Into the vat.

Taking a dip. A touch of warmth. Wear and tear. Imperfection.

It's been a dubious day. Dubiosity has reigned quietly in the background for the past few days as I've been going along cleaning, creating and contemplating. I've felt dubiosity hanging out somewhere in the corner of the room, weighing down heavily. Every time I think I catch it staring at my back, I turn and it's not there. It's moved and lurking in another corner.

- Color study for Warship

Silence.

Back to work.

Zen Tree

Image: J.B.Weekes, Copyright 2008

Awesome Jon sent me this. He took it last weekend after our first northeast storm.

Planned a post but stayed up too late and now tooooooooo tired. Does that mean double the goodness tomorrow?

?

I love paper.

I just wanted to say that. I love paper. Just that. Paper. Yep. Not the Xerox kind. The nice, fancy, kind. Porous, fancypants, watercolor, handmade-type. I love paper.

I love it so much, that I had to get up and post it here.

Wintery work.

Start of a continuation. I'm liking her more and more.
Pardon the bad lighting, I have very limited light sources.

I was so happy that this past weekend came around. Though part of the weekend was crappy due to family making me miserable (Saturday), yesterday turned out to be a perfect working day. Art day. Art is not work. I have to remember that. I keep on losing my vision of this since my day job is all about creating, and that is work with a capital, hard-ass "W". And the past week of day-jobness was exhausting. But Sunday was so nice. Music, art, and the company of kitties. The blistering snow storm outside didn't even phase me. Come evening time I went out to dig my yellow lemon out of the snow (that's the vehicle, it's yellow and a lemon in more ways than one), an hour and a half of wintery shoveling, to wake up today and see that I was plowed in. *Sigh* But with such a good day yesterday, I didn't care.


The view outside my window on Sunday.

When it's snowing like that I want to run out and hike through the woods. One day I'll get myself a pair of snow shoes that I've been pining for, grab my topo map and compass, and go get lost in the snow. One day, when I get those shoes.

Into the sketchbook.

Meine Kamera ist kaputt. Well, not really, it's only that the battery has run down and I don't have a charger. The charger was removed from my checked backpack somewhere between O'hare and Bradley International last year during a random routine search, and never replaced. My camera was on me, but in exhaustion, at the last second I checked my backpack. When I got home and unzipped it I found one of those paper things stating that they had gone through my bag. I was not so much upset that they (they being an airport personnel of some sort), rummaged through my bag (I can understand the need for it nowadays), I was more upset that the battery charger was removed and not put back. Unfortunately, at the moment I can't replace it and have been borrowing one off and on. So, since no battery for the Kamerrra, today no photos. But, I went all out and got savvy outside of the day job, and used the scanner. Woo!

So, peek into my sketchbook. It's actually a very special thing, place, whatevermajiggy, where I sketch ideas, meditate, babble, paste things into, and so on. I have pages where I warm up my brain with doodles and sketches before I actually start drawing something. It's a lot meditative and a bit trance-like. I write, make lines. Warmups. Brain babbles.

One page and close-ups. After I scanned the page (the book wasn't laying flat - sorry), I became detached from all those doodles. I felt as if I was looking at someone else's stuff and got really fascinated looking at it up close in hi-res. So I thought the close-ups would be neato to show.

Oh, and please pardon any cat fuzzies you might see.

In progress.

Oh, I wanted to post so much yesterday, but the odd weather up here in New England sent my barometer into the migraine zone. With a strong dose of ibuprofen I was out of commission. Sixty degrees out and pouring rain. Not normal. Not normal. Not for here. Oh we're all going to burn. Shame on us. The poor planet. Blahblahblah. I better stop now because otherwise I won't stop.

Sunday was great! I worked on the above image. I wasn't planning on it. It was originally a small drawing I did in pen. (I prefer a good pen over a sharp pencil. I like the challenge of having to rework a mistake to make it work, and a pen is very unforgiving.) I output it at a larger size for a transfer, and the next step will be inking it. I rather like it at this large size, 15"x 22". I could almost see it as a print of some sort, but not sure yet. I need to see how I'm going to develop it. I never know what the finished piece will look like when I start. I just go.

I gooooooo. Oh oh oh!

Jin Young Yu - Oh My!

A Family In Disguise

I've never really posted about another artist before, but Jin Young Yu's sculpture is absolutely amazing. I got a glimpse of her work on ArrestedMotion during their coverage of Art Basel and had to know more. Since then, I've spied images of her work on various blogs across the internet.

The figures are so ghostly and haunted looking, their emotions so masked and hidden yet at the same time readily apparent. From what I gathered in doing research on this Korean artist, her work is a commentary on the hypocrisy of today's society, who we really are and who we pretend to be while amongst other people. The masks we wear in front of our friends and relatives, yet at the same time not truly understanding who we are as individuals. I immediately identified with her work since it strikes close to home. In such a chaotic, media driven, materialistic society, it is very difficult to find one's soul and true purpose. The media drives us to not think for ourselves. It tells us what to wear, eat, how to act and behave, what medications to take, and how to live our lives, and even how to mourn, as at the very same time it is stripping us of our individuality. Though, it's very clever, because it leaves us with the belief that we are still thinking for ourselves.

So, in bloggy fashion, I'm posting both links to Jin Young Yu's blog and Union Gallery which is showcasing some of her work. Her blog is in Korean, but it's worth to take a look at all the images posted there.

yep.

Work. I'm slow to post because, just beacuase. So these are last week's photos. Sorry for the quality, there wasn't a lot of light.

I had put the original large piece Earth on the back-burner due to moving around so much and working on other things. She's everywhere and I can't get rid of her till she's complete. She's also further along now since this photo.

The other pieces are 8"x 8" and experimental. I don't know where I'm going with those yet. I pick them up every so often, do a bit here, then there. Then they sit. And I look and look. And so on. I've got too many ideas and too many things going on here and there that I'm starting or doing or finishing something or other.

I wish I could think of something clever to say. It could be this jazzy samba stuff I'm listening to. It might be messing with my head.

I really could go for some m&m's right now. With peanuts.