Commission: Jason M. Vawter

I recently got a commission for an illustrated portrait. Here's the original photo:


& here is my interpretation:

[click to embiggen]

How did I do?

P&H Art Bazaar takes Bizarre Turn via Gadsby Creson

This past Saturday, December 12th, marked the date of the annual P&H Art Bazaar, an arts flea market for fine Memphis art patrons and daytime drunks to shop for holiday gifts. Although the turnout was considerably less than previous years, the loyal attendees were treated to a badass interactive performance piece hosted by Gadsby Creson, wife of P&H arts advocate Dwayne Butcher, and one of my personal favorite MCA staff members.

Gathering all of the unsuspecting guests around a pool table covered in brightly spraypainted beer bottles, vases, and handmade ceramic knick knacks (which appear may have been boosted from a elementary school art class), Creson led everyone in several too many rounds of Jingle Bells, all the while "checking on the turkey" in the oven, ensuring the guests of her "holiday party" all had drinks, and answering phone call after annoying phone call from the dreaded mother with no navigational skills.
After ten minutes of agonizing group singing and ten or eleven answered phone calls Creson, got flustered, grabbed an armful of vases and ran outside, leaving the four rounds of carolers trailing off in confusion. As we slowly herded outside, we found Gadsby chucking the glassware and a fireplace mantle made from cinderblocks, complete with tacky stockings, screaming in frustration about her mother's surprise holiday visits.

The moral of the story? No moral. But the point, Creson explained, was a response to the overwhelming stress and wastefulness of the holiday season. The breakables were hocked off for 25 cents a piece, and participants chucked them off the back porch of the P&H Cafe at the concrete fireplace in an attempt to relieve that stress.

No one could resist. Even in freezing temperatures and misting rain, it was two hours of consistent bottle smashing before the ammo was exhausted.

Hats off to Gadsby for thinking of such a fun way to blow off steam, and for keeping the P&H's take on art unconventional, interesting, and best of all, destructive.

And thanks to Dwayne Butcher for hosting another successful year of happenings at the P&H Centre for the Arts.

...and I apologize again for hitting your truck with bouncing ceramics...

Another Vector

Did another vector today... of Miguelito X.

Vectoring my brains out...

I'm still in post-op recovery, which means I'm still at my dad's house unable to drive and out of school, which means I'm spending a lot of time bored on my couch. So I made this vector of myself today:

& some different color ideas:

EDGEFEST: Art Sale this Saturday

Join us this Saturday, October 3rd from 10AM-6PM for EDGEFEST!

Memphis artists from Five In One & Rozelle Artists Guild, as well as local artists Markece Brown, Alex Harrison, Derrick Dent, & others will be selling art in the parking lot at the Edge Coffeehouse.

Guest musical appearance by the Warble!

Project Sketchbook Catalogues are here!

And they look so good.





64 full color pages, 7.5x7.5 inches, softcover, saddle-stitched. They are $30 each or $25 if you're an artist in the book. E-mail rag@rozelleartistsguild.org to order a book, or swing by the gallery at 511 S. Main to check out the show & buy a book from the gallery rep.

Features a page each from sketchbooks by:

Jennifer Absher, Ryan L. Arthur (KS), Daniel Berish, Markece Brown, Baxter Buck, Fred Burton, Dwayne Butcher, Dail Chambers (MO), Kayla Cline (VA), Shea Colburn, Maritza Davila, Derrick Dent, Hamlett Dobbins, Will Drummond, Eric Easterday, Sara Estes, Adam Farmer, Jon Fayette, Rachel Fitzpatrick (NY), Richard Fudge, Adam Geary, Caitlin Goodman (IA), Greg Haller, Tiffany Harmon, Jon Hart, Bryan Hobein, Natalie Hoffmann, Kiefer Holtermann, Lauren Rae Holtermann, Ian Hudson, Ashley Leem, Stephanie Less, Ashley Luyendyk, Tommy Kha, Michael Kline, Lisa Maners, Taylor Martin, Shane McDermott, Pamela McFarland, Evelyn McMillan, Stephanie Miller, Carl E. Moore, Willie Nelson, Ashley Odum, Maria Parham, Bob Pearce, Chandler Pritchett, Christopher Rex, Michael Roy, RS70 (CA), Jenni Saiani (NC), Booth Sartain, Ryan Steed, Vincent Tabor, Claire Torina, Billy Welch (MO), Cole Weintraub, Susan Younger, and Eric Zeltner.

Rob Blackledge

I'm doing an internship with Tom Martin [tommartindesign.com] for the summer. Recently, I've been working on the CD art for a Nashville musician, Rob Blackledge.

Expanded Portraits

This is a series of 8 portraits I did for my final in Digital Imaging I. The objective was to use whichever method we preferred from the project before [this series of self-portraits I did], either a digital to physical, or physical to digital combination. I chose digital to physical, so I took the photos first, then printed them out & drew in their hair on sheet of vellum, then scanned them in. The color in the hair and desaturation of the faces was a last minute alteration, but I really like the way they turned out.

CLICK TO EMBIGGEN!



Feedback always appreciated.

About Me

So I bought a pack of moleskins the other day firstly because it was the first day my debit card has been reactivated with real monies on it and I was standing in Art Center giddy to spend some of it, but specifically to draw daily comics in. Here's one:



[CLICK TO EMBIGGEN]

I've done a couple others but I hate them so I'm not showing you. :P

Photography + Illustration: Self-Portraits

[CLICK TO EMBIGGEN]

I fucking hate doctors office waiting rooms.

Last time I went to the doctor:



Today's visit:



[CLICK TO EMBIGGEN]

I was exponentially more sick today. I can't even remember the last time I felt that shitty. I had to drive all the way to Germantown, was thirty minutes early for my appointment, waited an hour, finally asked the nurse when I was going to see a doctor (via pen & paper, my voice was totally gone), waited another thirty minutes, got my temperature and weight taken, sent back to the waiting room, waited another twenty minutes, finally saw the doctor where I ended up crying because it had been 36 hours since I had eaten, slept, or had a smoke, then got two shots in my ass, & drove promptly to Sonic.

I HAVE FINALLY ACQUIRED INDESIGN.
...which means that I can finally open & edit my trading cards. And I just spent a good two hours converting these to web-friendly jpegs (not to mention the 30 minutes spent searching for a free Bauhaus font download. I don't remember it being so difficult the first few times I downloaded it at school...)
ANYWAY. Here's a sneak preview:

and the rest of them can be viewed here:
laurenrae.carbonmade.com
(Which is my spiffy new gallery birthday present. Thanks Dad!)

That is all.

I'm in a show

The Andy Warhol exhibit just opened at the Brooks, From A to B and Back Again. I'm not really much of a fan of Warhol... Seems like he was just weird to be weird. And the art, well, it's tough to describe my qualm, being an artist that specializes in a design art oftentimes made to be duplicated, but, I guess the idea that you are never looking at a Warhol original bugs me too much to enjoy it. I like to look at art and think about how long it took to make, and I have no guage for his art. I mean, how long does it take to copy a photo? Is copying an image repeatedly art? If it makes a point once, can it make a new point by being repeated, or slightly altered, or the colors experimented with? Maybe it can.


myself, photoshop

It's been a while since I posted anything I've been up to artistically. Here are two metal pieces I've been working on in the past couple semesters.

I made these in Intermediate Metals 2 but they "let go" of Richard Prillaman, master silversmith, a week before classes began, so Bill Price, the replacement, barely had time to get moved let alone line out a lesson plan. So our first project (to research the history of tea and create a tea infuser based on that research) ended up being our only required project for the semester. I completed most of one other project, a sundial that my grandfather has been hounding me over since he saw the first one I made in Introduction to Metalsmithing my second semester. Twasn't Bill's fault our semester was so misguided. We ended up missing nearly a third of our classes due to holidays, advisory days, and a few sick days on his behalf. Regardless, Price has done more in renovating that metals studio in his short career at MCA than I have seen any department leader do. New cabinets, torches, and countertops.

Anyway. This is my tea infuser. The cap of the acorn is copper, the base is nickel, the branch is silver, and it's held together by small magnets.








Here is my sundial. It's 22g copper sheet, formed to hell, with lost wax cast bronze head, tail and feet, and an unintentional mix of silver and lead solder.



I made the sundial as a going-away present for my grandparents, who are moving to Florida tomorrow for their retirement. They both loved it, and I was pretty fucking proud I finally finished it.

Self Portrait in Tree of Life

Salvaged wooden chandelier, sculpey, silver wire, plaster, epoxy, acrylic. April 2008


Thar she blows.
5:30AM Friday morning, the day it was due.

This was my response piece to the week I spent in Mexico City during Spring Break. I made the sculpture for the post-international travel exhibition, participation a requirement to gain studio credit for the trip. It's a self portrait in a modernized version of the traditional trees of life made in certain areas of Mexico (the tradition really only perpetuates through four remaining families). They were originally used as elaborate candelabras given to newlywed couples on the wedding day, but have since claimed their own stake in the folk art world, and transformed eventually into Dies de las Muertas shrines, commemorating lost loved ones.

Mine holds a self portrait in the center, done in the folk art style, complete with signature side pony tail and nose ring (a bit of bent wire through the nostril orifices). I hold a bouquet of flowers to honor the dead. The tree itself is an evolution of an abstract flowing curved forms that I've been working with for the past several years, painted stark white and decorated with tear drops that flow down to the trunk, where they pool under me. These represent actual tears, and they are watering the tree (and me) to illustrate the point in my life I was at when I made the trip to Mexico. It was a difficult, introspective period in which recognizing problems, crying my eyeballs out, and moving on & growing were paramount. There are seven dangling tear drops as well, for things I have not totally gotten over, and perhaps will not, for the best. These are the fruits of the tree. The two sets of wrestling masks are a take on the universal theatrical symbol of happy/sad masks, representing the balance of melancholy and joy in my life, set on either side of me.

The four skeletons represent four of the deaths that have affected me the most: My great-grandmother, who I witnessed deteriorate in mind for years from Alzheimers, a disease that runs rampant in my family among women, and thus a very real reality for my future; My fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Williamson, who personally addressed administration to have me considered for honors programs and enriched art classes as young kid paving the way to achieve a lot more academically in high school, who had a diabetic seizure while driving and hit a tree, severing his spine; Laura Marie Ragonese-Snik, the aunt that I never got to meet, who was on the 101st floor of the second WTC building hit on September 11th, 2001, and whose death ravaged my family for years; My first theatre teacher, Mr. Collins, who died only last month from a stroke.

Unfortunately, when this sculpture went on display, the shelf on which it was placed was not properly secured to wall, and when my father made a special trip to midtown to see it, and rested a finger on the shelf, it fell and smashed into 20 or so pieces. Miraculously, the heavy plaster base made it in tact, and almost all of the armature as well. An hour of epoxy had it looking like nothing had ever happened, as most of the breaks had occurred at the joints. Unfortunately again, before I could reattach the self-portrait sculpture to the base, Shea jostled the shelf in the studio on which it was resting, and it was smashed irreparably. So, I am in the process of completely resculpting, baking, gluing, and painting it currently. The professor who wrongly hung the shelf is graciously paying me for the repairs as well, so all is okay. I planned to add to it anyway, and now I have a good reason to do so.

Among the additions, I plan to include a small, skeletal cat at my feet, to represent Bill, my childhood cat of 19 years who also deteriorated slowly over the past few years. Mute, blind in one eye, arthiritic and crippled from multiple strokes, and nearly deaf, he was eventually put down this past year.

This is probably the most persona lintrospective piece I have ever made, and definitely the one piece I have put so much time, effort, and love into. Nothing was half-assed. I barely slept for a week straight to make this exactly as I wanted it. I have never been so upset as when I saw it smash, but in a way, it's cruelly fitting for it to have broken. To make a piece about rebirth trough death; growth through destruction.. it makes sense for it to be destroyed for me to rebuild, all over again. And for it to be destroyed by the two men in my life that mean the most to be is... inexplicable, really. I'm not sure if it means anything, and if it does, I can only see negative warning in it.

Regardless.