Not sure what happened,
but here we are...
I’ve not been in the mood to type anything out here lately. There’s been so much going on in preparation for my upcoming solo show, among a bunch of other things, that it’s been hard to wrap my head around getting my thoughts together in a coherent manner to be read by someone else. I’m trying today, though, so let’s see how this goes.
I already mentioned that I have a solo show coming up and just this past week, I was able to say that I’m done with all of the work I’m planning so show. I’m done way earlier than I thought. There was one painting that I swore was going to take me up to the last minute to complete, but that miraculously didn’t happen. It didn’t happen in part because once I saw that my first attempts weren’t working to my satisfaction, I pivoted to another idea that I’d been developing on a smaller scale. The newer direction was “easier” in some ways, but still had its challenges due to a big change in scale and how materials interacted. It turned out wonderfully and I gave myself the gift of being done ahead of my deadline. There’s a bunch of small preparatory things to do, like wrapping up the larger paintings and beginning to promote the show, but now I can turn my attention to other items.
This past week also marked the end of my student intern’s term at the studio, which oddly had me feeling a little bereft. Nijah’s school has an internship program that pairs art students with artists and other organizations to gain experience and class credit. In spite of me thinking that there wasn’t going to be a lot for her to do at the beginning of the year, Nijah’s assistance wound up being more incredibly helpful than I thought. An ongoing project is the organization of my studio inventory and Nijah’s help with that was invaluable since I was also preparing for my show. Now, the way forward is a lot more clear than it has been.
At this point, if anyone were to come into my studio, they’d be able to identify everything stored in boxes since we went through each box to make sure that everything inside matched everything that was on the label sheets taped on the outside of the boxes. It’s good that we checked through each box because there were a few things out of place because of me moving some paintings around and not returning them to their proper place over the past year. In addition to properly labeling everything, Nijah also helped me with updating my online inventory, as well. Needless to say, without Nijah’s assistance these past few months, I’d not be in as good of a place as I am now with organizing my work. Needless to say, Nijah’s work is appreciated and I made sure to let her know that.
One of the reasons I ever liked browsing through Artforum at the bookstore was to check out the 20-30 pages of gallery ads at the front of the magazine every month to see who was showing where and when. The ads that attracted me most were those that did more than just have an image of a painting with the show information. The ones that held my attention usually had a seemingly random studio image that showed no artwork at all or a detail of a work or ones that had no image at all, but only the artist’s name, the gallery information and exhibition dates.
I’ve always had a thing for graphic design and every now and then, I’ll experiment with making up promotional graphics for exhibitions. Above are some “teaser” graphics I made for my upcoming show. Since I’ve been holding back on posting any full images of the new paintings, I thought it might be interesting to make a series of images with portions of the paintings showing and mostly covered with a flat colored surface with the works’ titles and ‘coming soon…’ at the lower edges. I’ve been sprinkling them in some of my social media posts recently. Judging from responses, they seem to be well-received. Next up, I’ll be releasing online promo graphics with all of the exhibition details.
Directly above are some graphics I made for an installation I made back in 2019. All of these were directly influenced by what I saw in Artforum ads.
Recent listening:
The Midnight Boys talk about Dune and the white savior narrative. They also give their instant reactions to the movie (spoilers for Dune 2).
Speaking of Dune 2, go see it in the theaters. Trust me.
On Everything is Connected, this week’s episode is dedicated to a remembrance of artist Radcliffe Bailey, who died in late 2023. More about Bailey on the Jack Shainman Gallery website.
Rebecca Rutstein on the I Like Your Work podcast: Exploration, Ecology and Public Projects
I got rid of the facial and head hair. Spring is coming. That is all.
Thanks Tim. I always like reading about your studio life.