Collector

I would collect this:

Transparent Song Bird, The Music House

It's a modern Singing Bird box, an automatonic music box

Artist spotlight: studio visit with Julia Dzikiewicz

Julia Dzikiewicz: “Ms. Stevens visits Ms. Paul” Mixed media encaustic,  50"x30"

Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting Julia Dzikiewicz's studio at Workhouse Center for the Arts. Julia paints in encaustic, spending months building up layers of pigmented wax. The result is luminous colors & textures, which she puts to work to send a message of freedom and equality. Her current work explores the history of American suffragists, the women who fought for voting rights. 
Julia writes,
"As a woman artist with a studio at the Workhouse Arts Center, a former prison, my work reflects upon the Suffragettes who were sent here. They were force-fed, put into solitary confinement and sleep deprived for demanding the right to vote. I often wonder how they awakened to the idea that they deserved basic human rights, in a time where this was considered absurd.  These paintings combine images of women from that era, portraits of figures in the suffrage movement, and icons of their oppression and their struggle for freedom."

Julia Dzikiewicz: "Awake" Encaustic, 14"x42"

Julia has been making political work for the past ten years. The seriousness of her political message is made more inviting by her playful style and sense of humor: one deceptively humorous picture depicts a suffragist bleeding psychadelic-colored paint from the nose. The sculptural additions to the frame à la Jasper Johns include the feeding tube that the imprisoned suffragist was force-fed with to counter her hunger strike. Other paintings incorporate zombies and dinosaurs into the stories.


Julia has exhibited widely in Virginia and elsewhere. Earlier bodies of work include meditations on global warming and 9/11. Visit her website to learn more, and check out the Workhorse Center.

Julia Dzikiewicz: "Martyr and Hero" Mixed media

Paris Postcards

Where I've been, where I'm going, where I hope to go

La Rochelle
Nantes
Lorient

Brussels
Rotterdam
Amsterdam
Berlin

Lithuania
Estonia
Finland
UK
Spain


Camera is ruined from sand of St Malo. But Justin's got an iPhone and there's digital cameras to be borrowed. I'm thinking of getting a disposible point n shoot.

show/artist

photo by louis atuonah

Little Update

I've seen and done many amazing things the past two months. I traveled to Provence and Burgandy with my Parents, passed a week contemplating the ocean horizon in Croatia (and getting tanned), practiced my French for a week in the countryside outside of Agen, and explored the coast of Normandy and Brittany with an adventurous friend. My time in Paris is nearly over, so I am seeing and experiencing as much of the city that I can, hosting travelers and sharing my love of the city with them.

I have been drawing constantly, looking around me and scheming for future painting projects.

digital doodles

some josh smith ......

I can just look at anything and paint it. Maybe not perfectly, but can do it. I can make a really good painting. Last year, I started making paintings of fish that way. I thought it would he nice to have a big painting on the wall of a fish jumping. That is exciting. It makes you wonder why it is there. It makes you proud of seeing it. There's a stupidity to it-and then again, it's nature. Courbet made a career out of that.
.......
I recently found a leaf, which I've been working with. I was in Pennsylvania, and I picked up this leaf and thought, "This will be easy to paint." I always try to paint things that are easy to paint. I never want to get hung up on trying to render something.

yves

Yesterday night, Wednesday, we went into an abstract café… the abstractionists were there. They are easy to recognize because they give off an atmosphere of abstract painting, plus you see their paintings in their eyes. Maybe I’m delirious, but I have the impression I see things like that. In any event, we sat down with themÉ. Then we began speaking of the book Yves Peintures. Later, I went to get it from the car and I laid it down on the table. At the very first few pages the abstractionists’ eyes began to change. Their eyes lit up and in the depths, pure, beautiful single colors appeared.

women

Maureen Gallace

Francesca DiMatteo

Kristen Schiele

Josephine Halvorson

You're invited!

Opening 6:30 - 9:30. 15 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

Loony Mag feature

I was really excited to see one of my paintings feature in the design magazine Loony! The Putmans, the couple who bought my painting "Christina,"have a really beautiful house...
See it: http://www.lonnymag.com/Home.html page 120

Some new work

Trip to Belgium

Sorry it's been so long since last updated- I've been really busy getting ready for the exhibition. I will tell you about a little trip to BELGIUM.

I took the train with my friend Harish. We got into Brussels and made our way to the Grand Place- a square surrounded by really epic architecture- and had the first of many delicious Belgian beers....
The city itself is great. It reminds me a little bit of NYC. That might be just in comparison to Paris, though. We stayed with Pierre in his brand new flat, which has a balcony and a terrace too (!), which makes me want to move to Brussels just a little bit.
We got to see a lot of great art while in Brussels. First there the contemporary artist Félix Gonzalez Torres, and his emotional minimalist sculptures. There was also the Museum of Musical Instruments, which was a lot of fun. They had so many instruments from around the world. The setup was kind of bizarre. Upon entry you recieve a pair of headphones, which detects what exhibit you are standing in front of and plays music accordingly. This can be very jarring when you walk quickly through the whole room!
Another great exhibit was the Frida Kahlo show at the BOZAR museum. Bozar is a sound pun on "Beaux-Arts"... but sadly there is also another museum called Beaux-Arts and we thought we were there and so missed the Magritte collection. Well, all the more reason to take a second trip!
The highlight for me was a daytrip to Ghent, a small town 30 minutes from Brussels. The weather was beautiful and we rented bikes to tour the town. It was also an art pilgrimage for me: to see the famous Ghent alterpiece by Van Eyck, the Mystic Adoration of the Lamb. I don't know what to say; well, it was everything I was hoping for. Beautiful, and brilliant, and a very strange picture.
I also saw some very strange half-painted trees, and the world's first shopping mall!! And, made sure to bring back lots of beer and chocolates.

i have a visitor!

tiger walk

GLIMPSE

palette diary

http://palettediary.tumblr.com/

slow and steady

snow day

new bike!

fishtank

 

meet gilbert & baby 

window garden

room with view

drawings

studies