I participated in Artomatic in D.C. this year because I thought it would be fun. And it was. They had about a dozen floors; each floor was about ten thousand square feet. All filled with art! I was on the 12th floor adjacent to my friend Susie Sikorski. (A view of the National Cathedral and the Washington Monument from our huge windows.) We painted our walls and dragged in our paintings. (I do get so tired of lugging my paintings around, [thank you Dan for helping] aside from having buckets of money, that would be my favorite reason to be incredibly famous, to have someone to lug the paintings.) Had several friends with work there. This year was the usual sublime to the ridiculous. LOTS and lots and lots of crap. Some guy on our floor had two walls, one with six foot letters spelling "FUCK" and the other with six foot letters spelling "KILL." Lots of political art (images of Bush and Cheney) and anti-war art. There were a few things that were really good, definitely worth walking every floor to find the jewels among the, well, non-jewels. Went there for "Meet the Artists Night" many put out snacks and chatted up their work. We put out wonderful snacks and met a lot of artists, a lot of people met us and ate our food (the kids zoomed in and took pockets full of our delicious swedish IKEA cookies and Wegman olives). Who cares. The better the food the more the visitors to your art. Is it possible they're faking interest in the art to get closer to the food? No sales or inquiries but did get invitations to participate in two juried art fairs in D.C. They had a total of 52,000 visitors through this year, a record! (And 47 pieces stolen, and some sales.)
The dog painting is called "Max" and I put it in because it took up a lot of space and I liked the color against the fuschia wall. The figure is called "Redhead" and was in a juried show in California, a watercolor. The three-dimensional piece is called "Slip Sliding Away" (from the Paul Simon song) and I guess you could say it's autobiographical since the images are me, and I definitely feel like I'm slip sliding away much of the time.
One day Susie called me from Artomatic and told me there was a poem taped on the wall near the painting of Max; a wandering poet named Brash wrote a sweet poem about the painting, and a few weeks earlier he had written a piece about one of Susie's paintings. If I could remember where I put it I would put it here, but, alas, things are just slip sliding away.
Congrats Chris! Your pieces look great! How did you create the 3D one? Hope you find the poem. Would love to read it.
Posted by: Bonnie | July 15, 2008 at 01:52 PM
HI CHRIS. I REALLY LIKE THE DOG PAINTING. IS THAT MAX? THE 3D ONE IS VERY INTERESTING TOO. WHO IS IT?
Posted by: JUANITA | July 15, 2008 at 06:58 PM