New and Old Part 2

  Since I am trying to make this a more regular venue for my random and sketchy observations, (get it? regular for random?) I am going to try to put down some more thoughts on recent projects. I am partway into my newest egg tempera, but not to a point where I wish to show it, so I am instead going to write about a new 3D construction I am putting together. A couple of years back I was mining a Beatles creative vein and built (at the suggestion of my writer/drummer/creative brother in law Mark Lindamood of Washington DC) an overlarge version of the Beatles Rubber Soul album cover. it is about 32" x 32" and about 5" deep and is in a beautiful wooden frame built by my friend Jerry Dudley at Heritage HS. It was a particularly painful project because when I finished painting the cover and all four of it's portraits on a piece of canvas, I had to cut them out. These were some of the best acrylic portraits I had done at this point (and along with a version of the Let It Be album cover and a 3D version of the Sgt Pepper center spread, probably my only acrylic portraits) and cutting them out of their canvas was simply put, scary as hell. I finished it, gave thanks that it looked so good and said to myself, "Enjoy it, that's the last thing like that you'll ever build."

Rubber Soul in 3D

  Right. So several weeks back, right at the end of fall break, I got an e-mail from my friend Ted Batt the Exhibitions Curator at the Academy of Fine Arts on Main Street asking if I'd be willing to interpret in a piece of art the new logo they were about to launch in a few weeks. The Academy will now be the Academy Center of the Arts and Ted included an attachment with the new multi-color logo. So even though I was really starting to enjoy my newest egg tempera, and hadn't yet even opened the attachment I said, "Yes," because I cannot resist the Academy and the friends I have made on the staff there. The problem is, when I looked at the logo, an idea came to mind - an idea of a sort I was pretty certain I'd never revisit. I wonder if I had been drinking Cabernet or Pinot Grigio when the e-mail came. Nope it was a Bordeaux they were selling at Magnolia Foods, a Domaines Baron De Rothschild (for a very nice price I might add.) I know because I was playing with the Vivino app on my phone and photographed the label. But I digress. The main point is French wine was involved in some manner. Not that I would have turned them down.

  Anyway, I looked at the logo and an idea began forming, and not a simple one I'm afraid. So I at school the next day I enlisted the help of some of my students (and of course my pal Jerry Dudley) in building this massive thing. I was thinking of the old and new aspects of introducing a new brand, and in typical form, my own attraction to the age of the Academy buildings and the fact that some of the signage is signage people have seen day to day for 110 plus years was poking it's nosy head into the proceedings. I had students in the closed off 6th Street this summer drawing the old doors and windows and anyone who knows my work knows I like bricks for some reason, so bricks were creeping in also. But it had to be lightweight so it could hang on a wall and suddenly I was thinking "make it sort of like the 3D Rubber Soul piece ..." So I took the logo design, brought it into Adobe Illustrator and laid it into a 36" square. I created a brick pattern as a background and while looking at my photos of the Academy I remembered a band of text at the top of the building overlooking 6th Street. I decided that would look cool on these bricks and that led me to ask myself, what else might be added that says Academy? Gradually a concept was presenting itself to me and just as gradually I was understanding it as it spoke to me. I remembered theatre and dance posters wearing away on walls in NYC when I was in art school, so it seemed I should probably have an old poster in there somehow and I had a photo of some cupids in plaster from inside and thought, "Why not have something from inside the old theatre?"

Lower right letter a with brick pattern
in place and walls built.

 At this point I could visualize it and was pretty certain I could build it. I just didn't realize it would be such a beast.

Here's the brick surface
after Jamie and Hunter did the

texturizing and after adding
the poster at lower right.

  So after the design, I had to build the backing for the bricks. Foam core didn't come in sheets as large as I needed (at least not without shipping), nor was gator board large enough. I failed to mention I had planned to put a solid piece of gator board down as my base. But the piece I looked at was too small (would have taken three at $36 apiece) so I stuck with basic foam core. I had to seam one large and two smaller scrap pieces together and add a backing to them of cardboard. That gave me a pretty stiff and lightweight foundation upon which I could build a brick wall. So I drew the logo out centered on the wall and then guesstimated the size of bricks on such a wall. Every brick was cut out of scraps of foam core but was added in such a way that I had to keep the brick pattern but cut out the sections that overlapped the logo itself. This allowed the logo to fit down in the space between the bricks, adding a little extra stability to the logo construction. The logo is four round letters (probably Avant Garde or Futura) overlapping each other in a two over two layout. I decided to make the two A's 4" tall, the C  2" tall and the O (as the least important element) only 1" tall. I guess the "T" is silent. (Of The Arts)The overlap sections would be  3". The letters were drawn out on foam core scraps and then the walls had to be built. Foam core doesn't bend but can be made to bend by slicing lines close together (.125" to .25" spaces) vertically on the wall. When you glue the wall to the "roof" for lack of a better word, you simply bend the now pliable foam core to the shape of the letter. Once it is all done you can use modeling paste to fill in the gaps that open up in the wall and thus restore stability to the foam core. Simple. Or so it seemed.

Poster detail

  This project actually went fairly quickly. The e-mail came during fall break from school leaving me with about three weeks to produce the final piece. Without Hunter G's yeoman efforts throughout and his influencing Jamie S., Aliyah D., Blair B., Lindsey D. and Grace K.  to help we couldn't possibly have gotten there.
   So above is a photo of the white bricks with parts of letters in place. We actually didn't glue anything down (the logo that is) until everything had a first coat of paint. So Hunter and Jamie painted all the bricks after I mixed paints and described what I saw as a way to paint an authentic looking brick. I drew on the Academy letters in the black panel at top and painted them in while Hunter began with a dark maroon "brick" color. the detailing on the bricks came by mixing a couple of reds just off from the base color, a darker one and a lighter one. Then we put the color down in a way they hadn't considered, we used old sponge material out of several year old Apple Mac packaging and tore off parts to make irregular surfaces. They were told to dip the sponge in the paint and before daubing it on, wipe the sponge almost dry on a paper towel, then daub. It seemed to me like they had a blast doing it and in no time the bricks were looking like bricks. Jamie mixed a putty color for the mortar between the bricks and then a second color to texturize the first. Again, in no time flat they were done. I also wanted to add a poster from a long ago show at the Academy. Because of timing issues I chose to print it on thin paper after doing some aging in Photoshop. Once it was printed, I coated the bricks where it was going to be adhered with Polymer Medium and laid it down. The paper was allowed to soak up the glue and I used fingers to really push it down into the mortar spaces between bricks. I added another coating of Polymer Medium on top to really get the paper soaking wet (and very fragile). Then I began using an x-acto knife blade to pry between the fibers of paper and rip and mar the wet poster, peeling back sections of the poster, aging it on the wall, trying to make it appear to be peeling and deteriorating.

Early state of the cupids.

Final state of cupids.

   At the same time I was working on a semi-bas-relief of some cupids from the interior plaster work. One huge problem. I had no clay. I had some sculpy but no way to heat it up as my stove at school wasn't hooked up when they moved me into the old printing room (no way to vent it). So improvisation was the word of the day. I started by drawing the cupids out on a scrap of foam core (really using up the scraps) and then I cut out of scrap mat board 3 or 4 versions of the cupids with each one being cut slightly smaller then the one before. This isn't like resizing and cutting a smaller version, this is laying down the original design and cutting the first one actual size, then pulling back from the edge and cutting another one, repeating that process several times. It gives you a semi mound in the shape of the figures. I then cut some foam core versions of parts of the figures and basically added small scraps of styrofoam onto those. Then it was modeling paste to smooth out the surfaces and enhance the relief aspects and finally it was all painted to reflect the photographic   sample I had. Not great, not bad. It gives the feeling of the old plaster in a state of disrepair.
Here you can see both an early state and the finished state. Wish I could have gone further but various technical issues got in the way as well as time. Anyway, the cupids were centered in the interior space created by the "O". I glued them in place and then added two small brass screws just to keep them there. The brass screws also add an antique feel to the cupid grouping.

   On to the finish. All the letters were painted black by the student helpers and we added a solid white surface on top to give the colors a base. The acrylics I used tend to be somewhat transparent, so they needed either a white base, or about ten coats of color. I opted for the white base with one or two coats of color. Hunter and I checked cmyk color mixes in Photoshop using the logo sample provided by the Academy and used the ideas presented in those numbers to mix colors for the logo parts. We did pretty well in that I don't think we had to remix any of them. 8 for 8 right off the bat. Each piece probably has 5-6 coats, not because they have to have them, but because they just looked better with each coat we added. Eventually it all dried and I started to glue them in place. This was all built from a design laid down very precisely and they had fit together fairly well right up until this point. Now with glue on the board, I found myself wedging and bending and trimming each piece as I glued them  down. When I finally got to the last piece, one of the three inch high connectors between letters, you guessed it, no way it was going to fit. This is where the Rubber Soul experience came in handy because I immediately just cut the thing down to fit. Projects like this really teach you to think on your feet. On this connector I cut almost a quarter inch sliver out of one side and corner and then it slid right into place. The black walls were built, (they were too short so they had to be seamed together) painted and glued down. After painting the walls and while they dried, I stained and polyurethaned the beautiful wooden frame Mr. Dudley built for the project After that dried, we slid it down over the art and it almost fitted perfectly. Had to trim each corner just a tiny bit and it slid right down into place. Once we had it in place we discovered it was so tight that fitting it in had caused the back edge of one corner to pop loose but Mr. Dudley was able to clamp, glue and nail it back in place and finally all we had to do was add a protective coat to the entire thing. Finished.
   So a long description to a fairly quick project. The students, especially Hunter G. were a huge help in getting it done and I have to believe learned a few lessons in the doing. I sort of lived in fear throughout that something might happen in the classroom and this would get derailed by damage. You just never know and if my classes weren't so large that fear would probably not arise. So as soon as I could, it was delivered to the Academy and since they have now announced they have it, I feel like I can write about it.  I am realizing now that I never stated what my concept with this piece actually is. I was thinking of a phoenix, rising. But that isn't exactly it, because my feeling is with a phoenix rising, it rises out of ruin. It actually was sort of a garden with something new arising in it's season. So the old is still there, the bricks, signage, plasterwork, old theatre, history (if you know where to look) but growing, arising out of the old is this new expression, this new home for all the arts, the Academy Center of the Arts in the visual form of this logo. Still a mouthful, but who am I kidding, no one reads this stuff anyway.

The pieces of letters glued together

The entire thing comes together

New and Old

So this year has been a sort of watershed year for me in terms of my exploration of new media. I have long wanted to explore a new style of painting (for me) which is actually a very old style of painting. For a number of years (a number I cannot name - but that’s me with numbers) I've wanted to try my hand at egg tempera, a style of painting that has a relatively small number of practitioners in our time. Most anyone with any knowledge of art will recognize the name Andrew Wyeth, the late American master of surprise, surprise, egg tempera. There are a number of other American greats using this medium and a sort of recent resurgence in it, but for most artists it seems a tedious and illusive art form. For me it was something I felt I could do, but in the rush to live life, get child through college, stay employed, etc, etc, it was always sort of just out of my reach. But I was getting older every day, and this seemed such a simple transition in style for me. Egg tempera uses lots of tiny little lines to create the subtle changes in color and to add depth to the images. Tiny brushes, tiny lines, sounded right up my alley. I actually began my artistic journey as a user of crow quill #102 pen points and india ink, and my first job out of college was as a photo retoucher using Kolinsky Rotmarder watercolor brushes in an industry more akin to the old European guild style of craftwork and since it was a blended German-American company that makes a lot of sense. A minimum of 8 hours a day (but generally far more hours a day and week) I had a #9 Kolinsky Rotmarder watercolor brush drawing god only knows what as I was trained in a 4-year apprenticeship to understand the intricacies of photography, printing and color. The constant use of the brush increased the skill level of the artist/retoucher, the rest was a constant repetition of practice that taught color knowledge to a level most people never approach. For years after I left there I painted watercolor paintings using red, yellow, blue and black with no other colors simply because I could. I had lots of other colors, but why bother? I understood colors and knew what I could create with just those four. It was fun, but no one cared. Most people would miss the dubious value of having that ability and rightly so. I also used to go to life drawing classes and draw using red yellow and blue watercolor pencils and try to get that same effect of full color using less, rather than more. But I knew about egg tempera and it was always there, just out of my reach.
In 2008 a giant of Lynchburg art, Frank Wright, passed away and in a bit of ironic whimsy, his son called me and asked if I'd like some of his leftover supplies. As I was now a public high school art teacher, I assumed some of these supplies would be valuable in the classroom,  a setting almost always underfunded in public schools. I said certainly and drove over to the master's home in my Jeep Liberty which I proceeded to load and load until I wondered if I'd be able to drive away. I drove directly to my school-it was a Sunday afternoon and unloaded everything I thought I could use in the classroom. The rest I took home and into my basement where it waited. Over the years since, I have used many very expensive sheets of watercolor paper, a couple of large canvases and various other pieces of the remainders of his studio. The art students at my school have used loads of stuff he donated and many opportunities for creating art by very worthy students were experienced directly because of this gift. 
But in my basement was one box that I'd forgotten about, just waiting for me to take a peek. In this time span, I've had a heart attack in class, coached girl’s soccer, my students have illustrated and published three children books and I've rediscovered acrylics and sculptural forms and still that box rested with other art supplies, waiting for my discovery. I was still thinking about egg tempera. My life wasn't getting longer and if I wanted to do it, I just had to, well, do it. I e-mailed various egg tempera artists inquiring about workshops, asking questions and the answer almost invariably was "...what are you waiting for, just do it..." or something along those lines. I could always find a reason not to do it; ‘ “daughter in college, can't afford the pigments” or “...no raises for teachers again and now our insurance rates have soared and daughter is in college, so can't afford the pigments right now...” ’ or something along those lines. I talked to my students about it, they were sort of lukewarm, but willing. I suppose they wanted to know the teacher understood the medium before they invested time in it (an acceptable feeling I'd admit) and their teacher had never tried it! One of my teachers had told me the “...best way to learn something is to teach it...” a statement I found ridiculous at the time. Turns out it’s actually not far off.
So back to the box in the basement. I had decided to write a grant when the new 2014-15 school year  opened and try to teach egg tempera and I proceeded to do exactly that. I asked our local Education Foundation for $800 in order to purchase supplies and a small refrigerator (to keep the egg medium fresh). To my shock, they agreed and we were off and running. So one day I was in the basement and moving some boxes around I came across this box I brought home from Mr. Wright’s studio maybe five years before. On a whim I popped the lid and there before my eyes were several dozen bottles of “Perma-Color” dry pigments from a pigment manufacturer in Charlotte, NC and I later discovered had also supplied Andrew Wyeth with some of his pigments. Wow!
I cannot describe how much this surprised and stunned me. Some of these pigments might have gone for a couple of dollars a bottle, others maybe a good bit more. Now that I have bought some pigments, I can say, a whole lot more. Nowadays one of these bottles starts at around $20 and quickly climbs to a place I can't even dream of. So I had no excuse now. Time to paint.
The summer before I had entered a watercolor painting into a regional show at The Hill Center on Capitol Hill in Washington DC. My sister in law Iris Goodman of DC had told me about the Hill Center and asked me to enter. To my surprise it was accepted. The show was juried by the Art Critic for the Washington Post so I was surprised to be accepted at all. This was a different level of art show for me. My wife and I went to DC for the show and after getting off the train went down to the National Gallery to kill a little time before the opening. While there we went to see a newly acquired Van Gogh and I wanted to look at some Toulouse-Lautrecs for something my students had been asked to do the next fall for Lynchburg's Opera on the James. I happened to turn and saw my wife in front of the new Van Gogh, her figure showing a question as she looked at the newly acquired painting. I shot off several photos, wondering if a guard would ask for my camera but no one seemed to notice and we proceeded to wander until her brother picked us up outside the museum. All evening at the opening I was struck by the image I had photographed. It's like a subtle buzz in the head you keep hearing, pulling you back to that moment and over the rest of the summer I thought about it and wondered whether to paint it.
Fall arrived and in class we began working on Opera panels (4' x 6' panels illustrating in the style of Toulouse-Lautrec all 20 operas done in the history of Opera on the James). Winter break arrived and I had begun talking to various students about whether they'd like to try egg tempera. In the end about 24 participated with 20-21 finishing at least one painting. But it was now winter break and I hadn't begun one yet. I went back to the photos of the National Gallery visit and the buzz was still in my head. I decided to begin a 16" x 20" painting of a museum patron looking at this newly acquired Van Gogh. First step, a drawing on claboard a sort of pre-gessoed masonite. Then I pen and inked the drawing. I couldn't open the door to silverpoint (money) and had been told pen and ink would substitute nicely and it did. The students watched and began inking their own 9" x 12" boards. So we proceeded together, seeing what happened and learning as we went. The next Hill Center deadline for entry was coming up and I had decided to enter an egg tempera. At the same time an Academy fund-raiser was fast approaching and I had told Ted Batt I'd donate a painting. So in mid January I stopped the larger first egg tempera and began a 9" x 12" painting of a lily against a red barn. I knocked this one out and posted it and a friend piped up with "I want it." So now I had a quandary, a sale, or a donation. I started another painting to donate to the Academy. By the end of January I was approaching the mid-point of the large painting, had finished one other and was about to finish a third with a fourth and fifth on my find. (One of my students was finishing her first and talking about her second. She is on number four at this point in October.) I was liking this medium.
The entry was due in April with an answer to acceptance in May and delivery to the Hill Center in June. I finished the large painting I was now calling “The New Van Gogh” in early March, photographed it along with a couple of fairly recent watercolors (a year old at least) and paid my entry fee and entered through something called "entrythingy". In early May I receive an e-mail from the gallery saying I'd had one of three accepted:

Dear Jon,
Congratulations!  We are very pleased to announce that your work has been selected for the Hill Center Galleries 2015 Regional Juried Exhibition that will run from June 25 through September 29.  (Note change from the announced end date of September 27.) 
Our juror, Mark Leithauser, Senior Curator and Chief of Design for the National Gallery of Art, selected a distinctive group of pieces from a very large field of entries -- 500 pieces from over 100 artists.  His evaluation was made on individual images, not the complete body of work entered. If you submitted more than one piece for consideration, please note this message advises you only of the individual image(s) SELECTED, by title and entry number, as follows: 2110.172273.730148 The New Van Gogh .  If you submitted additional work for consideration, you will receive a second message listing the piece(s) NOT selected.
You will receive instructions from us soon about the exhibition schedule, requirements for preparing your work to be hung in our galleries, etc.
Be sure to mark your calendar for Thursday, June 25, 6-8pm, for the Opening Reception.  Prize winners (1st, 2nd, and 3rd prize and five Honorable Mention) will be announced during the reception.

Wow, cool. I got in. We had a college graduation to attend in early May as our daughter completed her four years at Radford University and the costs of moving her back home and had about decided we weren't going to attend the opening this year. School ended with all the stress that entails and we slowly moved into our summer routine. My wife went off to a conference for several days and I debated whether or not to go to the show since she’d be coming home and heading right out if she was going to go also. I think I had even said to her I wasn't going to go when on Tuesday, the week of the Thursday opening, this e-mail arrived:

On behalf of Nicky Cymrot, Director of Hill Center Galleries, and Mark Leithauser, Juror for the 2015 Regional Exhibition, I am pleased to announce the following selections made today.

First Prize: Jon Roark, The New Van Gogh
Second Prize: M. Alexander Gray, Old Logging Railroad
Third Prize: Corinne Whitlach, Tunisia's Memoir
Honorable Mention:
- Joseph Bellofatto, Lady of the Lake
- Nancy Freeman, The Third Middle Journey
- Thom Goertel, Chevy, Yellville, Arkansas
- Hester Ohbi, Fleeting
- Judy Searles, Recoleta Detail

Cash awards and certificates will be presented during Mr. Leithauser's remarks at the Opening Reception, Thursday, June 25.  Please join us in the Lincoln Room on the 2nd floor of Hill Center by 7:10 pm.  (Please let me know if you unable to attend.)

Congratulations once again.

Barbara Bonessa for Hill Center Galleries

Well, the situation had changed, hadn't it? First Prize? I called my wife and said, “I think you want to go with me to this show.” We had the normal discussion of being too tired, the dog needing his schedule back to normal, etc, and then I read her the e-mail. It was a pretty astonishing thing for me. I’ve been in a lot of shows and won awards, but never on this level. Then I noticed the juror's name. Washington Post critic the year before, this year it was the Senior Curator of the National Gallery. This was not air I had breathed before.

So now we are almost a year later, my painting is gone, not only did it win but it sold and i am busy teaching again and trying to find time to paint. I just this week began my 8th egg tempera and while I am still finding my way, I am finding the path to be smooth and friendly and very, very fulfilling. Not that anyone is reading this...