Silicon Valley Open Studios will take place during the first three weekends of May. All sites open 11 a.m. till 5 p.m.

Visit me at the following locations to see new small art (4″ x 6″), tiny miniatures, and bigger pieces:

May 1 – 2, Site 179
5 other artists are showing at this location: Janki Chokshi, Iona Ezaki, Belinda Lima, Slava Shabrov, and Nina Uppaluru.
21471 Columbus Avenue, Cupertino, CA 95014-4972

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May 8 – 9, Site 364
4 other artists are showing at this location: Amanda Krauss, Sally Rayn, Slava Shabrov, Nance Wheeler
16060 Skyline Blvd, Woodside, CA 94062-4420

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May 15 – 16, Site 440
4 other artists are showing at this location: April Maiten, Angela Sanders, Scott Schilling, Slava Shabrov
23442 Toyonita Road, Los Altos Hills, CA 94024

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Pacific Art League holds the juried competition and exhibition, In the Garden. Fortitude was juried in and is on display on the 1st floor at PAL from April 2 till April 29.

Fortitude
colored pencil on drawing paper, 9" x 6"

Dates: April 2-29, 2010
Hours: Monday – Friday: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Address: 668 Ramona Street, Palo Alto, CA 94301

The Instant Art Critique Phrase Generator creates hilarious art comments based on as little as 5 random digits. The result can be only compared to creative alternatives of “Lorem Ipsum” text that I use to fill web pages before the client provides real content. Maybe I will use this generator for a web site that has nothing to do with art, just to see the client’s reaction Just look what it can give you:

“I find this work menacing/playful because of the way the optical suggestions of the spatial relationships contextualize the substructure of critical thinking.”

“Umm… the sublime beauty of the negative space threatens to penetrate the distinctive formal juxtapositions.”

“I agree/disagree with some of the things that have just been said, but the reductive quality of the facture seems very disturbing in light of the larger carcass.”

It just begs to be quietly slipped into some serious context!

I am partial to black and white photography in general, and can drop everything to go see more of it when it’s really good. Ragnar Axelsson’s photographs easily fit into the “really good” category. So many wonderful photos!

Someone mentioned Ragnar’s work to me and shared a link to his gallery. It turned out to be a whole world of images like no others. Just look at these stunning photographs!

Sadly, the web site had almost no information on the photographer himself, and it took some googling to learn about the man behind the camera:

PhotoBards.com – interview with Ragnar Axelsson
Showcase: Black and Very White

4″ x 6″, colored pencil *SOLD*

4″ x 6″, graphite pencil

3.5″ x 2.5″, colored pencil on canvas

I really like working that tiny. The stretched canvas make it easy to draw anywhere, without any support. A canvas and a few pencils fit into my smallest purse, and apparently a grip of a shopping cart is good enough to rest the canvas on when you stand in a long line (Costco has no equivalents of a “3 is a crowd” rule, and sometimes it can be a long wait). Drawing to the rescue.

“Out of the Dark” will be on display at the Cupertino Library. The heme of the show is “Graduations.” It has been created in cooperation with the Fine Arts League of Cupertino and sponsored by the Cupertino Library Foundation.

Out of the Dark
oil pastel on colored paper, 9″ x 12″

Dates: April 1, 2010 – June 20, 2010.
Hours: Mon. – Thurs. 01:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., Fri. – Sun. 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Address: 10800 Torre Avenue, Cupertino, California, 95014-3254

Following up on my initial idea of trying colored pencils on a canvas, I bought a pack of 5 2.5″ x 3.5″ primed canvases in Aaron Brothers and started with the first canvas the same day. It’s a remarkable thing for me; usually it takes days, if not weeks, to progress from an idea to something material. Here is the result:

It’s doable! And I like the effect that the rough support gives to the drawing. It reminds me of heavy cold pressed watercolor paper. Just like with that paper, canvas is lead hungry. It gobbles up serious amounts of colored pencil in no time at all, and I had to sharpen pencils more often than with most types of paper. On a positive side, a canvas leaves more room for mixing colors. A few things that I didn’t like I was able to scratch off with a fingernail and cover with new layers. No ill effects of doing so; the canvas does not seem to wear out at all.

I still need to get a better grasp of the whole thing, but when i am through this pack of canvases I think I will move to a bigger size. My first ides that never came to fruition was to wrap cold pressed watercolor paper around the stretcher. I even bought the small stretcher, and that was it. Wetting the paper, stretching it, drying it, seeing if drawing on that was plausible, and dealing with a possible fail was too much trouble. I wonder why I didn’t think of the canvas back then.

Speaking of the packs: not a single one in the store had 5 more or less rectangular canvases. A common case was 2-3 arbitrary quadrangles per pack that just look bad, so ordering online is not an option. I do want to continue with these tiny drawings.