Influences- Painters and Color

I have been thinking about painterly influences lately.   Nolde, Lam, and Ernst came to mind right away.   I now realize my choices have a to do with their bold use of color and emotional content.  I must admit that those painful art history lectures were worth the time.

Mossy Easter

We visited friends in St. Helena today. The meal was amazing and the moss was falling off the trees.   I gotta say I'm liking the lichen.

Freaking finally....

  This piece has been bugging me for a while now.  I have luster fired a few times without excitement until now.  It suddenly just pops.  I love gold luster but wish gold was not so expensive.  One tiny bottle of the tarnished gold was $46.00.  Shocking when you need two bottles to get the job done.

Maquette of the day

Working it out mini style.

Texturize me

More fun textures and my new favorite website for pics is http://www.naturephoto-cz.com.  They have fantastic images!

Sputnik Lives

Finally finished this one. Whoot!  This is the first of my new Virophage series.  The title Sputnik references the name given to the first found virophage. My virophage has evolved to attack the virus causing violence in my Mission Dolores and North Oakland neighborhoods. This heavily magnified sample was taken from a pool of oil in front of my studio at 62nd and Market Street. If you are interested in the science end of it here is a link. .http://www.virology.ws/2011/03/22/virophage-the-virus-eater/

Texture Mania

Are you obsessed with texture?  I am.  Nature is one of my favorite sources.  I am always trolling for the next cool bumpy thing.

more in progress

Today was a nice day in the studio.  It was the rare day that all three of us were there. I love my studio and studio mates.  I carved away on this and added another layer.  I think it needs a bit more tweaking and it will be ready to dry.  I often wish it could stay in the wet state forever.  It looks so alive. Alas...

New work in progress-Waiting for the glaciers to melt series

I love going to the studio after a few days away because I can focus and be productive.  I put this together today.  I found the Everest maps while I was packing boxes at my house this week.  I also completely forgot that I made copies of all of the maps about four years ago.  How useful to plan that far ahead.  Sometimes things turn up at just the right moment.  I did some sink drain research today too.  Fun stuff.

My "Chocolate Art" allocation has arrived

These days I am very excited about artisan chocolate.  Each piece is a little beauty filled with amazingly unique flavor combos. The one I ate today is in the lower left corner. It contained pink peppercorn infused ganache with Michel Cluizel Mangaro from Sambrano Valley(an award winning chocolate) in a dark chocolate velour shell. It was so rich I could only eat a small bite.  I will sneak up on the rest of it later.
   I found about about la forêt and their seasonal allocation from tasting table SF.  I cant wait for the summer batch. Drool....
  Their website if you have an elastic waistband like I do is http://www.laforetchocolate.com/

More inspiration Sin-ying Ho

Blog hopping I found this amazing work.  She is featured at SOFA NYC.  http://www.sinyingho.com/portfolio_1

A virus eating virus?

Do you ever feel like you just have to ask the right person and your path takes a great turn and you are off and running? This happened to me today.   I have been working on a virus series for a while now.  Conceptually it is unfolding, and has to do with being in Oakland, Memes, contagion, and community.  I lot of things to stuff into a body of work and maybe why it is taking so long to work out.  On a whim I texted an old grade school friend for ideas and this lead me to virophages.  Basically these are viruses that live off of other viruses. How cool is that?  So many possibilities and directions I can hardly contain myself.  Also today my neighbor the graffiti artist came by and said he will help me with the writing on these pieces. I have been waiting three months for him to get back into town.  A good day all around! Here is the article if you are interested.  A big thanks to Michelle.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-virus-eating-virus-antarctic-lake.html

Sweet Baby Feet

Don't you just love baby feet?  These belong to Ellie.  She is new in town and just getting started.  I can't wait to see where they take her.

My art cadre

These are some of my favorite people.  You need your art possy.  They have your back,  give an honest critique, and good hugs.

Aerial landscape or Wild Mouse?

These images are thin sections of electron microscopy of diaphragm (skeletal) muscles from wild type mice. Don't they look like aerial landscapes?  I love how one  image can work on several levels.  If you like looking at cells check out http://www.cellimagelibrary.org/.

Driving my work around

Today was about transporting work.  I have a show in Sacramento, so rather then mailing it I drove.  Everything is so green right now.  It doesn't look right.  Where are my brown grasses?  The good part of the trip was a quick visit with the show curator Tony Natsoulas. I am attaching a pic of his Ed Roth sculpture and a fish that came home with me.  I am so excited to have a piece of his work!  You can check out his website at http://www.tonynatsoulas.com/

New work

This sketch is a starting map of my next piece.  So many decisions... and drawing is much faster than scrapping a sculpture in progress.  (Although it is tempting to just dive in!)

Some more cool blogs and websites to surf.

http://journalofillustratedscience.blogspot.com/

http://www.neatorama.com/

http://www.inventables.com/

Working on the house and writing curriculum are fun but I miss my studio..... and my sanity!

First glaze firing

I am mostly happy with how this came out, but might fire it one more time to get the bronze glaze to pop a bit more.  You can tell what a great job my photographer J Jones does when you look at this taken by my iphone.