Saturday, September 19, 2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
i might as well tell you up front, i don't have anything visual to offer you.
actually, that is a lie. i'm doing a painting for my g-ma. it's a portrait of my mother and her brothers when they were chubby little babies, based on a black and white photograph, as per my grandmother's request. here is a progress picture, it is still quite unfinished:
oil on canvas, 18"x24". it will be framed eventually. this image is blurry, the painting doesn't look like this right now because i am experimenting with the ground color, and the image is actually reversed because i took this shot with my webcam using photobooth. i love love love to play with photobooth, and i am afraid it has made me lazy with the web photos. it's just so easy. and being american, i have a propensity for ease.
that one in the center there is my uncle chris. he looks like a little baby game show host, it's so wild. i can't get over it. i think it might be the eyebrows. and then my uncle russ looks exactly like my sister looked when she was little, except for being Not A Girl. my momma looks like my momma, only chubby and pink and white-blonde. you can see in her little baby eyes just how silly she was going to turn out. i treasure my mother's silliness. we're silly together, and strange, and we make up songs about anything. it makes life more fun.
here, i also made this portrait of a friend of mine, as a birthday gift. it's quite small. it is oil and encaustic with graphite on gessoed cardboard. 5"x7" unframed:
i really enjoyed using the encaustic when i made this. it was the first time in a while because the wax kind of takes over my kitchen, which makes it a little logistically difficult to use for any kind of extended period. i miss it and will bring it out more often. i also had a fun time painting it. it was more like drawing than painting, and i didn't feel the usual obligation to make Something Great that i do when i start a new painting. i think it makes for a nice gift, provided the receiver does not feel creeped out by having portraits of himself lying around. i would like to make more. i would like to use this method to explore my sometime interest in lycanthropy and carnie culture, and my own great dream of one day becoming a Bearded Lady (oh, it's going to happen. just you wait.)
oh how i hope you are well and happy.
august makes me want to do this:
HAVE A COOL SUMMER!
K.I.T.!!!!
DON'T EVER CHANGE!!
L.Y.L.A.S.!!!
actually, that is a lie. i'm doing a painting for my g-ma. it's a portrait of my mother and her brothers when they were chubby little babies, based on a black and white photograph, as per my grandmother's request. here is a progress picture, it is still quite unfinished:
oil on canvas, 18"x24". it will be framed eventually. this image is blurry, the painting doesn't look like this right now because i am experimenting with the ground color, and the image is actually reversed because i took this shot with my webcam using photobooth. i love love love to play with photobooth, and i am afraid it has made me lazy with the web photos. it's just so easy. and being american, i have a propensity for ease.
that one in the center there is my uncle chris. he looks like a little baby game show host, it's so wild. i can't get over it. i think it might be the eyebrows. and then my uncle russ looks exactly like my sister looked when she was little, except for being Not A Girl. my momma looks like my momma, only chubby and pink and white-blonde. you can see in her little baby eyes just how silly she was going to turn out. i treasure my mother's silliness. we're silly together, and strange, and we make up songs about anything. it makes life more fun.
here, i also made this portrait of a friend of mine, as a birthday gift. it's quite small. it is oil and encaustic with graphite on gessoed cardboard. 5"x7" unframed:
i really enjoyed using the encaustic when i made this. it was the first time in a while because the wax kind of takes over my kitchen, which makes it a little logistically difficult to use for any kind of extended period. i miss it and will bring it out more often. i also had a fun time painting it. it was more like drawing than painting, and i didn't feel the usual obligation to make Something Great that i do when i start a new painting. i think it makes for a nice gift, provided the receiver does not feel creeped out by having portraits of himself lying around. i would like to make more. i would like to use this method to explore my sometime interest in lycanthropy and carnie culture, and my own great dream of one day becoming a Bearded Lady (oh, it's going to happen. just you wait.)
oh how i hope you are well and happy.
august makes me want to do this:
HAVE A COOL SUMMER!
K.I.T.!!!!
DON'T EVER CHANGE!!
L.Y.L.A.S.!!!
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Saturday, June 06, 2009
Here are some crummy snapshots that I took with my webcam! A few prints from that HUGE project I did. There are something like eighty or a hundred prints total and none of them are alike. I have a set of 24 that are to be assembled together in some sort of installation as yet to be determined. I have not decided how or if the others will be displayed together. I am thinking about making a few small groupings and framing them for easy and affordable sales and showing, but since it's largely an intuitive process and I am unsure of how to sign these, I have not made any decisions yet. It's going to take some serious time and thought.
On with the photo circus!
On with the photo circus!
Thursday, June 04, 2009
dearest blog,
you are too young to die, so you shall live yet.
this is the last thing i made before leaving the shop for the summer months. it's an artist's proof for the time being because i did not have a chance to start editioning. i might make some minor changes. anyway, here is a little snapshot:
noel + voncille among the clouds
spit bite and balll ground aquatint
(wow, i'm sorry for all the wordy content in my recent posts! i promise to keep it more visual from now on, and keep my strange and ruffled ramblings limited to my other blog, which i made specifically for more personal use. i can't promise the two blogs will not overlap periodically, because i'm not really good at compartmentalizing...but i'm trying. i might even remove some previous posts, since they don't really "belong" here. stick it out, i'll try to improve myself for you.)
this is the last thing i made before leaving the shop for the summer months. it's an artist's proof for the time being because i did not have a chance to start editioning. i might make some minor changes. anyway, here is a little snapshot:
noel + voncille among the clouds
spit bite and balll ground aquatint
(wow, i'm sorry for all the wordy content in my recent posts! i promise to keep it more visual from now on, and keep my strange and ruffled ramblings limited to my other blog, which i made specifically for more personal use. i can't promise the two blogs will not overlap periodically, because i'm not really good at compartmentalizing...but i'm trying. i might even remove some previous posts, since they don't really "belong" here. stick it out, i'll try to improve myself for you.)
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
futuremusings (5-20-09)
i am considering purging most of the content of this blog and re-working my ideas for the format. it is not that i do not produce work, but that i take too long to get slides or scans, and once its done and posted, what then? nothing, there it sits in a blog. i don't have advice to share, or precious insights, or really anything to offer...just the convoluted path of thoughts that rattles around in my head, with the occasional observation, book recommendation, snatch of phrasing, or magical thought.
mostly what i have to offer are wishes. wishes and despondency, and sometimes a nonsensical romp through my own imagination's dark, dripping tunnels and hazy, far-off lightpoints. in my head things are shades of graphite and wax, close up and gauzy and always slightly circular. like when you try to look at something that is just too close to your face. and then i try to organize these flashes of imagery into some tangible format on paper or papers, try to make it happen in this world, through my hand, and get it finished before my own inhibitions trickle in and sour the whole experience.
i don't know what to call this blog.
maybe i will delete it, and start over new, and start something that isn't really my name, so it can really be me. and someday i'll get a website, and i will post my content there, and embed my little ruffled blog, graphite lace and beeswax and coffee stains.
some days i wish that i could live inside a dream, and not come out, and not participate in anything at all.
mostly what i have to offer are wishes. wishes and despondency, and sometimes a nonsensical romp through my own imagination's dark, dripping tunnels and hazy, far-off lightpoints. in my head things are shades of graphite and wax, close up and gauzy and always slightly circular. like when you try to look at something that is just too close to your face. and then i try to organize these flashes of imagery into some tangible format on paper or papers, try to make it happen in this world, through my hand, and get it finished before my own inhibitions trickle in and sour the whole experience.
i don't know what to call this blog.
maybe i will delete it, and start over new, and start something that isn't really my name, so it can really be me. and someday i'll get a website, and i will post my content there, and embed my little ruffled blog, graphite lace and beeswax and coffee stains.
some days i wish that i could live inside a dream, and not come out, and not participate in anything at all.
Friday, May 15, 2009
oh, this blog.
i am considering purging most of the content of this blog and re-working my ideas for the format. it is not that i do not produce work, but that i take too long to get slides or scans, and once its done and posted, what then? nothing, there it sits in a blog. i don't have advice to share, or precious insights, or really anything to offer...just the convoluted path of thoughts that rattles around in my head, with the occasional observation, book recommendation, snatch of phrasing, or magical thought.
mostly what i have to offer are wishes. wishes and despondency, and sometimes a nonsensical romp through my own imagination's dark, dripping tunnels and hazy, far-off lightpoints. in my head things are shades of graphite and wax, close up and gauzy and always slightly circular. like when you try to look at something that is just too close to your face. and then i try to organize these flashes of imagery into some tangible format on paper or papers, try to make it happen in this world, through my hand, and get it finished before my own inhibitions trickle in and sour the whole experience.
i don't know what to call this blog.
maybe i will delete it, and start over new, and start something that isn't really my name, so it can really be me. and someday i'll get a website, and i will post my content there, and embed my little ruffled blog, graphite lace and beeswax and coffee stains.
some days i wish that i could live inside a dream, and not come out, and not participate in anything at all.
mostly what i have to offer are wishes. wishes and despondency, and sometimes a nonsensical romp through my own imagination's dark, dripping tunnels and hazy, far-off lightpoints. in my head things are shades of graphite and wax, close up and gauzy and always slightly circular. like when you try to look at something that is just too close to your face. and then i try to organize these flashes of imagery into some tangible format on paper or papers, try to make it happen in this world, through my hand, and get it finished before my own inhibitions trickle in and sour the whole experience.
i don't know what to call this blog.
maybe i will delete it, and start over new, and start something that isn't really my name, so it can really be me. and someday i'll get a website, and i will post my content there, and embed my little ruffled blog, graphite lace and beeswax and coffee stains.
some days i wish that i could live inside a dream, and not come out, and not participate in anything at all.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
ageless ages (4-2-09)
it seems like forever since i have posted, apologies to the few but prized who follow my little internet smatterings. here is what is going on at the moment (this is the business end):
i am slowly working out kinks in a series of etchings that are meant to be related to each other and also each printed in what i suppose would be called variable editions. it involves each of three plates being printed in different inks and then displayed together--as triptychs? as a wall installation? still unsure at present and not closing any doors to myself--the combinations seem limitless and right now i am focused on making the process work. i have had some difficulties with ink and additives causing the zinc plates to oxidize, which is no fun at all but i am thankful for the learning experience. once the logistics are worked out and i am able to finish the printing process, i will focus on presentation.
i want these images--closely cropped, disembodied heads on a dark field, which are strongly related to one another--to emulate and conjure the motion of the sea. these are the phrases and images that i have in my mind: the palpable throb of ocean waves, the vibration of light on the water's surface, the mystical qualities of the sea: the water as a womb and mother, the water as a killer suffocator--the experience of drowning, as well as the experience of being cradled by water. the inevitability of the sea. the silence and solitude, the melancholy and the rapture, the calm destruction of the sea. many things! it is ambitious and i am not so bold as to think that i will be successful with all of these things...it is an avenue i want to explore and a theme i wish to continue in future work.
i never know how candid to be...i find it easy to write these thoughts but discussing them with people, in front of people, i feel embarrassed and even stupid. i feel like i have to guard these things. i guess a lot of that has to do with what these images and their associations mean to me personally, what they symbolize for me and how they relate to my life and my history. part of being an artist is spending time in those internal worlds, and then shamelessly externalizing all of it in our work, and then sticking that work up on a wall to be criticized by one and all, and it is not an easy thing. i hold honesty in very high regard, and strive to always be honest in my work, and as a result i find myself struggling with the exposure of my Self to the World.
sorry for not having images to share at this time, but know that i am working hard in the studio (and inside my head) and please look forward to something before the shoeless days of summer.
-c
i am slowly working out kinks in a series of etchings that are meant to be related to each other and also each printed in what i suppose would be called variable editions. it involves each of three plates being printed in different inks and then displayed together--as triptychs? as a wall installation? still unsure at present and not closing any doors to myself--the combinations seem limitless and right now i am focused on making the process work. i have had some difficulties with ink and additives causing the zinc plates to oxidize, which is no fun at all but i am thankful for the learning experience. once the logistics are worked out and i am able to finish the printing process, i will focus on presentation.
i want these images--closely cropped, disembodied heads on a dark field, which are strongly related to one another--to emulate and conjure the motion of the sea. these are the phrases and images that i have in my mind: the palpable throb of ocean waves, the vibration of light on the water's surface, the mystical qualities of the sea: the water as a womb and mother, the water as a killer suffocator--the experience of drowning, as well as the experience of being cradled by water. the inevitability of the sea. the silence and solitude, the melancholy and the rapture, the calm destruction of the sea. many things! it is ambitious and i am not so bold as to think that i will be successful with all of these things...it is an avenue i want to explore and a theme i wish to continue in future work.
i never know how candid to be...i find it easy to write these thoughts but discussing them with people, in front of people, i feel embarrassed and even stupid. i feel like i have to guard these things. i guess a lot of that has to do with what these images and their associations mean to me personally, what they symbolize for me and how they relate to my life and my history. part of being an artist is spending time in those internal worlds, and then shamelessly externalizing all of it in our work, and then sticking that work up on a wall to be criticized by one and all, and it is not an easy thing. i hold honesty in very high regard, and strive to always be honest in my work, and as a result i find myself struggling with the exposure of my Self to the World.
sorry for not having images to share at this time, but know that i am working hard in the studio (and inside my head) and please look forward to something before the shoeless days of summer.
-c
Monday, January 19, 2009
thoughts and thinkings (1-19-09)
i have been making inner considerations.
maya and i have this dialogue, sporadic at times but very much on-going, and i am so humbled and grateful and inspired by our modest yet massive puddle of words, thoughts, memories and hearts, our dreams. it makes me feel like me, but also like i am someone else.
i want to make jibe these seperated ideas in my mind. i feel like they are islands...volcano-born piles of black sand and ash rising painstakingly slow from the shimmering waves of the sea. i want them all to get big enough to join, like little balls of mercury, or little puddles of school glue. i can see my work and myself evolving but, as ever, i am impatient to get there...my hands are not fast enough and there are too many things in the way. maybe i should view it as a transcendence, for which i must have patience to achieve but of which i am impatient to achieve.
i am thinking about things, textures and imagery, abstract representations of actual true-to-life events, superimpositions, the nintendo era (will we be known as Generation Nintendo?)...doubles and repetition, the self next to the other self, the self next to the same self;
self versus circumstance. oh. how much is dictated by the self and how much by the circumstance? how much of the self itself is informed and even driven by circumstance? can i overcome my history, or should i submit? by submission will i rise above? it begins to be a religious conversation with myself, myself being the religion under scrutiny.
i wrote to maya about veils...this is the conundrum: my work is about truth. if it was not about my truth, i would find no value and cease to see a point. the trouble lies in the nature of truth: i have to be wholly exposed in my work, but i still want to keep myself whole. how do you keep from giving pieces away? we make these elaborate visual languages that allow us to broach the subject while simultaneously viewing it head-on. and i retreat into the rhetoric of "allowing the viewer to make up his own mind," in order to avoid concrete exposure of my actual truths. but at the same time, if the viewer was unable to experience the mutual internal experiences that i believe we as humans share, connected to an inner umbilical cord like dresses on the clothes line, if the viewer was unable to come to those conclusions on his own, then i will have failed in some way. what good is moderately effective work among an academic group of viewers? i am happy to make whatever achievements i can make, but i believe we, as humans all experiencing our lives alone, share some base, primordial connection--a sameness that is experienced through vastly differeing individual and very personal experiences. what i mean to say is, we are all so, so different, but our seeds are all the same...it is what makes us connect to the people around us, it is what makes us yearn for acceptance and seek love, it is what makes us turn to one another and need; empathize...sympathize...save, care, feel. it is what makes us need to be touched. it is this phenomenon that i am trying to tap...i want to make people aware of this connection, even if only in a fleeting moment of muddled emotion--even if only in a momentary lump in the throat or a tingle in the breast.
i am growing my small visual dictionary. even though i could not always see the connections, i am seeing more and more that i have been exploring these same themes all along in my little career as an artist--student and burgeoning professional. i find my former approaches laughable and realize now that i was so unable to articulate my own thoughts to myself, let alone to others, but the spirit was there, which comforts me: this journey needed to be.
what more? what next?
maya and i have this dialogue, sporadic at times but very much on-going, and i am so humbled and grateful and inspired by our modest yet massive puddle of words, thoughts, memories and hearts, our dreams. it makes me feel like me, but also like i am someone else.
i want to make jibe these seperated ideas in my mind. i feel like they are islands...volcano-born piles of black sand and ash rising painstakingly slow from the shimmering waves of the sea. i want them all to get big enough to join, like little balls of mercury, or little puddles of school glue. i can see my work and myself evolving but, as ever, i am impatient to get there...my hands are not fast enough and there are too many things in the way. maybe i should view it as a transcendence, for which i must have patience to achieve but of which i am impatient to achieve.
i am thinking about things, textures and imagery, abstract representations of actual true-to-life events, superimpositions, the nintendo era (will we be known as Generation Nintendo?)...doubles and repetition, the self next to the other self, the self next to the same self;
self versus circumstance. oh. how much is dictated by the self and how much by the circumstance? how much of the self itself is informed and even driven by circumstance? can i overcome my history, or should i submit? by submission will i rise above? it begins to be a religious conversation with myself, myself being the religion under scrutiny.
i wrote to maya about veils...this is the conundrum: my work is about truth. if it was not about my truth, i would find no value and cease to see a point. the trouble lies in the nature of truth: i have to be wholly exposed in my work, but i still want to keep myself whole. how do you keep from giving pieces away? we make these elaborate visual languages that allow us to broach the subject while simultaneously viewing it head-on. and i retreat into the rhetoric of "allowing the viewer to make up his own mind," in order to avoid concrete exposure of my actual truths. but at the same time, if the viewer was unable to experience the mutual internal experiences that i believe we as humans share, connected to an inner umbilical cord like dresses on the clothes line, if the viewer was unable to come to those conclusions on his own, then i will have failed in some way. what good is moderately effective work among an academic group of viewers? i am happy to make whatever achievements i can make, but i believe we, as humans all experiencing our lives alone, share some base, primordial connection--a sameness that is experienced through vastly differeing individual and very personal experiences. what i mean to say is, we are all so, so different, but our seeds are all the same...it is what makes us connect to the people around us, it is what makes us yearn for acceptance and seek love, it is what makes us turn to one another and need; empathize...sympathize...save, care, feel. it is what makes us need to be touched. it is this phenomenon that i am trying to tap...i want to make people aware of this connection, even if only in a fleeting moment of muddled emotion--even if only in a momentary lump in the throat or a tingle in the breast.
i am growing my small visual dictionary. even though i could not always see the connections, i am seeing more and more that i have been exploring these same themes all along in my little career as an artist--student and burgeoning professional. i find my former approaches laughable and realize now that i was so unable to articulate my own thoughts to myself, let alone to others, but the spirit was there, which comforts me: this journey needed to be.
what more? what next?
new works from winter of 2008
lithograph
etching & aquatint (intaglio)
mezzotint
the same mezzotint, printed twice in two colors (sort of like a duotone?)
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Saturday, September 20, 2008
newly drawn
two new drawings, graphite on Arches. these drawings are intended to be made into lithographs in the immediate future. i'm guessing it takes me about six weeks to complete both, and probably some more time after before i get around to scanning and uploading them, since i am the queen of lazy. i'll try and have stuff up for sale by thanksgiving, via etsy and/or redbubble, for your purchasing and gifting pleasure.
still unsure as to whether these original drawings will be made available for sale. at present i would like to keep them, and possibly show them in a group with other works as yet unmade.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
told ya
here's that "real slide" i promised you a million years ago. high quality reproductions of this painting are now for sale through redbubble.com:
Portrait of the Artist with a 'Stache
or, view my redbubble profile and other art here:
http://www.redbubble.com/people/calanagoncalves
you must become a member to purchase art, but it's free to join and they distribute very high quality reproductions. if you see something not currently available for sale through the site, just let me know and i can make it available for you. just send me an email!
Migrant, Voncille with Mushroom, and Mary Squared are also now available for sale!
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
July 2008 - commissions
Here are two commissioned paintings that I have recently completed. You can commission a portrait, too! Email me at calanagoncalves(at)gmail(dot)com for more information.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
This is something Philadelphia artist Maya Hope Goldweber sent me, which was given to her by Richmond artist Sally Bowring. I found it inspiring and noteworthy.
A Simple List:
1. It's simple really,
to paint is to trust.
To believe in our instincts; to become.
2. Painting is an investigation of being.
3. It is not the job of art to mirror. Images reflected in a mirror appear to us in reverse. An artist's responsibility is to reveal consciousness; to produce a human document.
4. Painting is an act of devotion. A practiced witnessing of the human spirit.
5. Paintings are about:
Paint
Observation &
Thought
6. Art is not about facts but about what is: the am-ness of things.
7. All paintings share a connection with other paintings.
8. Art is evidence. Evidence of breathing in and breathing out; proof of human majesty.
9. Painting places us. Painting puts us in real time. The time in which we inhabit our bodies.
10. Light is the home of painting.
11. The visible is how we orient ourselves. It remains our principal source of information about the world. Painting reminds us of what is absent. What we don't see anymore.
12. Painting is not only a mnemonic device employed to remember events in our lifetime. Paintings address a greater memory. A memory less topical, one less provincial than the geography of our currently occupied body. Painting reminds us of what we don't know but what we recognize as familiar.
13. Painting, like water, takes any form. Paint is a film of pigment on a plane. It is not real in the way that gravity-bound sculpture is real. It is, however, real. Painting comes to reality through illusion. An illusion that allows us to make a leap of faith: to believe. To believe in a blue that can be the wing of a bug or a thought. It makes our invisible visible.
A Simple List:
1. It's simple really,
to paint is to trust.
To believe in our instincts; to become.
2. Painting is an investigation of being.
3. It is not the job of art to mirror. Images reflected in a mirror appear to us in reverse. An artist's responsibility is to reveal consciousness; to produce a human document.
4. Painting is an act of devotion. A practiced witnessing of the human spirit.
5. Paintings are about:
Paint
Observation &
Thought
6. Art is not about facts but about what is: the am-ness of things.
7. All paintings share a connection with other paintings.
8. Art is evidence. Evidence of breathing in and breathing out; proof of human majesty.
9. Painting places us. Painting puts us in real time. The time in which we inhabit our bodies.
10. Light is the home of painting.
11. The visible is how we orient ourselves. It remains our principal source of information about the world. Painting reminds us of what is absent. What we don't see anymore.
12. Painting is not only a mnemonic device employed to remember events in our lifetime. Paintings address a greater memory. A memory less topical, one less provincial than the geography of our currently occupied body. Painting reminds us of what we don't know but what we recognize as familiar.
13. Painting, like water, takes any form. Paint is a film of pigment on a plane. It is not real in the way that gravity-bound sculpture is real. It is, however, real. Painting comes to reality through illusion. An illusion that allows us to make a leap of faith: to believe. To believe in a blue that can be the wing of a bug or a thought. It makes our invisible visible.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Friday, April 25, 2008
Here's a fun little one for you...
completed this very night. i'll put a formal slide up at a later date, but for now, enjoy this little installation shot, and feel free to marvel at my clear mastery of flash photography.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Group Show
Hey there kids. I have work in a gallery next month.
Friday, April 11th at 6pm, KRONOS Gallery is celebrating their One-Year Anniversary with a big party and a lot of really cool art. I'll have a few pieces up in the group rooms, and the show runs for six weeks.
Come out to a sleepy little mountain town and say hi, boogie, look at art, buy some if you're feeling wealthy. Do it!
KRONOS Gallery
14 Byers St. (on the wharf)
Staunton, VA 24401
(540) 213-1815
http://kronos.todayinart.com
http://www.artisdangerous.com/Gallery/Kronos/Kronos.htm
Friday, April 11th at 6pm, KRONOS Gallery is celebrating their One-Year Anniversary with a big party and a lot of really cool art. I'll have a few pieces up in the group rooms, and the show runs for six weeks.
Come out to a sleepy little mountain town and say hi, boogie, look at art, buy some if you're feeling wealthy. Do it!
KRONOS Gallery
14 Byers St. (on the wharf)
Staunton, VA 24401
(540) 213-1815
http://kronos.todayinart.com
http://www.artisdangerous.com/Gallery/Kronos/Kronos.htm
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
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