Almost 70 people showed up for the "Fanning the Flames" reception, pretty good for a rainy Somerville Thursday! The readings were great, we had tasty food donated by Guru Catering. It was awesome to meet all the artists and talk to them, and I even sold one of my pieces.

Special thanks to Nick Shectman for doing the lighting, and Michelle Fiorenza at the Nave Gallery and Greg Jenkins from the Somerville Arts Council for making this show happen. I also want to express my gratitude for having the opportunity to work with Sandra Butler. The partnership was incredibly rewarding for me, both from the standpoint of organizing the show and because of her inspirational artistic insight. I look forward to working with her again and seeing her work as it evolves.

What a trip! The BECA gallery in New Orleans accepted two of my pieces, "Charlie's Birthday" and the diptych "A Supposedly Good Idea," for their Hybrids & Other Sorts exhibit, so I headed down to N'awlins for the opening. The gallery had 450 contemporary artists from around the country submit work on the theme of hybrids, and chose nine for this show. They're calling us "the most innovative emerging artists from across the United States." Wow.

I've felt a strong connection to New Orleans since I went to Tulane in the late '80s, and it was a thrill to be back as a professional. The warehouse district has become a fantastic arts area, with scores of museums and little galleries. I got around solely by bicycle, and had a chance to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and several galleries. One of the highlights of the trip was visiting te New Orleans Museum of Art at 2:00 in the morning. There was a 24-hour party to celebrate the closing of their most popular exhibit ever. It was awesome to be part of the art scene in New Orleans.

Participating in the BECA show was a great opportunity for me. I guess you could say that it was the national premiere of my new diptychs! Photos of the installation:

Read press about the "Hybrids" show:
Gambit Press
Artvoices
art2bank.com
bestofneworleans.com

Come see how the work of 11 artists has evolved at the first show I've been involved in curating. "Fanning the Flames", at the Nave Gallery, features new and 2007-vintage work of Somerville Arts Council grant recipients, along with artist statements reflecting on how their work has developed. Sandra Butler and I have been working on this show since January, and are quite proud of the fantastic work we have the opportunity to show. Included in the exhibit are two of my pieces, "Learning to Let Go" and "A Supposedly Good Idea (Further Study)."

The opening reception will feature readings from fellowship-winning poet Bert Stern and memoir writer Ethan Gilsdorf, as well as a screening of an animated short from Karen Aqua, whose works have also been screened at the ICA Boston. The show runs from June 12 to July 6, 2008. I hope you'll stop by, as the level of work Sandra and I have been lucky enough to work with is truly amazing.

Read the press release.

I had a piece accepted into the Cambridge Art Association's Northeast Prize Show. It's a pretty prestigious show - curated by Nicholas Baume, Chief Curator of the ICA - but I'm most excited because the piece they accepted, "Moving Forward By Standing Still," is one of the new diptychs I've been working on. The reception is a big gala stretching across two gallery spaces, and should be a lot of fun. Stop by and say hello, and see the local premiere of the new direction my work is taking.

I had a really great open studio at SOS this year. It's always exciting to show new work, and I got to see a lot of familiar faces I hadn't seen in a long time. I had great conversations with new people too. I love when people tell me what they see in my work. Sometimes it's something I've never seen before, and sometimes it's so dead-on that it's eerie. Either way, I learn something. I sold a lot of prints and lots of people signed up for my mailing list. It was exhausting, as always, but worth it. Thanks for coming!

The opening reception for the Artist Choice exhibit was a raging success - hundreds of people came. I heard several comments from people that they saw my work there and came to my studio to see more because of it.

SOS was great from a volunteer perspective, too. A lot of artists told me they were really happy with the event organization and how smoothly it ran. Lots of Somervillians got involved, and even more signed up for our mailing list or to volunteer for SOS 2009. We created a survey to ask people what they saw and enjoyed, so we'll be able to make next year's SOS even better.

I hope everyone is looking forward to spending this weekend enjoying Somerville Open Studios. Let me suggest Mad Oyster Studios (2 Bradley Street) for a portion of your SOS weekend wanderings. There will be a group show in the lobby gallery, live music, a bake sale to benefit Pets in Need, and free parking. (Or, if you're taking the free SOS trolley, we're at stop M.) Mad Oyster houses photographers, weavers, sculptors, abstract and representational painters, printmakers, a quilter, a bookmaker, and more. I hope you'll come by and stop in my studio. I have some new work I'm showing - diptychs of my silhouette-shadow pieces and woodblock prints. It's a slightly new direction for my work, and I'm excited to share it. I've also taken over the whole space now, and done a little renovating... come see! Don't forget to take a look at the Artist Choice exhibit at the Somerville Museum, too.

Join me on April 17 from 6-9PM at the opening reception for the Artist Choice Exhibit at the Somerville Museum. As part of Somerville Open Studios, all the participating artists have been invited to submit a piece of work to the exhibit. I chose "Waiting In the Morning, Waiting For the Green Line," a silhouette-shadow piece that considers both commuters waiting for the Green Line in the morning and Somerville's long wait for the Green Line extension.

The reception includes live music by acoustic folk artists Ryan Ruffing and Kit Walpole, and food donated by by Restaurant Dante of Cambridge. If you can't make it to the reception, you can still come by before SOS to browse and plan your studio visiting itinerary, or swing by afterwards to see the work of people whose studios you couldn't get to. Special thanks to Evelyn, Museum Director, for making the exhibit possible.

Once again, I'll be opening my studio to the public during Somerville Open Studios, coming up on May 3 and 4. In preparation, I've been doing some renovations. My studio-mate moved out recently, and I took over the whole space for myself! The front 200 square feet is now gallery space, and the back 400 is working space (or as I call it, the clean half and the messy half). I'm really enjoying the new layout. Now, when I take a break, I can sit and reflect on my own work properly displayed.

I'm also getting really involved in working on SOS. I went from wanting to volunteer and not being sure how, to becoming in charge of volunteer recruitment. I'm working on bringing new people on board, so if you're a fan of Open Studios, or are a non-artist involved in the Somerville arts community, let me know if you want to help!

I'm really excited to be showing my work for the second time at the fabulous Lynn Arts. They put together strong shows that do a great job of highlighting and supporting local artists. This exhibit, called "Works on Paper," is a very full show, and I'm honored to have had two pieces accepted: "Queen of Scissors" and "Static Mirror." The opening for the show should be dazzling - While dropping off my art I saw a huge range of work, including woodblock prints, silkscreens, etchings, intaglios, watercolors, collages, drawings, and more. Come by and support this wonderful local gallery.

In 2007, I won an artist fellowship grant from the Somerville Arts Council.  Recently, the Council called me and Sandra Butler, an artist I met during SOS 2007, to ask if we'd like to curate a show as our way of giving back to the community. Of course, we said yes!

Sandra and I wanted to show how a person's work evolves over the course of a year, so we decided to show work from the period when artists were applying for the grants alongside current work by the same artists. We'll include artist statements of how their work has been evolving. It's going to be a lot of work, but I am really looking forward to it. We're calling the exhibit Fanning the Flames: Evolving Works of Somerville Arts Council Fellowship Recipients.