The Color Tree: Fine Art Mobiles, Kinetic Paper Sculpture, Digital Art

Show Announcement

2012-01-28T20:19:00.005-05:00

For the month of February 2012, the CAP ArtSpace will be displaying Portraits of Randomness, a brand new series of work about chance, uncertainty, and fractals. This exhibit contains mobiles, sculptures, and embroidered drawings constructed from paper and thread and based on computer-generated images. Come back for my artist's talk to hear about the intersection of science, math, and art.

Opening reception: Friday, Feb. 3, 5-8 pm, during Gallery Night

Artist's talk: Tuesday, Feb. 21, 6:30-7:30

The CAP ArtSpace is located at 171 The Commons, Ithaca, NY

Fractals Everywhere

2012-01-27T09:10:00.009-05:00

It turns out that, like many of the shapes you see in nature, tree branches have a fractal structure. For my show next month at the CAP Artspace, I made a few thread drawings on top of photographs of bare trees. Here are a couple from the series, which I think I will call The Secrets of Trees.

Fractal Canopy Mobile

2012-01-26T02:21:00.006-05:00

It's the final countdown for my February show at the CAP Artspace, which I'm installing next Tuesday. The wall pieces are being framed (by Ariel at the Corners Gallery), and the mobiles are done. Here are a couple pics of the largest mobile in the exhibit (62" W x 16" H). I designed it to be a canopy of fractal shapes covering part of the main space.

The opening is next Friday Feb. 3, during Gallery Night 5-8 PM. Stop by and say hello!

Upcoming Show

2012-01-21T21:05:00.004-05:00

Wow, has it been over a month since I posted anything? I've been busy creating a new body of work for my February solo show at the CAP Artspace in downtown Ithaca (on the Commons, in Center Ithaca). It's going to be an exhibit with a couple mobiles but mainly embroidered drawings based on computer-generated fractals, touching on themes of randomness, uncertainty, order, data, and knowledge.

Here's a sneak preview.

Holiday Artists' Market

2011-12-10T07:04:00.004-05:00

If you're out doing some holiday shopping in downtown Ithaca today, please stop by and see me at the Holiday Artists' Market organized by the Community Arts Partnership. Sat. Dec. 10, 11 am to 5 pm in the Women's Community Building on the corner of Cayuga and Seneca.

Among other things, I'll have a preview of my February 2012 show at the CAP Artspace, which will be based on my new embroidered fractal drawings. The picture to the left shows an experimental 3D rendition of these drawings. I'm planning to do a large-scale version for the show.

And below is another pair of 2D drawings with both sides shown. The stitch I used creates more of a starburst effect than my previous ones. I'm not sure which side is front and which is back....

Blast from the Past

2011-11-24T22:37:00.004-05:00

Over Thanksgiving, my mother unearthed a photograph of the very first mobile I ever made. This was during my senior year in high school, 20+ years ago. The mobile itself is lost to history. I think it was 3 or 4 feet tall, possibly more, although objects have a tendency to grow in one's memory.

It would be 14 years before I made another mobile.

Looking back, I'm struck by how much more fluid my visual style used to be -- inky shapes with sweeping lines and thorny cusps. When I returned to making art, nearly 8 years ago, I adopted a tightly controlled geometric vocabulary, influenced by the revival of mid-century modern design at the time.

It makes me wonder where I would be now if I had continued down that earlier path.

Constellation

2011-11-21T09:49:00.013-05:00

I suppose it was inevitable that my embroidered fractal drawings would end up in an artist's book.

I think this is a good way of exposing both sides of the embroidery, which are slightly different. I also introduced some mechanical action -- opening the book pulls on the strings, which span both sides of the fold like the cables of a suspension bridge. There is a flap at the back of the book for retracting the strings when the front cover is closed.

On the back cover, you can see the actual computer-generated fractal I used for the drawing.

Title: Constellation. It measures 6" high by 5-5/8" folded, and I'm planning a limited edition of 5 copies.

Portraits of Randomness

2011-11-16T08:03:00.009-05:00

It has been a month since the end of Art Trail open studios, and it seems I've gone off in a completely different direction (again). Here are a couple of the embroidered drawings I've been making using needle and thread and punched holes on Bristol paper. These are inspired in part by other work I've seen here and here.

The threads in these pieces trace the outlines of computer-generated fractals. My aim is to depict chance and randomness as benign facts of life, without which we would not even exist. Planets, galaxies, coastlines, and clouds, are all products of random but ordered processes. Similarly, this art is based on a mathematical principle manifested in an infinite set of variations.

More later on how I arrived at this idea and its connection to mobiles. For now, here are some closeup shots showing the surface texture of these low-relief drawings.

Fall Foliage, Art Trail

2011-10-14T01:18:00.005-04:00

It's that time of year again... the drive home grows darker each day, and the rain turns from nourishing to chilling. Here is an autumn bouquet of scanned leaves, stones, and birch bark. A last splash of color before the season ends.

One more weekend of Art Trail open studios. Drop in for cookies and art this Saturday and Sunday, October 15-16, from 11 am to 5 pm each day. Don't let the clouds get you down!

Open Studio Weekends!

2011-10-05T10:55:00.006-04:00

Join me and 49 other artists as we open our studios to the public over the next two weekends! A brochure with directions can be downloaded from www.arttrail.com, or pick one up at the many arts and shopping establishments around town. Note that my art is on the cover....

Come take a scenic 15-minute drive out of Ithaca and see all the new projects I've been working on.

Open studio dates and times are:

Sat. Oct. 8
Sun. Oct. 9
Sat. Oct. 15
Sun. Oct 16

11 am to 5 pm each day.

For a taste of the things you'll see on the Art Trail, come to the State of the Art Gallery, which will host an Art Trail Preview Exhibition for the month of October. My new piece Pink Deconstruction is hanging in the front window. The opening reception for this show is Oct. 7, 5-8 pm.

Star Sapphire

2011-09-21T11:58:00.003-04:00

This polyhedron is part of a mobile I'm working on, but I thought it deserved a picture of its own.

It's about 7.5" tall and 5" wide.

Survey Map of Goldenrod

2011-09-20T20:34:00.005-04:00

I think this is my best one yet. Like my previous (smaller) pieces here and here, there is a strong organizing principle, but the details came together here in a way that's fluid and natural. This one measures 12" x 23", and it's based on a scanned composition of goldenrod blossoms and stones that has gone through some color sorting.

One More

2011-09-08T00:05:00.007-04:00

This is another wall sculpture (6" x 12") in the same form as my first one here.

This time, the edge pieces are pyramids instead of squares, and I stained the border walnut brown. Here is the image that appears on the paper:

The photograph on the right is a lavender bush at Dano's on Seneca, and the line drawing on the left is scanned from Paper Machine Felts and Fabrics (reminds me of crop circles). The striped underlay is a color sorted version of the photo.

Antique Store Finds

2011-09-05T23:34:00.002-04:00

Another color sorted photograph, taken at FOUND in Ithaca.

Echoes of Frank Stella

2011-09-04T22:56:00.009-04:00

Here's a small (6" x 12") paper wall sculpture using the same image as my previous mobile, this time with the paper folded into a grid of pyramids and squares. I glued the paper onto a piece of birch plywood and then scalloped the edges to follow the outline of the paper. This piece is meant to be practice for another one twice as large. I'm not sure if I should stain the exposed wood border or not.

Try Some Rutabaga

2011-09-02T16:11:00.003-04:00

Help spread the word!

Notecards
Magnets
Bumper stickers
T-shirts

Now available on Etsy.

Something New, Perhaps

2011-08-30T00:18:00.007-04:00

Here's a picture of the latest concept I've been working on, made of fine art paper and steel wire.
The paper is printed with a color sorted image and then folded into polyhedra. And I added thin wire filigree to the armatures to fuzz them out a little. The idea was to create a free flowing network of lines to offset the mathematical organization in the polyhedra. This is really more of a hanging sculpture than a mobile because the paper pieces are not designed to catch the wind.

Here are some closeups:

And this is the image that is printed on the paper pieces, made from a closeup shot of sedum flowers:

I've realized that, in bringing images into my sculptures, I don't care so much what the images depict because I'm treating them simply as carriers of visual information. In other words, I'm interested in images as data, which is why I tend to fragment them and pick them apart with analytic techniques. I guess I just love complexity or, more precisely, finding elegance in complexity (for some cool examples, see Visual Complexity), and it turns out there is more science in my art than I was previously willing to admit.

Paper Machine Felts and Fabrics

2011-08-29T21:18:00.008-04:00

I picked up this book today on the dollar shelves at Autumn Leaves Used Books on the Ithaca Commons. The title struck me as oddly poetic, before I realized it's a technical book published in 1976 by the Albany Felt Company about felts and fabrics used in paper making machines. Even still, I liked the graphic quality of the cover, and then when I looked inside, there are these great map-like diagrams and wonderfully dated photographs. I think there's an art project in here somewhere.

Single Editions

2011-08-28T11:11:00.005-04:00

While I'm working on new projects, I thought I would show some single-edition artist's books I made a few weeks ago. These all use the same images and materials as my previous ones, but they are assembled in more fancy ways.

The first one is a made from two accordion or concertina folds, sewn together back to back at the corners using a pamphlet stitch, and glued together at the ends. It actually folds up flat, which took some planning to achieve, given that the accordion folds are irregular.

The next two are made with the flag book construction pioneered by Hedi Kyle in 1979. It has since become a very popular technique. See some examples here and here. Again, the folds and flag pieces are of irregular lengths, which adds an interesting visual rhythm, I think.

Available on Etsy.

Color Sorting

2011-08-17T12:21:00.009-04:00

I thought I would say a little more about the pixel sorting method I mentioned in my last post. I wrote a tool using an open source programming framework called Processing that is good for data visualization and animation. It allows me to read in all the pixels in a digital image and store their RGB color values in an array. I can then sort this array and write out the pixels in their new positions to a jpeg.

Here's an example. I took a picture of a blooming thistle in our yard:

Then, I sorted the pixels and laid them out in an L shape:

The reason that there's not a strict separation between green and pink is because of the way colors are represented in RGB format. A 24-bit color is given by a six-digit hexadecimal number that schematically looks like RRGGBB. The first two digits give the R value, the second two are G, and the last two are B. So, the most significant digits tell you how much red is in a pixel and the least significant digits tell you how much blue. That means that, if you think of the full 24-bit scale, that blue pixels will appear all throughout that range but red pixels will be more or less concentrated towards one end. If you reorder the digits in the color representation, say GGRRBB instead of RRGGBB, then the sorted colors will give a different pattern.

After I wrote my program, I found that someone else implemented something similar in Python.

Anyway, after sorting the pixels, I combined that image with a black-and-white version of the original photograph to produce this:

A small print of this image is available in my shop on Etsy.

More Artist's Books

2011-08-16T16:01:00.009-04:00

For the past week or so, I have been completely absorbed in making a new series of artist's books. These are basically archival prints of my digital photomontages that I folded up, so the viewer has to take them in a little bit at a time by picking up the book and undoing the folds. It's interactive! For the images, I'm using a new technique where I decompose a photograph into individual pixels, sort them by color, and then weave them back into the original (sometimes after turning it into a black-and-white version of itself). What I'm trying to get at is the idea that digital images are just bits of data arranged in a certain way. And so, whatever meaning is conveyed by a photograph is not inherent to the photograph itself but exists only in the mind/eyes of the beholder.

The pictures below show three books, each one printed in a limited edition of five copies. At the moment, they are for sale on Etsy, but I will also hopefully have them in my various locations around town soon.

Current Garden Mobiles

2011-07-30T23:16:00.004-04:00

Since some people have been asking, here are the garden mobiles that are still available after the Ithaca Artists' Market. I'll be bringing many of these to the Plantsmen Nursery for their outdoor art show Art on the Grounds, opening on August 6, 5-8 pm.

Click to enlarge

One Tree, Six Views, Two Maps

2011-07-28T22:05:00.006-04:00

This is my first artist's book, composed of altered photographs with hand-drawn maps interspersed. The photos are of a large birch tree in our yard during a violent thunderstorm this past week. I took the photos through a window just as the rain began to fall, so some of the blurry spots are water drops on the glass.

The book is constructed with an accordion fold, so the above scan shows one side of the paper. Below is the other side.

This first printing will be a limited edition of 10, and the maps in each one are unique. I will have a couple of these on hand at the Ithaca Artists' Market tomorrow.

Just Finished!

2011-07-25T13:27:00.004-04:00

This is a large new garden mobile I made for the Ithaca Artists' Market this Friday -- 3 feet tall and 5-1/2 feet wide. I'm running with the subdued white theme I began here, this time with a few spots of color.

And here it is at home in a more natural setting.

Stop by this Friday to see it in person!

Ithaca Artists' Market 2011

2011-07-25T13:13:00.003-04:00

Come see me at the Ithaca Artists' Market this Friday, July 29, 2-8 PM, in the Farmers' Market pavilion at Steamboat Landing. I'll be in booth 34, right next to the main office.

I'll have some new things I've been working on: inkjet prints on birch plywood, and, if the weather holds, paper mobiles including a mini-installation. There will also be a clearance bin of discontinued items. And, of course, a brand new batch of my ever-popular garden mobiles.

Urban Glyphs

2011-07-19T00:11:00.014-04:00

This is a mini-installation piece I'm planning to show at the Ithaca Artists' Market on July 29 [2-8 pm, Steamboat Landing, Ithaca, NY]. Dimensions are 45" H x 32" W x 32" D.

I really wanted to display some paper mobiles in this breezy outdoor setting, and my scheme to keep them from flying away was to anchor them with stones and pull them taut to the ceiling. The result, though, exceeded my expectations. There are four main stems that branch into paper leaves printed with pixellated images. In this configuration, the paper and wires seem to levitate and defy gravity. Also, I arranged the pieces in an approximate grid, which suggests windows in an apartment building, or letters on a page, as well as trees in a forest. I will definitely explore this form more in the future.

Below are a couple in-progress shots. In the first one, the columns are lit by the setting sun, and in the second, I had just laid out the paper pieces, which crystallized for me the idea of glyphs on a grid.

Blank Slate

2011-06-19T14:59:00.003-04:00

I just finished my large interactive outdoor mobile for 60 Hours of Art, a minifestival at Beulahland, just outside of Corning, NY. My idea here was to provide a blank mobile for festival participants to paint or embellish however they want. The pieces are made of polymer clay, and the whole thing measures 3' H x 6.5' W -- my largest garden mobile yet.

I can't wait to see how it looks after the festival!

Shadowy Mobile

2011-06-05T21:38:00.004-04:00

Inspired by the trompe l'oeil shadow work in Marcel Duchamp's painting Tu m' at the Yale Art Gallery, and also by people remarking on the interesting shadows made by my mobiles, I decided to try using shadows within a mobile itself. Here is a closeup of my initial exploration:

I think there's potential here. At times, the pieces do seem to melt into the background, as desired, but they are still a bit too concrete. Next time, I'll print the images on a larger scale, so that the pieces seem less like pictures of shadows and more like actual shadows.

Gimme Coffee T-burg

2011-05-31T23:21:00.003-04:00

My show at the Trumansburg branch of Gimme Coffee is now up! Stop by and take a look. It's on display until June 30.

No mobiles this time -- only digital prints.

Included in the collection is a new piece of scanner art, printed by yours truly on etching paper with archival pigment inks. The image is a diptych featuring mini paper sculptures, stones, and birch bark -- a study in contrasts. You can see the image up close in the bottom picture.

Digital Composition with Real Objects

2011-05-28T16:33:00.005-04:00

It has been a while since I posted anything, so here is a bit of scanner art that I've been messing around with today. The thin lines are the mini paper sculptures from my Arcades Project installation, A Visibility of Thought. I also added a few stones and curls of birch bark for variation. I like the different sense of perspective you get from seeing the paper edge-on. It's not how you normally look at paper.

Arcades Project

2011-05-06T00:11:00.008-04:00

My installation for the Arcades Project is up! Come by on Friday May 6 to see it in person. One night only -- 5 to 9 PM on the Ithaca Commons, at the old Night & Day store.

Painted Synapses

2011-05-02T17:13:00.003-04:00

I finally decided to rework the cardboard mobile I made almost two years ago. Here's a picture of the original, where the cardboard was kept bare:

Yesterday, I repositioned the two halves so the whole thing is more horizontal, and I painted the pieces with colors from the 70's. They almost look like laminated plywood now. Here is the revamped mobile (avec shadows) photographed with and without my canvas prints in the background:

This will be one of the pieces I'm bringing to my new venue, the Aurora Arts & Design Center. It's a sweet gallery and antiques shop in beautiful downtown Aurora, and I'm thrilled to be joining a great group of artists there!

The Kitchen of the Future ...

2011-04-28T23:09:00.009-04:00

... will be filled with mobiles.

My installation for the Arcades Project is done, and I'm calling it A Visibility of Thought, after a line from Wallace Stevens' An Ordinary Evening in New Haven. Come see this "reading room" vignette in person on May 6, during Gallery Night (5-9 PM) in the old Night & Day building on the Commons.

The large mobile on the left is 7 feet wide and 4 feet high, made of paper and wire. It hangs above a Zen garden of rocks and paper sculptures like the ones in the mobile itself.

Inscribed on the mobile is a poem about words and winter:

Solstice Snowfall

With a fateful arc
the poles of our spherical mound
glide once again up
to an inflection point,
where they pause, mid-turn,
to regain sight of
the verdant star at the distant end.

At this held-breath moment of freefall,
fleeting ands ifs and buts
shed their aspirant corners and
consonant edges.
And as their sound swings back
around, we find they abound in the
abstract air, when they settle as
crystalline sediments on the
whispering ground.

My goal in developing this piece was to form an organic, natural relationship between art and text, and to marry the act of reading with an intuitive visual comprehension. Along the way, I became attuned to the physicality of language and the way words are first felt in the body before they are transmitted into the world.

Texting Mobiles III

2011-04-14T23:15:00.012-04:00

Another element in my installation for the Arcades Project on May 6: a pair of mod bar stools with poetry mobiles dangling over the seats. The mobiles are printed with scanned pebbles (see here for the full image), and the poems I wrote on the reverse play on the same theme:

Watery Pebbles

1.

Last winter, I saw
the fine print in my books,
sharp and concrete.
But now the stream is flowing again,
and the bright pebbles down below
never seem to stand still.

2.

Clatter of round pebbles tumbling into
a dry bowl. Fill it
with clear water.
Now reach inside,
and dip your hand.
Scoop up a stone, and
pull out a song.

Texting Mobiles II

2011-04-06T22:02:00.006-04:00

Here is a sneak preview of work in progress for my Arcades Project installation. So far, it's just a collection of miniature paper sculptures featuring lines of poetry. Kinda reminds me of Allan McCollum's meditations on mass-produced objects.

Now, to work these all into a mobile....

Paint Off Redux

2011-04-06T21:40:00.008-04:00

An action shot of me at the Ithaca Festival Paint Off. The mobile here is made from plastic cutting boards and was auctioned off to a good home. The event was a lot of fun -- I loved seeing all the art that could be created in an hour!

Texting Mobiles

2011-03-24T15:19:00.016-04:00

On May 6, I will be creating an art installation at the Arcades Project, which is part of Ithaca's annual literary festival, Spring (W)rites. The Arcades Project is a one-day event for artists, vendors, and small presses, to be housed in the old Night and Day building on the Ithaca Commons. My contribution will be a "reading room" vignette filled with poetry mobiles, with a large raincloud of a mobile hanging overhead.

For some time now, I have been searching for an authentic way to incorporate text into my mobiles. The problem, in my mind, is that letters and words are such potent symbols, with such deep associations, that they inject an instant resonance when used in a piece of visual art. But if they are just sprinkled in randomly, then that resonance can be hollow, which ends up cheapening the symbols themselves. So, my aim, in using text, would be to preserve and enhance the words, much like a composer setting a poem to music.

Below is my first attempt at a poetry mobile, made from paper, wire, and stone, with the words written on the back of a printed image. It's supposed to hang low, just above the surface of a coffee table (like a coffee table book), so the words are mainly visible from above.

Initially, I wanted to find a short poem in the public domain, but then I thought: why not write something myself? That way, I can tailor the length and subject matter to the image. And to be honest, I don't want the poem to be so good on its own that it distracts from the sculpture....

So, this is the poem, which talks ironically about the promise of factual certainty offered by cameras and other image capturing devices.

Panacea

The photographic record
sends the eye's plain version
beyond the realm of doubt,
sailing over the boundary
like a skipping stone.
Information seals the cracks,
scatters misgivings, and
smothers regret.

The past is illuminated.
Onward ever, ever forward.

The mobile is in the form of a plant (a poet-tree!), with the words spread out over many leaves, so that to "read" the mobile you have to physically fit the puzzle pieces together. This is a new way, for me, of interacting with the viewer, and at the same time, it teases out a somatic connection to the words themselves. So not only can words be sounds and concepts and flat projections on a page or screen, but I claim they can also attain a physical, corporeal presence in the three-dimensional world.

Word Mobiles

2011-03-23T23:40:00.005-04:00

I've been playing with adding text to my inkjet mobiles. This first one uses a print of my Try Some Rutabaga image. I cut up the letters until they were barely recognizable, so that I could use them almost as pure graphical elements, without being too blatant about co-opting their symbolic value.

The second one is based mainly on a print of my Flavored With Innocence image. Here, the letters disappear completely, I think, and the composition reminds me of dogwood blossoms. Rob sees printed circuit boards instead. I will take better pictures if the sun ever comes out again.

Thanks, Ithaca Post!

2011-03-09T23:44:00.004-05:00

Many thanks to the Ithaca Post for recognizing the Art Behind the Scientist series at the Tompkins County Public Library, in their 2010 "Year in Art" review. My mobile exhibit there, as part of this series, was one of the highlights of my year as well.

Maps: An Appreciation

2011-03-03T01:09:00.008-05:00

Pictured above is one of the maps from my Cloud Mesa mobile. My maps appear not to be representations of places; they are more like diagrams of exploration, migration, and settlement. Maps have long held a fascination for me, as they have for many others. Witness the recent spate of books about maps, such as those by Katharine Harmon, Frank Jacobs, and Peter Turchi. I can spend hours poring over a simple transit map.

As graphic objects, maps are both figurative and abstract -- they depict real places, reduced to their most salient features. They exert a seductive authority, organizing information with a sheen of objectivity. However, maps are drawn by mapmakers, who have agendas of their own: cartographers decide what features to show and omit; they label places with names that carry political and cultural biases; they sometimes use flawed data. Nonetheless, we treasure maps not only as practical tools, but as metaphors for knowledge and power (or knowledge as power).

One function of many maps is to delineate borders. When we locate ourselves on a map -- our state, our town, or our property lines -- we reinforce our mental boundaries, our sense of self. Boundaries establish identity. Boundaries lead to conflict. Boundaries foster movement (import/export of goods, gradient flow of fluids across a cell membrane). Boundaries sustain life (trees need bark, we need our skin). Psychologically, boundaries (beliefs) keep us from having to process too much information. Boundaries help us to make sense of it all.

The trick, I think, is to acknowledge our need for boundaries without allowing them to become limitations. Perhaps this is why I've been cutting up my maps to make mobiles -- to transcend my own personal borders and history, in the hopes of achieving a Zen-like balance with the world around me. So, not only am I making a profound postmodernist statement about the fragmentation of culture and society, I'm also getting some therapy out of it....

Cloud Mesa

2011-03-01T23:23:00.004-05:00

My latest inkjet mobile -- it's the largest one yet, around 4 feet wide.

Apart from expanding the scale, I also incorporated maps into both sides of each paper piece (previous mobiles only had maps on the white side), and I experimented with more complex joinery. For example, the piece in the foreground here is constructed from seven strips of paper.

My aim with this mobile was to evoke both the solidity of a mountain as well as the amorphousness of a cloud formation.

Exhibit at FOUND

2011-02-14T23:39:00.003-05:00

I am delighted to be showing my inkjet mobiles and canvas prints at FOUND in Ithaca, a great new marketplace for antiques, with a gallery at the front of the store. I'm very pleased with how the show looks, and I love being amid such cool vintage items.

Stop by for the opening reception this Thursday, February 17, 5-7 PM!

The exhibit is on display February 16 to March 13.

New Website!

2011-02-09T11:02:00.009-05:00

Redesigning my website has been on my to-do list for a long time, and now it's finally done! Visit www.thecolortree.net to see the finished product. It's all done in Blogger, and boy did I have to jump through hoops to get it (close to) the way I want! For the record, here are a bunch of links I found very useful:

Static front page

Navigation tabs

Three-column footer

Selective display of Blogger widgets

The reason I'm doing this now is to highlight a new series of paper-based inkjet mobiles that I'm working on. These are made from giclee prints of my digital photomontages that are cut apart and then shaped. The paper is a heavy fine art watercolor cotton rag, and it is naturally curled from being rolled on a spindle. That curvature gives me sculptural interest for free, and it also allows me to join several strips together into more complex pieces.

The paper can only be printed on one side, so on the reverse, I draw maps in pencil or india ink. I also throw in some aluminum pieces with maps for textural variation.

I like the contrast between the colorful, "manufactured" prints on one side and the monochromatic, hand-produced drawings on the other. I am also enjoying working with paper, which I find more expressive than metal, both because of its flexibility and because it is inherently ephemeral. I think paper gives my new mobiles a delicate and luxurious quality that is almost nostalgic -- a throwback to a pre-digital age.

Welcome to the World

2011-01-12T13:21:00.005-05:00

Our friends Anna and Daniel recently brought a daughter into the world, and here is the baby mobile I made for her.

Welcome, little Ella! If you're lucky, this mobile might put you through college one day...

Fly Away

2011-01-11T22:14:00.001-05:00

A photomontage of the paper mobile from my previous post

Paper Sculpture

2011-01-10T23:07:00.006-05:00

I've been wanting to use paper in my mobiles for some time now, but I wasn't sure how to go about it. Last week, I was trimming some prints on heavy watercolor paper, and the scraps made a spontaneous composition on the table. And I realized that's what I wanted my paper mobiles to look like -- a swirling cloud of random curly bits.

Here, then, is my first experiment with this idea. I like the organic way the process unfolded -- no sketches, no plan; I just added pieces until it felt done. I also allowed some pieces to rub against each other, which contributes to the looseness of the execution, I think. And then there is the tactile quality of the paper itself. Next, I want to print images or photographs on the paper before cutting it up, which will be an act of deconstruction similar to what I've been doing in my digital images. So all the threads are coming together....

If Mary Poppins Were A Root Vegetable...

2010-12-16T11:24:00.006-05:00

... she would need a different catch phrase.

Rooting for Inspiration

2010-12-15T16:12:00.003-05:00

The next installment of my root vegetable graphic design series:

In case you're wondering, the background is a photomontage of an old dropcloth used for spray painting.

Winter Montages

2010-12-15T13:52:00.005-05:00

To mark our rapid descent into winter, I made a couple photomontages of scenes around the house.

First is a closeup of our lawn mower's snowblower attachment:

which inspired this poem (sorry, Dr. Williams):

so much depends
upon

an orange snow
blower

in the town of
Enfield

beside the grey
cinder block.

And then here is our cabin with an actual poem, an early gem by Wallace Stevens:

December 2010 Events

2010-12-03T11:20:00.003-05:00

So, I'm managing to keep busy, even without being in the Holiday Spirit Store this year. Hope to see you at one of these two events next week!

Dec. 7 @ 7 PM: Science Cabaret, Delilah's on Cayuga (formerly Wildfire), Ithaca, NY. Come for dinner and drinks as I give a free informal talk on the physics of mobiles. To be followed by a fundraiser for Light in Winter, in which participants will get to make their own mobiles -- they make great holiday gifts! Click here to register for the fundraiser. Also, check out this short interview I did for the LIW blog. Finally, thanks to Evan Clayburg for the brilliant poster design.

Dec. 11 @ 11 AM - 5 PM: Holiday Artists' Market, Women's Community Building at 100 W. Seneca St., Ithaca, NY. Organized by the Community Arts Partnership. I will have a new batch of upcycled mobiles (see here for last year's edition), as well as large canvas prints of my recent digital work.

More Public Art

2010-11-08T22:42:00.006-05:00

Here is my mobile The Word Engine hanging in the Tompkins County Public Library's exhibit 1864 to 2060: Your Library Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, celebrating ten years at their Green Street location. It's on display through the end of the year. In this photo, you can also see artwork by Jane Dennis (left) and Susan Watkins (right).

I truly value these opportunities to create public art because, unlike in a store or gallery, the price tag becomes secondary, and the work of art is more of a gift. As a result, there's a more direct connection with viewers that I find very gratifying.

Big One Redux

2010-11-04T23:45:00.004-04:00

I just realized I never posted any pictures of my big nautical mobile in its rightful home, hanging 20 feet above the ground, in a beautiful converted barn. So here it is, including a view from below.

Layering Textures

2010-11-03T23:30:00.006-04:00

Here is an experiment in combining my recent digital work with mobiles. For this piece, I had a poster printed of this image, which is itself a montage of mobile photos. Then, I traced the metal mobile pieces onto the poster and cut out the shapes, which I then adhered to the metal pieces with iron-on tape. The result is in the first two photos below.

Here is a photo of the interesting shadows cast by this mobile hanging in a window:

And finally, here is a montage of the previous three photos plus one more shadow photo:

So then, this is a montage of a mobile that is itself made from a montage of mobiles. It's like an M.C. Escher drawing....

2011 Not-Calendar

2010-11-02T23:59:00.005-04:00

There's no shortage of calendars out there, so who needs another one? Well, the one I designed isn't particularly useful if you want to know what day it is. But you have your PDAs and cell phones and online organizers for that. My calendar is more of an art book for your wall, with a new piece for each month of the year.

I wanted to publish a collection of my digital compositions, and a calendar seemed like a promising theme. In order to draw attention to the images, I disassembled the letters and numbers of the calendar and merged them into the design. And in a way, I'm playing with time itself: the images themselves are superimposed photos -- compressed time -- and the weeks and days of each month have been dissected and rearranged for a disorienting effect.

For sale on Etsy and at ithacamade.

The Word Engine

2010-10-08T10:51:00.002-04:00

Here is a new piece (24" H x 35" W) for the Tompkins County Public Library's 10th anniversary exhibit, in which artists are asked to imagine the library of 2060. Mine is not a literal imagining, of course, but it builds on the mobiles-as-poetry idea I was developing last year, now with a human touch. I see it as an expression of the increasingly abstract and disembodied way we interact with our environment, with language, and with each other. I've realized that I now see everything through the lens of technology, and while this has brought faraway places much closer, it has also made my immediate surroundings more distant.

Sunday Drive

2010-09-21T12:11:00.003-04:00

Another layering of road photos, this time with an autumnal theme. And the pumpkin in the lower left corner is really me in the side view mirror.

The Road Home

2010-09-20T11:14:00.002-04:00

A photo taken in the car by Rob, as we were driving back from Ithaca last night at twilight. Then, duplicated, overlaid, colorized. And voilà, instant abstract art!

The Sum Total

2010-09-16T17:44:00.002-04:00

Rutabaga!

2010-09-13T11:46:00.005-04:00

A recent trip to a conference in Karlsruhe, Germany provided me with fodder for some more digital compositions, in which I pay homage to our constant companion during the winter months.

Garden Mobile Montage

2010-08-20T01:03:00.001-04:00

Art Behind the Scientist at the TCPL

2010-08-13T18:21:00.004-04:00

I am very excited to be at the Tompkins County Public Library until the end of September. My mobiles will be up and down the central walkway, known as the Avenue of the Friends, both hanging overhead and enclosed in the glass cases. It's a dramatic space full of natural light, and I am simply floored by the opportunity to display there.

In conjunction with this Art Behind the Scientist exhibit, I will be holding a workshop on mobile making in the Borg-Warner room at the library on August 25 at 6 PM. I have no idea what I'm doing, so tips or pointers from anyone would be most appreciated....

Sky Meets Mountain

2010-08-11T23:53:00.002-04:00

The Ithaca Artists' Market two weeks ago was a big success, and as a result, one of my mobiles is now on public display in the lobby of the Tompkins County Human Services Building on State St. in Ithaca. Here are a couple photos of it in its new home.

Thanks, Patricia!

Upcoming Events

2010-07-21T11:07:00.007-04:00

Radio silence prevails. I have been far too busy preparing new work for an upcoming slew of activities. Hope you can join me for some of them!

July 30, 2-8 PM: Ithaca Artists' Market, Steamboat Landing. Last year's market was fabulous -- the biggest crowd I have ever seen at this location. Look for me in the same booth as last time, next to the main office. In addition to showing mobiles, I will also be unveiling new giclees on canvas and paper of the digital images I've been making.

August 7: Plantsmen Nursery, Art on the Grounds. This outdoor art show runs through the end of the summer, and it was a wonderful display last year. This year there will be even more mobiles....

August 13 - September ?: Art Behind the Scientist at the Tompkins County Public Library. I will have a few large mobiles hanging from the skylights along the main walkway, plus smaller ones in the glass cases. Also, I will give a public lecture/demonstration/workshop on August 25 at 6 PM.

Since the beginning of July, my mobiles have been available at the Sciencenter gift shop. Check 'em out!

Finally, I plan to be in the new ithacamade store going in next to Mama Goose and Mimi's Attic on State St., opening in August.

Whew!

Big Mobile in Motion

2010-07-09T14:57:00.003-04:00

A follow-up post to this one, now with video!

Big One Finished!

2010-07-07T23:58:00.002-04:00

The large commission I've been working on is finally done! And it's BIG -- almost 8 feet wide and over 4 feet tall (93" x 51"). Here are some pictures taken in the living room. A video will be uploaded later....

What I like about working in such a large format is the visceral, somatic impact of the piece. I also found that when the number of flat pieces exceeds ten or so, they begin to lose their individuality, blending into each other impressionistically. It's like a cloud of birds, connected by a silver network of wires.

Wildflower Mandala

2010-07-01T16:48:00.002-04:00

Our meadow is full of wildflowers these days -- daisies, black-eyed susans, clover, chicory, thistle, and a whole bunch of others I can't identify. Here is a digital weaving of lots of different images that hopefully gives you a sense of the panoply of color in our backyard.

Screens and Storms

2010-06-30T10:45:00.003-04:00

An experiment with the macro setting on my point-and-shoot camera. Here, I'm looking out from the main house to the seasonal cottage and shooting each scene twice -- once with regular focus so the objects in the distance are sharp, and once with the macro setting on so the focus is on the window screen in the foreground.

There was a storm brewing at the time, but the sun was still out, and that creppy ambiguity is reflected in the warped sense of perspective just popped out when I overlaid the images on top of each other.

And, in case you're wondering, the moon was added by hand after the fact.

Pixelated Peonies

2010-06-06T16:08:00.004-04:00

An experiment in overlaying different versions of the same photo with varying levels of pixelation. The original is to the right, showing our new house behind a burgeoning cluster of peonies.

Bilco Doors

2010-06-06T15:54:00.004-04:00

Going in and out of our basement last evening, I came across this interesting view out of the Bilco doors. The sky was a deep blue, and the grass in the opening reflected the kitchen window light just above. Here are two versions, both with massive color enhancement. The second one is a composite of two images.

Big One 3

2010-05-26T11:13:00.008-04:00

All the flat metal pieces on my big mobile are now painted, and the full array is shown at left. In the background, you can also see Seamus lounging in the yard.

And below is another digital composition using photos of mobile parts. I wanted this one to suggest both a weaving and a 35mm film slide.

Workspace 2

2010-05-22T11:40:00.001-04:00

Another workspace composite photo as I continue to paint the flat pieces on my big mobile.

Big One 2

2010-05-19T00:43:00.002-04:00

Another update on the large commission I'm working on. I started painting the larger metal pieces. The white parts have only been primed and will be covered by a second color eventually. But the primary colors that I happened to start with and the arrangement against the window reminds me of Mondrian crossed with Ellsworth Kelly.

Go West

2010-05-17T15:35:00.008-04:00

Rob and I are moving out to the country. Enfield, to be exact. Twelve miles west of Ithaca. For a city dweller like myself, it's going to be a big change (for example, the new house currently has no internet). But we love the house we found, and it sits on one of the highest points in the county, so the scenery is terrific. The photo to the left shows the view across our land at twilight yesterday.

Below is a composite that tries to convey both my anxiety over the shift in lifestyle as well as a sense of possibilities opening up.

Workspace

2010-05-14T22:47:00.003-04:00

I am working on my large mobile commission, and I had stacked some of the primed metal pieces against a window in my studio to dry. The arrangement looked quite sculptural, so I decided to document it. Below is composite of five of the photos I took.

Blown About

2010-05-10T18:54:00.003-04:00

High winds over the past few days have shaken loose lots of green maple seeds. These translucent spinners make good scanning subjects. Here, they're accented with yellow broom flowers, and the streaks were made by waving my hands over the scanning rod. Finally, I digitally enhanced the images with kinetic scribbles.

Traipsing Through the Dogwoods

2010-05-09T12:57:00.003-04:00

A grid of dogwood blossoms superimposed with a triangle of maple leaves, with grid points highlighted by paths.

Use this map for your Mothers' Day peregrinations.

Maps for Wandering

2010-05-06T21:43:00.005-04:00

Colored pencil and graphite.

Felt-tip pen.

Frugal Typography

2010-05-05T21:46:00.003-04:00

Ever wonder which font uses the least amount of ink? This Consumerist post should appeal to all of you penny-pinching font geeks.

Waving

2010-05-04T23:30:00.004-04:00

Dogwoods and Redbuds

2010-05-04T02:07:00.007-04:00

Another time lapse scan, but instead of dragging the dogwood flowers along the scanner glass, I lifted them and repositioned them several times during the scan. The effect resembles a flickering TV set. In the top half, the redbud branches remained stationary while the dogwood moved.

Even without any fancy effects, I think the dogwood blossoms scan beautifully.

More Garden Scans

2010-05-03T01:25:00.007-04:00

An early Mother's Day bouquet made of broom flowers and Hesperis matronalis, which is apparently an invasive weed also known as Dame's Rocket [insert bawdy remark].

This composition is made of two scans spliced together, which is then flipped along the horizontal and woven together with the original. For reference, the original two scans are shown below. For the bottom half, I used the dragging technique [insert bawdy remark] described here.

Big One 1

2010-05-02T14:33:00.006-04:00

Recent progress on my large mobile commission. The metal pieces are all cut out. Next, they have to be sanded, primed, and painted, then attached to wires. Right now, the mobile is just over 8 feet wide.

Going from the sketch to reality, I enlarged many of the pieces to fill more of the negative space. I also replaced one of the trapezoids with the funky little piece shown at right. It's actually a scrap left over from cutting out the other trapezoids, but I thought it was interesting enough to use. You can also see it in the image I posted here.

Abstract Lilacs

2010-05-02T00:21:00.004-04:00

Scanned lilac blossoms and leaves, embellished with trapezoid shapes.

And here's the same thing without the scans, which I like just as much:

Maypole (or not)

2010-05-01T17:42:00.004-04:00

A colorful pencil and marker doodle for May Day. Abstract artists of the world, unite!

Psychedelic

2010-04-30T21:46:00.004-04:00

Here's what happens when you drag objects along the glass, following the path of the scanning rod.

Uplift

2010-04-29T01:14:00.004-04:00

Curled Post-It strips on flatbed scanner.

Two-Way Lamium

2010-04-28T02:29:00.003-04:00

Homage to Miró

2010-04-28T00:42:00.003-04:00

The Plants are Watching

2010-04-27T03:26:00.015-04:00

Continuing with my scanner experiments, here is a digital quilt I stitched together from garden bits and body parts. It's like a walk in the park, as remembered in the mind's eye. Perhaps this one is a little too weird. The foot seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I'm not so sure.

Ever since I was young, my eye has been prone to seeing faces and figures hidden in various patterns -- wood grain, tree branches, buildings, even Chinese characters. No potato chips so far, though. But maybe this is where these recent images are coming from. By using pictures of myself, I think there's also an aspect of self-assertion or taking ownership that I haven't explored before.

Pressing Matters

2010-04-25T23:49:00.015-04:00

It turns out you can scan almost anything. Even water drops on the surface of the glass window. And even my hand held just above the glass. I think the image to the right is like a disembodied self portrait.

For the next image, I overlaid a water/hand scan with an arrangement of flowers and leaves from my garden. The Victorian naturalist in me would have been satisfied with just the floral grid, but the artist in me had to add a personal touch. The thin horizontal stripes come from the scanner glass, but I like how they screen the viewer from the objects being looked at.

My last image uses magnolia petals arranged into a fan shape. To get the luminous glow and dark background, I turned out all the lights in the room and left the scanner cover open. The velvety, tactile quality of the petals really comes across in the scan, and it almost looks like an Old Master oil painting. I even like the smudge in the lower right.

Adding the hand and water drops makes for an admittedly strange composition with echoes of the Surrealists' obsession with deconstructing and (artistically) mutilating the body. Maybe this is my sublimated self-destructiveness bubbling to the surface....

A Crushing Beauty

2010-04-25T01:48:00.006-04:00

Pressing and scanning leaves and flowers is a great way to capture sharp detail with a diffuse light source. For these images below, I also used a crumpled tissue (clean) for a background. Then, lots of photo manipulation with Gimp.

The first image uses a clump of clematis leaves. And I only added the grey circle afterward with Gimp.

In the triptych, there is a branch from a Fine Line buckthorn, plus a few crabapple blossoms and the same clematis leaves as above. With the scanner, it's easy to create quick studies in composition. The middle and right panels are relatively undoctored, but the left panel is a composite of the other two with color adjustment.

Big One

2010-04-24T11:39:00.004-04:00

I was commissioned to make a giant mobile for a wonderful couple with exquisite taste (obviously). They live in a converted barn with soaring views inside and out. This mobile is intended for their central living space, which is three stories high. [Yes, installing the mobile will be a challenge.]

I was dissatisfied with my first sketch, so I reworked it last night into what you see below. It will end up being 7-8 feet wide, and the colors are inspired by Miro.

Life is a Box of Pastels

2010-04-23T01:42:00.004-04:00

Today, I came across an image from a few months ago that I never posted. It's a commissioned piece made from cut pieces of paper that are colored with oil pastels and sandwiched between two panes of glass (using a store-bought float frame).

That piece inspired today's quickie doodle, where I simply scribbled some lines with oil pastels and then brushed the paper with turpentine to blur the edges and to smooth out the colors. The result looks vaguely like a Morris Louis painting to me.

A Shocking Mix of Media

2010-04-22T19:50:00.004-04:00

Here's a mobile experiment I tried last weekend, as warmup for a large commission I need to get cracking on. This one is more of a hanging sculpture than a true mobile. It combines flat metal pieces with stones, and I bent one of the wires to mirror the letter-like shape next to it. 25" H x 21" W.

Cosmic Checkers

2010-04-22T02:00:00.002-04:00

Colored pencil on paper.

2010-04-21T11:33:00.005-04:00

More line drawings. Or maps.

Daily Art

2010-04-20T22:37:00.006-04:00

I've decided that I need to start making art every day. Large or small, good or bad. Even the simplest doodle will suffice.

I haven't had much time for art recently, but that's really no excuse. I should be constantly practicing and working on new ideas. And, let's face it, not every experiment will turn out successfully. But the point is to try it anyway because no effort is truly wasted.

So, here are three line drawings I made last night. Unlike most of my work so far, these were not planned in advance; they are spontaneous, stream of consciousness drawings. I laid down each line slowly and deliberately, with as few revisions as possible, concentrating on the physicality of pencil on paper, living solely in the moment.

You'll Be Glad You Did

2010-04-10T19:00:00.003-04:00

A public service announcement from the Root Vegetable Growers' Association of America.

Poetry Lite

2010-03-16T15:36:00.002-04:00

This text just sort of popped into my head. Could be a chewing gum slogan, I think.

Long and Purple

2010-03-16T15:32:00.003-04:00

Word painting of a sort. It's not meant to be easily read....