Living in the northeast US, I get to truly love autumn! I love the smells, the colors, the cool temperatures and the winds that blow over the hill we live on. I especially the love the sounds of leaves crunching under foot. This piece is based on that sound.
Regarding the black circles, my synesthesia inspired art is always a dance between my mental visual images of sound, and my interior self-talk emotional, or cognitive understanding of what I am experiencing. Perhaps it is because I am a Gemini that I hold these two tensions, or maybe all syns do this. When I make art, I don’t worry that it is a “photo” of exactly what I “see”/hear, but it is usually some variation of the remembered pattern of what that sound looks like. I just take the trip, create and not worry about the outcome. As I reflect, I suspect the black circles reference the cyclical seasons, the oncoming apparent death of flowering plants and trees, and the unknowable “Mystery” of death.
Archival inks, Canson Aquarelle Rag paper 8″x10″
22″x22″ Hand sewn silk on silk with cotton, metallic and chenille floss and thread
This is my emotional/synesthetic response to the Miles Davis favorite, “SO WHAT”.
“Eleta J. Caldwell and Rodney M. Gilbert Memorial Gallery, So What Curated by Jo-El Lopez
Whether inviting to the eye or to the ear, what is the purpose of art if not to evoke? So What, the opening track of Miles Davis’ — and jazz’s most famous — album, Kind of Blue, dares to answer that question. While deceptively simplistic in structure, So What’s sophistication lies within the measured ease of its three soloists. In the case of So What: A Visual Interpretation, curator Jo-El Lopez makes a similar statement about what happens when a group of ten visual artists are given the same piece of music to examine and reimagine? In this exhibition, each artist’s work independently represents a cross section of styles, political platforms, and purpose. And with Lopez’s curatorial approach, as well as Newark’s world-renowned WBGO Jazz 88 Gallery at the helm, the show presents itself as the perfect unification of visual art and interpretation of sound.”
On display October 5th – November 17th, 2018
Aluminum sculpture 10″x21″ November 2017
This is my second effort to capture the patterns I hear in the music by the German Tanz-Metall band Rammstein from the 1997 album Sehnsucht. The song is one of the band’s best known because of its inclusion on the soundtrack of The Matrix . My first effort in Fabric was created in March of 2014.
Raw silk, metallic thread and chenille yarn 14″x34″
Silk on silk with metallic, linen and cotton floss and metallic and cotton thread. 30″x30″
The great composer and musician and all round creative Pauline Oliveros taught me more than words can express. When I “came out” as an Artist in 2014, she not only always “liked” my work as I was tentatively beginning to show it on Facebook, but copied most of it to her FB page to share with others. Her “Deep Listening” process gave me a way to focus on the sounds that so importantly influence my art making. I was so very lucky to have had this woman as friend.
This piece was created after spending an hour out of doors when the world was noisy with some birds still calling at dusk- the wood thrush was strident, and the insects, traffic, airplanes, neighbors kids talking and laughing, the chatter of walkers on my street, and the wind in the trees added to the general shape of the sounds I noted as inspiration. This is pulled through my image of Pauline’s magical and ever present, accordion.
“Throb and Swagger- The Sounds of Newark” #10 10.5″x16.5″ Canson Arches Aquarelle Rag Paper, Enhanced Giclée Archival Print Edition 1/1 Printed for the Newark Public Library
This work is about the vitality, creativity and resilience of Newark New Jersey. My print captures the dynamic energy of the city.
In the spring of 2016, I was invited by Matthew Gosser, (curator and teacher at NJIT’s College of Architecture and Design, involved with the historic preservation of many of Newark’s landmark buildings,) to create art based on my personal experience with the Queen of Angels, a historic church on Belmont Avenue, now Irving Turner Blvd.
I spent a couple hours exploring what was a nearly completely demolished church, with most of my time seated and listening to the ambient sounds of the community. I took notes and made sketches from overheard conversations of passersby, and the ambient sounds from traffic, airplanes and nature. These sounds deeply influenced my emotional response and drawing, and was the basis for this work of art
