Lisa Call

Upcoming Solo Exhibit

This article is part of a series of posts on the preparation for my upcoming solo exhibit, Dwelling, at Macky Gallery, Feb 17-March 17 with an opening reception Sunday, Feb 21 from 1-4 and artist talk at 2pm.

To see photos of the artwork for the exhibit as I’m creating it, check out my page on facebook: www.facebook.com/LisaCallFineArt.

Writing an Exhibit Statement

This past weekend I completed my artist statement for the exhibit. It takes me a few weeks to write my statements as they go through several iterations before I finally settle on the final wording.

Words are much harder for me than images, probably why I’m a visual artist and not a poet or writer, but over the past 5 years I’ve gotten a lot better at writing. I attribute the majority of that improvement on my blogging. The more one writes the better one gets.

Kinda like making art also. Just keep doing it.

The Statement

Dwelling

Recently life has revolved around houses, starting with a move into the city after selling my large suburban home two years ago.

During an extensive remodel of my new abode, turning the small fixer-upper into a dream home and studio, I began creating the stick figure structures that became the Home series, as houses had permeated my thoughts.

Shortly after construction ended, I spent a month traveling in South Africa where I was captured by beauty and simplicity of the dwellings, which inspired the box like buildings in the Dream series.

The desire for a place to call home feels nearly universal. Most often it is linked to words such as security, comfort, happiness and belonging. A home is a container for our possessions, our love, our hopes and our dreams. It’s also where we feel safe to share our vulnerabilities, fear and disappointments.

The past few years I found myself contemplating these concepts of house and home often. What exactly defines a home? When does a house become a home? If four sheets of tin can become a home why do I desire a larger space to inhabit?

What makes your house your home?

Upcoming Solo Exhibit

Part of a series of posts on the preparation for my upcoming solo exhibit, Dwelling, at Macky Gallery, Feb 17-March 17 with an opening reception Sunday, Feb 21 from 1-4 and artist talk at 2pm.

To see photos of the artwork as I’m creating it, check out my page on facebook: www.facebook.com/LisaCallFineArt. Images of Home #10, in progress, were posted over the last few days.

If you become a fan (click the ‘become a fan button’) you’ll see these updates in your newsfeed. If you aren’t on facebook you can still check out the page every once in a while as it is public and you don’t have to be on facebook to see the images. So I can focus on creating the artwork I’m posting the images on facebook as it is quicker than posting them on my blog.

You’ve Got Mail

This morning I designed and ordered postcard invitations for my upcoming exhibit (front show above, back shown below). I have a mailing list of collectors, supporters, fans, family, acquaintances, etc that will receive the card.

My longer term goal with this mailing list is to send out a hard copy announcement 2-4 times a year. I’m getting fewer and fewer of these cards from artists and galleries as it is quite expensive in comparison to email so I think I will continue to send them, as they are a rare treat and will stand out more as fewer people are sending them.

[If you'd like to be added to my mailing list please email me.]

Creating the Invitation

I haven’t yet shared all the details of the office work entailed with the preparation for the exhibit and will soon. Today I’ll just touch on the creation of the postcard as it takes a fairly good chunk of time.

Yesterday I photographed the artwork and prepared the image for the front of the card. Earlier this week I worked with the gallery director to get approval of the text I was using on the back of the card.

With the content determined this morning I started work on the layout. I have no training in graphic design but I still find it great fun to play around with layouts. I used photoshop to do the work.

I decided on using a detail image for the front of the card as the textile painting was long and skinny and left too much white space at the bottom if used in it’s entirety. I find layout of the text most difficult as I know very little about what is supposed to work so I wing it and go with what looks okay to me.

I order my cards from Vistaprint so I use their template when designing the card. I’ve found that to get the file size small enough I have to save it as .pdf and so far the printing has turned out great. I always order the oversized card as I like the impact of the larger image.

Crazy Logs
©2009 Cherie Bagadiong
33" x44 "

Beauty from Scraps

For a while Cherie would leave comments on my blog asking to buy my hand dyed fabric scraps and I’d tell her "Oh yeah, some day". When I sold my house last year that day arrived as I was getting rid of anything that didn’t seem essential. We came to an agreement on the price and off the fabric went.

She’s been telling me for a while that the first piece (of many as I hear this barely made a dent in the pile) was nearly done. Today I finally got to see, and now you all do also.

Wow! Is that cool. To think those are all my scraps and actually a bit of my piecing as Cherie says: "The line with orange and white and a few others are the pieces that you sewed originally for your pieces." I think the white with red lines is from Structures #18, from 2003.

Cherie I’m honored with the lovely quilt you’ve made with my scraps.

Beautiful Stitching

Check out the great stitching she’s put on the piece also – she does this with a home sewing machine (with the feeddogs for you sewing types out there – it’s not free motion or with an industrial machine).

Great job!

Less Art

Today was a day with less art than yesterday (I painted the edges of canvases for Ascending #1 and Home #8 – so at least something). Instead more admin stuff that keeps our lives busy. Like calling insurance people, and ordering tile, and checking on where my studio lights might be and paying the mortgage. And working the day job.

And tonight I got another email from the folks that write my mailing list software (phplist) with a security update. It’s been a year and half since I upgraded so decided I should. And ran into a little technical problem that had my mailing list down for about an hour.

In the process of fixing that I accidentally deleted an important configuration file for my website (.htaccess for you geeks). Oops, no back up (er oops again) – so I had to recreate it. So if something is broken on my website please let me know – I probably broke it myself.

I did discover I needed to add my .ico file into my hotlink protection list so in the end it was a good thing.

Wonderful Response

And wow, in less than 20 hours I sold all of the ACEO’s I had left (I suppose an impending large price increase doesn’t hurt for selling work today). Thanks everyone that purchased one.

Today I also set up an art trade with Nichole Hyde for Markings #11. I very excited about this exchange as I love her work and I’m going to get a beautiful orange and gray piece that will look fabulous on my new purple bedroom walls.

This means there is almost nothing left for sale on the small arts for sale website. The last couple of months I’ve been so focused on the large textile paintings, which I can’t show until next year, that I’ve been remiss and making new smaller pieces.

Here are the 6" or larger pieces that are left:

Home #3
©2008
10.5" x 8"
Purchase Here

Structures #102
©2008
6"x 6"
Purchase Here

Structures #25
©2003
8"x 8"
Purchase Here

Structures #6
©2001
20"x 26"
Purchase Here

 
 
For those curious the new prices on these textile paintings will be as follows on February 1st if they don’t sell in the next 3 days:

Home #3: $640
Structures #102: $350
Structures #25: $350
Structures #6: $3000 (it’s currently priced at 60% of it’s old price as it was on sale at artfulhome.com)

Artful Home Changes

Speaking of Artful Home, there are changes afoot at the well known and successful online art website. Yesterday they announced a $25 a month fee for artists to be listed online.

It’s an interesting move to charge artists a fee for the privilege to be represented by a gallery. I suspect the video format of the announcement is an indication of some really great ideas to come from artfulhome even in our current economic climate, so I’m quite optimistic about the change and will definitely sign up.

The first wonderful change is that the artists will be able to edit their own information and control their retail prices and upload their own images. Yay! That will be nice (currently we have to ask to get things listed or changed and while I’ve had good turn around times it’s not as immediate as I would always like).

As long as they continue to do an amazing job jurying the artists, which I believe they will as quality is key to their brand, I suspect we have some really good things to come from this website. Will it be worth $300 a year? Their reputation is worth the investment to find out.

Change is exciting. Gotta think big and expand!

Structures #47    ©2007    61"x76"

Contemporary Crafts Exhibition

The 29th Annual Contemporary Crafts Exhibition opens this friday in Mesa, Arizona. This is one of the juried shows I entered last fall. Structures #47 will be part of the show.

They do a wonderful job hanging the show, which is curated by Michael Monroe, and the building and grounds are beautiful. A few images from last years show are now on smugmug here.

They’ve created an online invite shown below (click for larger image).

 
In case the image is difficult to read:

29th Annual Contemporary Crafts
January 25 – March 9, 2008
For hours, location and more info: www.mesaartscenter.com

My Solo Show at Macky

Yesterday I scheduled the opening reception for my solo show opening next month in Boulder Colorado. It will be Saturday, February 23 from 2-4pm with an artist talk at 3pm. I have 1 month to get everything ready for this show. So time to stop uploading images to smugmug and get to my studio.

Tomorrow I’ll photograph artwork and create a postcard invitation and write the statement for the show for the press release. If you’d like to receive a post card you please email me your name and address and I will add you to my mailing list.

You can also sign up for my email newsletter. The first one will be mailed out in the next few months.