I hope your Friday is shaping up to something fabu and you're ready for your weekend. I'll be heading to Renegade Craft Fair this weekend, I am so excited to see all the booty. I'll post pics next week of what I get up to and see at the fair. I know posting has been pretty non-existant this week but along with Renegade pics I'll be posting a bunch of other really great and inspiring posts come Monday. Stay tuned!
To get us a little amped for Renegade, Lisa Congdon shares with us a few snaps of what's in store for us in her booth. She'll have original art, screen prints, digital prints of different sixes, notecards, journals, magnets, necklaces, wallets and paper weights! Be sure to say hello to Lisa she'll be in booth #19. And perhaps I'll see you there! ;)
Marissa Textor sent over images of her beautiful, graphite drawings. Looking to natural phenomena for inspiration, Marissa calls out things that are often right before our very eyes in her photo-realist work. Both she and Even Nesbit will be showing new work in Strange and Constant, which opens tonight at Park Life and runs through August 30.
Contributor Jillian Mackintosh (and co-owner of Gallery Hijinks) sits down with fellas Mark Warren Jacques and Seth Neefus to chat with them about their collaborative project that opens tonight at Gallery Hijinks. - meighan
For more information on Free Life Center or the events happening this weekend, visit galleryhijinks.com.
As the week comes to an end, the Free Life Center gears up for a fun filled weekend of art, music and raging good times at Gallery Hijinks. Since May, Mark Warren Jacques and Seth Neefus have been touring the west coast with their traveling art exhibit, inspiring health, happiness and the creative life. We got to talking with these two artists, check out what they have to say.- Jillian
Most of the
people who are reading this interview probably have no idea about The Free Life
Center; how do you usually describe it?
Mark Warren
Jacques- It seems easiest to describe the project as a movable gallery space,
built of reclaimed materials, in a modular fashion. At its full size the
structure is a pretty large free standing building (10 ft wide x 16 ft long x
10ft tall), complete with lighting, a tin roof and a wood floor. Since we
designed the building to come apart in sections, we have the option to vary the
size of the installation to fit the environment it is housed within. We've also
built the structure in manageable pieces to allow us to travel, which is
exactly what we've been doing this summer, an art tour. At each location along
the journey we've been setting up the structure and filling it with our artworks,
video works, process documentation, interactive installation elements, music,
good vibes. Along with our own artworks we've asked members of each local
community to join in. We've had a ton of friends play music, dance, draw, jam,
sleep, eat, and hang with us in and around the installation... So yeah,
installation, art, video, music, art tour, curating guest performance,
performing, documentation, its all a part of this big project.
What is does the
“free life” really mean?
Seth Neefus - It
is in the mind, just follow whatever speaks to you inside, and see where it
takes you.
Are you really
living the free life?
sn + mwj - yes
What do you hope
to accomplish with the free life center during the tour and even after?
sn-To share an
experience of art, music and good people, the Free Life Center is not a
permanent place or thing, it is a chance to explore what we have created and
are willing to share with everyone we meet. We hope to inspire artists and
communities to take a journey and experience what they enjoy to the fullest.
Whether they hit the road or take on a new perspective, if we inspire, we are
stoked.
mwj- Honestly I
feel like we have already accomplished the initial goals of actually doing it,
building it, making art, working together, working with others, and taking it
on tour. People’s reactions have been amazing, inspired and in turn inspiring.
How long does it
take for you to build up the structure it’s self and install the show inside?
sn - The
installation is built so that we can set it up and take it down in a matter of
hours. Typically its taken us 3 - 5 hours for set up and a bit less for
takedown.
mwj - we're
getting pretty buff this summer, that was high on the list of priorities for
the project too.
How much of the
tour and your performances are influenced by the time spent living in Portland,
OR?
mwj - all of
life is inspiration in one way or another.
What’s your
favorite part of PDX?
sn - There is
room to grow.
mwj - Good
people, cheap beer, cheap rent, the beautiful Sandy River, Mt. Hood, it’s not
SF.
What’s your
favorite part of SF?
mwj - Sunshine,
the grime, crazy people, tons of wild energy, its not Portland
What are you
really excited about right now?
sn - This moment.
When are you the
most productive?
sn - In the
woods.
mwj - All the
time. Specifically after or during coffee, which is pretty much all the time.
Not only is the
FLC an artistic venture, it involves many types of musical performances. What
kind of music have you been listening to on the road?
mwj - We are
practicing zen driving methods, ha.
A little bird
told me that you drink a lot of 40 oz beers, what brand is your favorite and
why?
sn - That is not
entirely true, but I do like miller high life in a 40oz.
Have you run
into any particularly strange or comical experiences while on your epic road
trip thus far?
mwj - When we
where in Vancouver B.C. we stayed up all night with some friends and ended up
on a beach in the downtown area watching the sun rise and sparkle on the water.
This super old Chinese lady somehow crept up on us wearing a red jogging suit
and white plastic bags on her feet. She was walking so slow, one foot in front
of the other in the sand, that no one really heard her coming. As she passed no
more than five feet in front of us, everyone took notice and a strange and
beautiful silence fell over us, the beach, and the morning city air. In slow
motion, one foot in front of the other, the old lady performed her patient
dance right on past us, the glittering water acting as her silver stage
curtain. Strange, comical, beautiful, like life is. "Good morning"
she finally said as she crept toward her day.
If you were
limited to 5 tools of the trade in your line up, which would they be and why?
sn - Graphite
pencil, paint brush, watercolors, color pencils, pencil sharpener. They are
fun.
mwj - Paint, a
tiny brush, a good woman, some beer, and nice weather.
If you were to
die and be reborn as another animal, what would it be?
sn - a deer
mwj - seth
The opening
reception for the Free life Center is on Friday the 23rd of July from 7-10 pm,
as well as musical performances the night after on Saturday the 24th, from
6-9pm. Check out this sweet time lapse of the Free Life Center's erection as well as postcards for the Free Life Center and photography exhibit
happening in the back.
Charmaine Oliviahas been hard at work for the upcoming group show at Gallery Hijinks, here in SF. I asked Charmaine to share with us some process pics of her latest piece Nautica. It's a bit larger than what she normally works with at 24" x 30" and it's combo of oil, watercolor pencil & ink on wood as she explains below. I was really drawn to the tattooing and overall beauty of it. The text in this piece originally appears on Charmaine's blog, you can read the full unedited/moved about post there. ;) Like I always encourage in Process/Inspiration posts please feel free to ask Charmaine any questions in the comment section.- meighan
The longest part for me [about the process of a piece] is the conceptualizing. I spend a lot of time on the computer sketching in Photoshop, playing with colors and themes. Since I work from photo references I generally draw on top of the photos so I can change the hairstyles, clothing (or no clothing), etc. Once I feel good about the image I'll start sketching it on the wood. Even though my paintings are highly planned out, I leave a lot of room for changes and improvising.
After I'm happy with the pencil sketch, I start with the skin. I guess you could consider my technique more like "finger painting". I like to blend the colors together with my fingers, I find it's a much smoother result than using a brush. (My flesh color palette consists of Yellow Ochre, Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Umber, Titanium White and Ultramarine Blue.)
The tattoos are predominately black watercolor pencil. I know, water and oil don't mix, but somehow the pencil works great on top of the oil paint (once it has dried a little bit). To get the color hues, I mix a lot of paint thinner with the oil so it's nice and transparent. I suppose some linseed oil would work too. If I feel like it needs more definition then I'll go in with my ink to get some darker lines. The mermaid tattoo is inspired by art nouveau designs. The quote says "fair
winds and following seas", which is a traditional mariner's phrase,
it's like a farewell/blessing. It gives me chills a little bit.
Once I am satisfied with the skin, I start the hair (my favorite part). I start by blocking in most of the color and shape with flat black oil paint. Once the black dries a bit, I bust out my India ink and draw in individual strands, just to give it more life.
For the blue halo, I was in a bit of a predicament. I felt like it really needed it and I wasn't going to be happy if it wasn't there, but it's difficult to get a smooth and even color when painting with thinned-down paint directly on the wood, as it soaks in so quickly. Then I found an old bottle of Bleached Linseed Oil buried in the depths of my art drawers. It adds a nice gloss and transparency to the oil, which made it really easy to use directly on the wood. It's also thin enough where I could paint directly on top of the hair to get the blue behind it.
Gaia blew through San Francisco in May for his show at Heist Gallery. Never one to be shy, Gaia spread his pieces all over the city. It was exciting to see a Gaia piece suddenly appear on my walk up 6th street to Mission for coffee. Notoriously a hectic environment, and when I say hectic I mean crack, squalor and over all unbelievable depths in which the human psyche can sink to everywhere you look, despite the city's attempt at a 'beautification' program. But to be greeted by this piece, still groggy and ducking panhandlers trying to make your way to get coffee was a nice change of pace.
I wonder if the folks in Seoul, South Korea felt the same about Gaia's latest domination. Gaia recently spent time in there through an exchange program. He hit 4 parts of the city, dipping into Korean folklore, religion and his own perception of the state of the nation within his latest paste-ups. Each piece has an accompanying video with an explanation behind Gaia's inspiration. Check em out on Gaia's vimeo page. They're all pretty diverse and beautiful. I can't decide which is my fave. Can you?
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