Art Presentation, Video Postings, Art Show Submission, Classes and the Andre Breton's 'Manifesto of Surrealism'.

Well, it’s been a busy and artfully fulfilling couple of weeks since last I wrote for both Martha and me. With all the work we’ve been up to our ears in with our remodel project it’s a wonder we’ve had time for anything else, but somehow we have.

Martha, for starters completed the series of classes she was teaching for the Icicle Arts Gallery in Leavenworth at the Barn Beach Reserve. She loved doing it and the students really had a great time and a lot of budding artist got some good exposure to making art and getting in touch with their own creativity.

At the same time she got her flier out for her upcoming class to be held September21st in Soap Lake for the Art Guild there at the Las Brisas facility and folk started calling about it this week.

Here at our home studio her students have been making progress on their clay animal figures and Martha has really made some great forays into animal sculpture with the two horses she has been working on. I really like the bust of this horse.

Meanwhile, I have been getting a few things done myself.  I finally got the video of the Artful bike ride of the Apple Capital Loop Trail submitted to Go Wedia the local video sharing site where most of the likely viewers will have the opportunity to see it. And, that just days after I posted a very short video clip on Facebook of folks running in the Color Rush fundraiser over the weekend which I took while riding again on the loop. That was a surprise and kind of a hoot coming off of the Pipeline Bridge only to find a bunch of crazy looking people running and walking with colored flour all over themselves. People tell me they were intrigued by the video clip but were really wondering what in the heck was going on… can’t blame them. I was wonder myself as I shot the video.

But, of greater artful significance for me was my getting my submission into the Orange County center for Contemporary Art this past week. I really hope they accept one or more of my works for this show which is titled ‘Compass – Navigating the Journey to Self-Identity.  Amy V. Grimes, who has degrees in both Art History and Psychology, will be the guest curator for this show. For inspiration she offered this quote from Andre Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism 1924:

"So strong is the belief in life, in what is most fragile in life - real life, I mean - that in the end this belief is lost. Man, that inveterate dreamer, daily more discontent with his destiny, has trouble assessing the objects he has been led to use, objects that his nonchalance has brought his way, or that he has earned through his own efforts, almost always through his own efforts for he has agreed to work, at least he has not refused to try his luck (or what he calls his luck!).  At this point he feels extremely modest: he knows what women he has had, what silly affairs he has been involved in; he is unimpressed by his wealth or his poverty, in this respect he is still a newborn babe and, as for the approval of his conscience, I confess that he does very nicely without it. If he still retains a certain lucidity, all he can do is turn back toward his childhood which, however his guides and mentors may have botched it, still strikes him as somehow charming. There, the absence of any known restrictions allows him the perspective of several lives lived at once; this illusion becomes firmly rooted within him; now he is only interested in the fleeting, the extreme facility of everything. Children set off each day without a worry in the world. Everything is near at hand, the worst material conditions are fine. The woods are white or black, one will never sleep."

That being digested and politics being one of the described subsets to Identity that were described in the prospectus, I decided to submit three of my Peace Art works.  The exhibition will take place in October and November at the OCCCA in Santa Ana, Ca.  The days to physically submit and accepted works coincides with the time we will be in the O.C. for family events; so the timing couldn’t be better. Let’s hope Amy V. Grimes appreciates my work. 

On a much lighter and entertaining note, last night Martha and I went to Soap Lake to the local Art Guild’s 3^rd Wednesday event at which I was to be one of the three presenters for the night. The other two being Wally Kluver an Abstract painter from the town of Wilbur and David Michaelson a photographer who has taken on the chore of photographing what he described as the ‘passing history’ in rural Grant, Adams and Lincoln Counties. David is also and author of fourteen books including a cook book, a children’s book and several mysteries. Both were very entertaining presenters talking about how they went about their art and told some funny stories along the way.

I was the middle presenter of the three and was able to make what seemed a pretty coherent description of how my art has progressed from simple nature photos to abstract but untouched (no Photoshop) creations to embracing digital photo alteration to the extent of using it as a means to create digital paintings using my own photos as the palate from which I paint, to even returning to brush painting and physical collage based upon designs I created digitally.  

The folks in the audience many of them artists and photographers themselves were very interested in what I presented and came up and asked many questions during the break and at the end of the evening. Some even described how my talk had given them some new inspiration or how they had experimented with some similar

techniques. All in all it was a rewarding evening both as a presenter and as an audience member listening to the other presenters and chatting it up with so many interesting folks. One might even help us redo our websites to be more accessible to phones and Ipads and such.

Well, that’s probably enough for now as I really need to get out there and Help Martha with painting the trim of the house. Have a very artful day and if you have time reread that quote by Andre Breton.

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