Sneak Peek

New Christmas ornaments for 2012 in progress. This year each one will be hand-painted and coated in resin.

Look for them in the etsy shop next week.

Last-Quarter Plans

Wow, we’re already most of the way through 2012. Astonishingly, I only have two more shows this year. But, like Tim Tebow, I've saved some of my best stuff for the final quarter. So if you want to see my work IRL, try to make it to one of these:

October 14        MPAArtfest – this is a new one for me, a really nice fine art show put on by the McLean Project for the Arts. I decided to go with just abstract and science art for this one. Coffee cups and cats can wait for another day.

December 7-11         Downtown Holiday Market – I’ll be spending five days in front of the National Portrait Gallery as part of this wonderful downtown DC shopping experience. You should really come, and go to the museum at the same time, and bring me a coffee. I’ll remind you.

In the meantime, I’ll be hard at work creating new stuff for my etsy shop, including paintings, Christmas ornaments and (if all goes well, fingers crossed) some new scarf designs in time for the holidays. Stay tuned.

BTW, I painted this yesterday: Nice, huh? I’ll be bringing it with me to McLean, unless someone buys it before Sunday....

Serious Stuff

Onward and upward with Artologica! Even though I am ridiculously old to be doing a lot of things for the first time, it’s better than never doing them at all. So I’m delighted to tell you about two pieces of news. First (the first first? Oh dear), I’ll be co-moderating a session at the ScienceOnline Conference in January with Dr. Cedar Riener. We’ll be talking about visual metaphors in science communication. Sounds pretty serious, huh? I’m practicing this face:

ScienceOnline is just about the best thing ever. I went last year and I met so many great people and learned so much, I am delighted to be part of the official program this year. If you’ve never heard of it, go have a look at the website.

The "second first" is one I told you about earlier, but now it’s actually happened. The novel with my painting on it arrived! There I am in print on the cover of James Meek’s book The Heart Broke In. I’ll be blogging about the book itself soon. It releases on October 2nd, so you can all go down to Barnes & Noble and take pictures of it and tweet them to me. Or buy the book - James would probably appreciate that more ; ) 

Caught in a Bad Translation

On my trip to storage the other day, I found another piece of my past. This is a painting I did many years ago, probably around 2003. It's another watercolor grid, this time with a deeply romantic stanza from the Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov.

Way back in the day, I studied Russian and lived in Moscow for a few years. But now my Russian is fairly rusty, and I wanted to make sure I wasn't too far off in telling you what this painting said. I couldn't find an English translation online, so I ran it through Google translate. Well, as they say in Moscow, kha, kha, kha!

Here's the original Russian:

Одной тобою жил поэт,

Скрываючи в груди мятежной

Страданья многих, многих лет,

Свои мечты, твой образ нежный.

(Up to here is what's actually on the painting)

На зло враждующей судьбе

Имел он лишь одно в пре‹д›мете:

Всю душу посвятить тебе,

И больше никому на свете!..

Here's my rough translation

For you alone the poet lived,

Concealing in his turbulent breast

The sufferings of many, many years, 

His dreams, and your sweet image.

In strife-riven, evil fate,

He had only one subject,

To devote to you his whole soul

And to no one else on earth.

We get the picture. The guy was seriously smitten, and the lady didn't want to know. Here's what Google translate gave me:

One thee poet lived,

Skryvayuchi chest rebel

The suffering of many, many years,

Your dreams, your way of tender.

For evil warring fate

He had only one thing in the pre <x> Weather forecast:

Devote his whole soul to you,

And nobody else in the world! 

Now, to be fair. To be fair, there is some old-fashioned wording in there. The poem was written in 1830. I have no idea why one letter in the word predmet (subject) is in brackets, which obviously threw off the algorithm. But how's that for modern romance?  Poor old Skryvayuchi chest rebel had only one thing in the pre <x> Weather forecast. Oh baby, y u no share ur way of tender?  No wonder he died young of a broken heart. 

The Great Science Art Giveaway - Day 5

Congrats to @SciTriGrrl!

Last one is an Artologica classic in bright colors. Find it at my shop and buy it for 50 cents.

Politics and Art the Artologica Way

Back before I started painting dividing cells, I painted - other stuff. Mostly abstract watercolors, often in the same kind of grid patterns that I still use. I'm pretty sure that many people suspected my paintings were about nothing, like Seinfeld.  I like to keep my message subtle. I usually don't like art that whacks me over the head with its politics, so I usually don't make it. Here's a little look behind the curtain at some older pieces and what they have to say.

Blue Code 7, 2008

I made a whole series of blue paintings during the run-up to the 2008 election. I was interested in the various symbolic meanings of blue (true blue, blue chip, blue ribbon, etc), especially the idea of "blue states". Blue states, aesthetically speaking , are much calmer and deeper than angry, hot red states. (Of course I would think that because, despite having grown up in Indiana, a became a godless East coast librul.) The scribbles in masking fluid are my thoughts about the primary battle between Obama and Hillary Clinton. I was conflicted. You can read them if you try really hard.

Ballooniverse Too, 2009

After the stock market and housing market crashed, I started obsessively drawing bubbles. Partly it was a very direct (unoriginal?) response to the bursting of the economic bubble. I also painted a lot of floating zeroes, expressing my inability to fathom the gigantic amounts of theoretical wealth that simply "floated away" as housing values and stock market prices crashed.  Interestingly, despite the cheerful, pretty surface of these pieces, nobody really likes them, and I have hardly sold any. Either people just prefer my work in squares or they can detect the influence of the dismal science lurking beneath.

Down with Bush, 2005

This has been sitting in a drawer in my studio (aka dining room) for seven years. I painted three of these, to commemorate the second inaugural of George W. Bush on January 20, 2005. One I gave away to a like-minded friend, one I sold to a drunk person at a festival, and this one I kept. They all feature symbols such as equal signs, question marks and fish. The text, in Russian, says Долой Буша - "Down with Bush". It is unsubtle. That's OK too.

The Great Art Science Giveaway, Day 4

Congrats to RLD! Enjoy your scarf : )

Today's giveaway is soft, if you can wrap your mind around that. Go find it at my shop and it's yours for 50 cents plus shipping.