GoggleWorks Center for the Arts

I will have 3 silk sculptures at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts, in Reading PA
in the show VANITY FARE: Art inspired by Fashion.

May 4-June 3, 2012 | Cohen Gallery

Opening Reception: First Friday | May 4 | 5:30-7:30pm

Fashion has woven its way into the fabric of our culture. Following in the footsteps of Philadelphia Museum of Art´s Summer 2011 Roberto Capucci exhibit and the Metropolitan Museum of Art´s posthumous Alexander McQueen exhibit, GoggleWorks presents its 2012 juried exhibition VANITY FARE: ART Inspired by FASHION. This show features 80+ works by more than 40 artists and includes painting, sculpture, fiber art, couture, decor and installations.

Jurors: Lyn Godley, pioneer in transforming fine art
designs into everyday products, and Pam Ptak of
Season 7 of Project Runway.

My friend Marilyn Mitchell will be joining me with her beautiful sculptural piece pictured here.

Natural Rhythm

FiberPhiladelphia

FiberPhiladelphia 2012 is an international biennial and regional festival that celebrates textile and fiber arts. The opening was on Saturday and I was kicking myself that I didn't bring my camera. The show is outstanding. I was unsuccessful in grabbing photos from the website so you'll have to follow the link and see for yourself Outside/Inside the Box

My husband snapped this picture of my daughter and her friend standing next to my piece.

Sea Foam, silk and dye

If you're local it's worth seeing in person. Pictures can be deceiving some things I thought were large are actually small and others are surprisingly large and commanding. I think there's something for everyone to love in this show. Fiber art is alive and kicking and it's not your Grandma's knitting.


If you go don't miss stopping in on Warren and R.J. at bahdeebahdu a working studio for design and the development of art, sculpture and furnishings at 1522 N. American St. I featured on my blog here. You will find beautiful art, beautiful furnishings, and amazing trash to treasure light fixtures and sculptures. It's only a block away from the Crane Arts Building.

Fine Art Accessories

These are some of the my accessories that are featured at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts in the Alternatives Shop through the month of March.

Silk and Wool Bracelets, Silk, Wool and Glass Pendant

Silk, Wool and Glass Pendant, Painted Canvas, Silk and Feather Pendant

Medium Silk Bubble Neckpiece

Small Silk Bubble Neckpiece

Raindrops

It's Spring which means rain, rain, rain. I've been working on my silk raindrops and have 8 finished.

I hope I can at least double the number of raindrops in time for my July show in the Mezzanine Gallery, Wilmington, DE. I still have to figure out the logistics of hanging them but I have some ideas.

Rain is good for the trees and this beautiful magnolia tree provided gorgeous spring color to brighten the past few days.

This tree is right in my front yard and smells good too.

Happy Spring!

Art on the Town Opening

I will be at the Buzz Ware Village Center in Arden, DE for the April 1st, Art on the Town opening. If you're a local friend, you are invited to stop by. I am planning to show a sampling of works in different mediums. Here's what I wrote for the brochure, so now I must deliver.

"Linda Celestian’s work although abstract is unmistakably inspired by nature. She explores many mediums and has chosen to show works in colored inks, oil paint, encaustic and fiber next to each other the way you might find them in her studio. Come out to meet her and learn how working in more than one medium aids in her to ability to express her feelings about the beauty of nature."

The work I posted paired together for the Duets show application inspired the idea for this show. I might even get some of my photos printed to have on hand. The idea is to present some work together that I'll probably never show together in a gallery setting but will highlight how I work. A photograph taken on vacation might inspire a painting which in turn inspires a sculpture, which inspires me to photograph something I find in nature that reminds me of the painting and so on. In the end it's hard to tell what came first and doesn't even matter. It's easy to see that it all came from me or so I think.

Here's a video interview done by my friend David Nordheimer at the installation of my February show, I'm talking about my inspiration and my technique in oil paint. It's preceded by an infomercial about Wilmington's Art on the Town:

Silk Organza Soft Sculpture

Linda Hutchins is an artist that makes beautiful hand sewn organza sculptures.

Memory of the Dance

Cord

Egg, Cup, Hammer

Jade Plant

Here's an excerpt from her website: Over time, I have distilled my materials and methods to a spare, minimal aesthetic. I use hand-sewn organza to explore the effects of cumulative process in three dimensions. I use hand-drawn line as a basic element to reveal the nature of repetition itself. Dualities between full and empty, convex and concave, right and left, and sensual and cerebral have surfaced as a result. Line is the device that recurs throughout. It is a connector, a separator, a marker of boundaries, a spiraling circularity, and a thread that prevails.

Although her thought process is different from mine I admire the patience that goes into her work. This is a piece I made over a year ago that I'm in the process of trying to duplicate. Every step in the making of it has to be approached slowly and methodically. The process is very meditative, which is nice.

Rain Drop

There's one week left to catch my show Waterways at the DCCA in Wilmington.

Duets Dilemma

I've been trying to choose a duet for my application for the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts, Annual Members' Juried Exhibition: Duets

The call for entry reads:
Artists are invited to submit paired works of art in order to create duets. The two works by each artist may be in any media. One work may be a video, and the other a painting—or a photo and an etching—or both may be sculptures, or textiles, or drawings, or whatever else is appropriate. The two works may be serial (think Monet’s haystacks) or completely unrelated. Here, the artist acts as a curator of his or her own work. By pairing works in duets, the artist has the opportunity to call greater attention to an aspect of his or her practice, or an element of the work, such as color, scale, subject, medium, and so on. The exhibition that will result from the submissions will be an exhibition of duets. Some works may harmonize, others may offer a radical or unexpected juxtaposition. In all instances, the hope is that the presentation of works in pairs by individual artists will offer the viewer a focused and dynamic engagement with the work. Please do not title the duet. Each work should have its own title and the viewer will make the connection between the two works visually.

I have a lot of options but found out I can only submit one. Here's a few I'm considering.

Duet #1

Bottom of the Ocean, oil on canvas, 48 x 46 inches, and Bubbles, 12 x 12 x 5 inches, silk, dye and nylon thread

Duet #2

Golden, Oil on canvas, 48 x 46 inches, and Sickening, Ink on Paper, 5 x 5 inches

Duet #3

Surf, Encaustic on Board, 9 x 12 inches, and Froth, Silk and dye, 7 x 12 inches

Duet #4

Feeling Blue, Ink on paper, 7 x 11 inches, and Go With the Flow, Silk, dye, wool and nylon thread, 15 x 17 inches

Duet #5.

Ocean View, Silk, wool, dye and nylon thread, 5 x 7 inches and Ocean, Ink on paper, 7 x 11 inches

These are only some of my choices, so you can see my dilemma. How am I suppose to chose just one? Comments welcome.

Beili Liu

Beili Liu is an amazing artist working in installation and 2D art. I'm struggling right now to find the balance between these two areas of my own work so I find her to be an inspiration. I found her featured on Christine Mauersberger's blog.

Here's a few of her impressive works and excerpts from her website.

Ailment

In Chinese tradition, spirit money is burnt for ancestors and spirits in the after world as an offering. Aliment is made from approximately 5000 sheets of Chinese spirit money, each folded in half, and tightly spiraled into a solid wheel. On one side, the rich and warm texture shimmers of silver and gold, on the other side, dense layers of paper edges are charred black. The partial burning, transforms the piece into a symbolic gateway, one side facing the present, the other side bridging to the afterworld.

Yun Yan

“Yun Yan” stands for “cloud and smoke” in Chinese, and refers to things temporal and fleeting in life. Each mark is drawn using a stick of burning incense lightly brushing onto the surface of the rice paper.

Void

Each of the 49 layers of silk organza holds a delicate ring drawn with a burning incense. Each ring reduces in size until it recedes to a small circle. Through the void of the layering black silk, the spectator is drawn to a subtle hint of light at the end of the portal.

Lure/Rise

"The ancient Chinese legend of the red thread tells that when children are born, invisible red threads connect them to the ones whom they are fated to be with. Over the years of their lives they come closer and eventurally find each other, overcoming the distance between, and cultural and social divides.

Red Thread Legend Series is a group of installations inspired by this tale. Lure/Forest is the first project of the series.

The installation makes use of thousands of hand spiraled coils of red thread suspended from the ceiling of the gallery. Each disk is connected to another, as a “couple”, and each pair is made from a single thread. Every coil is pierced in the center by a sewing needle, which enables the suspension of the disks a few inches from the ground. Subtle air currents set the red disks swaying and turning slowly as the loose strands of thread on the floor drift and become entangled.

Here's a video interview with her that I enjoyed and wanted to share. Happy New Year.

Crash, Hush... Exhibition

There's still time to see my new work in person at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts. The show continues through June 27th in the Elizabeth Denison Hatch Gallery. Here's an installation shot taken by my talented friend Carson Zullinger, an amazing photographer.

There's a favorable review of the show on The Hunt Magazine website.

I experienced the post show blues for a few days after the opening. This is a completely normal let down after the final push of installing a show and everything that goes into promoting it. Even though I should expect this mood swing, it was difficult especially with everything else I had going on with my kids. I cleaned my studio for the opening so I took a few photos before it inevitable returns to it's normal chaotic, working state. "Where did I put the hammer I was just using?"

Inspiration, fiber work and encaustic paintings.

Fiber pieces, encaustic paintings and silk remnants.

I've accomplished quite a bit since September and should feel proud of it but I'm never comfortable to sit back and relax. On Sunday I experienced some severe nerve pain in my neck that sent me to the urgent care medical center. I guess that was my body saying "slow down". I'm busy ordering supplies and planning projects for my summer job as an art director at a camp that starts on Saturday. Meanwhile I'm still plotting how to get one more painting finished before my summer deadlines. I guess "slow down" just isn't in my vocabulary.

Upcoming Show

It's June and I'm installing my show with Kyle Ripp tomorrow in the Elizabeth Denison Hatch Gallery, at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts. Here's a teaser.

I went back and forth on whether I should paint the wall blue behind it.

I have decided to install it and then decide but I think I'm NOT going to paint the wall. I want it to be viewed from as many angles as the space allows and not just from head on.

I will know when I get it installed whether I've made the right choice. Since this is my first time showing sculpture in a gallery it's been really hard to visualize it. I'm also working on a sound component which will be available for listening on a personal player with headphones, another first for me.


Here is a detail from the painting also included in the show.

Title: "Crash, Hush..." 48 x 92 inches (diptych).

The opening is this Friday, June 4th, 5:30 - 9 pm. I'll be giving an artist's talk starting with the piece I have included in the member's show NEW juried by Roberta Fallon and ending in the Hatch Gallery. The talk will be sometime between 6:30 and 7:00.

Silk Sculpture Progress

I've been working on a silk sculpture for my June show in the Elizabeth Denison Hatch Gallery at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts in Wilmington, DE. It's coming along. I'm planning to show this with a new large diptych oil painting.

I thought I'd show you what goes into making this piece. I start with silk organza and nuno felt it with off white wool. Here I'm laying out the wool.

Here I'm drizzling warm soaping water over it until it's soaked.

It's a little hard to see white on white so I also photographed the same process with turquoise wool.

Next I cover it with another layer of bubble wrap and roll it up.

I wrap it in a towel and roll it back and forth.

Then I unroll it and rub my hands over the back of the silk further working the wool fibers through the silk. In this part of the process I can actually see the wool fibers coming through to the back of the silk.

After that comes the fun part, I rinse the soap out and throw it on the table with force at least 200 times. It's called felling and it shrinks and compacts the wool which in turn makes the silk crinkle.

It's time to dye it in a puddle of dye and let it dry untouched for a few days. Here it is dry.

I have to steam it before I cut out the pieces.

Here's a stack of the pieces ready to be sewn together.

I've sewn them together, put wire in the seams and hung them up in my studio.

I'm working on color and composition issues but in 3 dimensions, instead of 2 which is a whole different ballgame. I'm trying to find the balance between too much, and too little. Then, there's the whole logistical issue of how to hang it.

Here I played around with adding the bubble silk to it. I'm going to make some pieces with smaller bubbles in a lighter color. I have a lot of work left to do! If you're in the Wilmington area I'll have my studio open this Friday from 5-9 pm at the DCCA.