Build a mountain; then tear it down

 

ink pen, colored pencil on paper, 14" x 17"

(detail)

(detail)

Red

This week's sketchbook piece in the works:

 acrylic wash, ink pen, colored pencil on paper, 14" x 17"

 (detail)

 

(detail)

Quick peek

Some quick and dirty photos of the new sketchbook work still in progress (all abstracted landscapes):

 

 cut paper

 cut paper

 felt tip pen on paper

felt tip pen on paper

So, how ya doing?

It's been a while.  Still making art almost everyday--creating, destroying and re-making again. Slow and steady...

I'm currently at work on some small/medium sculptures made of watercolor paper and foam core. Haven't figured out yet how they will be displayed-will the pedestals be part of the sculpture or separate beasts from the actual works? Remains to be seen.  Been nice to just make work and not worry about deadlines so much. 

I'm also working on some felt tip pen drawings and cut paper/collage-style drawings on paper; all are basically abstracted landscapes. But some are venturing on being completely abstract.  Will post some here as soon as I get a couple of pictures of them.

On a different note, is anyone really going to care about this once Mr. Deitch is gone?
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-deitch-moca-20130725,0,278228.story

Sure, there's a lot of work that needs to be done at MOCA but that seems to have been the case for quite a while.  So what else is new?  During my stint at the museum on the hill, there were always troubles or issues with the "higher ups."  Sigh.  It just gets so, so tired after a while.  Everyone seems to get in their own way-too many agendas. Thank God for the people who actually believe in the art they show, the art makers everywhere and the good art-things that continue to happen in and around Los Angeles. This good will continue too. With or without the head muckety-mucks to give their blessings.  Really, who needs 'em anyway? Keep at it, artists.  Just keep making what you gotta make and doing what you need to do to make your art happen.

Art installation at LAX

Fellow artist Leanne Lee and I have our installation Passage currently on display at the Tom Bradley International Terminal at the Los Angeles International Airport.

(Photos by Kelly Barrie, Panic Studio LA)

Here's the press release from the Los Angeles World Airports site:

Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), in partnership with the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, announces a new installation by Los Angeles-based artists Sophia Allison and Leanne Lee at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). The installation, titled Passage, is composed of coffee filters, which were used, dried, and sewn together, and delicate drawings on rice paper. Using these materials to create, deconstruct, and reconstruct speaks to the notion of process, change, and reinvention. The site-specific installation is on view in the art display case in the Customs Hall of the Tom Bradley International Terminal, on the Lower/Arrivals Level, for ticketed international passengers through March 2013.

Passage references a ritualistic domestic action: making coffee. Water passes through ground coffee and filters, staining the ghost image of the process into the paper. Allison and Lee dried and ironed flat the used filters, then stitched them into clusters reminiscent of floral and vegetative landscapes. Adding to the juxtaposition of organic and inorganic, of ritual and daily activity, the artists incorporated cityscape drawings on rice paper which were stained with watercolor and coffee. Informed by traditional Korean symbols and motifs, these drawings were reconfigured by cutting, tearing, and sewing the images into the clusters of coffee filters. As actual geographies, locations and landscapes shift and fluctuate – physically, mentally, and metaphorically –the materials that comprise this work are non-permanent and fragile. As a modular construct, Passage can be repositioned infinitely, becoming site-specific and speaking to the temporal nature of life.

http://stuckattheairport.com/2012/12/21/art-made-of-coffee-filters-at-lax-airport/

Days of Our Lives

Currently, I am in a terrific show with 2 wonderful artist friends, Paul W. Evans and Kim Tucker, at artist run space WEEKEND.  We are wrapping up the exhibition next Sunday, November 25.  All three of us will be present to speak with visitors about the exhibition.  And hey, there will be doughnuts and cookies, so stop on by!  Here are the details:

DAYS OF OUR LIVES

November 2-25 2012
Weekend Space
4634 Hollywood Blvd. 

Los Angeles, CA 90027

Open Sat. and Sun: 11a.m.-6p.m.

I am very excited to announce my upcoming solo exhibition, Friend Among Strangers, opening at the end of this month at Brevard College!  Please see below for details, and if you are in the area, I hope you can attend the reception.

Mountainscape3, acrylic and grit on watercolor paper, 2012

Friend Among Strangers

Sophia Allison

August 31– September 29, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday, August 31, 5:30pm

Brevard College

Art Department

Spiers Gallery

1 Brevard Drive

Brevard, NC 28712

Gallery hours: Mon. - Fri., 8:00a.m.-3:00p.m.

Brevard College Art Department is proud to present a solo exhibition by North Carolina native Sophia Allison. In Friend Among Strangers the Los Angeles-based, multi-media artist offers an autobiography of sewn landscapes, works on paper and sculpture which culminate into an installation addressing ideas concerning the emotional connections to one’s own past, the fragmentation of memories and the experiences that meld it all together.

For this exhibition the artist presents work directly connected to and inspired by the organic surroundings of her childhood home in the mountains of Western North Carolina.

In her sewn pictorials, Allison places a printed image on fabric and repetitively sews through the paper, forcing it into the cloth fibers while simultaneously destroying the paper. Parts of the image are recreated with thread on the opposite side of the material. The effect is two-fold: on one side, the landscape is clearly articulated; on the other, the paper image is obliterated, leaving loose threads and uneven textures. The image is simultaneously destroyed and built up; it is recognized as a snapshot of a specific location and at the same time it becomes fragmented and abstracted.

Allison's room-size installation contains a small house sculpture made of cardboard and recycled materials. The house references a gatehouse on her family's property that has fallen into disrepair. This sculpture is situated within a larger installation of thousands of hand cut paper floral pieces that reference local landscape as well as the landscape from her Los Angeles neighborhood.

Her recent works on paper are collaged abstracted landscapes. The forms within these pieces undulate and flow, creating movement in the images. The works are created from Allison's memory of the local physical terrain.

Friend Among Strangers situates the viewer directly within the enveloping environment of the creative mind. The use of carefully selected, tactile material and the physical consequences of the artist’s solitary intentions transform commonplace and discarded detritus into re-born objects of contemplation, recollection and redemption.

For more information, please contact Diane Pomphrey, at 828.884.8188 or email at pomphrdj.@brevard.edu. Visit www.brevard.edu/art or www.sophiaallison.com