Last week, with the help of a whole team, I installed my latest exhibition at the Sechrest Gallery of Art at High Point University. The show includes a 19-foot tall painting installation as well as a 19-foot tall mountain of paper cranes with an approximately 12-foot square foot print. There is also a monumental video projection and a collection of paintings. Below is the video showing all 40 hours of the installation process. Read on for a breakdown of what happened during that time.
Day 1:
Measure/Cut/Attach the wire mesh to steel beams about 25-feet up
Tie fishing line to the mesh
Prep wall with masking tape to install 63 sky paintings in a grid
Day 2:
Tie fishing line to mesh
Prep wall with masking tape for 63 paintings grid
Lay out all sky paintings on the ground to arrange them for installation
Rebox paintings in order they’ll be installed
Start installing sky painting grid
Start attaching paper cranes to fishing line
Day 3:
Finish tying last remaining fishing line
Attach paper cranes
Interns start on this day: explain the work and each person’s job
Finish installing sky painting grid
Day 4:
Attach paper cranes
Hang all other paintings in the exhibit
Begin lighting mountain
Day 5:
Attach paper cranes and refine shape of mountain
Finish lighting mountain
Install largest painting in exhibit
Trim fishing line
Light all other paintings
I shot 1 photo per minute over the course of about 40 hours over 5 days, using a GoPro Hero 3+.
This exhibition is at the Sechrest Gallery of Art at High Point University, NC October 25, 2021 – December 17, 2021 Opening Reception: October 28, 5:00-7:00 PM Gallery Hours: Monday through Friday, 10am – 5pm
To see more details about each artwork or for purchasing, visit the gallery shop page.
THANK YOU to my partner Tim Bowman, the team of interns, Emily Gerhold and High Point University for supporting this exhibition.
Big skies… this is the working title for a new project I’m working on. I announced last week that Sechrest Gallery at High Point University invited me to show Paper Mountain, Sky Project and a group of paintings for a solo exhibit in the fall, and installation for the show starts exactly 90 days from today. Because I want to make a lot A LOT of paintings between now and then, I decided what this exhibit needs is a wall-full of paintings – sky paintings to be specific.
So I am making 50 sky paintings that will literally cover one of the gallery walls.
The paintings will be hung in a grid 19ft tall and 17ft wide.
I’ve decided to use acrylic on Yupo, a polypropylene paper. The acrylic dries relatively fast compared to oil paint, so I can easily stack finished paintings as I work. As for the Yupo paper, I like how slick it is to paint on, and I know that it will sit against the wall rather than buckle.
Why am I using paper rather than wood or canvas to make these paintings? I want the images to sit flat on the wall rather than jut out into space like a panel does. I don’t want the objectness of a panel.
I’ll share with you progress on this project as I go, so stay tuned for images as I figure things out.
In the meantime, I’ll leave you with an image of a sky I particularly like. This is Field and forest with red, one of the paintings from my Tiny Landscapes collection. I enjoy being able to see some of the underpainting of the sky… bits of pink and gold glimpsing through layers of sky and cloud. This little painting is acrylic on wood panel and measures 6×6 inches.
Last week I completed a mural along the Long Branch trail in Winston-Salem, NC. It was a real pleasure to paint outdoors with passing runners, walkers and cyclists giving me words of encouragement and approval.
The mural is 50-feet long and varies in height from 6’2″ to 7’6″. The project was commissioned by Innovation Quarter.
Know someone looking for a mural artist to paint something BIG? Send them here.
Long Branch Trail Mural in Winston-Salem, NCdetail of hand lettering on mural Jessica Singerman painting a mural along the Long Branch trail in Winston-Salem, NC.
The Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County has made 14 awards to local artists through its Duke Energy Regional Artist Grant program. A total of $24,500 will allow the artists to further their artistic professional development through a specific project.
Award recipients include Kate Carey (Literature/Davidson Co.), Mike Chamis (Film/Forsyth Co.), Amy da Luz (Theatre/Forsyth Co.), Owens Daniels (Visual Art, Forsyth Co.), Zach Deas (Craft/Davie Co.), Marianne DiNapoli-Mylet (Visual Art, Forsyth Co.), Nathan Ross Freeman (Film/Forsyth Co.), Kendra Harding (Music/Forsyth Co.), Cashavelly Morrison (Music/Forsyth Co.), Zach McCraw (Visual Art/Stokes Co.), David Petty (Storytelling/Forsyth Co.), Leo Rucker (Visual Art/Forsyth Co.), Jessica Singerman (Visual Art/Forsyth Co.), and Will Willner (Visual Art/Forsyth Co.).
14 local artists receive a total of $24,500 in career-development awards
Regional artist grants are available to artists working in the disciplines of music, film, literature, dance, visual art and craft and residing in Davidson, Davie, Forsyth, Stokes, Surry, and Yadkin counties. The program is sponsored by Duke Energy and supported by the N.C. Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
“We are especially pleased with the variety of artistic projects that these artists will be working on this year,” said Dara Silver, Grant Program Manager for The Arts Council. “These awards are a way The Arts Council invests in our local creative entrepreneurs by helping them move forward a project so that they can leverage additional opportunities and commissions.”
Cashavelly Morrison is an American-Alt Country singer and songwriter whose debut album The Kingdom Belongs to a Child received the Independent Music Award for Best Alt Country Album. This grant will support the completion efforts of their second album, Hunger. “We’ve been writing and recording our second studio album for two years, and now because of this grant, we can complete the mixing, mastering, and printing to get it out into the world at a time when the songs will be particularly timely and culturally relevant. It’s support like this that makes the artistic dreams of working parents possible,” said Cashavelly Morrison.
Nathan Freeman is an award winning screenwriter, director, and filmmaker. This grant will support the production of his next feature film, Gem, about an Archangel named Gem who is involved in a prophetic story of religions at war. Nathan said, “This award is most appreciated and will support the film needs of Gem by helping to cover costs for the local hiring of costume and design and production artists.”
Jessica Singerman is an award recognized artist and received her MFA from the University of Delaware. Her works are inspired by the poetry of nature’s changing color, light, and the passing of time. This grant will allow her to obtain a professional photography and video equipment to support the marketing efforts of her works on her website, blog, and social media. “This grant is an investment in the infrastructure of my career as a working artist. It will help me to better document my work and to build my web presence. Having an internet presence is vital for an artist because it allows them share their work worldwide. Viewers are able to gain a deeper understanding of my work and process and it is a way to share that process with other artists who are still learning and exploring their craft.”
Winston-Salem, known as a City of Arts and Innovation, and Forsyth County have a robust arts community that enriches the lives of area residents every day and accounts in large part for the recognition they continue to receive as a great place to live, learn, work and play. The Arts Council raises funds and advocates for the arts, sponsors events in conjunction with other arts organizations, promotes and funds arts education, creates cultural and learning opportunities, develops social capital and aids economic development. Last year, The Arts Council made 98 awards totaling $1,699,500.
This post is for artists looking for a solution to keep an inventory of their artwork. Here I use Microsoft Excel, but you could also use Google Docs or Numbers, so this technique is free and pretty painless.
To begin, I used this tutorial to make the basic inventory:
As you build your inventory, be sure to use low resolution images, otherwise the excel document becomes too big and performance slows down.
As I used this method, I made a few modifications to better fit my needs and to make using it a bit more efficient.
In each record, I add the following headings:
Exhibitions: List any exhibitions where the work has been shown.
Place: If the work is at a gallery or has been sold, write that here, including the name of the collector and city/country.
To speed things up, I replace images rather than deleting and entering another. This way the image goes in the right place and doesn’t need to be reformatted again. To do this, right click on an imageand select “Change Picture.” I use this method on each tab after I copy it and in the master inventory sheet.
Also on the inventory sheet, I add hyperlinks to each thumbnail. This way, when you click on each image, you instantly go to that image’s tab. To do this, right click on an image, click “Hyperlink,” select “This Document,” then scroll down to the tab number and select it. Click “OK.” When adding new images in the inventory, you can copy and paste images, replace each image, then right click and select “Edit Hyperlink” to change the links to each new tab number.
If you are looking for guidance in your creative work, I offer coaching/mentoring for artists. You can learn more here.
