Category: web
I’m Nominated for an Okie Blog Award!
Carl Sandburg: Crimson, prismacolor in altered book, 2009 by Sarah Atlee. Click image to view source.
It’s a cliche, but I’m honored just to be nominated. Some of my favoite blogs are also up for awards, like Debby Kaspari’s Drawing the Motmot and OVAC’s excellent blog. Vote by February 14!
romy from 24 Works Featured on OVAC Blog
Detail from romy, ink on paper, 2009. Click image to view full-size.
The OVAC blog is featuring an ongoing interiew series with the artist from the current 24 Works on Paper show. Click here to read my thoughts on the process of creating romy.
24 Works on Paper is on display at Northern Oklahoma College in Tonkawa through October 14. The show will travel to venues around Oklahoma through August 2010. Click here for a full exhibition schedule.
Some Thoughts on Blogging: NaBloPoMo
Woman working on an airplane motor at North American Aviation, Inc., plant in California. From the Library of Congress collection in the Flickr Commons. Click image to view source.
The curious abbreviation NaBloPoMo refers to National Blog Posting Month, which began a couple of years ago as a call for bloggers to post something every day for a month. (It’s a spinoff of National Novel Writing Month.) Thanks to the efforts of people like Eden, NaBloPoMo is now celebrated every month of the year. There is a theme suggestion for each month, but blogging on the theme is always optional. It lives on as an exercise in developing the habit of regular blog posting.
I jumped on board NaBloPoMo for the month of July. It was a good time for me, as I had finished up work for my current solo show (Back to Normal at the Gaylord-Pickens Museum, through September 19). I always have more ideas than I have time to write about (or paint about), so I had a stack of blog topics saved up. I diligently released one post a day for three weeks. Then I stopped.
During those three weeks, I noticed my blogging behavior adapt like a small fish put into a bigger pond. The more blogging I did, the more topics I found worthy of blogging about. I could do it all day, every day. It was a rewarding experience, though limiting in other ways (my time, a valuable resource, was depleted).
Around the fourth week of July, daily blogging lost its importance for me. I had three shows open, my car had been totaled, etc etc; my blog slipped down my list of priorities. My readership had increased during daily posting (mostly via Facebook), but not dramatically. So I let myself off the hook.
I’ll continue blogging, of course, but I don’t plan to hold myself to a stringent timetable. Quality, not quantity. It’s time for me to focus on being a painter, especially now that I have a new studio. Stay tuned.
Thank you, folks out in internetland, for reading this.
Found on Flickr: Okinawa Soba and Old Japan
Geisha From Another World, vintage photograph posted by Flickr user Okinawa Soba. Click image to view source.
Flickr user Okinawa Soba has shared with us a vast archive of antique photographs, mostly of old Japan. If you have a couple of free hours, explore sets such as Geisha and Maiko, Religion in Old Japan, or Foot Binding in Old China.* (Caution — some of these photographs contain nudity or are otherwise NSFW. Flickr will give you the option of viewing these, or not.) These photos are licensed under Creative Commons.
An Early Meiji-era Geisha Hair Style, vintage photograph posted by Flickr user Okinawa Soba. Click image to view source.
Okinawa Soba himself is quite a character, as you’ll see from his humorous (though very informative) photo captions. (Many commenters provide additional information about the subjects photographed.) Read his full profile here.
Interestingly, there is a photo of Evelyn Nesbit (the “original supermodel” and inspiration for the Gibson Girl) posing as a geisha among this collection. OS thoughtfully provides a link to other Flickr images of Ms. Nesbit. We can see why she was such a big hit.
* If you’re interested in the history of footbinding in China, I recommend Splendid Slippers: A Thousand Years of an Erotic Tradition
See what else I’ve Found on Flickr.
This post is part of NaBloPoMo for July 2009.
Found on Flickr: In Extasis by Tim Lowly
In Extasis, acrylic on panel, 2002 by Tim Lowly. Click image to view source.
Once again, I celebrate Flickr as a showcase for emerging and established artists alike, in all visual media. This wonderful painting by Tim Lowly (his website is here) is accompanied by a description written by Karen Halvorsen-Screck in 2002. You can read the full essay here, but this is my favorite part:
In Ekstasis, for instance, seems to reveal one of Temma’s fleeting expressions of happiness, or what appears to be happiness. I know that she is cortically blind, yet here I see her seeing something above and beyond me and my ken. In fact, she appears to be gazing at radiance, or releasing a radiance within. It is impossible to know for sure, and much of my response to In Ekstasis depends on my emotional perspective in the moment of looking.
I got the same feeling looking at this image, the feeling that I was seeing someone seeing something that I don’t see. It reminds me of that fundamental paradox of portraiture, that the inanimate image of the subject is a reflection of my own act of seeing.
Tim Lowly is represented by Koplin Del Rio Gallery in Culver City, California.
See what else I’ve Found on Flickr.
This post is part of NaBloPoMo for July 2009.
Worldwide Sketch Crawl Day 2009.07.11
090711 Sketchcrawl 08 by Flickr user Borromini Bear. Click image to view source.
Via the SILA blog.
Today is the 23rd International Sketch Crawl Day! Go ye and make drawings in ye Books of Sketch. Browse the SketchCrawl Flickr pool here.
Hey, Okies: who wants to converge for the next Sketch Crawl, in more or less October? (The official date has not yet been released.) All we have to do is draw. Let’s talk about it.
This post is part of NaBloPoMo for July 2009.
Carrie Ann Baade Interview at Hi Fructose
Wedding Portrait of Madam Himmelblau, oil on panel, 2005 by Carrie Ann Baade. Click image to view source. This painting is from the Secret Lives of Portraits series.
via Right Some Good.
The Hi Fructose blog is featuring an exclusing interview with contemporary pop baroque painter Carrie Ann Baade. Reading Baade’s description of her working process, I found that she uses collage as a sketching method, just like I do! Quote:
The spark of the muse that could be called intuition is present when I make the collage for my work. I begin this process by covering the first floor of my house in photos and ripped out pages from books. After the floor is covered I walk around looking for images that fell on top of each other in an interesting manner…this is similar to reading tealeaves. Often I will have a question in mind while diving into the piles of picture images, such as, “What can I say about the horrors of dating in Tallahassee.” This process reminds me of reading tarot cards and getting an answer through the cards that can sometimes be uncannily accurate. Looking for the divine spark to speak to me through these images, I collect and adhere together with cellophane tape to paint later. I know something is really working if I involuntarily laugh aloud at the juxtaposition.
I feel the same intuitive connectivity when I’m making collage sketches. Sometimes the best compositions happen by accident, because I left two scraps in the same pile. I look over and realize, with a little rush of adrenaline, “Of course those go together!”
Ostrich, collage sketch, 2007 by Sarah Atlee. Click image to view source.
I like how Baade allows the collage aesthetic to show through in her finished paintings, without her images appearing slapped-together. She does an excellent job of creating integrated compostitions from a variety of sources. The world is a vast grab-bag of information, and our job as artists is to interpret, reinterpret, and dis-cover meaning through our medium. Although Baade has been told that “paint was an inadequate media to display the complexity of [her] ideas,” her intricate creations overflow with narrative and emotion. You can explore more of Carrie Ann Baade’s work here.
As I was reading this interview on the Hi Fructose blog, I felt an eerie similarity between Baade’s collage process and my own. This feeling was redoubled when I saw the previous blog post about the release of Isabel Samaras’ new monograph by Chronicle books. The gent on the cover bears an uncanny resemblance to this guy here. The similarity is a coincidence.
This post is part of NaBloPoMo for July 2009.
Profile on the Society of Illustrators LA Blog
Margaret V, acrylic and graphite on masonite, 2005 by Sarah Atlee
The Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles blog has posted a profile of me and my work. Click here to read it.
Thank you, SILA, for providing your members with an online gallery, and helping the public get to know us a little better.