ARCHIVES: March 2010

giving the door a fresh coat of paint
Portals into other worlds

Right now there are four soaking wet paintings in my little studio. There is only space for four paintings to be worked on at any one time. And oil paintings need time to dry between sessions. I usually work them to the point where if I were to continue, they would become mud. Mud does not make for good paint. Therefore, I have time. Not tons of spare time, but some time nonetheless. So other things get done.

I recently decided my portal website needed updating. It was created during the spring of 2007 and was still in its original design; which felt very fresh and clever then, but not so much now. What is a portal website? A website dedicated to doors and gates and entrances? Sort of. Way back when I was registering my very small publishing company as a URL name, I thought maybe I oughta register my own name as a URL too, you know, just in case I became famous or something. So I did, and that site became a portal to all my little worlds; where someone who placed my name in a search engine would find passage to some of the things I do in one place, such as paintings and lyric poetry and graphic design and the books and this blog...

The portal site re-do went live yesterday. It looks so very different than before. On the right side on three of the four main pages I have a column of painting details that were color-shifted to fit the mood of the site. The painting to the right is a detail of Azalea #11, but here it is in its original azalea coloring. Go look and see: www.alexandrialevin.com

And now I’ve got other things to do, and before you know it the four wet paintings will be dry enough to go back into. I would like to add more illustrated lyric poetry to the site. It’s overdue. Next month I hope to write here about having such a tiny studio, and also why painting in alla prima does not suit me; two things hinted at this time around.

posted March 30, 2010

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little square booklet
Yay for exhibition catalogs!

It's a rare occurence these days - being in an exhibition. I used to have overlapping exhibitions, half a dozen a year or more, before moving here. As said before, I'm in the wrong place. I didn't think there was such a thing as a wrong place, but it seems there is. However, when I listen to the quiet inner voices, they say this is only a passing phase. When we move along, the exhibitions will return, and there will be plenty. Meanwhile, I paint for me. This down time is giving me the opportunity to experiment with varying levels of abstraction. Studio time is good.

Child's Play
March 5th to April 9th, 2010
The Galleries at CCBC Catonsville
800 South Rolling Road, Baltimore, MD

The painting to the right is "Eyeless Rabbit" and is part of the exhibition.

From Nicole Buckingham, exhibition curator for Child's Play:
"The poignant representations of plush toys by Alexandria Levin present a moment of stillness, the beloved toy in the absence of the child. Eerie and endearing all at once, they provide a narrative open for the imagination."

She got it! I love when that happens.

posted March 20, 2010

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keep your eyes open
When street art is good

As winter fades into the slush and melt of early spring, the trees of a certain city park in Cape May, NJ have been guarding against the lingering chill by sporting knitted sleeves; branch warmers, if you will. They must go shopping overnight. Or more likely, the knitwear is brought to them. Some folks are outraged, but most are not. One comment on a news website stated that such things, such visual surprises, delight the spirit and generally make the day go better. Anything to bring about more smiles. I know. I’m a cranky girl these days. And I’m all for public knitwear in unusual places.

Last fall I was in South Florida for my niece’s wedding. The day before the wedding I was visiting with a friend in Delray Beach who had moved all the way down there from way up here. This was on Halloween. We were wandering around the pretty streets and I was snapping photos when we came across this cardboard kitty face on a little traffic roundabout that had been festooned with homemade holiday decorations. I love this cat. If you know who created it, let me know.

This is contemporary folk art, and I say that as high praise. Someone creates something; it’s funky, it’s colorful, it’s fun. Sometimes there is deeper meaning, sometimes it is just for amusement and a sort of wild beautification. This is the stuff you don’t notice if you’ve got your face nose first into a PDA or other such device. The world out there is around us for a reason.

posted March 11, 2010

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creative fun from almost nothing
Finding inspiration in being uninspired

In honor of cabin fever...

This monthly feature on developing unlimited creativity is best referenced from the two original creative fun from almost nothing entries from the archives; September and October 2009. Read those two entries, and the entry below will be all yours. Use your lack of motivation to inspire your art!

Bored
• Boring, bore, board. Bore holes in boards. You could spend all day just drilling holes, but that too could be boring. Seriously though, you could make some interesting designs with holes in boards, or make something out of found pieces of twigs and branches where insects have bored holes, or maybe create something out of pegboard. You could weave things in and out of the holes in that very same piece of pegboard. This should keep you out of trouble for awhile.
• Try to make the most boring piece of two or three-dimensional art that ever existed, using at least ten different colors and/or five different types of materials. Make sure that there is absolutely nothing interesting about it. This is more of a challenge than it seems.
• Do a portrait, or a series of portraits, of people and other creatures yawning in boredom. Give them that glazed-over look.
• The syllable -dom is a suffix referring to domain. So as there are king-doms, maybe there could also be a bore-dom, the domain of all that is boring. Depict a scene from the Land of Boredom, or if three- dimensionally inclined, create a royally boring installation.

Dull lackluster beige dust
Very much like an apartment we lived in briefly, the rickety one where I wrote some of the earlier chapters of the book; Creatively Unblocking Creative Blocks.
• Try working with raw pigment, metallic powders and other dust-like materials. Don’t forget to wear a face mask; not the costume type, but the breathing type of mask.
• Do a two-dimensional piece about dust storms and dust devils. Dust devils are small tornado-like wind vortexes, usually found in hot, dry, sunny areas. We once saw a dog chasing a dust devil across a field in southeastern New Mexico. Now, that was entertaining! Not boring at all. Oops.
• What is the true color and texture of being uninspired? Can it be found in beige-gray vinyl clutch purses, dull mauve pile carpeting, baby blue polyester dust ruffles or pale orange plastic countertops? Create an abstract piece that is at least 90% in three of the dullest, most uninspiring colors in your opinion.
• Portray a bleak terrain, a place where once was some sort of opulence, now gone dry for lack of use such as a half-dead shopping center.
• Collect old plastic beads, costume jewelry with missing rhinestones and broken clasps, silk scarves with stains, bent sequins, and create a wearable piece or a whole outfit that epitomizes long-faded glamour.
• Take one or more shiny objects or materials and scratch most of the sheen out of it. Create something with these materials on the theme of the lackluster life.

Excerpted and paraphrased from the book;
Creatively Unblocking Creative Blocks
Author: Alexandria Levin
ISBN: 0-9743267-1-2
Published by Painted Jay Publishing
www.paintedjay.com

posted March 1, 2010

All images and content ©2009-2010 Alexandria Levin