Tag Archives: Grovewood Gallery

One For the Money, Two For the Show…

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Dear Reader,

Several months ago, I was offered a one-man show at the Grovewood Gallery, here in Asheville, NC. I’ve been in a bunch of exhibitions and a number of group and two person shows, but have never before gone solo.

Isn’t that nice, I thought. I should probably look at the space they expect me to fill. I walked around with a casual attitude looking at a lot of large walls, trying to visualize the number of works I had to create in a limited amount of time.

I had six or eight finished pieces in the studio, but I really had no idea of what I was going to do to fill the rest of the space. I spent several days dallying and messing about, searching for inspiration. I finally realized I’d better do a Jack Rabbit start.

Jack Rabbit Color Wheel

These twelve leaping Jack Rabbits are painted in full intensity (pure quality). The twelve colors are Johannes Itten’s Bauhaus color wheel with logical names and the limited number for ease of selection and combination. Not so much a system, but rather a reference device and point of departure for artists.

I use “dancing” as a metaphor for the way I work. I started dancing slowly at first, just to get the rhythm by sketching ideas, cutting and manipulating the papers and a rough approach to color. Last year, I did a series of ten dancers, all with a reason to be dancing alone. The reasons were in scrabble letters at the bottom.

Alone At Night

I do work at night when I get in the flow. Quiet, no phones or visitors and I can concentrate on my dance steps. Cutting, bending, folding, is my rhumba for work.

Nobody Watching

You can’t imagine the false starts, throwing away paper, stumbling through a simple two step, re-cutting and re-painting. I’m glad nobody watches me because a spinning dervish would be a slow dance at this point.

It's Your Problem

Suddenly, I’ve got three months left, and one of those months, or more, is for the framer, and I can’t seem to get anything finished. My problem is time, and my old bugaboo procrastination. There are so many other things I want to do with my time and the gallery assumes I’m doing the paper sculpture Macarena here.

If I've Had A Few

That’s what I need. A couple of doubles should loosen me up. If you’ve ever seen a plastered dancer then you know what a boozy artist is like when he tries to waltz or work. You can’t boogie when you’re buzzed or blitzed.

Times Are Tough

Those days, nights, weeks and months are tough. Life and art are harder as I have aged. Picasso said, “The problem with age, is aging. When you get to an advanced age, you feel like you’re twenty again and want to get a lot of things done.” The way things get done at my age is by dancing with a lot of partners, and now I want to thank them.

My wife, Karen, for her constant support all these years, and my son, Marco, for re-working my website under pressure to incorporate my new work. Nancy Swift, friend and agent, who handles all the details. Sherry Masters, general manager of the Grovewood Gallery, and Karen Kennedy, gallery manager. Frameworks’ wizard, Robert Reitz who creates my beautiful shadow box frames.

And thank you for visiting me, now my dance card is full.

leo

I’m never satisfied with what I know.
Only, with what I can find out.

“Nobody Watching, I Dance” is available for $1000.
“Jack Rabbit Color Wheel” is available for $1000.

My work can be purchased at the Grovewood Gallery on the grounds of the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC. Click on the gallery link if you are interested in one of my workshops.

Please plan to attend my three month exhibit at the Grovewood Gallery to help kick off American Craft Week. The opening is one week from tomorrow, Saturday, 4-6 pm.
Music by Bruce Lang, good eats, lively conversation and a paper sculpture demonstration by yours truly.

Medicine Bundle

“Medicine Bundle” is one of four new limited edition, signed, Giclée prints to be offered at the show. $250. Edition of 150.

Them’re Good Eats

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Dear Reader,

Food Colorwheel

“Them’re good eats,” one of my friends says when Matt serves up breakfast at the Saturday farmer’s market here in Barnardsville, NC.  After taking everything into consideration, such as eating too much or starvation, I’ll take eating too much every time.

My “plate full of food” color wheel is painted in the three primary, red-yellow-blue, and the three secondary ones, orange-violet-green. The secondary colors are the direct complements of the primaries. The food shapes are the commonly accepted colors of yellow for bananas and lemons, red for apples, and tomatoes, green for scallions and asparagus, etc., etc., etc. You’d be confused if a Navel orange was suddenly Army green or Air Force blue.

As a child of the depression, I ate every mac of my “mac’n cheese”, and always had enough to eat, so why was I such a skinny teenager? We ate lots of poached deer, elk and antelope. “Poached” refers to how we got it rather than how we cooked it. Canning was very important, and we ate out of rows of Mason Jars full of color and good tastes all winter long. The color and taste of food seem to go together.

The harvest is on now, and the colors of the fresh fruit and vegetables are breathtaking. If you’ve never been to a county fair and seen the endless displays of “canning” for competition, then you ain’t never seen no color, not really.

Mason Jar I

A war started, and I thought the Army would send me to Korea to live in holes and eat C-rations, so I joined the Navy. In a matter of three months at boot camp, I gained 20 pounds and grew 2 inches. I was finally being nourished.  Remember, I told you my mother thought that burnt pork chops was a recipe.

Fast forward to Los Angeles, the GI bill, the Chouinard Art Institute, and the first Disney scholarship. I discovered Langer’s Deli, Edward’s Steak House, and a good Mexican restaurant close to the school, which was by MacArthur Park.

When you live in LA, you only need three kinds of restaurants to survive, a Mexican, a Chinese (in Chinatown), and an “open all night” Jewish deli like Canter’s on Fairfax. You always had Dos XX, Tsingtao beer, and Cel Ray Tonic. All other restaurants are “bonus eating.”

Four Plates

From the substantial time I’ve spent outside the U.S., there are a few foods etched in my gastronomical memory: sushi in Japan, Christmas tamales and pupusas in El Salvador, wurst and schnitzels in Germany, pub food in England, dim sum in China, and almost anything in Italy  (but mainly the gelato). If I can swing it, I eat ice cream every day, and gelato in Italy is a dream.

Gelato

I close with a song from my food appreciation past:

Fried ham fried ham cheese and baloney bananas and jello
and after the macaroni we’ll have onions pickles and pretzels
and then we’ll have some more fried ham
Fried ham fried ham fried ham fried ham…(Repeat 10 times, fast!)

Thanks for visiting with me. Tip your waitress.

leo…

I’m never content with what I know,
only with what I can find out.

Food Colorwheel is $1200. Sold 10/24/12
Mason Jar I is $500.
Four Plates is $800.
Gelato is $900. Sold 10/27/12 at the Weaverville Art Safari

My work can be purchased at the Grovewood Gallery on the grounds of the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC. Click on the gallery link if you are interested in taking one of my workshops.

Please plan to attend the opening of my three-month exhibit at the Grovewood Gallery to help kick off American Craft Week.  The opening is Saturday, October 6th, from 4-6pm. Music by Bruce Lang, good eats, lively conversation, and a paper sculpture demonstration by yours truly.

Cut, Bend, Fold, ColorColorColor Exhibit Invite