Last night ended my eight week large format screen printing class with instructor Kerstin Graudins at Pratt Fine Art Center in Seattle, WA. It was nice to finally see my small 8″x10″ sketchbook size collages expand to a 30″x40″ scale. I used my time at Pratt to experiment with screen printing scanned collaged images over physical collaged backgrounds. I recycled patterns from some of my favorite handmade papers and lines from old drawings to create prints that became a layer in a larger collage. Much of the material that I used for these collages was collected from my stash of my grandfather’s blue prints of the buildings he once designed, torn advertisements and posters ripped from the streets of Florence, Italy and Paris, France as well as paper rolls found in player pianos.
Come this July you can view a collaborative work by yours truly and Carmen Neely in person at the Elder Gallery in Charlotte, NC’s southend. We will be exhibited in the Salon II show opening July 5th.
Recently my life has become a whirlwind of changes. In just a month I will be moving across country to Seattle, WA. This will be my first experience living anywhere other than Charlotte, NC, my hometown. In preparation for the big move all of my things have been scattered, packed, shipped, sold and all around relocated to new places that leave me with minimal resources to continue to produce artwork at the current moment. Instead of letting my artistic limitations restrict me from continuing to make things, I have embraced the limitations that have been put in front of me.
My most recent project has been a collaboration with a close friend and artist, Carmen Neely. We met at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where we both studied and received Bachelors in Fine Art, concentrating in painting. In our final painting projects course we shared a studio together, however, it wasn’t until we graduated and moved out of the studio that we began to work together.
I have decided to dedicate a tumblr blog to my moleskin sketches. For the past year I have carried around a moleskin and a pen. As a rule I only draw in my moleskin with a pen because I erase too much. I enjoy practicing discretely drawing the people and things around me from critiques, cafes, hospital waiting rooms to traveling abroad.
The North Carolina CowParade is a public art exhibit that was featured from August-December 2012 within the triad area of Chapel Hill, Raleigh and Durham. At the closing of the parade, there will be an auction. All proceeds from the auction will benefit the North Carolina Children’s Hospital. Each artist participating was provided a life size cow (8′ long and 5′ high and weighing approx. 125 lb.) to utilize as a canvas.
Come out this Saturday to the Hart Witzen Gallery to see the opening SHOWDOWN exhibition from 6-10 pm. I will be exhibiting my latest silkscreen and chine colle prints alongside 36 other artists including Carmen Neely and Lydia Goldbeck.
If you didn’t make it to the open reception last week you can still view the Sanskrit Exhibition at the Student Union Gallery at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte until this Thursday, April 26th. The exhibition gives you a chance to see some of the artwork including my painting, My Wunderkammer, that has been recently published in the 2012 43rd edition of the Sanskrit Literary Arts Magazine.
I have been working towards this moment for five years. Finally, this Monday, April 16th my latest work will be displayed alongside fifteen other BFA artists, some of which have become my closest friends. Altogether we are an assortment of a wide variety of media, ranging from sculpture, fibers, printmaking, painting, photography and installation. It feels bittersweet. Come out and celebrate our last show together as undergrad students at UNC-Charlotte.
There is something fascinating about investigating abandoned buildings. I use what was left behind: old papers, broken objects, and discarded furniture to imagine what once existed. I create narratives for the different types of people that would inhabit these spaces and collect their objects to recreate environments filled with their stories. Some objects are my own personal story while others are those of a stranger. Everything I have collected is found in Charlotte, North Carolina, the only home I’ve ever known. It is a place that never holds on to anything. There is more concern for creating anew than renovating the old. To me there is something tragic about old buildings being demolished and places fading into mere memories. My work is a reflection on the inevitability of loss and time. House of Collections is still on view in the lobby of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte Center City Building.
Yours truly sitting in House of Collections, site specific mixed media installation, 2012, dimensions variable. Photography by Adam Anderson
