Favianna Rodriguez

Five On Paper

These 2 untitled works are, as far as I know, the last images my friend & colleague Linda Day made before she (as my Korean students are wont to say) "went back." Even though we all expected this news, it was not any less heart wrenching. The last time I saw Linda was at this opening on July 30th & the event was deeply moving, humbling & inspiring. I will always hold her at my core as a grace note of how live bravely without bitterness, defeat or self-pity in the face of one's own death. Her luminous last works are full of jewel-like color of radiant beauty, inspired by her trip to India during her last Sabbatical.

After the death of someone she greatly admired, Patti Smith wrote in her autobiography: "I chided myself for inactivity and self-indulgence, and resolved to rededicate myself to my work." I think Linda taught us all a huge lesson that way.

Both works are about the same size, roughly

39 x 32", & made from pigment, paper & cloth. There was also an equally impressive, but more intimate work on wood panel in the exhibition. Easily missed due to it's unassuming facade, the gallery is located at 600 South Pacific Avenue in San Pedro, CA.

Sarah Whorf Exhibition

Work by my former student Sarah Whorf is currently gracing the walls of the Knight Gallery, near where she works, lives & whittles in beautiful Eureka, California. Sponsored by the Humboldt Arts Council, the exhibition will run until 10/9/2011. The gallery address is: Knight Gallery, Morris Graves Museum of Art, 636 F Street, Eureka. The hours are Thurs. - Sun., noon - 5 PM, the phone # is: 707/442-0278, & the organization's URL: www.humboldtarts.org

Her symmetrical image repro'ed here is a woodcut, titled: Advanced Hunter Gatherers, & visually it works equally well in either vertical orientation. Seemingly playful & innocent, her aquatic floral image belies the war mongering/whale harpooning/slave trading nature of the two mirrored ships, sailing around the earth's gentle curve. The subtle shift in color helps us perceive the ephemeral nature of time & the ever shifting briney deep. Skillful changes in mark-making in the background establishes varied weather conditions & time of day, helping to create the illusion that these floating vessels are easy prey for varied nautical forces.

I include below the quote from the "Humboldt Beacon," which hopefully further serves to provide the audience Sarah so richly deserves. (If you happen up that way, don't forget breakfast at the Samoa Cookhouse, which - despite it's name, serves up basic American fare.)

"New work of Sarah Whorf is on display in the Knight Gallery. As a printmaker, Whorf works primarily with the medium of woodcuts, and is currently working on a series which address her conceptual interest in connectedness and attraction. Depicting abstracted objects which are linked together to form mixtures that reference chandeliers, candelabras and fishing gear, she employs depictions of common objects to function symbolically, moving beyond their obvious function and serving as metaphor in a personal narrative."

Linda Day Memorial Service

The address is 8687 Melrose Avenue, Pacific Design Center, Space B-267, West Hollywood, CA

The service is set to start at 1PM on 9/9/11

Joseph Lupo's Take...Comic Relief?

Joe Lupo, who teaches printmaking at West Virginia University in Morgantown created this sadbuttrue 3 panel strip in the style of the late underground comic book writer Harvey Pekar. If you click on the image, it should enlarge enough to reveal the text. Hey now, we obsessive compulsive types have to be able to channel our energies in some harmless way! At least the majority of us (besides being gregarious) have an appreciation for the ludicrous & amusing.

Internship at Bergamot Station - ASAP

The Lora Schlesinger Gallery in Santa Monica is currently looking for an intern to help out & gallery sit for the next two weeks, with the possibility of another short stint sometime in November.

If you are interested, or know of anyone who may be keen to do this, please contact Stephanie Mercado at Gallery@loraschlesinger.com

The commitment doesn't involve too many hours, but it would help if said person is available at least on Fridays / Saturdays.

While the internship is unpaid, it is a great opportunity make some lasting connections & to see and to hear how things work on the business end of the art world.

The pencil drawing repro'ed here (titled: Bird with Ball Balancing on Cat) is by former CSULB MFA student in illustration, Adonna Khare. She is represented by this gallery, as is Bruce Houston. I was at The University of Iowa with the latter, back when the earth's magma was just beginning to cool (the early '70's). To this day, I wish Adonna had taken some classes with me - she could have made some outstanding etchings!

Energy Exhibition - More Shameless Self-Promotion

Should anyone be in the proximity of Santa Ana, CA this coming Saturday evening (8/6/2011) please do consider dropping into the OCCCA (The Orange County Center for Contemporary Arts) from 6 - 10 PM. There will be an opening reception for "Energy" an exhibition that I've the good fortune to be part of, along with fellow printmaker (& Canadian) Sean Caulfield. Otherwise, I'd say that the majority of work appears either photographically or digitally derived. If those combination of factors aren't enough to entice you away from viddying instant movies on Netflix, perhaps the looming presence of not 1, but 2 upscale food trucks will tempt. "Brats Berlin" (one can only wonder if they'll actually have the dreadful currywurst) will be competing for your Yankee dollars with "Crepes Bonaparte," & Santa Ana's renowned "ArtWalk" will be in full swing.

I'm not certain which works by powerhouse Sean will be in the exhibition, but I'd guess something visually tasty, such as the above, titled Fire Horn, a mezzotint form 2005, might just be in the offing. The image below is from my hand, a woodcut/litho combo titled Perihelion/Aphelion. The Shanghai Museum of Art has a gallery of Qing dynasty paper currency, many of which incorporate the techniques of woodcut or engraving. Enthralled, I did small sketches in the gallery, one of which eventually became this print. I was interested in playing with not only ornamental pattern and decoration, but also with symmetrical duplication of the solar image that appears on many of the banknotes. I wanted to translate the nervous line energy from the sketch into the larger print, and to see if I could compositionally sequence the image in time through composing multiple inversions of it.

The address of the above is 117 North Sycamore Street, Santa Ana , CA, & no, that's not my late model blue sporty vehicle.

The 75 pg. catalogue is available for purchase at www.LuLu.com, for $25.00. Howard Fox, Curator Emeritus of Contemporary Art at LACMA did a bang up job writing an insightful essay.