What's up wit' da art, the gallery, & MSU art events

This is me about a month ago in Florence from the Duomo - you can climb to the top (450+ steps) and see a perfect 360 of the city. Florence and Vienna were my favorite parts of the trip. Seeing the Pantheon in Rome was no small shakes either! I will be sporadically throwing up the Europe photos up on the blog now and again.


The state of the studio, early September 2007:


The large piece of the crow series is moving along - this one is called "Seven For A Secret Never Told" - the crow applique is one big ring of fabric - cutting it out was a real challenge but it is almost entirely sewn down at this point, and soon I'm going to start the quilting/beading. I think the piece will be in a gothic arch shape, but I had to bind the piece off pre-cutting because the duponi was just shedding like crazy. My goal is to have this piece finished by early November so it can be in the faculty show here @ MSU.


The first show of the semester, "A Natural Order", opened and is up through September. We have two visiting artists coming in, Michael McFall from Georgia and Thomas Rice from Michigan. I'm excited that we have two coming with this show - I wish we could have all the artists come in. For more about the exhibition, visit: http://www.moreheadstate.edu/art/index.aspx?id=6039


Still working along on the Judy Baca logistics - we're (hopefully) bringing her in April 2008 to do a mural workshop and public lecture. Judy is the famous public art muralist who conceived and coordinated gang members in the 1970s in CA to create the Great Wall of Los Angeles. (visit: http://www.sparcmurals.org/). She is known as, I believe, THE political public artist working in America. This event is on par with the Faith Ringgold event I managed February 2006. I love, love, LOVE the fact I can coordinate this sort of thing, especially since we're in Eastern Kentucky and this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for our students. And, people are being so generous in cost sharing with these projects, so what seems like a big budget event for one department to handle, ends up being relatively small when we partner. Sharing is fun!

There are two larger juried exhibitions happening this year - one is called "Self-Evident: Contemporary American Self-Portraiture" which is a national open call to artists who do work that translates that theme, and then it's the third incarnation of the "Bluegrass Biennial" that is currently the only Kentucky specific juried exhibition open to practicing artists in the commonwealth. Tim Glotzbach, now Director of Student Crafts at Berea College and formerly the Dean/Director of the Kentucky School of Craft down in Hindman KY, has generously agreed to be our juror. Tim is such a fabulous guy - just love him - and he is the person I feel that is responsible for me doing the workshopping stuff since he invited me back in 2003 to do a weekend workshop down at the KSoC and I discovered how much I adored spending an intensive period of time with student artists, all of us working in a collaborative fashion. And, as icing, I got to meet the lovely Ms. Libby Barnes of Nicholasville KY, who runs the Alternative Jewelry Shop - they make absolutely beautiful one of a kind cast pieces.

Off to watch the movie Magnolia and continue the sewing!