Guests left this morning. Finished the last chapter of Seven Days in The Art World. Been second guessing my decision to stay home from Art Basel & work.... it would not be at all surprised to find myself packing bags at the last minute and driving down this week. But after several days of hosting, I am also anxious to get back into the studio.

A great article in the Miami Herald about the rise of FIU, the art department I taught at for ten years before moving here in 2006. My colleagues there were truly outstanding artists, and it is so exciting to see the department getting some of the recognition it deserves.

Art Basel.....
This is the first year I will not be attending Art Basel, and, I must admit, it is freaking me out. I just got an invite to the Death by Basel show, it looks to be a great show. I am dying to see the work, and if any of it relates to my painting of last year "Requiem.... for Wassily & The Ineffable". I considered an internet time out, not even reading about what is going on next week, but I know that I couldn't do it.

I am finally home from a multi-destination, 10 day road trip. I missed my puppy so much, I made them give Radley back to me, even though he was not dry from his bath after 10 days of boarding. Though I am in the middle of 3 new pieces, artmaking will likely not resume until Sunday, when my Thanksgiving guests depart. My friend Sarah has recently finished this amazing drawing:
and, a detail of the lower left corner....
"This Little Empress Has Built Her House Of Cards Upon A Quagmire"
graphite on Arches hot press watercolor paper
36 x 21 inches

Sarah is so talented, but is not much of a self-promoter. Someday a lucky curator is going to walk into her studio, flip through the dozens of pieces, and think that he/she has died and gone to heaven.

A NYT review of the Pipilotti Rist installation.

Meeting w/the Drawing Center on Wednesday went very well. Thursday went to the Museum of Art & Design to see the fabulous show, Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary, and the FIT Museum, where they have a great show on Gothic fashion. Today, I am in my hometown of Binghamton, NY, (also the hometown of Rod Serling and, I am ashamed to admit it, Randall Terry). Can't get out of here soon enough.

From The Trenches

Doing my thing in NY while being five months pregnant is kicking my butt. I am used to coming here with a daily agenda as long as my arm, leaving early in the a.m. and not coming back until late at night, walking all day. This trip, I am able to accomplish about a third of what I normally do, and I have to stop for more rests.

Yesterday, went to the always inspiring Folk Art Museum (highlight: Henry Darger show), and then got a real treat when I went to visit my cousin who works next door at MOMA. The museum is closed on Tuesdays, so I had the rare opportunity of seeing the night Van Gogh exhibit in an almost empty gallery. Have had the images on my brain since. I also got to take in the new Pipilotti Rist installation, which was GORGEOUS eye candy, chock full of disparate references.

Today, I plan to see the Catherine Opie Show at the Guggenheim, the Morandi show at the Met, and have my viewing program meeting at the Drawing Center. (those of you who have not yet done it should apply....). They are really interested in stretching the definition of “drawing”, so I have brought some fiber works (beyond just the hair embroideries, which already fit the criteria) that I hope will help them fulfill that noble purpose.

If You Know Anyone in the Netherlands....

Send them to the Van Gijn Museum in Dordrecht for the group exhibition I am in that opened this weekend: Forget Me Not: About Mourning & Remembering"

In NYC..... visiting this weekend, meeting with a realtor tomorrow to look at neighborhoods and see if we can afford to live here. Tues-Thursday looking at art, buying fabric, and seeing a few friends for meals. Meeting with The Drawing Center Weds afternoon.

In University Classrooms Everywhere......

So, the doorbell just rang, and it was the Fed Ex guy with a copy of a university textbook containing an image of "Blessed Art Thou" for discussion.... This is the first of three textbooks, all in different disciplines, that are using the image this year. This one is "Perspectives on Argument" by Nancy V. Wood, printed by Prentice Hall. (click to enlarge)

Recent Activity
Finishing the heart piece allowed me to set into motion a range of long-overdue activities. I put up a Flickr page highlighting work of the last 10 months. Then I put together an newsletter email (with a link to the Flickr page and a list of upcoming exhibitions) and mailed it to my mailing list. Over the weekend, I read almost all of Sarah Thornton's Seven Days in the Art World, and will finish it tonight and list it to sell used on amazon, as I often do with books I don't need to keep. The book did give some insights... I was particularly interested in reading about Murakami's studio, to get a different glimpse of how he uses assistants. There was a chapter on a CalArts critique that was frustrating to read, a day at Art Basel, a day at the auctions, etc. I am currently reading about a day at ArtForum. I would recommend the book, as it is a fast, engaging read, and provides lots of information about how the art world "works". Of course, we are already in a different art world now because of the recession, and while that knowledge dates some of the information in this recently published book, it also provides a sense of melancholy when reading, particularly if one missed the opportunity of riding the crest of that wave that is no longer.

Saturday, I got up at the crack of dawn and drove to Charlotte (almost two hours away) to attend an "Artist as Entrepreneur" seminar. It was a long day (9-6), then I had to drive back home, and this is just the first of three Saturdays in the seminar. Because I essentially used to teach this course at FIU, I would not normally sign up for a workshop like this. I have walked out of lots of events just like this one, because I am incapable of sitting still if I feel like I am wasting my time. But this was a very good seminar: each 1-1 1/2 hr module was taught by a different person in their own area of expertise, and they gave us lots to think about and provided some new, updated information. Because I am working on adding some high-end, limited edition pieces to my website, and because I am hiring assistants, I felt as if it was the right time to do a refresher course and reframe some aspects of my studio practice.

This week, the plan is to prep for NYC.... I am working on 1-2 final pieces that I hope to present at the Drawing Center, and (ugh!) unframing many drawings to put in my portfolio that will have to be reframed upon my return. As I have been embroidering in my den for the past month or so (cozier), I also need to get my studio back in shape so that I can prep for other human beings to be working in there.

"Heart Center", 2008, 21" round, hand dyed velvet, standard & 3D embroidery, batting, taffeta, convex glass, frame.

New Book
I haven't really addressed it here, but for about two months now I have been on a little "art world" hiatus. I have been reading art reviews and articles about artists, but staying away from most of the up-to-the-minute "art world" blogs I usually read (I guess I still did the occasional check-in with Ed Winkleman....). Avoiding reading about "the art world" (as opposed to reading about art) was a type of experiment to see if it affected my studio practice. It's hard to gauge how/if it affected my practice, as I seem to have replaced it with an obsessive following of the elections online. But I do realize that I really didn't MISS reading about the art market, art gossip, etc.

While slowly dipping my toe back into the water, I discovered that there is a new book I needed to order, :Seven Days In The Art World", written by Sarah Thornton, a sociologist. ArtWorld Salon interviews her here.

.... and then, once the heart was attached to the background, I realized that the left side of the background needed more visual weight, so there was a TINY BIT bit more embroidery to be done......

As much as I am a snotty elitist about most television programs, it appears that some good may come of them after all.......

If at First......

Yesterday afternoon was an exercise in frustration. The piece was sewn up in the back, but something was not quite right: the flesh colored embroidered piece on a the top right should have wrapped around a the top a bit more. (See yesterday's post.) So I cut the stitches I had just sewn on the back of the heart, and was going to just try to reposition the embroidery around the form, then I realized I would only be SURE it would work if I took apart the form (layers of batting sewn around foam core), shaved a bit off the foam core, then reassembled the form. (Also took this opportunity to photograph the back, which I had forgotten to do when completed.)
So that's what I did: resewed the form, repositioned and pinned the embroidery so all the edges were exactly where I wanted them, and resewed the embroidery.

Today we attach.