ATCs of Palette and Place

Yesterday’s outgoing mail included my latest series ATCs.  In this series, the Collagescape idea that I began with in 2014 takes another direction.  There are eight different designs in the series.  Each design shows different place that has been reduced to four individual colors.  The colors are used to represent a certain place and, in some cases, a time of the year.

A Cultural Oasis in the Arizona Desert

I am a big advocate of seeking out museums wherever I travel.  This Christmas I found myself in the gated community, McMansion, suburban sprawl that is Scottsdale, Arizona.  Fortunately, the Monday after Christmas, the Phoenix Art Museum was open for visitors.  I visited the museum about ten years ago, but that time I was helping organize an event and was unable to see as much as I wanted to.  This year I had all the time I needed on a quiet day. 

The permanent collection is solid.  There is a good overview of western art such as the Deborah Butterfield (seen above).  The contemporary collection has noticeably grown since my previous visit.   I really like Betsabeé Romero’s piece in the courtyard and then I looked at her website.  I would love to see a big installation of her work. 

As an artist who works with maps, of course I was all over Horacio Zabala’s exhibit Mapping the Monochrome.  Seeing my first large exhibit of Kehinde Wiley’s work was a real treat.  And then there was Martin Creed’s installation Work No. 2497 — a room filled, tightly packed actually, with white balloons.  Visitors are allowed to navigate their way through it.  It was a bit terrifying, yet I am glad I did it — but once was enough.

Now I am back home in San Francisco.  It is good to be home.  But I have to say, as we all love to diss red state Trumpizona, it should be noted that they have this museum.  It is a place where all the signage is bilingual, where women and non-white artists are well represented, where this is plenty of new, dynamic contemporary art.  I am not sure where to find that in my little city by the Bay….

Monsoon Green

Saguaro Monsoon, acrylic on paper, 15”x14”

Tucson Monsoon Green Collagescape, mixed media on board, 8”x10”

After my recent Southwest art adventure, it’s time to start making some art to reflect the road trip.  As a Californian I don’t always think about green being the color of the desert – especially as we’re in the middle of a drought.  But then I arrived in a hot and humid Tucson just as thunderstorms moved in, I experienced monsoon weather in the Southwest – they have had a wet year in Arizona and New Mexico and the desert is green.  I am also thinking back to the work of the Tucson artist Rose Cabat I saw for the first time in Tucson – the glowing shades of green on her ceramics are starting to make even more sense to me as I look closer at Tucson Green.

I have started some Tucson work with both a landscape and a collagescape.  More desert-inspired work to come….

Reds, Browns and Pinks

When I travel the desert southwest, my road trips always combine three of my favorites interests: nature, art and history.  I just completed a two-week trip to New Mexico and back, 3665 miles and plenty of stops along the way. 

My last stop, before arriving in New Mexico, was in Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park.  It was the middle of a hot desert day that discouraged any sort of hiking.  But I kept jumping out of the car and took a lot of pictures.  I love the colors of the place and realized I still need to do a Collagescape to capture that petrified wood palette of reds and browns. 

As you wind through the park and head back to the Interstate, one of the last stops is the historic Painted Desert Inn.  Now I always appreciate a good national park lodge, and this one, well it’s a real gem.  The Painted Desert Inn is small and modest.  It is not one of the bigger lodges that get all the attention like Yosemite’s Ahwahnee Hotel or the Timberline Lodge up on Mount Hood.  As beautiful as those grand lodges are, this might be one of the best.

The Painted Desert Inn is too small by today’s standards to operate as a national park lodge.  And this is what makes it special.  It functions now as an extra visitor center, but more importantly as a thoughtfully restored and well-maintained example of unspoiled, 1930’s Pueblo Revival Architecture.  It also stands as a fine monument to the good work done by the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) during the Depression. 

The inn is situated on a bed of clay that has resulted in an unstable foundation requiring a constant series of maintenance to the building.  The last time I visited, the inn was more of a construction site.  Currently it’s there, as close as possible to it’s 1930‘s condition, for visitors to enjoy just a quick stop off of I-40.  Keep an eye on those colors, they might be appearing in some of my art in the near future.

Post-Vintage Postcard Booklets

A few years ago I bought a pile of vintage postcard booklets. As I was deciding what to do with them, I had the idea to start making my own postcard booklets. I did not intend to make booklets that would be printed and reproduced, but instead to make individual, hand-made postcard booklets. Perhaps as we run short of vintage materials we should all start making our own.

For this project I began with a few different prototypes. I experimented with various papers and other materials. I chose subject matter familiar to the old postcard booklets and started on a series of small paintings of mostly landscapes based on my frequent road trips around the Western U.S. After a couple of months I had created over 100 4”x6” paintings for this series. The final step was to sort the pieces and assemble them into eight hand-made postcard booklets. Further examples of the work can be seen at tofuart.com and some prints based on the work are also available.

Six Maps of Arizona

I want to live in a country where we end a politician’s career at the ballot box. There are plenty of politicians I’d like to see go. Having crooked congressmen caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar suits me just fine. And one loves a homophobic, toe tapping republican getting busted in a men’s room. But what I do not want to live in a country where terrorists feel entitled to use violence against our elected officials. I do not want to live in Columbia, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, etc.