OK – it’s been over a week now and I really should have had this post up long ago but I’ve been suffering from an art hangover like you wouldn’t believe (unless of course, you were at the party)!
In fact, this is what the inside of my brain looks like now – a cacophony of pattern, lights and color like this giant kaleidoscope by Ned Greene!
Or this detail from Emanuela Harris-Sintamarian’s gouache Die Gesteze der Stukturen!
And here are the synapses of my grey matter firing in pops of dreamy florasl and dandelion puffs of exploding fractals seen here in Carrie Lederer’s Clear Night!
The computer of my mind is overloaded and is threatening to crash (detail from Karen Gutfruend’s CTRT ALT DEL)!
And my dreams are haunted by a blind white rabbit, thank you Tulio Flores and Asiel Design….so here we go – one more trip down the rabbit hole before I move on!
First of all I’d like to thank everyone who made it out to see my Florilegia and shared with me their response to the work – this input is simply invaluable to an artist and means do much! Thank you , thank you , thank you!
And then there were the visitors who seemed like they were exertions of my paintings!
So Fabulous!
And then there were my art crushes…..like this discarded cigarette packaging piece by Robert Larson. He was able to take something dirty and disgusting and transform it into something sublime! I smelled it too – not a hint of nicotine or anything else. Pure alcmemy!
I also adored this woman’s torso fashioned from safety pins, Lacey by Bob Marzewski, like little stars or snowflakes tenuously welded together.
Lorraine Lawson’s missed media paintings, Bob Marzeweski’s torsos and Tessie Barrera-Scharaga’s Matrix of Chaos, an installation piece of multiple images of the Virgin and kneeling benches.
So easy to get lost wandering through the maze of galleries – at least if you’re doing it right.
Kristin Lindseth’s prints.
Gianfranco Paolozzi’s Journal, enamel, robber paint, glue on recycled role of paper.
Will Marino’s Paradigm Shift , wound and folded paper
Patrick Hofmeister’s Aware.
Malia Landis’s IIiima in Kiawe.
Marianne Lettieri’s Memory Bank.
Lynn Dao’s Domestic Apocalypse
Love the simplicity of this delicate bowl against a simple grey background in this oil painting by Deborah Trilling.
John Hylton’s Moon Watcher, canvas, paint wood.
Monica Van den Dool’s Behold in front of Emanuela Harris-Sintamarian’s gouache Die Gesteze der Stukturen.
Wesley T. Wright – California Coyote – Stoneware, underglaze, glaze, concrete, steel in front of Nanette Wylde’s monoprints.
It was such a delight to meet Natalia Bertotti and Michael Garlington who collaborate on intensely dark, curious and magical images that somehow tap into some cultural core of ours – Grimm’s American fairytale crossed with something ripped out of the headlines of an old newspaper – or rather the stories that was never fit to print or maybe a precursor to a circus side show. They photographed Susan Sarandon in amazing paper dresses here’s a link to this process.
Love the flask action!
I’m not even sure what I’m looking at here, but it feels like a pierced and leaking Padora’s Box emptying out into a sea of melting glaciers – a big old barrel of global warming by Briget Henry with Ann Altstatt. Feel free to go with another interpretation!
Grant Wells’s Ocean Structure 1, pigment transfer on canvas.
Tim Craighead’s oil and alkyd on linen, Without Constantini.
Adon Vaneziano’s sculptures.
Brian Taylor’s Changing Nature, photography.
Dotti Cichon with her installation she collaborated on with Jamila Rufaro.
Pantea Karimi and her paper vovelles.
With Lorraine Lawson and her mixed media paintings.
Sara Cole’s Forgotten Women 2 , acrylic, graphite, gesso on paper.
Oleg Lobykin’s bronze Flex Cube.
Ann Sconberg’s photography,Thirteen One and Two.
Quinn Peck’s archival ink jet print on fabric.
Betsy Braun-Kernaghan and her mixed media work.
Michelle Longosz photographs.
A detail from Jenifer Renzel’s The Contraption.
Vanessa Callanta’s self portrait.
Marc D’Estout’s A Briefcase of Puppetry (detail) found objects, fabricated steel, paint, patina.
Joe Uglyeye – Personal Demons – spray paint, screenpaint, acrylic on birch panel.
Denise Harris-Olenak’s Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, photographic plates on copper and wood.
Beyond the visual art, the big draw go the Closing Bash was the fabulous runway put on by Pivot: The Art of Fashion! The lights the crowds, the fantastic music and and even more fantastic fashion! Above are Charlotte Kruk’s Bossa Nova Bombshells made from recycled Ferrara Pan Chewy Lemonhead & Friends, Lemonhead, CherryHead, Grapehead wrappers!
And her Godiva coat!
Tullio Flores
Lace design work.
Tulio Flores
IB Bayo
Rose Sellery (left) Charlotte Kruk’s Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend, recycled Tiffany bags and chandelier pieces (middle) Katraa (right)
Rose Sellery
MC Kim Luke thanking Pivot Oraganizers Tina Brown, Rose Sellery and designers, Charlotte Kruk, Tulio Flores, Katraa, Sudnya Shroff, Ruby Roxanne, Ricochet, IB Bayo and Many others…
Food truck fun.
Rose Sellery’s designs and sculpture
D’Arcy Couture models in front of Khaled Akil’s Requiem for Syria.
D’Arcy Couture.
Model Izzabelly Santos in IB Bayo.
Pivot MC, Kim Luke in front of
Sunya Shroff’s designs and painting and models in a moment of pre-composure
Pivot models in front of art.
Jessica Hilltout’s phtographs of handmade balls.
Pillar Aguero-Esparza’s multicultural Crayolas on paper.
Pivot model in front of Miguel Machuca’s Orchestrated Religion.
Butterfly model wafting by Teresa Cuniff’s There and Back
Glowing butterfly floating by Alan Silver’s oils on canvas.
Finally alighting on chair sculpture.
The morning after….picking up my work there are still a few remnants from the Art Party – Bill Gould’s sculpture tinkling overhead and the fabulous murals painted with Empire 7 glowing in the early morning sun. Farewell Wonderland, you will haunt my dreams until the next occasional and irrational art fest! Thanks to all involved with Anne and Mark’s Art Party – you’re the best!
Update – I’m delighted to hear that Anne Sconberg and Mark Henderson have just been presented with the Creative Impact Award for their extraordinary vision and hard work with Anne & Mark’s Art Party! So well deserved!
In case you’re still game for more and missed previous Art Party posts, here are the links:
Tower of Bauble
Angels Among Us
Down the Rabbit Hole
Anne & Mark’s Art Party 2014
Truth is, the author and I go way back, growing up only a few miles apart and have been collaborating (formally and informally) for years!
Christy Ann Conlin is a great photographer as well and she’ll often share a shot with me and I will fall in love with it both because of her great eye for subject and composition but also because it speaks to me on a deep level of the essence of home. Such was the case when she sent my this lovely photo of a field of wildflowers overlooking the bay out toward Isle Haute. I called the resulting oil painting, 
It’s no wonder! Christy Ann had found the bird lying dead on her doorstep as she was deeply in the process of writing her novel. She’d slipped her grandfather’s shovel under the bird and taken a photo, overcome by it’s sad beauty. I adored the photo and told her what a great painting it would make. It had a striking composition and an up tilted perspective, the shovel elevating and framing the bird, even reading like a tombstone. To me, the image spoke of our curious arm’s length relationship with death. The photo seemed to honor the bird and allowed us the intimacy of seeing in death that which is fleeting and unobservable in life. The translation to paint and canvas was very true to Christy Ann’s photograph I heightened the color, contrast, texture and the larger-than-life scale helped to make this quiet moment feel monumental.
