Woman with lines

This one started out as just lines on paper and then, suddenly a woman appeared! Not quite realistic but at least recognizable.

Rumi again

I want to do a whole series on Rumi but so far I'm only up to two. The picture below right is the detail on the bottom left corner of the full piece. I love these lines.

Working with wood

I've been a woodworker for a while building various furniture pieces, boxes, etc. This piece is made from lacewood (sycamore) and walnut. I'll call it....Object #1.

This one may change....

So can I draw?

Not very well. My skills are rather limited -- at least compared to Napoleon Dynamite.

This is one of the best and it's a copy of a Man Ray fashion ad photo. You do what you can.

My dear friend Maggi

Maggi Grace is a talented artist and teacher, great friend and also an expert in the experience of health care in the US. She took her then partner, Howard Staub, to India because his operation would have cost over $200,000 here. Her main web site is here.

From there you can reach her website about her book on their experience, State of the Heart, that will be released in the spring. Her testimony to the US Senate is here.

Take a look; it's an issue that affects us all.

The fine print

You can see the quotes here, mostly from Orwell and mostly from 1984.

Returning from DC....

When I returned from DC I was obsessed with Dada. I read books on Dada, researched on the web, thought Dada, dreamt Dada, ate Dada. Problem was that I had no artistic background. So I figured I'd start with collage. Anybody can glue things to a board, right? I gave into my anger and created what you see below.

It's entitled "The Medusa Leaders or Orwell Just Got the Year Wrong." My niece thinks it's disrespectful to women but it's not my fault Medusa was female.

Mixed media, house paint on discarded plywood cabinet door, finished with hard wood flooring varnish. The women are taken from ads in Art Forum magazine. The eye is , of course, a famous Man Ray photo manipulated some. The quotes are mostly from Orwell and mostly from 1984.

Where I started

I was in DC during the Spring for work and decided to visit the Dada exhibit at the National Gallery. I was shaken by the world the Dadaists were experiencing, the ideas that drove them, and the similarities to our present circumstances. Their reaction to the absurdity and tragedy of the 1910s, WWI and the negative aspects of technology made me feel like I was in a time warp. Was 2006 really just a new version of 1919?

The exhibit was so disturbing that I had the first panic attack of my life -- I had to get out of there. At the same time I was drawn to the art, the artists and the story. I went back twice more and I'll go see it at the MOMA in NY in August. For more info on the Dada exhibit go here.



George Grosz "Republican Automatons"