Shine On!

#NoPanelLeftBehind, Exhibition, Narrative, Origin story, Works In Progress

Every painting has an origin story.  My initial vision for this blog was to show the evolution of pieces, from start to finish.  (If I could, I would name my blog, “The Journey Is Everything.”)  You can track the progress of all my pieces on my Instagram feed.

Here is the origin story of Shine On – my rusty sunflower piece, which has taken on many forms over the past year…

8/12/17 – Wrote out my morning meditation on engaged, contemplative imagination. #BeginAgain

 

8/14/17 – Morning Meditation (final).  For my COCA Residency, I took this 24″x24″ white painting, and brought it to life in a 90″x 90″ 3D installation ~ The Truth Has No Borders.  This shipping container installation combined 40 years of work in writing, music, film and art into a single exhibit examining identity, family, culture and migration.

 

2/10/18 – I lied earlier when I posted the white painting, Morning Meditation, and said it was my “Final” layer. The following week, I was bored to death of it. So I taped it back up, and went back to work.

 

2/12/18 – Shoreline. Came downstairs to find the kid laying out wax scraps on my painting, telling me it needed more texture. So I spent the day fusing the wax scraps onto the painting, and adding silver leaf.

 

7/19/18 – And now, for something completely different.  I scraped and torched the Shoreline piece all the way down to the panel. 🔥🤩  The free write on the base of this panel was suffocating under the layers of valiant, earnest effort. Now it (and I) can finally breathe again.#BlowtorchTherapy #NoPanelLeftBehind #BeginAgain

 

7/31/18 – Today I return to a mostly empty studio, and start the day by making sunflower seeds ~a perfect meditation for beginning again.

 

8/1/18 – Got my first coat of rust on the sunflower seeds.

 

8/2/18 – Conquering fears today about not being able to draw by just painting these petals on free hand. More coats to follow. 😅 (I needed some way to pass time while the second coat of rust dried on the sunflower seeds!)

 

10/16/18Shine On! Applying new knowledge about color mixing to this piece, which is vying for a spot in pop-up exhibit/talk next week (“My Life in 24 Frames“, 10/23 at 6pm, Columbia City Gallery).

 

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