Deck the Halls - an exhibition at 28 West Second Gallery in Greensburg, PA

28 West Second Gallery & Studio Space presents Deck the Halls: A Second Annual Holiday Exhibition, with an opening reception on Saturday, December 11, 2010 from 7 - 10 PM. Exhibition continues through December 24, 2010.

Deck the Halls features art work from local artists throughout the western Pennsylvania region: Michael Bendik, Michelle Eng-Bendik, Robert Bishop, Tony Cacalano, Kyle Fischer, John Lario, Roberta Meyers, Amy Rustic, Scott Snaden, Marc Snyder, Meeghan Triggs and more. There will be a wide variety of art work ranging from collage, fiber arts, painting, printmaking, sculpture and photography. Find a unique gift for those special people in your life!



I'm delighted to have 7 linocuts included in this exhibition, including this one, "Lunch Hour".

28 West Second is a really great gallery here in Greensburg, and I would encourage everyone who can to take this opportunity to visit it!


28 West Second
Gallery & Studio Space
28 West Second St
Greensburg, PA 15601
Website: www.28westsecond.com

Gallery Hours: Tues - Fri Noon - 6 PM/ Sat 11 AM - 4 PM / Appointments Welcome / Admission is Free

Missing The Point

I've got sketchbooks full of studies from great artwork - it was something my various professors strongly encouraged, and something I encouraged my students to do. Here's a page of studies I just made where I challenged myself to create recognizable reproductions that were completely pointless in terms of learning anything significant about the artwork in question. The Rothko kind of fails at completely failing, as the values tell you a little something about the work. I think the Monet most satisfactorily succeeds at failing to convey anything meaningful about the painting in question.

Red Sky At Night

Subscribers to the FIMP Book of the Month Club (which, by the way, makes a wonderfully eccentric holiday gift) will find "Red Sky At Night" in their mailboxes any day now. This book explores and expands upon the wisdom of sailors.

Rep. Joe Barton or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Carbon Dioxide

“I would also point out that CO2, carbon dioxide, is not a pollutant in any normal definition of the term. … I am creating it as I talk to you. It’s in your Coca-Cola, you’re Dr. Pepper, your Perrier water. It is necessary for human life. It is odorless, colorless, tasteless, does not cause cancer, does not cause asthma.” - Rep. Joe Barton

Rachel's Animated Crocodile

My four year old daughter Rachel makes "cards" where she folds a piece of paper in half, draws on the inside and the outside, and often signs her name on the back. Yesterday she had made a card and was flipping it open and closed, watching the crocodile open and close its mouth. Her first animation!



You can find more of her wonderful drawings at Rachel Draws A Lot.

Educational and Instructive! Scientifically Designed! Beautiful Old Box!

Christmas Island Pipistrelle

I've found that if I draw something I'm more likely to remember it, so I thought I'd draw something that should be remembered.

A Little Drawing Of My Little Daughter Drawing.

Where Are They Now?

Tinseltown is a tough place to be a robot. So many of our mechanical stars have their one huge role, and then never catch the eye of another casting director. October's Book of the Month asks the question "Where Are They Now?"

Where Are They Now? R2D2 and C3PO

One of the few robots to continue to find work in the theater, R2D2 is currently performing as Vladimir in an Off-Off-Broadway production of Waiting for Godot.



C3PO performs as Paul in "Meet The Re-Peatles", a Beatles tribute band.

Here's a clip from "Star Wars", the film that introduced us to these consummate performers:

Where Are They Now? Computer

Computer was really the robot's robot. Highly respected amongst her peers, but receiving little recognition from the broader public for her groundbreaking work in the original "Star Trek" series. She can be found these days doing voiceover work for several GPS companies.

Computer in a moment of hair-raising drama from "Star Trek":

Where Are They Now? Gort

Gort currently is filling in for the vacationing "Big Tex" at the State Fair of Texas, a nice break from his regular gig of holding a giant muffler in front of an auto parts shop.

The world was first introduced to this stellar talent in "The Day The Earth Stood Still".

Where Are They Now? Hal 9000

Sadly, Hal 9000 has abandoned his career as a performer. Despite his astonishing and moving performance in 2001, he was unable to find more work in Hollywood, and has returned to his hometown of Urbana, Illinois. He is currently working as a red light camera. He refuses all interview requests.

Here's a clip from 2001:

Where Are They Now? Robot

Unable to cope with life after "Lost in Space", Robot has had a rough time, having been in and out of rehab many times over the years, battling his inner demons. These days he is working as a grocery bagger, just trying to stay clean and sober, taking it one day at a time.

Here's Robot in better days:

Ketchup spoon

This Just In!

Why did they bury a story like this on page 12?

Shark on Driveway

See the finished drawing at Rachel Draws A Lot.

Crane on Couch

Mr. Anteater Does Not Suffer Fools Gladly.

Art Lesson

I'm sitting on the couch, drawing with my daughter Rachel. I'm drawing the couch we're sitting on, and the bookshelves next to it - just a little perspective drawing. She's watching, and guessing what I'm going to draw next. I draw one of her drawings in a large frame hanging above the couch. She turns around and looks at the bare wall and says "Where is it?!".

More soon. . .

The suspense is just killing you, isn't it?

Mr. Anteater Stars in the 100th FIMP Book of the Month

Here's the cover to September's Book of the Month. Back in 2000 I mailed out A Short Short Fairy Tail Tale to a few folks. I never suspected I'd still be making these tiny books ten years later. This month's offering is the 100th book in the series.

Liftoff! Rachel draws an animal in a rocket.

For more of Rachel's drawings visit Rachel Draws A Lot.

If it were up to my daughter, I would just make contour drawings.

Our house is full of tiny creatures.

Critique

Meat Motor

charcoal and acrylic, 20" x 20"

The Scrambler

skate park

in the desert

Loud Duck.

Stampede!

The Green in Greensburg - Alternative Energy

Greensburg's way ahead of the curve when it comes to alternative sources of energy. We have drawn on the enormous potential of trees to power the grid. Here's one of the tree-outlets. It's kind of like tapping them for maple syrup. . . you'd be amazed at how much electricity is generated by all of those fluttering leaves.

How To Draw Ernest Hemingway, FIMP's 3rd How To Draw book

"How To Draw Ernest Hemingway" will be arriving in FIMP Book of the Month Club subscribers' mailboxes in the next couple of days - it went to the post office this afternoon.

"How To Draw Ernest Hemingway" is the third of FIMP's "How To Draw" books, which have included "How To Draw Jean Paul Sartre (With Genuine Human Dignity)" and "How To Draw Sigmund Freud (And Your Subconscious Reasons For Doing So)".

My standard disclaimer is, of course, that you will learn absolutely nothing useful about drawing by reading these books.

A Face

More of Rachel's drawings at Rachel Draws A Lot.

Another Motor

charcoal and acrylic, 12" x 16"

Motor

charcoal and acrylic, 20" x 20"

My 4 year old explains things.

"The moon goes around the earth. The earth goes around the sun. The sun is in the middle. The dinosaurs stay in the museum. The museum stays in Pittsburgh."



More of Rachel's drawings at Rachel Draws A Lot.

Before and After

"Before and After" is the 98th tiny book published by the Fiji Island Mermaid Press. It's not my usual practice to reproduce the entire book on the blog right after it's been sent out to FIMP Book of the Month subscribers, but this one is dealing with the ongoing oil spill, and it seems to make sense to put it out there while that horrible situation is still unfolding.

I'm happy with this month's book for a couple of reasons. Back in my graduate school days at Indiana University I studied concrete poetry with Mary Ellen Solt, and this book puts some of those ideas to use. She was a great professor - I remember her passing out her syllabus in two week increments over the course of the semester, as she was putting the class together as she went along, being responsive to what was happening with the students. Pretty amazing for someone who was near the end of a long teaching career. If she were still around I'd send her one of these. . .

I'm pleased with the way this book translates to xerox. As a printmaker I always feel like my work should take advantage of the peculiar strengths of whatever medium I'm working in, and that includes xerography. I don't always achieve that, but in this case the xerox did nice things to the pages that include both laser-printed and rubber-stamped text. Things that I wanted it to do, like increasing the contrast and making them less distinct from each other, so that the "OIL" stamp takes a few more seconds to read as something other than just pattern and noise. In the xerox, you're much more likely to see the page as a picture first, before you start reading, than you do with the "printing plate" from which the xerox is made. It's nice when things like that actually work out the way you hoped they would.

And I'm happy that the front and back covers are full participants in the little drama of the book. I especially like the back cover - I sacrificed the usual FIMP logo for the drama of the black swallowing up the page.

So, anyway, I'm happy with this one, and that's why. I wish the subject matter were something less awful. There's something that makes me sick.