SARDINE CAN ART

Working on another sardine art piece…this one for this Sunday’s  “Titanic Commemoration “ @ the Eastport  Arts Center.  For the art part of the day, a silent art auction with ocean themes.

I really enjoy creating these miniature art pieces contained in sardine cans…they’re really satisfying in this I-can’t-quite-put-my-finger-on-it sort of way...but did the best I could in my Artist Statement.  

Earlier this year I put a sardine can piece in a “Collage, Assemblage Centennial.” show @ the Ontological Museum in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. The Ontological Museum “is an artist oriented museum developed around living connections to artists.” it felt very cool to be part of it and to donate my sardine art can to the museum.

 Eastport Beach Composition #2
found material, acrylic, paper within a sardine can
Height 4 inches  x Width 3 ½ inches x Depth 1 inch

ARTIST STATEMENT

                                                                
Accumulation, serendipity, and the surprise of juxtaposition, to me, replicates life, elements that become messages artists use to create order in unified realities expressed thru the forms of collage, assemblage, and constructs…unfettered uniqueness and personal.

My on going series of little assemblages created inside sardine cans feels satisfying to me as well as integrated. I live on a island in Maine, way north in Passamaquoddy Bay looking across to Canada.  At one time its island shores were filled with sardine factories, in its heyday, its port even rivaled New York City. But fished-out long ago, today there is not one single fish factory left, now it is the art galleries turn to flourish…this another example of community being saved by Art…and so time marches on to different tunes. I walk the beaches and collect bits of nature, and parts of aged machinery, along with more contemporary trash. Back in the studio, I compose my island beach moments into the now imported sardine cans.  To me, they are like portraits of my island’s cycling history all enmeshed with mine and my assemblaged sardine-can art becomes a mash-up of moments and objects held in timeless composition.

Eastporters...the Art Auction is starts @ 2 PM...the Play @ 4 PM and the Movie @ 5:30 PM 

PLUS Refreshments! 

Voting for “Choice” has Begun!

Reverie Of A Woodland Nymph
Ceramic,  Acrylic and A Wreath of Tree Roots
Height 17 inches,  Width 11 inches, Depth  7 ½ inches

So the voting is on…and so far, “Reverie of the Woodland Nymph“,  is in the lead…I’m using her face as my Blog logo…so she is definitely one of  “mama’s” favorite…yes, I do think of my sculptures as my art children…entities that came from me…out of me that were once so close, so intimate they,  like my birth children, in time, claim their own unto themselves identities

 “Reverie of the Woodland Nymph“, appeared to me in a visual meditation and I was inspired to pursue the vision in clay but I was also using a new clay and I was a bit anxious how it would all turn out.

For some time, I had been wanting to try a higher firing clay body and so after much toing-and-foring, I choose a mid-range firing sculpture clay from Portland Pottery…that’s Portland, ME.  This new clay took me a while to get use to…It didn’t handle like the familiar terracotta clay but after a bit, I did feel we were beginning to dance together…but then my concern was how would the kiln firing  go with this higher cone clay in my kiln…gratefully, it fried beautifully…a bit more shrinking than I was used to but I was still quite pleased.  Plus it responded well to my acrylic coloring technique…so, a vision realized along with technical aplomb makes her a winner to me!

Flying With Soul’s Grace
Ceramic, and Acrylic
Height  16 ½ inches,  Width 11 ½ inches, Depth 13 inches

 “Flying With Soul’s Grace” is the second most high rated favorite…she is another nature being like “Reverie of the Woodland Nymph“, but of a decidedly different countenance.  For her, I feel that she is springing up from the grass to soar with the birds towards the sun and the Nymph’s quietude unfolds in the sweet shadows of forest trees and ferns.

Hope you’ll go take a peek at all of this…and vote too…it’s @  www.maine-art.com/choice