Julio Le Parc

I'm willing to bet that not many are familiar with the kinetic artist Julio Le Parc. Born in 1928 in Argentina, he moved to Paris in 1958. Two of his works in American museums can be seen online. At the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington D.C. there is "Instability" (1963) and at the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, "Collage After a Theme of 1959" (1971). This is the one that first brought him to my attention, that hooked me, and inspired one of my earliest dots collages titled "After Le Parc (Theme No. 1)" . Also, the Sicard Gallery in Houston, TX has five versions of a wood and metal construction with movable plexiglass squares.

But, although Julio Le Parc seems to be sadly under-represented in the US, his official web site: http://www.julioleparc.org/ makes up for it. If you want to be absolutely dazzled by color, start with the Surface-Color gallery. Then, if you are not on chromatic overload, check out his Alchemies! And be sure not to miss Modulation 1 and Modulation 2. I don't know of any other artist who has so much information about their work so readily available... be prepared to spend a lot of time!

No Clear Title

No clear title comes to mind for this post. But I am starting this with all good intentions because I want to post something here every day. That's one of the rules of blogging, as I understand it... it's a daily thing. But I'm thinking that, for me, it should not always be a morning thing.

I went out this morning for groceries and that interrupted the energy. I will confess that I don't get out much. Clearly stated: I like it here. I can go for days without going beyond the mailbox at the end of my driveway. If I could order groceries over the internet and have them delivered, I probably wouldn't leave at all until the opening of my first Boston or NY gallery show(!) or until my interlibrary loan book comes, whichever happens first. I've requested "Color Choices: Making Sense Out of Color Theory" by Stephen Quiller.

I've just come back to edit this post to add the photo of the tamarack tree that shades my mailbox. It's a deciduous pine and the needles are even more yellow now and are beginning to drop in earnest.

Designing With Dots

I really love dots! I have a whole series of collages going that are based on dots which you can look at on my web site . I also like painting dots. I should tell you that I began teaching myself painting in acrylic around March or so of this year. And I started with dots in primary colors mainly to get used to using the brush and because I was slightly nervous about all of the color choices I could make. I figured I could keep it simple with red, yellow and blue. I had lots of acrylic gloss medium on hand as the "glue" for my collage work, therefore I naturally progressed to glazing my primary colors (resulting in greens and oranges and purples!). So the better part of this year has been an exploration of dots in design. This has even led to the creation of digital collages based on patterns of dots painted in acrylics. Photoshop is such a miracle, but I'll try not to digress about it here except to say that I scanned in one of my unfinished dots paintings to create a collaged exhibition poster with a repeat pattern for my local art group. I had a few sheets of the dots pattern from the poster left over. I marked up one with outlined triangles (for lights) and one with shaded triangles (for darks). Then I scanned them, shrunk them, alternated and repeated them to make a quilt. Then I cut out a circular portion, repeated the circle, added some dots and voila! I had "Risking Absurdity (Digression No. 1)" shown above!

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

In the short-term, I would probably not be doing this if I hadn't found the Blog (http://selftaughtartist.blogspot.com/) of an impassioned and refreshing woman living in Vermont. Hello Paula! from your neighbor and kindred spirit in New Hampshire.

And in the long-term, I should mention two artists who have inspired me. The first is Roderick Slater. I admired his collages back in the early '80's before I even knew what collage was. There was a gallery in Newburyport, Massachusetts that had lots of them! They were ever so detailed and absolutely enchanting. And they planted a seed that finally sprouted in 2004 with the discovery of the Talbot method of collage. Jonathan Talbot's slim little book provided the link that finally got me started on my path of artistic expression through collage.

Jumping Into Something New

Seems rather cheeky of me to assume that others might take an interest in what I think about. Well, I will try to edit out the boring and the mundane like: "Should I change all three of the kitty litter boxes or just the one that I can smell from the bedroom?" and write about my higher thoughts, my thoughts about art and my creative process. Because art is the driving force in my life right now. It defines who I am. It is why I get up in the morning and it is what I think about (besides, sometimes, the state of the litter boxes) as I fall asleep at night.