Award of Excellence

Out of the Blue at Art Saint Louis: A multi-media exhibit featuring works that examine all things Blue: color, emotions, symbols and other associations.

Juried by artists Michael Byron, Professor, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University and Douglass Freed, former Director of the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art in Sedalia, Missouri.

The exhibit runs from May 18 though June 25, 2009 at Art Saint Louis, 555 Washington Ave. St. Louis MO.

This image evokes memories of something I might have seen in Dr. Strange comic books from the seventies – a sort of post-industrial altar bathed in a supernatural light where elements of  of technology and mysticism struggle to coexist.

Part of a series of images based upon the arch shape. The title comes from a series of Monet paintings which display the main arch of the Rouen Cathedral at different times of day and in different light. Monet’s paintings, while stylistically and formally similar, change mood based upon his color choices. Roy Lichtenstein re-imagined the pieces with large benday dots replacing Monet’s brush daubs of paint. In my series I played with combining and switching the RGB channels in the image file to create different moods based upon the same original image.

The vaguely rabbit shaped “hole” at the top of the image and the overall psychedelic feel of this image brings to mind the Jefferson Airplane classic, White Rabbit.

“When you go chasing rabbits, you know you’re bound to fall.”

This piece is based upon a photograph of a wall hanging my mother-in-law made for me. The design is a traditional block pattern that was also used on a quilt my grandmother  made that was a favorite of mine as a child. As such the image has multiple layers of meaning for me representing my memories of the people who made them and also of my childhood.

The “destroyed” parts of the image represent loss:

• loss of childhood
• loss of individuals close to me
• And the loss of memory experience by the elderly who the quilt also symbolizes for me.

• a small knot or lump in wool, thread, or cloth.
• a dome-shaped growth on the trunk of a tree; a wartlike structure sometimes sliced to make veneer.

The image uses various digital techniques to create a dynamic swirling image reminiscent of the Rembrant masterpiece from which the title is taken.