Flying the Friendly Skies; My Contribution to Improving the Economy

This week I have the pleasure of traveling to Florida to attend opening receptions for two exhibitions that include my work. It sounds very cosmopolitan and exciting, except that the exhibits are back to back and hundreds of miles apart.  I need to be in Sarasota one day, Tallahassee the next, and while it was easy to get flights to each from Charlotte, it was nearly impossible to get from one to the other. It all seemed so logical. Fly from Charlotte to Sarasota, then from Sarasota to Tallahassee and then back to Charlotte. But obviously no one mentioned this to the airlines. So I will leave Sarasota, fly to Atlanta, (almost home), and then back to Tallahassee. It looks like I will be in the air almost as much as I will be on the ground.


SARASOTA

Venetian Lace.014, size: 24 X 20", encaustic
wax,oil pigment, resin, iron oxidation on paper
on panel © 2011 

On Thursday November 3rd I will be in Sarasota to attend events for the exhibition WOW, Women & Wax, that will be at Arts Center Sarasota. Curated by friend and fellow artist Elena De La Ville, I am pleased to be included in this exhibition along with several artists I know and hold respect for their work. Elena chose ten women artists from across the country who work with wax, and asked each to send slides from which she could make selections for the WOW exhibit. I like being included in small group shows where each artist can present a group of works rather than a single item. I will exhibit several recent works from my traces series and Venetian Lace series, including three that have not yet been shown outside of the studio. I look forward to visiting with friends and enjoying the opening reception events at Arts Center Sarasota, and I look forward to Sarasota enjoying what I anticipate to be a strong exhibition.

  

   Venetian Lace.014, DETAIL

WOW, Women & Wax
Arts Center Sarasota
November 3 – December 21
Reception: November 3rd, 5:00 – 7:00 PM

trace.111, size: 36 X 18", encaustic
wax, oil pigment, resin, iron oxidation
on muslin on panel © 2011 

TALLAHASSEE


After what I hope to be a pleasant trip to Sarasota, including lots of seafood, I will travel to the  Tallahassee, via Atlanta, to the Mary Brogan Museum for an opening reception on Friday November 4th for the exhibit COMING OUT OF THE CLOSET: Clothing Art as an Emergent Form. This exhibit will include four of my works, none of which are encaustic. Here I will exhibit two digital drawings and two installations from an earlier series that focused on aspects of memory/ experience and items of clothing as a metaphor for daily struggles. Several works from this series are on my website and I continue to use the images and the content of memory in my encaustic work. 


This show should prove to be interesting with many of the artists using clothing in response to humor, politics and social behavior. Again, I am pleased to be included with a group of artists from across the country whose work I respect. I am also pleased to be exhibiting at the Brogan Museum which is a community resource for visual arts, science exploration, and humanities education, and serves a large population of visitors through a variety of educational activities. Oh yes and BTW, I just got notice they are using my vesture.0114 image on the exhibition catalogue. Always a nice added bonus!!

they stand alone • size: variable, shirts, hangars, ironing board, © 2002

daily vestments • size: 48 X 80 X 50", wood drying racks, digitally
constructed images printed on vellum © 2001

pinpoint revealed • size: 20 X 24", digitally constructed and printed
image, graphite on paper © 2005

vesture series.0114 • size: 20 X 20.75", digitally constructed and printed
image, acrylic, prismacolor on paper © 2006

COMING OUT OF THE CLOSET: Clothing Art as an Emergent Form

Mary Brogan Museum of Art

November 4 – February 26, 2012

Reception: November 4, 6:00 – 9:00 PM

Expect the Unexpected; Using Found Photographs

My previous post on a series of digital drawings developed in early 2000, noted my use of found photographs that included vernacular images of individuals and family groups. The series originated from a body of drawings inspired by a collection of old photographs I purchased at a thrift store in the late 1980's. There were about thirty-five photographs of a family that appeared to span three generations, and whose relationship could be identified by strong resemblances to one another. There were a few first names and dates on several of the photos from the 50's and 60's, but nothing to clearly identify the people or their location except for one school picture with a man's name, the school, his grade and the year.


The photographs lay dormant for several years until the mid-1990's when I pulled the stack out of storage and began to consider using them in work. I had been scanning and manipulating photographs for a body of digital drawings I was developing, and as I browsed through this collection of intimate and personal family snap-shots, the images seemed ripe for exploring and producing new work. A number of my digital drawings, that included individuals and group scenes from the photographs, were exhibited across the US, and several were reproduced in publications including a 2001 South Carolina Triennial exhibition catalogue, the cover of Skirt magazine, and the exhibition announcement for the Rutger's National '96 drawing competition. My works with images of these individuals had begun to develop a life, or virtual life, of their own.

For several years I worked using part and whole sections from the photographs, never knowing details or if the individuals were living or deceased. In actuality, I began to develop my own narrative that played out in my head and in the work. Curiously, I was toying with an aspect of power and control over the images in my possession, and ultimately feeling a form of control over the individuals themselves. There was the aspect of including the figures in work and juxtaposing them in ways to my choosing, and there was the aspect of public exhibition and reproduction of the work in print and electronic media that fascinated and intrigued me with the idea of a virtual life that was developing for the images of these people, and evolving in a manner that was beyond my control. Irresponsible ?.....maybe. Selfish ?.... probably, but I continued.

In March of this year I was reading a local newspaper when I noticed a photograph in the obituary section that caught my eye, an almost exact reproduction of one of the photos in my collection of originals. It was one of the family members. There in print, was a small column of information with names, addresses, dates and details, that gave identity to the figures I had manipulated in art-making for many years. Unexpected? Yes, very unexpected and quite a surprise. It was eerie and odd, somewhat like the feeling experienced as a child when you are caught at something you know is restricted.

Class photo from the collection of originals.

       

Obituary Photo.

           

                                                                                       

Original photo from the collection.

words not spoken © 1999
Jane Allen Nodine

Original photo from the collection.

obligatory response © 1999 • Jane Allen Nodine
McKissick Museum, Columbia, SC

                                       

Original photo from the collection.

indefinite concern © 1998
Collection State of SC

restrained resolve © 1998
Collection State of SC

don't look back © 1995
Jane Allen Nodine

conjunct suspension © 1999 Jane Allen Nodine

Original photo of a girl collaged into a mix-media drawing
soon to be published in Artist Among Us 2011