My studio is located in the Vernon Street Studios building at: 6 Vernon Street, 2nd floor, Somerville 02145

See you then!

Sprawl, at the FPAC Gallery in Boston, MA (see postcard below).

Sprawl is a mixed media exhibition of invented realities, alternative landscapes, and urban structures in various stages of evolution and decay. It investigates contemporary utopian visions of the natural, urban, and scientific, through the filter of art and technology. Sprawl is a co-curated exhibit featuring new work from all three artists: Resa Blatman, Courtney Jordan, and Lalie Schewadron.

-The artists’ reception is Thursday, April 29th, 6-8PM
(and is sponsored by the Channel Cafe)

-The artists’ talk is on Saturday, May 1st at 7PM
(the Channel Cafe will be open for dinner that evening as well)

-The exhibit runs April 23-May 28, 2010
For gallery hours and directions, please visit: http://www.fortpointarts.org

————————————————————-

I’m also participating in a group show, I-95 Triennial: A Survey from Four New England States, at the University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor, ME.

Artists’ reception: Thursday, April 25, 2010
Exhibit runs: April 23-June 12, 2010

For more information, please visit: http://www.umma.umaine.edu/

“The arts in the period between 1880 and 1920 reached heights of achievement unseen since the Renaissance. The avant-garde in its prime was all greatness, all glory. With the best will in the world, and however much we find to admire and to hope for, our time is mannerist in comparison.” Read full article.

….”What’s missing is art that seems made by one person out of intense personal necessity, often by hand. A lot but not all of this kind of work is painting, which seems to be becoming the art medium that dare not speak its name where museums are concerned.” …..”They have a responsibility to their public and to history to be more ecumenical, to do things that seem to come from left field. They owe it to the public to present a balanced menu that involves painting as well as video and photography and sculpture. They need to think outside the hive-mind, both distancing themselves from their personal feelings to consider what’s being wrongly omitted and tapping into their own subjectivity to show us what they really love.

These things should be understood by now: The present is diverse beyond knowing, history is never completely on anyone’s side, and what we ignore today will be excavated later and held against us the way we hold previous oversights against past generations.

Message to curators: Whatever you’re doing right now, do something else next.” Read the entire article

Here are a few photos of WF’s beautiful beasts.

Nila

Madagascar

Thanh Hoang

I couldn’t fall asleep last night — my brain was swirling round and round with thoughts, and one was about my childhood home in Long Beach, New York. People ask me quite often who or what my painting influences are, and why I paint what I do; my answers are truthful based on what I’m aware of. For instance, I know my paintings are about fertility, sensuality, and an over-the-top beauty, but I’m not completely certain why I’m attracted to the Baroque/Rococo style to get my message across. The arabesque shapes I use are something I alluded to in my paintings and design work throughout the years, but why?

I’ve often had trouble recalling memories from my early past, but lately I’ve been able to access them more frequently. In fact, last night it occurred to me, while I couldn’t fall asleep, that the house I was brought up in for the first ten years of my life was decorated in a somewhat watered down style of Louis XIV. My father was a decorator and an upholsterer, and he worked in all kinds of homes back then, especially rich ones. He was given, or found, antique chairs and couches that he saved and reupholstered, and they ended up in our house. We had a green crushed velvet couch without any arms that had a soft ‘S’ curve. It was beautiful — perfect for a fainting baroness. Our curtains were silk and had swooping valences and tasseled shades that made the windows seem glorious. We had lovely detailed chairs, some with stiff cushioned backs, upholstered in beautiful fabrics. Our dining room had a mural painted on one wall, which wasn’t so common back then. It was the late 1960s and everyone was styling up to “modern,” but not my parents — I lived in a middle-class, quiet suburb, in a small ordinary house with parents that never went to college, yet the house was decorated, in parts, like a tiny palace. I’d stare at the mural for hours, wanting to walk inside the wall. It was a Greek/Roman scene of columns, gardens, and a pool. It was linear mostly, with washes, not heavily painted or filled in. Our dining room was small, but the furniture was ornate and elegant — well crafted, solid, real wood furniture! We had a chandelier in the dining room of tarnished gold and crystal. I’m picky about the chandeliers I like; most are poorly made copies that are too shiny or just plain ugly, but this one was truly elegant and beautiful.

Downstairs in the old, raw, musty basement, we had a small room called the “material room.” My father collected and saved the yards and bolts of unused fabrics from his work. He piled them in this tiny room so that over the years the scraps of fabric were like small mountains to a child (at least 3-4 feet high) and the bolts were stacked nearly to the ceiling. It was a great place to play, with one small light bulb in a dark, soft, mountainous room. I rolled, jumped, and laid there for hours playing with the fabrics and swallowed up in my own imagination. Some of the fabrics were probably quite old, in fact many may have been originals designed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. So here I was, enveloped by brocades, swirly patterns, and Rococo style fabrics. They didn’t seem to mean much to me then, but is it any wonder that my paintings are now full of classical references and ornate gestures?

Our pasts have a lot to offer us, but I wasn’t aware that mine could answer some of my painting questions. In any case, now when people ask me why I paint what I do, I can confidently say that my work is steeped in my childhood experiences and influenced by my parents’ taste for the riches of an ornate, opulent past.