And the Artist's Statement, As it Stands Now:

Represented are 30 of the 100 portraits I am creating as an exploration of the complexities of human identity.  This is pursued through the searching and creative act of drawing. The drawings strive to represent the proper physiognomy and acute identities of the tremendous diversity of people I meet as a college art instructor. It is this diversity that inspired my initial thoughts of documenting these faces.

Though the repetitive nature of the grid serves to bind and unite the series, I am allowing myself a degree of experimentation with form.  Intuitive abstraction, gesture, erasure, and re-creation become important aspects in mirroring the diversity represented. In the response to each face I choose to draw, I am looking for the ways I can push and pull these drawings from what is expected.  We are wired to recognize faces, so I am particularly interested in how I can play with this instant ability.  I am exploring shifts in pose, focus, and layering to get my viewers to look a bit longer, a bit harder. This suggests the drawings in a constant state of change, analogous to the shifts inherent in physical and psychological identity.  

Often artifacts of society help build our identities.  Beyond their physiognomy I am responding to what I think will get viewers to think most about who I am drawing.  It could be a pair of glasses, the way hair is styled, suggestions of the clothing choices, and more.  This potentially builds complexities and pushes up against what we expect out of a certain face. Finally, an encaustic seal is torched, carved and scraped into the drawings to shift surface quality and visual density.  The way they are drawn is as diverse as those who are drawn.

This portrait series will continue to grow, as I envision that it must be large in scale to become a regiment of human identities.  Even as I look at the 30 I’ve made so far the most impactful part is how the eye jumps from face to face, scanning and seeing the shifts I have been working on.  The ideas I'm generating for future and bigger work will spawn from the concepts and formal work in these. 100 portraits? Yes, but I doubt the form will stay entirely consistent as I continue to work on this series.

Art Fair, ArtPrize, and a Solo Exhibition: From Ann Arbor to Grand Rapids and Beyond

It has been an intensive summer and fall since I last posted on here, with my portrait series making it into several venues as it has grown.

Here are 15 of them at The Necto Night Club in Ann Arbor in July for Art Fair:

And 18 of them in ArtPrize.

Now 30 of these little encaustic encased drawings hang in a solo exhibition at the NCCA-Artsplace in Fremont, Mi.  I'm waiting for the gallery to send me images of the final installation.

This work was also featured in a few articles: 
The Rapidian in Grand Rapids
And The Voice in Ann Arbor

I really enjoyed ArtPrize, it is a professionally run event that has gotten my work more exposure than anywhere.  The venue I had was great to work with, and just down the street from the Grand Rapids Art Museum.  I can see why it is becoming an internationally-known event.  I think tens of thousands of people saw my drawings, and I have had several requests for sales!

So far I have created 30 of these 15"X16" drawings representing a regiment of identities, and this feels like a good benchmark to shift into new directions.  Interestingly, I'm just getting warmed up on this project. Bigger is where I'm heading next, and I've learned so much from the little ones that I cannot wait to see what happens when I scale up!  The levels of abstraction I have been playing with, the textures in the surface (which cannot be experienced through the web), and the sense of all the shifts in identity I have been working with all hold great promise for bigger work.  Once midterm grading is over at the colleges, I think the creative floodgates will open!

Venturing Out, with a Nice Send-Off...

In the paper for the fifth time in six months.

The Voice, a student newspaper at WCC anyway.  And like all projects at this college, it is a pretty good production.  Too many people discount Community Colleges, but this one is special.  I can say that I have found some of my most promising and dedicated students here.

Between two authors who carried a keen interest in what The WCC Academic Drawing Club has been up to, Maria Rigou, and David Fitch, they have really helped promote the hard work we have been doing in our little art program.  From starting our Drawing Club, to jurying and hosting the Annual Student Exhibition, to our live Drawing on Jazz collaboration, and our visits to draw and study in the college's Cadaver Labs.  It's always fun to get any recognition for what you work on, and their articles have helped create additional excitement around our activities at the college.

So when Maria found out I had started this series of 100 portraits she contacted me right away to find out more.  She stopped in to the studio at this early stage of the project and I, in my usual fashion, talked her ear off.  As with all articles I've been included and quoted in, it feels to me much too concise and simplified, but that is part of a reporter's job, anyway.  This blog can attempt to fill the gaps in between.

She also put a lot of emphasis on my use of some of my students as portrait models, but it makes sense given the paper's audience.  Besides, she's right on two counts: I have easy access to work with them, and this is where most of the diversity I encounter in the average day will be found. That and my students seem to love working with me, and being a part of this project has been exciting for many of them.  Word of what I am doing seems to have gone viral around the college...  But to get this project done I will have to branch out beyond the studios here.  And as for the title, well, I guess I can't control everything in life.......

She did get one thing right on; my love and passion for teaching art.  I feel so lucky to be able to do what I do, and I know there is so much more I have yet to achieve as an artist/teacher.  (Shameless plug for my Workshop at Cincinnati's Manifest Creative Research Gallery and Drawing Center in late June)  But this has been a great place to start, in more than one way.

So it was nice to have the paper stop in at this early stage of a huge project, and though Maria will not be around by the time it is done (have fun out in Seattle!) she has told those that may remain to document the eventual exhibition.  That will be a nice set of bookends...

http://www.washtenawvoice.com/2014/04/artist-beauty-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/

Testing, Testing... Is This Thing On?..... Testing....

Firing up my art blog after awhile.  I have been teaching over full time since leaving grad school, leaving surprisingly little studio time.  But with the current semester winding down and a huge new project started, I see the opportunity to get back at it.

A few weeks ago I conceived of a series of portraits.  As a figurative artist I have been teaching Life Drawing extensively, and even when teaching more basic drawing classes I can't help but to introduce Life Drawing principles (hands, portraits in particular)  Also, working at the colleges here in Southeast Michigan, I have been directly engaged with the tremendous diversity of people that live here.

So recently when another artist friend of mine proposed that we do a show together I was freshly inspired.  Nancy Flanagan (http://www.nancy-flanagan.com/mi_et_al.html) is a recent transplant to the area and has been working on a series of urban landscapes, commenting on the nature of place.  I thought that if she can document the spaces, then I can document the people (which sounds a lot like the way we've run our collaborative Drawing Marathons).  So with this new idea I began doing research; looking at contemporary and historical artists working with portraiture, mapping out just what I could use and say to make this my own, and beginning the early stages of material and scale exploration, which is where I find myself now.

The goal is to create 100 drawn portraits of the people that live, work and study around me within the next year.  What I know is that this series must attempt to be representative of the people I meet, that the drawings must represent the proper physiognomy and acute identities of them, and that it must be large in scale to become a regiment of the full range of them.  What I do not know yet is what scale they must be (or even if they have to all be the same scale), what materials I want to use (I work with drawing because I feel it is the most expansive media an artist may choose to work in), and how they will be presented (mounted, framed, hung).  I'm not even entirely certain they will remain 2D (there is always 3D and 4D, again, the beauty of being a drawing artist).

The scale of the project does not intimidate me, my last major drawing was 27-feet in length and 3 months in the making.  I think the scale will have to be significant for this project to become whatever it will.  I know that mediums and conceptual concerns will shift as this series develops, and that is part of the meaning behind it.  Something in me, and in my work, is bound to be different by the time those 100 or so portraits are done.

So here is a peak in my studio in the early stages.  Not all of my visual research is here, but what you can see is intuitive experimentation with media, surfaces, scale, poses, and abstraction.  I'll make an attempt to document the progress along the way.  Who is my next model?