August 7, 2015

What I did On My Summer Vacation

Chez Cheryl Artspace is back to normal, a quiet interlude of pastoral bliss, monarch's flutter  past the milkweed and  wild carrot, tall stalks of spent ditch lilies and grasses gone to seed, and wind blows through the pine and maple.  I  often see a family of turkey vultures preening on the ridge of the barn roof, Coopers Hawks in the meadow, indigo buntings in the apple trees and across the valley, a deer   emerges from a cool thicket to cross over a stone fence, venturing into the field of newly cut clover.  On the walls which a month ago featured portraits in a myriad of media and presentation, I now have my growing accumulation of paintings I have attempted over the past few years, a series of abstract impressions of winter, a few still life studies, and en plein air or the valley and environs I have just described above. 

We were pretty dry, and I prayed it would rain, refilling my rain barrel and the water bins at the back door, and last Sunday we got that rain, plus 60 mph winds which  wreaked havoc on many, with downed trees, no power for at least 12 hours, and  marble sized hail throughout the county.  The garden is nearly feral again, but yielding spaghetti squash, cucumber and zucchini, tomatoes of  all sizes, potatoes, broccoli, eggplant and basil and peppers. Earlier there was  a handful of radishes, and spinach, and sweet raspberries, just enough to pick and eat while standing in the garden.

All of this takes me away,  my focus in life seems to be less of the world out there, and more about the internalizing of this pastoral  setting. Painting as meditation, painting as movement, the path of a butterfly, the shadow of the turkey vulture, the sound of the  pine trees singing in the wind. Painting to make the palpable yet invisible  patterns more visible.

This is where I live. I live in a place where people stop to move a snapping turtle off the busy county highway, I live where when a storm hits and knocks out power, puts trees on car tops and roof lines, the grocery stores cook up burgers and  have water ready for people who are hungry. I live where  I know the guy in the emergency responder truck is also the same guy who tends bar, he is a neighbor and he is always on call.  I live where you can't go to the grocery store, library or post office without running into at least 2-3 artists or poets or musicians. And the post master brings garden surplus in to the lobby for the FREE box, if anyone needs a zucchini, or a lily bulb.

Door prize for Portraiture 2015

Chez Cheryl Artspace was open for those interested in seeing 26 of region's most creative and unique artists in this annual invitational exhibition that pays homage to the genre of portraits, in all forms. Guest Juror Grame Reid, Director of Collections and Exhibitions at the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend Wi selected three honorable mentions and one Best in Show, and new this year was an award for the rookies,  or newbies of the group. Honorable Mention awards went to Rick Risch for his pensive portrait. TOMORROW,  Cynthia Wolfe, for her Mixed media assembled clay and wood visage  PORTRAIT IN SEPIA, with surface treatment of elaborate zen tangle drawing on clay; and Mark Zelten for his expressive  and classical capture of THE ARTIST'S FATHER, Best in Show went to Paula Swaydan Grebel for her double portrait THE PROM, which features her daughter and date for high school prom seated  in formal attire, barefoot, in an explosion of painterly pink chiffon.
The newbie award went to Colleen McCarty for NATURE GIRL, a self portrait in graphite, portraying the artist with feathers, leaves and tree limbs as body parts.

THE ARTIST'S FATHER

By Mark Zelten of Green Bay WI

Honorable Mention Award 2015

THE PROM

By Paula Swaydan Grebel of Plymouth WI

DOOR PRIZE BEST IN Show 2015

GUEST JUROR

Grame Reide of Museum of Wisconsin Art, West Bend, WI

Presenting awards and offering comments, with Cheryl Stidwell Parker to a crowd of over 100.- photo contributed by Suzanne Rose

NATURE GRl by Colleen McCarty, Sturgeon Bay, WI

Copperhead  by David Franke

Urban Portrait by Ken Klopack

Where have the weeks gone...

What Happens When You Wait

I have spent the last five months puzzled and frustrated  by my own lack of interest in the tubes of paint sitting  on my paint table. I started a portrait in January, and it sits on my easel still, unfinished but slowly evolving into a statement of some sort.  I also have paintings from  the 90's which have been getting cut into strips and wrapped around the thrift store horses I find on my fossicking about. The horses have been well received and sell in a gallery shop in Iowa.  And I hope to sell them again here in Door County,  but I am saving them for a fall garden art fair in Sturgeon Bay.
I went into a  regimen of physical therapy following knee replacement in September, and by the end of the year I was walking without a cane, and able to get outside daily through the winter, and at least one or two days a week I spent at the studio, wrapping horses, and struggling with the idea of painting a portrait of the daughter of a friend. It  still lures me in to paint now and then, but the countryside is loaded with lilac and the cherry and apple orchards peaked last week. The garden plot beckons and the county is begining to boil with the hubub of art openings, and galleries opening up for the season.
 I am able to do a nearly weekly drawing activity, figure studies which allow me to experiment with a variety of materials, but mostly I favor the vine charcoal and water color pencils, in two hour drawing sessions, I am thrilled when I get one or two good renderings a week.
Reading has also  been a focus, and when people ask what do we do for maintaining sanity through the winter here, I reply, "go to the library" or I shop online, and load my kindle or find a treasure trove of art biographies.  Alice Neel, Eric Fischl, Joan Mitchell,  William Merrit Chase,  A Wolf Called Romeo, and currently a bio on Fairfield Porter, have kept me company through out the season.  And there are the books, mostly novels, from my book club selections, in which I do not fully participate..
Lately I have focused on our Sixth annual Door Prize for Portraiture, inspired by the Archibald Prize of New South Wales Gallery of art, we have invited more artists each year to show protraits in the studio farm house... with a good juror attending the party, we announce winners, drink wine and artists meet each other. Each year there is a new batch, some returning, and others, newcomers, but all leave as friends and look forward to the next year.

Unfinished portrait

working title

The Hundredth Hihii bird

paint table still life

Memento Mori

started this painting in 2012, finished it after a year of incubating, 2015

Rag Nags, horses upcycled and wrapped with paintings from twenty years ago.