Getting Friendly

I was asked to use my skills to help with the Friendly House Charity Fundraising auction, by my good friend, fellow artist, and comity head Ellen Goldschmidt. How could I turn down an oppurtuinty to be a part of the glorious  "Ambiance Comity?"

Creating the 1930's themed deco decor, turned out to be an enormous task, literally, the piece I over saw was HUGE! Luckily, I had a lot of friendly help!

All of this effort, was a wonderful excuse for adults to make art with abandon. Myself included. Knowing these pieces were temporary and for a fun party, led me experiment, to let go, and to focus on what I love about making. In the end it brought people together in new ways which is at the core of the Friendly House.

Pieces of New NEW York YORK......Museum

The Museums of New York are huge institutions of art, serious, grand, and mind blowing!

I visited as many as I could and soaked in as much as I could, this is what I absorbed. 

 

GUGGENHEIM

Guggenheim

At the time of my vist The Guggenheim was featuring "ZERO a countdown to tomorrow 1950- 1960."  Zero is an art collective of German artist born in a zeitgeist of positivity and exploration in post war Germany.  

Zero (1957–66) founded by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene and joined in 1961 by Günther Uecker, and ZERO, a larger international network of likeminded artists, including Lucio Fontana, Yayoi Kusama, Yves Klein, and Piero Manzoni.  Work by more than 40 artists from 10 countries who were united by an aspiration to transform and redefine art following World War II.

These works were stunningly cohesive with the unique architecture of the fabulously spiraling Guggenheim. The show was laid out not only chronologically but by artistic expression. Starting with minimalist color fields Yves Klien "Blue" the tastiest among them (this "blue" is one of the great loves of my life), kinetic paintings on timers kept me enthralled and added to the whimsical spontaneity that these artist where trying to capture, the artist then stated deconstcutying the canvas but punchering ripping and burning the surface. All of these exploratory gestures evolved from 2-d into 3-d  kinetic light instillations, some of which were intragted with film and performance, all timed to push these installations into the realm of grand happenings! 

Refelection of Art Shows for Caffe Mingo

From the first to the last,

all of this work was a made for the very inspiring space and community of Caffe Mingo in North West Portland.

This is a community I have been proud to apart of for the last seven years, that time is drawing to a close and in time of transition it is important to reflect on successes!

(each of these show as not only wonderful to make, but allowed me to connect with a specific and important art audience)

special thank you to Micheal Cornan for supporting my artistic side, and to all the patrons that bought these pieces off the wall.

LUSH

Dear Portland,

The over growth of summer is all around. Enjoy the bounty.

Sincerely,

The Sun

The Web World of Ellen Goldschmidt

I had the great pleasure of working with my fellow artist and dear friend  Ellen Goldschmidt on her new web site. I was a wonderful collaboration, an intimate way to get know her work, and learn from each other.

Plus it looks pretty sharp!! check it out!!

This could be the beginning of a whole new realm of aiding the artist of Portland.

A NOTE FROM ELLENDear Artist Friends,I'm excited to announce the launch of my new website,  ellengoldschmidt.comPlease take a look.  I built it from a template on Squarespace with the guidance, tutelage and genius teaching of my friend, ar…

A NOTE FROM ELLEN

Dear Artist Friends,

I'm excited to announce the launch of my new website,  ellengoldschmidt.com
Please take a look.  I built it from a template on Squarespace with the guidance, tutelage and genius teaching of my friend, artist Arielle Adkin.
As some of you know, I am NOT a techno wizard.  And yet, with Arielle's help, I was able to build a well designed, highly functional website that far exceeded my expectations.    I'm delighted with the outcome.

The best part is I learned what I need to know to manage the site from here on out by myself.  I did not pay an arm and a leg up front for a design and am not dependent on a designer to update the site.  Arielle has a great eye, is fun to work with and enjoys working with artists.  I highly recommend her services (arielleadkin@gmail.com).

Thanks for taking a look at my site.

Best,
Ellen

The Master of Animals and Fireworks

This is one my all time favorite artist.

Using Nature as theme he create a palatable beautiful amount of tension in this work. Creation living along side destruction and unbridled instincts existing together. The closest permanent instillation to a Portland dwellers is at the Seattle Art Museum, where he installed full size "exploding" firework white Fords.

What follow are images form his new show and an essay a wrote when I first saw his work in collage.

http://www.caiguoqiang.com/

Constant Complicated Time of Destruction and Creation

“We live in complicated times.” is the opening statement made in the promotional brochure for the work of Cai Guo-Qiang showing at Site Santa Fe. However, this work entitled ‘Inopportune’ is not necessarily about this general cliché statement. Cai Guo-Qiang’s artwork including the use of scale, material and subject matter speaks profoundly more to the idea that destruction is creative and beautiful.

Material is one of the strongest aspects of Cai’s work that resonates with the ideas of positive destruction. He works with fireworks, the quintessential controlled explosion made to invoke beauty and celebration.  Cai paints the sky with choreographed firework displays, films a car being destroyed by colorful explosives, and most astounding Cai gives the viewer lasting evidence that these highly temporal explosives can create lasting images with his gunpowder drawings on Japanese rice paper. Had these “drawings” been made by any other means they would never capture the power of ethereal destruction, an act of explosion that is impermanent and performance based.

He also employs a thematic use of subject matter in ‘Inopportune’. Images tigers and car are repeated over and over in Cai’s work. The tigers call up references to exotic myths and heroism, a glorified destruction, while cars reference the true life of destruction on a daily bases: car bombs car crashes. The use of tigers was an extremely eloquent choice to show the beauty of a certain kind of destruction, hunting, and an extension. Had Cai use the human body, for example, instead of tigers the viewer would have been far less involved. We are desensitized to that type of imagery and most of us can feel stronger compassion for an endangered species. The car imagery installs in the viewer a more threatening since of destruction as if a car bombing could happen to you.