What I Am Doing Now

These are side-ways knitted hats and ear warmers, mostly made of cotton yarn (much softer).

Also, an updated photograph of yours truly, seated on Bridget's deck on Little Bay with Loren (my niece) and her boyfriend Jake.

Better Late than Never: Family Camping Series 1964

After years of accumulating photographs, drawings, and ideas about how to put it together I came up with the idea of dying some canvas the color of our tent from 1964 and put the drawings (from the photographs Tim and Liz took--sadly, I seem to have misplaced them but do have copies) on it.  I even asked the library to display it a year ago!

To Give Credit Where Credit Is Due

It took me about as long to upload these photographs as it did the time I needed to complete this afghan.

Be that as it may, 13x13" garter stitch blocks using local yarn from Great Bay Yarn (on Bennett Road in Durham) and varying colors with photographs of sheep who gave me the yarn attached.  Five by six blocks so it just about covers the bed although it itches like hell so probably best seen as an viewing thing rather than a useful thing.

On to, well, I'm not sure what is next.  Watch this space.

So it has come to this (attempt number two):

Ahh, heaven:  a PHOTOGRAPH of a phone photo taken of me on a Southwest flight back from Baltimore.  I was the last one on and found this seat in the middle between these two guys who had this little therapy DOG.  One of them moved over, I got the AISLE SEAT, and eventually "GRACIE" made it over to my lap for the duration of the trip.  Please note that I am wearing one of my SWEATERS:  good old garter stitch with the emphasis on COLOR.

I am still doing puzzles.  Right now I am working on a Miro painting.

My college roommate just sent me a photograph of a painting that she said I did and gave to her.  . . .
I do not remember it although the color and brush strokes look vaguely familiar.

Knit.  Knit.  Knit.  And I am making some bookmarks.

And focusing on keeping an observational nature journal. 

What can I say but most art leaves me cold, colder than the below zero temps we are experiencing here.

So it has come to this:

So . . .

It's sort of like raising from the dead.  I have been "retired" now for over ten years and I am just now learning how to do that.  What does this mean re my art?  Ahh, my "art ," which has been mostly knitting and putting little animal tchotchkes (yes, I know, not spelled correctly) around the house (animals:  yay; people:  nay).

I have been spending more time in my studio.  That can mean any number of things:  working on puzzles or reading or negotiating with the cat to see if it is okay if I can even enter the room (whoops, sorry to disturb you, Clio).  Night-time is great for thinking up tons of ideas.  Let it be said that I was never without some intriguing ideas:  analog versus digital; recreating drawings of birds and other animals; seeing faces in the leaves and limbs of trees outside our windows; taking instant camera pictures of the little animal arrangements . . . and Godzilla.  And many others.

I have spread out the rough paintings I did of family camping series to see if there is anything there to recapitulate on a larger canvas.

What I am trying to avoid doing is MORE SELF PORTRAITS. 

So I leave you here for now and will update as necessary or needed.

shawn finnegan

It's been about a year since the last post.  And I recently had an experience that made me realize even more that everything is fleeting, including art.  When I took my old laptop in to have all the stuff moved to my new laptop (thank you, Bridget!), the technician basically lost all my photographs because I did not clarify they were in my photo file--or whatever it is called. 

I have decided to let them go.  The ones I wanted to "save" I did have paper copies made (let's hear it for the real real!). 

This get's me back to doing art.  I guess it is all about self-expression.  I cannot find the time or motivation to lift even a brush so I do creative things in my day-to-day life (lots of knitting).  I really don't care what other people think about my work--thus, have no desire to exhibit.  The time I did put a couple of things in a show a few years ago I put in a couple of blah works that were "saleable."  (Needless to say, they didn't sell.)  My stuff is my stuff.  You can bury me with it.

I was going to do a spiel here about technology/internet and everyone's desire to be noticed by everybody else but will save that for another time.   shawnZa

John Grillo

The Boston Globe had the obituary of my former painting teacher, John Grillo, who died at age 97 on the Cape.  I met John when I went to Amherst for the master's program in art teaching at UMass.  He taught me so much, basically through osmosis.  He was always around and he was always encouraging.  (He is not unlike my current mandolin teacher, Ned, who moves ahead without rapping ones fingers with a ruler.)  When I survey the work I did while painting with John Grillo and some of the things that came afterwards, I can see that they are my strongest work--and I am gleefully glorifying colors we both shared.  John Grillo gave me hope, something I rarely found with other teachers, especially of the art kind (exception is Paul Berabe, another UMass guy who unwound my detestation of ceramics after two semesters at UNH with Al Potter (yes, that was his name)).

I have never stopped thinking about John Grillo and will continue to carry him in my art heart.

shawn finnegan

I was checking out books at the Newmarket Public Library where I work occasionally and this book came across the desk entitled:  I Ain't Gonna Paint No More.  It's a kids book and I have put a hold on it because the title pretty much says it all.

Visits to galleries, museums, and the like are not high on my priority list right now (ART STINKS!) except for the trip my sister Kitty and I took up to Waterville, Maine, to the Colby Gallery to see B. Langlois wooden animal sculptures which are wonderful, for all the right reasons.  I loved it.  It was worth the two plus hour drive up to our former home to see it (the exhibit and our old house on Roosevelt Avenue).

I am hoping to audit a course on environmental and wildlife concerns this spring at UNH and maybe that will spur something that could be done artistically.

I also got kind of fascinating with dying irises so I'll throw in a few of those, too.

Okay, Okay, I am also knitting another sweater, free range with left-over colors, all done in straight knit stockinette.

Art stinks . . .  teehee

Just to clarify, I did not post the preceding at 6:57 a.m.  It is now almost 10 a.m. on Tuesday.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, technology is just so great.  s

Today is the equinox and we are now in fall.  I suppose one could say that I am also in the autumn of my life.  This is the best time of the year. 

That said, right now my feelings about art are:  art sucks and is boring and who cares.  I feel overloaded with everyone expressing THEIR cute and/or deep ideas.  Art is a narcissistic preoccupation.

Boring.  Boring.  Boring.

Sweater, Australian Aborigine Style

Here is the sweater, sans sleeves, that I have been working on recently.  I stole the idea from a book and from a sweater I did a long time ago (and have since unraveled) so I guess I can safely say it is mine.  And, yes, things are not "even," intentionally so.

Work in Progress

This is my latest piece connecting three dimensionality in real time and place and the concept of letter writing.  I am slowly filling each box with a letter addressed to "dearest M" which is the actual title of the piece.  I continue to mull what it is I am trying to say and how to say it and am wondering if I should make the letters accessible to the viewer (personal?  all that pulling of box covers off to retrieve letters?  etc.).

I recently went to the gallery at Phillips Exeter to see an exhibit where words were actually applied to various art forms:  clay; paper; woven cassette tape; thread; cut up books in new assemblages.  I continue to think about Cy Twombley and his painting/pencil writing.  In a discussion with my niece who is also a painter, we commiserated about the hassles to maintaining an oil painting set up in one's room.  One of my issues is the amount of turpenoid  that I go through in order to maintain clean colors.  I should have buckets of the stuff.  This too will make itself known.  I do love the act of painting and splotching and spreading color.  How to utilize these without doing another (traditional) self portrait.

All my work continues to be personal and self-portrait like.

Next post will show my finished Australian sweater where I stole a basic idea from a book and made it into my own through color and design changes.

I spent more time trying to put this on line than I did in painting it.

I stole this idea from someone (thanks to my friend Maureen in Washington State who sent the little video of new things made from old things) but the paint job is mine.

Needlework update (better late than never)

I'm not sure why but I like how this work has progressed, and for me it is at a stopping point.

As for the other work seen in my last posting, I have dubbed that the last needlework piece I will ever do because I have no idea when and how it will be finished.

I could say that when it is done I will "go back" to painting but who knows.

Sewn Art

Technical confusion leads to hiatus

I'm back.

I got this email from Google and immediately assumed that they were going to charge me (how dare they!) for this free service, and then I couldn't get into my blog and assumed they had blocked it (the nerve of them!).  I hope you're getting the picture that my writing a blog to display my work is a stretch (give me a medal).

I have been working on my "cross stitch" lately, two new projects that I will photograph and add to this post at some point.  When I did my first ever cross stitch, it was of a bear (it was a kit) and I discovered that the back of the piece was much more interesting than the front.  That is how I am approaching the work with my Girl Scout badges.  It is, as they say, a work in progress.  The other utilizes a haiku--you could call it an acknowledgment of new discoveries in older age.

The other good news is that my ideas are starting to coalesce around a few ideas that keep returning to me:  family camping series, animal existences, letter writing.  I think I have found my painting "mentor" in Cy Twombly who uses written words and glorious colors on canvas.  Somewhere in all of that lies my future.

So, until the next post.

My Feathered Nest

Feathery-Ness

Exploring the dynamics of what it mean to be feathery is my artistic goal. Over the past few months I have worked with shapes and sizes of feathers and feelings of featheriness. I leave various attempts around and find that further action on them comes at the most unexpected moments. Here, briefly, are some of the things so far including a chair I painted for downtown Newmarket (my "feathered nest") and collage like items. I am working away from feather shapes and concentrating on color and feeling, my own version of abstract expressionism.

I recently completed the biography of Joan Mitchell, color painter extraordinaire and definitely difficult human being. She had that condition where senses smudge over onto one another ("synesthesia"?) so, e.g., in her mind, each letter in the alphabet had its own color. Needless to say, this appears to have had quite an impact on her work (also, her lifelong need to make her father love her; not successful that way). Her paintings are large and full of extraordinary color. I have found a book of her paintings and am now tracking down where they are located so I can see them for real.

Some Thoughts about Technology and Expression

I have started reading Sherry Turkle's latest book about loss of intimacy in our rush towards embracing machines and it has reminded me that I remain a squishy Luddite (someone who likes to curse new technologies but who learns reluctantly some of the new rules) who has a blog.

Why do this blog? For me, it is more of an organizational tool and a timid toe-in-the-water for exhibiting in the future. It is also a way to sort through ideas. I do like to type and am very good at it (I can keep up with things coming out of my brain). So this blog functions, in part, like an electronic sketch pad and journal. This way of thinking plays out in the production of my art "work," as well: intermittent explosions of creativity and color, always with an ear turned to the outer world of caregiving responsibilities.