For two months now I have had limited use of my left arm. I am recovering, but still being very careful what I do: no strenuous work or heavy lifting! My new series, The Surprisingly Artistic Potholes of Port Townsend, has come about through an injury.
Most of my recent art work has been photography, often including plenty of digital enhancement. This led me to a very local project: the series of photos, mostly enhanced or transformed, that I call The Surprisingly Artistic Potholes of Port Townsend!
This is not a “fine art” series, but a quick and dirty (potholes are muddy!) and very fun way of showing up, and enjoying the sorry state of Port Townsend streets. But there is art here too. There is unexpected beauty everywhere, even in potholes and puddles!
I am of mixed mind as to the desirability of smooth well paved residential streets: potholes are great for traffic calming, and I would rather see resources better directed. But the current reality is that we do drive, many of us really do rely on our vehicles, with few reasonable alternatives to driving. So many people in Port Townsend are old, and many are infirm; we are not going to take to bicycles at this point in our lives. And younger working parents probably cannot readily readjust their lifestyle to bike to work, etc. That kind of change does not happen overnight.
So some level of street maintenance is badly needed… and is not really happening!
The Surprisingly Artistic Potholes of Port Townsend
You can find many more of The Surprisingly Artistic Potholes of Port Townsend in my online photo gallery!
I walk every day, and do not resist taking all too many photos. My phone camera is always with me. So I have hundred of photos and photo manipulation is at hand in my desktop software. Some of my photos I enjoy and save as taken, or only slightly corrected. Many are inadequate, and are deleted. A great many are treated to a bit of digital manipulation before I determine their fate!
My phone has a good camera, and sometimes I take a really nice photo. I have added a new photo album to my online art gallery that features a few of these. These are either untouched photos or photos that have been just slightly corrected. I may adjust the horizon line to be level, or brighten the picture a bit. Now that I have selected some photos that I am proud of, I want to share them.
Below are a handful of simple photos taken in the past 18 months. You can find more of my less adulterated(!) photos in a new album in my online photo gallery.
But I take many photos with digital magic in mind. I don’t use most of the automatic transformations offered in my photo editing software. However there is one effect I rely on heavily. I find that some images that appear dull initially, are transformed into something beautiful by particular manipulations. Usually the effect is only one step in a long process. I use layers to select, adjust, and alter to make the manipulated image satisfying. You can see all too many of these transformed photos online in my album New Digital Media.
Some New Digital Media Transformed Photos
Sometimes I cannot work on my various mixed media art projects. But photos and photo manipulation are an option in any weather. Photography is an enterprise that I pursue whenever I have use of my phone and my computer.
This is a combination of colored pencil and watercolor on a polylitho print. It is from the a limited print edition of “Watching”. I have completed several of these prints based on a simple line drawing of a lone figure in a stark landscape.
Sand tones and pastel colored pencil on Watcher print
I was not enthralled (lovely word!) by the virulent (!) green & blue of the watercolors on this print. So I softened these a bit with colored pencil, displayed top left below. It was one more interesting experiment. Of course the heavy soft etching paper I used really soaked up the watercolor!
And then of course you can see the digital magic. I applied digital technology to both this watercolor painted version of “Watching”, and also to a softer, less colorful print from this edition.
The scan of my watercolor paint & colored pencil print is the first image, top row left. On the top right, more colorful again, is a modified foil enhancement of the print at left. But on the second row, I got a bit negative!
On the lower row, at left, you see the negative of the foiled print above. The purple is vile, but I like it! And we all feel a bit negative at times, surely?
I did a bit more digital work to balance the intensity and contrast. The thought occurred that more could/should be done, perhaps. I switched to working with a negative of the scanned image, rather than using the foiled version, and that is the last image in the gallery view below.
For my second dip into the negative, I started with a less colorful version of “Watching”, tinted with colored pencil mostly in sand tones. This resulted in the mostly blue, blue, blue image! Of course this has additional digital work also to enhance the touch of greens and purple in the aurora borealis…
The final image, bottom right, is yet another colored print. I used metallic pen for some highlights, and metallic colored pencil in addition to some “normal” colors. Then I added a second figure: a negative and flipped version of the original.
I don’t think I need to try watercolor on a polylitho print again, but I’ll never stop using digital magic!
I have not been near a printing press for several years now, having sold my small home press and dropped my membership in the local printmakers’ guild, Corvidae Press. But I have a few incomplete prints I have saved to work on, including this edition of a polylitho “drawing”. These are single pass, single ink images that I hand color in various different ways. The result being several unique artworks based on one print edition, most being colored pencil on a polylitho print. I did use some watercolor and pen on a few prints.
The top row is the very latest one, with soft pastel coloring completed today, followed by two foiled versions of the same colored print. The lower row shows the same print before much of the color was added, followed by a digitally foiled version. The last image is a digital foil of another variant, also colored, but not shown here in the “flesh” original.
I can’t help having a few further thoughts about the label & word: macabre. It is a fine word, but … making artwork that displays the sad and weary does not equal macabre!
I incorporate real life, and sometimes my work shoes anger, sadness, even despair. But also hope, beauty and joy.
Of course if documenting and displaying the existence of death in life is macabre, well so be it.
An entertaining article, spun from a series of written interview questions, identifies me as a macabre artist! I find I rather like the term, at least at the moment. Certainly some of my favorite artworks do border on the macabre, and maybe some people find them so. Of course I have created any number of pieces that do not fit that description at all. So am I a macabre artist?
You can find the article on a site named Obsessed with Art, which features various artists willing to respond to their interview questions. I am very pleased to be featured, and I enjoyed reading this article. Of course I immediately wanted to edit and improve my own responses to their questions, but it is late for that now! I am left with is this question: am I a macabre artist?
Of course I want to argue the point! For one thing, I am naturally argumentative! And for another, I have read various definitions of “macabre”. Here is the Merriam Webster definition, with three meanings for this adjective:
Definition of macabre
1 : having death as a subject : comprising or including a personalized representation of death: The macabre dance included aprocession of skeletons. 2 : dwelling on the gruesome a macabre presentation of a tragic story 3 : tending to produce horror in a beholder this macabre procession of starving peasants
I may not be the best judge of my own work. When I look at the pieces I choose to display at home, I see variety. I don’t necessarily find a recognizable style, only the works that I recognize as my own. But I do see themes that recur, some over and over through many years: bones, distortion, mystery, fantasy, and perhaps a sense that something is not quite right. And yes, death is a recurring theme in my art. But does that make my work macabre? Yes and no. Other themes that recur include family, birds, trees, and beauty in nature.
Certainly in the narrower sense of the first Merriam Webster meaning, the answer can be “yes”.
Examples of Death in my Work
Work about Life
However in the second and third meanings that are the focus of this statement in Wikipedia, I would answer with a resounding “no!”. My work is not obsessed with death, does not focus on the gruesome, and plenty of it is about life!
Less Macabre Examples!
In works of art, the adjective macabre means “having the quality of having a grim or ghastly atmosphere”. The macabre works to emphasize the details and symbols of death. The term also refers to works particularly gruesome in nature.
I do not think that the term “macabre” is an adequate description of me as an artist, but I can certainly enjoy this view of me and my work! And I embrace the term based on the narrow definition that death is a subject in some quantity of my work. A lot more of my work than I realized can be thought to reference death. For one thing, angels do make a lot of appearances. Although I don’t think of my angels as about death: for me, angels are symbols or personifications of protection, defense, assistance, or love.
So as a description, the term “macabre artist” is certainly incomplete.
So again I ask you the question: am I a macabre artist?
Take a look at this short article at Obsessed with Art; it makes for fun reading. But then look at my online gallery, and decide for yourself just how macabre my work is!
I had limited energy for Halloween, but did manage a few last minute decorations. Unfortunately I have still failed to accept the shift to non-spooky daylight Halloween activities, so all my spooky decorations went unappreciated…
In addition to my Halloween fun, digital foiling has resumed for the winter … as if it ever really stopped!
My experiment with printing from an engraved found metal “plate” resulted in two very light “ghost” prints. My printing plate is 3/4″ thick and is 22″ x 30″, so I could not print on my small home press. Instead I hand rubbed and rolled to my thick soft paper.
The result was very uneven on the two prints I made. I had the full image, but both very dull and unfinished in appearance. I worked on them both, then set one aside still incomplete. I have done more work on this now, and I have more color on a ghost print of the dancer who continues to appears in my art periodically.
Progress
And More Color
Maybe this is the eternal dancer who creates the world and the tree of life. Or maybe this is just a naked soul who dances for joy. The fantastic tree full of many colors and patterns reflects the many moods and many variations in our lives.
Each variation of my Three Angels requires more than a little creative thinking, not to mention a good bit of work. And as for the angelic display logistics! Oh my!
My first, and so far only, cement version of the Three Angels Is quite thin, and therefore especially susceptible to being damaged. I want to display outside, but it needs to be safely secured. If it falls or is dropped on a hard surface it will almost certainly chip, and might be damaged beyond reasonable repair.
I have created a rudimentary stand for it now; one that is far from elegant, but fairly discreet. It neither enhances nor detracts from the artwork, I think. And that is sufficient angelic display logistics for this week!
My Three Angels are mounted now, and ready to go! My clear resin Three Angels / Purple Mountains is complete, and in search of a new long term home!
This artwork will look best in a room with multiple lights sources and windows. The background and the figures seem to come to life when the light is right, and I love the variation a different light angle and intensity can bring to this piece.
The resin relief cast is “pegged” to the wooden panel at the four corners, using clear acrylic rod and epoxy super glue. The panel edges are painted and I will add D-rings & picture wire for hanging later today. This mixed media piece has been a bit complicated to assemble, but now it is satisfactorily complete!
And now that my Three Angels / Purple Mountains is complete, I would really like to sell it. However I have not been able to even begin to set a price. Maybe after I recover from all the hours of work!
The tiny LED rice lights are just tucked in between the resin cast & the back. The tiny switch and battery “box” is installed into a pocket behind. These are pretty discreet when turned off, but removing them is easy if they not wanted. However care must be taken not to scratch the surface of the paper background if they are to be re-inserted!
