Jonathan Saiz with Queen Doña Mariana of Austria, 80 x 71 x 8 inches, ©2009

Jonathan Saiz, “widely recognized as one of Denver’s top emerging artists,”*  has a great show on view at the plus+gallery through October 17. A week ago last Friday, I went to hear his talk at the gallery.

Saiz is a friendly, unassuming guy, and his talk was of the sort I like most: informal and unrehearsed, just an artist speaking from the heart about his passion and process. This show is called Industry, and it consists of six mixed media pieces constructed of painted metal boxes and parts of machines. Each work features a miniature portrait painstakingly painted by Saiz, set into the work as a diamond is set into a piece of jewelry.

Detail from Queen Doña Mariana of Austria by Jonathan Saiz

Saiz describes the work as a dialog between painting and sculpture. It’s also about contrasts: masculine versus feminine, human versus machine, construction versus destruction. The painted miniatures reference 17th- through 19th-century portrait painting, and the industrial materials represent the “unidentifiable uneasiness and appeal of a contemporary perspective informed by the remnants of the past and the realities of the present.”* Saiz says the huge, powerful constructions function to both protect the image as well as to “kill” it.

The yellow paint color was a serendipitous choice. Known as “safety yellow,” Saiz says he bought seven gallons of the industrial grade paint on sale at a local store. Using this color was a way to create a cohesive grouping of works as well as to create the unmistakable reference to industry, as most viewers will recognize the yellow from its ubiquitous presence in heavy machinery and other industrial uses. Saiz also pays attention to surfaces, painting his boxes with multiple layers of color and then distressing them by “rubbing them on the ground in the parking lot” to reveal hints of turquoise beneath the yellow. The result is an effect of security and permanence, as though these powerful structures have existed for a long time and will continue to do so long after we are all gone.

Saiz spent some time in Paris, where he studied romantic and classical paintings and developed a deep respect for them. He also noticed that many of them were presented with elaborate, ponderous frames, which became a source of inspiration for the idea for setting his small paintings in a contemporary interpretation of the frame. He describes the effect as both humorous and vaguely menacing.

His first love is painting, but he’s looking for different ways to expand his work. The sculpture gives him a different way to approach working, as well as to keep the work from being “too pretty.”

After this talk, many of the gallery patrons continued on to Ironton studios to view the Monumental show, in which large works by five plus+gallery artists, including Saiz, are also on view through the 17th. Saiz’s work in this show is called “Grand Opening,” and it’s a related but very different work from those in the Industry show. Still constructed of multiple boxes, the portrait image in this work comes not from classical painting tradition, but from internet pornography.

Grand Opening, 95 x 142 x 17 inches, ©2009 Jonathan Saiz

Answering questions from viewers in the audience, Saiz described how he makes some of the choices in his work. He explained that he buys paint when it’s on sale, and that, as much as anything else, influenced the colors in this particular work. I found this honesty rather refreshing, as some of my choices are made in much the same way. He also goes against accepted art school methodology, experimenting with materials and finding ways of working that are right for him personally, mixing oil-based enamel with acrylics, house paint, and salt. For example, in this work, he’s layered acrylic over oil, something we’re told in school is very much against the law, violating the “fat over lean” rule. So far no adverse effects have surfaced.

Also on view in Monumental are works by Wes Magyar, Patti Hallock, Robin Schaefer (who also curated the show), and Frank T. Martinez.

*From the plus+gallery flyer for the show

Monday was museum day. If art museums are your thing, there’s no better place than Paris. By this time, all of the group from school (Metro) had arrived, and we went together to several of the museums. We didn’t go to the Louvre as a group, since it’s just too overwhelming to do in a short amount of time, but some went on their own. I chose not to, because I simply am not into the crowd thing. Maybe some day I’ll get to go again at a time of year when there aren’t so many tourists in town.

Our first stop was the Musée de l’Orangerie, an institution built for the express purpose of housing eight of Monet’s 2×6-meter paintings of waterlilies, known as Nymphéas. We had special arrangements to go at a time when only a couple of small groups were allowed in and were able to avoid the masses of people who come in during the regular hours.

The Monet paintings are installed on curved walls in two oval-shaped rooms lit only by softly diffused natural light coming from overhead skylights covered by fabric filters. Standing in front of these enormous paintings at close range, I began to lose sight of them as paintings. The texture of the brush strokes becomes quite abstracted and is lovely in its own right.

Can you imagine having a studio space large enough to paint something like this and be able to get far enough back from it to see the overall effect?

The Orangerie also has an impressive collection of paintings by Cezanne, Picasso, Renoir, Modigliani, Utrillo, Derain, Soutine, and others. But by far my favorite in the Museum that day was a temporary exhibition of work by contemporary artist Didier Paquignon called Tu rencontreras d’abord les sirènes. I had never heard of Paquignon before, and I couldn’t find much about him online, but more of his work can be seen here. (Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find my notes with the titles of these works, below.)

Two paintings by Didier Paquignon, photographed at Musée de l’Orangerie, July 2009

It seems there is no subject Paquignon can’t render with lively expression and sensitive soulfulness, whether it’s an octopus, an urban landscape, a portrait, or a strangely familiar yet ambiguous interior. His handling of color and light give the work an ethereal glow that apparently can’t be reproduced in print. I was excited to find the exhibition catalog in the museum shop, but then disappointed because the paintings appeared flat and lifeless in the book.

Other activities that day included lunch at Le Souffle restaurant, a trip to the Musée National Picasso, more walking, a little shopping, and still more walking.

Harry Potter et le Prince de Sang-Mêlé is a big deal here.

A few of my very favorite things: concrete and rust and peeling stuff.

(I’d like to hold a caption-writing contest for this one.)

The last tour for the day was the Centre Pompidou, a vast, multi-storied institution with multiple exhibition halls, research facilities, performance halls, a restaurant, an amazing bookstore, and so on and so forth. My only regret was that we had just a couple of hours here. I probably could have spent 2 or 3 days, quite happily. In addition to an amazing permanent collection of modern and contemporary art, the Pompidou was hosting major retrospective exhibitions of work by both Kandinsky and Calder. I didn’t have time to get through both of them, so, since Kandinsky has always been one of my favorite artists, that was the one I chose. One of the interesting things about the exhibit was that, in addition to the paintings, they included a selection of pages from Kandinsky’s notebooks. I always love seeing a glimpse into another artist’s thought process, but when it’s Kandinsky, well, that’s beyond cool.

The Pompidou structure is also quite interesting. I didn’t get a good shot of it, but you can see one here. You can decide for yourself whether you think it’s awesome or hideous, but regardless, the views from the top are spectacular.

Notre Dame Gargoyles. ©2009 Deidre Adams.

My flight into Paris was an overnight one, so I arrived there at 6 am on a Saturday. Due to various assaults on the senses that take place on flights now, I hadn’t slept at all, so the day was spent in a strange state of mind. Another woman from the group, Laura, came over on the same flight, and we decided that it would be best to stay awake as long as possible so that we could get adjusted to the time difference. The solution: do a lot of walking and see as much as possible the first day!

Our hotel was only a couple of blocks from Notre Dame de Paris, so we started there. Not surprisingly, it’s quite the tourist attraction, with huge crowds everywhere, so I was not inspired to linger. We continued on to Sainte-Chapelle, a 13th-century chapel built to hold relics from the Passion of the Christ brought to France by Louis IX. According to the official literature, “The Holy Relics had belonged to the emperors of Constantinople since the 4th century. In purchasing them, Louis IX added to the prestige of both France and Paris which, in the eyes of medieval Europe, became a ‘New Jerusalem,’ and hence the second capital of Christianity.” More specific details about the architecture and the magnificent stained-glass windows are available here.

Ste. Chapelle. ©2009 Deidre Adams. (Click each image for larger version.)

Continuing on to the west, towards the Tuileries Gardens, we found many more interesting sights.

Once we made it to the Tuileries, I was evidently so overwrought by the numerous young women asking us, “Do you speak English?” that I neglected my picture-taking duties, with the exception of this loner pigeon who didn’t seem to like hanging out with his compatriots:

We made it as far as the Arc de Triomphe, which seemed a fitting place to stop our journey for the day.

You can get to the top by climbing up 234 steps:

From the top viewing platform, you have fantastic views of the city in all directions.

This summer, I had the great good fortune to go on a 12-day trip to France, visiting Paris for 4 days and then spending the remaining time in Giverny and the surrounding area. I went with a group of fellow painting students and our instructor, Amy Metier. Giverny is the home of Monet’s Garden. The garden is a huge attraction, with over 500,000 visitors each year, but we were fortunate to be part of an Art Study group, which has arrangements with the Monet Foundation that allows their students to go and paint in the gardens for 2 hours each day after they officially close at 6:00 pm.

The experience of being in France for this time was so far removed from my everyday way of life that I’m finding I’m still processing all that I saw and did, as though a part of me is still there. Each day was filled with visual and culinary richness, all spent in the company of other artists. I had very few daily responsibilities pulling at me. And possibly the best of all, I didn’t touch a computer for the entire time!

I took over 1400 photos, so I’ve been slowly trying to wade through them in the past couple of days to pick out a good representative sampling. I also did several paintings. I’ll be posting more of all this in the coming days, but I just wanted to check in briefly in case anyone’s been wondering where I’ve been.

Untitled, 12 x 12 inches, ©Deidre Adams

When I finished up my spring semester of school back in mid-May, it seemed I had the whole summer before me and many grandiose plans swirled through my brain about all the great work I was going to make and the many things I would accomplish. Well, here it is the middle of July and I don’t have a whole lot to show for it. Instead of going into my studio and working full days with single-minded focus, I’ve found that my time has been thoroughly eaten away with traveling and design work, and artwork time has been limited to popping in for short stints when I just couldn’t force myself to sit at the computer for one more second.

This kind of disjointed time is manifesting itself in serious ADD behavior. Instead of concentrating on a single thing, I’m flitting from one project to another, making small amounts of progress on each. I’m working on a few large pieces in my standard working style, progressing very slowly. It seems the large pieces now require small amounts of painting interspersed with lots of staring and contemplating and decision-making. In addition to those, I’ve also started some totally new small works that I have a vision will contain lots and lots of hand-stitching, something I love but rarely find time to do. And since I’m not distracted enough, I’m getting out UFOs (unfinished objects) and finding little ways to improve them. I’m even taking a few of my older finished pieces that I wasn’t satisfied with and have been making small alterations.

This piece above started as a school assignment. It was part of my final project in Painting IV last spring, which was supposed to consist of 2 large paintings. Since I was taking a total of 5 classes, I knew that I was not going to have a lot of time to complete the work at school. Plus I really did not want to have to schlep huge canvases back and forth to school and home for each class. In consultation with my instructor, we agreed that I could make 6-8 small pieces instead of the 2 large ones. At the time, I had been reading Elaine Lipson’s Red Thread Studio blog, a content-rich source of ideas and links relating to all manner of sewing topics, and from there went to a link for the Sri Threads blog, specifically this post about a boro sakiori noragi, an old Japanese work coat that was well worn and loved and had been patched many times. I loved the story of how it was made:

Sometimes a group of women would pool their meager resources to buy a bundle of rags.  They’d sort the rags, wash them and then prepare them for use as yarn to create these thick coats.  Prior to this, farmers and rural folk would wear what they could forage for and turn that into yarn, so they wore clothing of hemp, ramie, wisteria and the like.

The Sri Threads Gallery has many more examples of these patched textiles on their web site, and I printed out some of them for the “process folio” we’re required to make for every painting assignment. The beautiful stitching was so engaging to me, along with the idea of continuing to repair and keep using an item of clothing, instead of casting it away so easily as our society does. So I had some kind of idea that my pieces would be about wabi-sabi, or finding beauty in the imperfect. I knew that I wanted to include scraps of cloth and hand stitching as an homage to this way of thinking and living. Here’s an image of them in progress:

The top ones are before any paint is applied, and the bottom ones are in early stages of painting.

The problem was, I ran out of time and was just going through the motions there at the end. I couldn’t figure out how I could possibly give them the kind of dimension I wanted them to have, plus get them all mounted so they would look complete, but at the same time preserve the raw edge of the torn canvas, which I deemed as very important to the work. Since having something you could call finished seemed to have a bigger impact on your grade than whether or not you realized your artistic vision — after all, how could anyone besides the artist really know whether that was achieved — I had to compromise. I ended up making 2 long, banner-like mountings out of canvas and batting, and I laboriously hand-stitched each of these little paintings to them to form long vertical pieces. This image shows them close to done but without the final dark paint that I ended up putting on the background. I forgot to take a picture of the completed paintings — I guess that in itself is an indicator of how excited I was about it.

Well, these things have been hanging around my studio for months, and I finally got tired of looking at them. I just decided to take the plunge and cut them all apart again, to live as separate paintings as I had intended all along. I’m giving up on the idea of simple beauty, because they were, quite frankly, just plain boring, and that original idea is less important to me than having work I find interesting and complete. I’m working on making them standalone paintings, with texture and color and many levels of layering. I’m much happier with where these are going now. Here are a couple more:

Die Spur Der Steine, 74 x 90 cm (29 x 35 inches), ©2008 Isabelle Wiessler

By far the most interesting aspect of keeping a blog is meeting new people, both nearby and from the other side of the globe. It has opened up a whole new world for me, mostly online, but sometimes in person.

This week I was fortunate to have a studio visit from a friend I met through my blog. Isabelle Wiessler, an artist from Gundelfingen, Germany, and her husband were travelling to the U.S. to visit her daughter, who is working in a nearby town, and to see some of the sights in Colorado and neighboring states. She e-mailed me before coming over, asking if I ever had open studios. I don’t live in an area with many other artists, so I’ve never had an open studio, but I replied that I would be happy for her to just come for an informal visit some time while she was in the area.

I was somewhat apprehensive as to what I would talk about, since I’m not the most outgoing of individuals. But it turns out I need not have worried, because Isabelle is warm and friendly and genuinely interested in everything relating to textile art.  We had a lovely conversation about our different working methods as I showed her my studio setup and my work. I also learned something more about what it’s like to be a textile artist in Europe versus here in the United States. We here are very fortunate to have so many opportunities to exhibit our work.

Verfall, 70 x 104 cm (28 x 41 inches), ©Isabelle Wiessler

While I was looking at her web galleries, I was especially struck by this image. It looks like something I would have photographed myself if given the chance. Isabelle uses a lot of different materials in her work, including Tyvek and Lutradur, as well as dyeing her own fabric. She also includes a lot of embroidery and handwork. Beautiful!

(Images posted with permission of the artist.)

Have I mentioned how much I love Kansas City? I thoroughly enjoyed my time here, for many reasons. I loved buying something in a store and being told “thank you very much, and have a nice day!” This is something you don’t hear too much in Denver, where people often act like they are doing you a huge favor by ringing up your purchase. Although I’m used to it now, the lack of friendliness was shocking to me when I first moved to Denver from Albuquerque, where people are much nicer. It’s the same in K.C., where I struck up conversations with total strangers on a regular basis. (And anyone who knows me very well knows that’s highly unusual for me.)

I also loved the city itself, which has a wonderful mixture of eclectic architecture, with the old happily existing alongside the new. I’m still going through all the pictures I took — that will be a long process. But before too much time went by, I wanted to post some pictures from my very favorite find: a little section of town full of marvelous old warehouses, some still in use, and some waiting for new tenants, but none seeming in imminent danger of demise. I first saw the cluster of tall old warehouses from the freeway when I was on my way in for the conference, and I knew I had to come back and take a closer look.

My first foray into the area was on Sunday evening, and the logistics were more complicated than I had imagined, due to one of the main routes into the area having been closed off for reconstruction. At that time of day, the place was more or less deserted, and it had an eerie feel. I got sort of lost in a maze and was feeling rather apprehensive since I wasn’t familiar with the area. It seemed like a movie set, with all these amazing old buildings and no one around. I took just a few pictures and then decided I’d better find my way out before it got dark.

The next day, I was leaving to go back home, but on my way out of town I decided I wanted to go see the buildings again in different light. Since it was now Monday morning, the place had a totally different feel with people bustling about their business, some visible through open garage-type doors working inside at various industry, some doing touch-up work on the buildings, and some even out walking dogs.

The area boasts a fun-looking local restaurant:

And the residents evidently have a good sense of humor:

What’s not to love?

I had fleeting thoughts of how it might be fun to have an entire floor in one of these buildings for an artist’s studio, up high with views of the city visible from the windows. Look, now here’s one for sale:

I do really love my current studio, and the convenience of having it in my house cannot be denied. But wouldn’t it be great to have some room to stretch out in? It’s fun to dream, and it doesn’t cost anything.

Sorry if this post is a bit over the top on pictures, but just before I went on the trip, I treated myself to a new camera kit. I now have a cool 24-105 zoom lens. With my old camera/lens situation, I was limited to a 35mm focal length on the wide end, so having the 24mm is new and fun. I’ve been entertaining myself with all the wonky angles I can get on things now.

As a vacation destination, Amarillo, Texas can certainly hold its own. There are several attractions in the area which demanded our attention, the Big Texas Steak Ranch providing only the smallest glimpse of what was to come. The parking lot was very full when I was there taking pictures near sundown on Wednesday night, so there must have been a lot of people in that place trying to earn their free 72-oz steak by eating it within an hour — something probably very interesting to observe. However, since I don’t eat steak, we have to move on find to less burly but more suitable refreshments at a local Thai restaurant. Then the next morning it was on to more exploration.

If you love roadside attractions as much as I do, then you are in luck because there is a most informative web site catering to this addiction: Roadside America. This is how I learned that there is another great Texan in the area, somewhat south of Amarillo in the town of Canyon. He is  the Big Texan, aka Tex Randall, erected in 1959, but in past years under siege and even now in danger of imminent demise. I had to make sure I got to see him before he meets his inevitable end. Unfortunately, he’s not doing so well these days. Hang in there, Tex! You’ve lasted this long, I hope you’ll stick it out for another 50 years.

Heading back towards Amarillo from Canyon, one can also see this amazing sight, the so-called Huge Pair of Legs, standing out in the middle of a field of cows (many thanks to the model for providing the much-needed sense of scale):

Evidently, the legs are also the work of Stanley Marsh 3, the creator of Cadillac Ranch. Read the whole sordid story at the link above, if so inclined. Now, having heard of the legendary Cadillac Ranch so many times, I was living in a state of heightened anticipation until I finally got to see it. But as with so many things in life, the things you obsess over the most often turn out to be disappointments.

Cadillac Ranch has turned into a giant graffiti site, where the main attraction is the chance to go crazy with a spray can without fear of reprisal, with the blessing of the owner of the establishment.

Now, I’ll be the first to say that I love graffiti when it’s done well, but this is a community free-for-all with no organization, and so it’s pretty much just a big mishmash of colors and there’s no real art to it.

Everyone is just busy spraying everything in sight, and even the hardpacked dirt road and the unfortunate nearby cow leavings are subject to the frenzy.

The empty cans are all left behind to be blown by the blasting wind into the adjacent empty field.

Oh well, then, let’s go back to Amarillo momentarily. Are there words to express how much I love this place? Observe just a small sampling of the the delights to be found here:

As great as these things are, there is another surprise of unsurpassed super yummy goodness, but I fear this is getting way too long, so I shall save it for tomorrow.

Big Texas Steak Ranch, Amarillo, Texas

This is Spring break, and I am off from school for an entire lovely week. We were long overdue for a road trip, so it seemed like a good excuse to just get in the car and go. I had not set foot inside the great state of Texas for a long time, so we decided to do some exploring in the panhandle area and then start making our way back west in New Mexico.

The first day of travel was filled with our usual gotta-do-six-million-things-before-we-can-leave futzing around, so we didn’t get out of the house until around 3:00 pm. That gave us enough time to reach the bustling metropolis of Raton, NM. We spent our first night at the Colt Motel.

There was a large selection of cute little retro motels to choose from, so the selection was difficult. I finally settled on the Colt because of its mascot (I can always be depended upon to fall for a life-size fiberglass animal, especially when it’s a happy little horse).

The next morning, after breakfast and some brief photo opportunities in town, we headed east on Highway 72 towards the town of Folsom. We soon found ourselves in a strange and lonely landscape, with no trees and very few other people, with just the occasional herd of cows as the only other company.

Finally, we reached Folsom. The town has very few residents left. There were a few occupied homes, several abandonded of same, an abandoned school and historic hotel, and the very happening downtown area.

Further on, we had to make a decision about where to stop for the night once again. We saw this place, but passed it up in favor of the Holiday Inn Express in Amarillo — our big splurge of the trip.

Tomorrow: Cadillac Ranch!

Deno’s 6&85  ©2009 Deidre Adams.

It seems that the beginning of a new year is a time for most people to want to take stock of their lives and to resolve to change themselves in some way. I decided a long time ago that making resolutions was a sure setup for failure. So, although there is a tiny nagging sense of guilt that I should be working to improve myself in some way, I pass on the whole resolution thing and just allow myself to enjoy the day. Is that because I’m weakwilled? Perhaps, but I much prefer to live in the moment than to spend the day in deep introspection, self-absorption and recriminations, thinking about how I should change myself.

So, yesterday when I saw that it was a beautiful warm day with striking clouds — my optimal picture-taking scenario — I decided it was time to take advantage of a quiet traffic day and go up north to Commerce City to get some shots of Deno’s 6&85 restaurant, with this fabulous old sign. I’m not sure why, but it evidently has some claim to fame, as it’s the poster child for the “truck stop” entry on Wikipedia. I’d heard that they had closed, so I thought I’d better get up there before it got torn down. I was quite surprised to find that it’s now plastered with ugly banners announcing that they’re now open under new management. Kind of ruined the atmosphere I was hoping for, but whaddaya gonna do!

Here’s a closeup of the sign in which you can see a couple of the current residents. These birds were quite happy and noisy yesterday, giving the whole scene an oddly surreal spring-like feeling, there on the first day of January, 2009.

We spent some time driving around Commerce City, a great urban exploration area, for other photo opportunities. Late in the afternoon, the sun came poking through a cloudbank and produced this great scene in the concrete labyrinth that lives underneath I-70:

Underpass. ©2009 Deidre Adams.

Disclaimer: All of these images are tweaked in Adobe Lightroom, to which I am now heavily addicted.

But to get back to the New Year’s theme, I got a bonus in my e-mail today in the form of permission for my lazy behavior. This comes from Robert Genn’s Twice Weekly Newsletter, which I subscribed to a while ago. Although most of what he offers is a rehash of the same-old stuff that you’ve heard a gazillion times if you’ve been around awhile, every now and then there is a gem worth contemplating. Today’s offering is called How to Find Passion. I read through the typical life turnaround story barely paying attention, but there were a couple of steps in his how-to list that made me stop in my tracks:

Consider your dreams to be private, unique and sacred….
Don’t talk about it, do it.

OK, great. Gotta stop talking about it, and go do it. Until next time, then!