More wall install pix

Looky, I'm on the Tee Vee!

Thursday, Dec. 19, on the 6p.m. news, KNBC aired a piece about art in domestic spaces in connection to Anne Marten's recent article, "Los Angeles Art Outside The White Cube," in Artillery Magazine's Nov/Dec issue. Underground Gallery and my work were featured. Click the link to see the 3-minute spot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAUanD57tgY

I am thrilled to say the least! My only complaint is that my name wasn't mentioned at all in connection to the work, but my exhibition received quite a bit of air time, which was fantastic.

Armando H. Torres, Director of Underground Gallery.

Tulsa Kinney (Artillery Magazine), Anne Martens and Armando hanging out in the back of the gallery.

Anne Martens, friend, colleague, artist and art writer.

Mini Interview

The great folks at the Little Bird Gallery blog asked me to participate in their 15 Questions About Art series. From their blog: 15 Questions about Art is an ongoing series in which we ask our collective favorite artists, writers, musicians, sleepy dreamers and object makers from across the creative spectrum to give us a glimpse into how they perceive art through a standard set of questions.

http://lbgsqueeks.blogspot.com/2009/11/15-questions-about-art-sophia-allison.html

More from Home Home, Sweet Again

On wall, left to right: Untitled (branches, flowers) and Untitled (Kudzu)- both are hand cut paper installations. In foreground: Blue Ridge.


On the wall: Untitled (Gatehouse), sewn canvas and paper and Green limb, sewn cardboard, consumer packaging, paper and wire.

Untitled (Dan) - I wasn't planning to include this piece in the show, but the day of the opening, Armando, the Director of Underground Gallery, liked the image and sewed it into a pillow! It works well in the show, especially since the gallery is a domestic space (an apartment) and the exhibition deals with some aspects of domesticity.

Opening Tonight

My solo show Home Home, Sweet Again opens tonight at Underground Gallery in Sliver Lake. Almost ready! Here are a few install shots:



I ironed some of my sewn works flat-a domestic activity for preparation of artwork in a domestic space.


More to come!

Coming Soon

Here's a preview of some of the work I'll have in my solo exhibition Home Home, Sweet Again at Underground Gallery opening Friday, November 13:

Gatehouse, mixed media

Pop Up, mixed media

Blue Ridge, cardboard, straight pins, watercolor

The sculpture shown in the last image involves me gluing a small, hole-punched dot of watercolor paper to the head of a pin- a few thousand dots and pins, actually. But the work is meditative, and I get a lot pleasure pushing the pins into the cardboard mountain range and seeing the work come together. I'm also creating a couple of new sewn images as well as a new paper installation for this exhibition. Back to work!

Charles Burchfield

MG and I went to the Hammer Museum's opening this past Saturday to see the exhibition Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield, curated by artist Robert Gober. I become aware of Charles Burchfield's watercolors when I was teaching a beginning water media painting class at Hastings College around 2001-2002. I had stumbled across his images while I was doing preparation for the class, trying to find some interesting examples of how watercolor could be used in an expressive fashion to depict traditional subject matter-some students were interested in painting representationally, and I was encouraging them to try a variety of approaches.

Above from the Hammer's website: Glory of Spring (Radiant Spring), 1950

I was particular inspired by how Burchfield created a very rich, personal vocabulary of marks imbued with emotional and psychological qualities that he applied to his observed subjects -the marks have an abstracted quality that seem to describe vibrations, sounds, energy, and life radiating from the environments he painted. The marks work together to create a fantastical element to his landscapes-they seem spiritualized or feel otherworldly. The Hammer exhibition is quite expansive -many drawings, preliminary studies, and his journals in addition to paintings. There's so much to take in, I know I'll need to go back for a second viewing. The show is up through Jan. 3, 2010 and well worth seeing.

Hendersonville

A few images taken on my family's property, Redgates:


And images of some of the surrounding areas near my family's place:

(I think the sign is fantastic.)

Regarding the last two images - my brother and I went riding around on some of the old country roads near our family's place and discovered three houses that were completely overgrown and abandoned. One was just barely visible from the road, so when we went to investigate, we were surprised there were actually three hidden in the overgrowth. We investigated further as one of the basements was wide open.


My brother discovered a stack of several copies of molding old catalogues/year book-type publications advertising an all-girls school from the 1940-50s that our mom and her sister had briefly attended. They weren't pictured in the catalogues as these pre-dated their enrollment there, but it was still kind of weird.

I'll tell you whut

It's been a while since I last posted. After the show opened, I went back to Hendersonville, NC for over a week and spent time with family and friends. Hendersonville is in the western part of NC in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains near Asheville. It' s a beautiful area. I took a lot of pictures of some of the buildings on Redgates- my family's property, and dilapidated buildings on some of the surrounding country roads. My family runs a seasonal RV park business as well as rents out small summer cottages, but the RV park gets the most action. They've built up their business primarily by word-of-mouth and know most of the folks they rent to very well. The surrounding property is quite beautiful-very natural and not overly manicured like some godawful country club or golf course. I have many strong images that I am currently using in new work I am making now. I'll post some of the snapshots and new works (as these progress) soon.

Also, I'm in the thick of making new pieces for a small solo show in November at a cool little space called Underground Gallery located in Echo Park. Armando Torres is the Director. He's a wonderful, funny, very talented individual, and I'm honored that he wants to have some of my work in his space. The title for the show is Home, Home, Sweet Again. I usually struggle settling on a show title, but this one came to me quickly.

Additionally, I've finally gotten a chance to scan some of the sewn images I had in the July group exhibition, but my website keeps freezing up as I try to add pages, so I'm putting some of the images here.

Untitled (Redgates, sky view) front view

(The back view of this work can been seen in my previous post.)

Untitled (Redgates, red cottage) front view
(The back view of this work can been seen in my previous post.)

Untitled (C.B's garden) front view


Untitled (C.B's garden) back view

Tonight

Our three person collaborative exhibition Retrospect opens at Lawrence Asher Gallery tonight! The show is looking good, and I think the choices that the three of us made for the layout of the exhibition were good ones. There is a flow to the work placement that guides the viewer through the gallery space.

Untitled (C.C's Hendersonville) back view

Untitled (Redgates, sky view) back view

Molly Barnes stopped by yesterday while Matt and I were preparing to hang my sewn works and she (like me) felt that the backs of the work should be hung outward; this view shows the sewing process along with the paper image ripping and crumbling. As the show is about memory, reflection and fragmentation of things past, the view of the backs of the work reflects this idea. These images of landscapes and structures are bits and pieces of scenes from my home in western NC. Some of these places are in a state of disrepair. The front of the work is more much clean and looks like a traditional embroidered landscape image. Viewers can walk behind the work and see this view also. We hung the pieces clothesline style.

Untitled (Redgates, red cottage) back view

In addition to the sewn works, I also have two installations in the exhibition and one is in the front window:

Show ready

I'm in the process of installing art for next Saturday's 3-person exhibition, Retrospect, at Lawrence Asher Gallery. We received a nice plug for the show in flavorpill:

http://flavorpill.com/losangeles/events/2009/7/11/retrospect



Detail of Untitled (Redgates), sewing on khaki scrap fabric and paper, 2009.

Branching out

Cutting more tree limb/root-shapes out of watercolor paper. It's a bit of a painstaking and hand cramping process, but the result is worth it.