search for lost time

jars

2010-04-29T09:38:00.000-07:00

keeping

holding

waiting

when i was working on these i was thinking about representing potential-- jars are identified by what they hold and keep inside. and space. but they are also beautiful forms. and i like the way they relate to each other. so close but keeping their contents separate--like people.

p.s. these will be in a little show in a lovely little store in pasadena: Zinnia. the theme of the show is Kitchen.

p.p.s. the artist buddy/influence for these pieces is georgio morandi. he painted mostly monochromatic still lives of mundane objects, mostly containers. sometimes the same ones over and over in slightly different arrangements. focusing on form.

the way i feel about chairs

2009-06-12T09:01:00.001-07:00

"Furniture is our first sculptural encounter, after the body of the mother and slightly before the interior volumes of architecture."
Gord Peteran

chairs are anthropomorphic, human scale, can be sad or sexy, patient or unwelcoming. can show the imprint of time spent, ghosts of use. practical sculpture that can continue to be sculpted by interactions with life and sunlight, rain and waiting.

Bedroom portrait

2009-06-06T22:50:00.000-07:00

This is a painting of Alli and Zeke's bedroom. I want to do a series of these because for me the bedroom is the part of the house that i pay the least attention to. I think that this is the room that is the most personal, not just because we sleep there, have sex there, get dressed/undressed there; but because we hide there. It might be a space that two people share, but you don't really share it with lots of people as a rule. Its a refuge. I have the idea that the way people treat their bedrooms might say something about them. My bedroom is a mess. Eventually I will paint a picture of it.

Side note: Alli is the best. I told her about this idea and she got really excited and wanted me to paint her room so basically this is a collaboration. she took a beautiful polaroid that i used for the painting.

show at Regeneration

2007-10-31T15:04:00.000-07:00

its a "green" store selling recycled, sustainable, fair-trade gifts, clothing, etc. (i am partial to the shoes). it is located at 1649 colorado boulevard eagle rock, ca 90041 (for those of us who know the neighborhood, its next to fatty's and spitting distance from the chalet). www.shopregeneration.com
On November 10, from 7-9 PM, Kelly the proprietress of regeneration, the lovely Ayana, and i will be hosting a reception party for art veiwing and general hanging out. i will bake chocolate chip cookies. if anyone can come i will be really really happy. the show will be up until january 1 so go see it while you are christmas shopping.

found still lives

2007-10-31T14:37:00.000-07:00

andre breton wrote, " the image is the pure creation of the mind. it cannot be born from a comparison but from a juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities. the more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be-the greater its emotional power."

the juxtaposition of disparate objects and realities became one of the cornerstones of the surrealist aesthetic.
i have been photographing haphazard juxtapositions on the streets of l a and elsewhere for years. surrealism blends seamlessly back into realism when discarded objects carry with them some of their symbolic meanings into the trash heap.
i think the shoes in the sink picture is the best example of this, especially as it rests serenely free of plumbing next to a telephone pole.
the stilleto boot strung up on the gate chain is amazing on its own, without being painted. you will have to believe me that i found it that way and did not alter the scene.
the balanced chairs remind me of aging and tattered ballet dancers performing one last graceful lift, expressing a sad love at the end of their time.
these are oil paintings on chunks of beam that i found at a construction site near my house.
cubes approximately 5"x5"x5".

staircase

2007-10-29T14:20:00.000-07:00

"...as though all Combray had consisted of but two floors joined by a slender staircase, and as though there had been no time there but seven o'clock at night." Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past

ghosts

2007-10-29T13:48:00.000-07:00

"People go in search of ghosts whenever they return, after a long absence, to a place where they once lived." -Philip Roth

keys, collection project

2007-09-27T15:01:00.000-07:00

these drawings are about life size, key size. the keys are all for locks that don't exist anymore. or they just don't work, like the one that broke in half-- that one is for my car door which does still exist. the two car keys together are both for cars that are now totalled. one is for my old volvo, the one i had since i was 16 and got totalled a few years ago, the other one is from eleanor's saab which was known as herbie, someone ran into it while it was parked on the street. a lot of the keys are from dana's giant keyring. he had a lot of keys that had outlived their buildings, one for a cabin that was destroyed and a gate that was torn from its posts. weight of time and memory. sometimes we carry things around that we don't really need. we can't let them go because of what they mean, what they might still open.

small storm

2007-09-24T16:16:00.000-07:00

this piece reminds me of the warm lonely feeling that you get when you are all alone in the house looking out at a rainstorm. it also reminds me of kansas where i admit i have never been

new work: wedding wishes

2007-09-24T16:04:00.001-07:00

the background wrapping paper in this drawer comes from my great grandmother via my great uncle. it has cherubs and bells on it and reads "wedding wishes". this piece has a more obvious narrative or message than my others because of the tension between this message and the precarious stack of houses teetering in the middle of the field.

influences

2007-09-24T15:37:00.001-07:00

before i show you what i have been working on lately, i need to give credit where credit is due. there are three artists that i feel linked to through this work:

i have been obsessed on an off by gordon matta-clark ever since seeing slides of his work in a contemporary art class. he got famous cutting up abandoned houses. sometimes he literally cut them in half, or he cut the corners off or cut sections out to bring into the gallery. it gives me the shudders. cutting an old house seems as delicate and transgressive as cutting a cadaver. he plays with size-- houses are supposed to encompass and shelter a person, but pieces of a wall in a gallery are so personal, you can see every scratch every wrinkle every mark of time and use.

joseph cornell became my hero when i read a book called Dime Store Alchemy by charles simic. joseph cornell has been described as a "fellow traveller" of the surrealist movement. he juxtaposed bizarre objects, usually salvaged from the trash, to create eerie narative scenes usually in decrepit looking boxes. i love this guy.

recently i was in the lacma and i saw a painting that stopped me in my tracks. it was a large canvas with a small delicate pencil sketch of a house directly in the center. surrounding it was a field of industrial gray. it reminded me so much of my first drawer painting of the village. it was by an artist named joe goode. he did a few houses like this and the sense of isolation, desolation and exclusionary domesticity that i see in them resonates with me deeply. now that i have seen his paintings i am consciously working to do something different than what he did, but his houses are beautiful and i agree with them.

first drawer: a lonely town

2007-09-24T14:46:00.000-07:00

When i made this piece last year, i knew i was going somewhere good but i didn't know exactly where i was going. i think this piece tells a story, but not a specific one. for me it tells about a small forgotten town, not unlike the one i am trying to forget. in los angeles we have a lot of people shutting away small town memories in the top drawers of our imaginations. once again, like the previous pieces, and the subsequent ones, it is about traveling back and forth in time and memory. use and obsolescence and filling in your own blanks

so far

2007-09-21T14:53:00.001-07:00

i love how these pieces look together. they are colored pencil on gessoed wood (found) and are 48.5 x 13 inches each. the old tools show all the use, all the work they have done over the years. the people who used them left an imprint, a signature, a ghost of action on them, as did air and water and sunlight. the mannequin hands do reference the relationship between hands and tools when they are hung together... but they show decay and disuse, not proud functionality. they show old age and have lost some of their resemblance to the idealized human appendages they once represented. when a real woman's hands age, you begin to see what they are made of, the bones the tendons and veins. and as these romantic depictions of a woman's hands travelled through life they revealed their insides too-- it is kind of like particle board.

so far

2007-09-21T14:15:00.001-07:00

these are ink drawings on found and salvaged boards. the drawings are all discarded objects from the sidewalk, some drawn in situ and some without context. the large one in the middle is my favorite, the one with the drawers stacked on the chair. we brought home the drawers in a dresser as they are often found. josh took the drawers out for some reason and stacked them on that chair (another salvage piece from a different time). the smell rising from them was a warm woody earthy mildewy smell mixed with a light perfume. the smell transported me to my grandmother's house in london, visiting for the first time when i was eight. my grandmother has completely lost her memory now so any memory of her hits me particularly hard. the precariousness of the stack also reminds me of time and life and loss. so that picture is called Ruth.

just starting out

2006-10-16T11:51:00.000-07:00

i want to try this as a way to put my art into the world. I am so happy that people will be able to look at what i have been doing and maybe even talk to me about it. I also like the idea of my work being in people's homes, even just in the bathroom. anna_magnuson@yahoo.com