Making some xerox transfer prints with a blender pen for the first time and loving it. Looking forward to exploring this method some more:

Finally realizing an idea I have been mulling over for some time, and it feels good. I had the opportunity this week to install some of my work from my Constellations series in a faculty art exhibit at Lone Star College-University Park. Here are a few installation shots:

Planning to keep making more and more of these constellation globes and hope to fill a whole room with them...

Participated again this year in a fundraiser for a local high school orchestra by recycling an older or lightly damaged instrument into a piece. My violin was actually in very good condition with a very nice surface, so again I didn't want to cover it up with paint but rather use it in an etching process. The imagery this year is related to my wildflower constellation project that's been brewing in my head for the past year and a half:

We leaned back against the cold, hard incline.
A framed square of sky above.
Look at the short narrow cloud in the upper left quadrant of baby blue.
It kind of looks like a white cheeto.

Two people get up and walk out.
Others rustle, and I hear a man snoring.
I question my own attention span.
The cheeto is already in the bottom left quadrant.

The sky is rosy now.
A bird flits diagonally across the right side.
A microscopic plane steadily divides the square up the center.
The cheeto is gone.

Artificial blue light fights with the sky's blue.
The square slowly then quickly becomes warm and grey.
Then slowly a sickly cool yellow-green.
Surrounded by diffuse neon violet.

When did the sky become so quiet and dark?
A blink ago it shouted proudly at the orange.
Minutes pass which feel like hours which feel like seconds.
Suddenly, inky indigo-black.

Drinking tea, listening to the hum of the dryer, and decompressing from another semester. Discovering the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershoi for the first time:

I am reminded and inspired again of this sense of quiet that I want to convey in my work.

Finished a new watercolor today, or at least I'm saying it's finished for now:

This work, along with three others, will be displayed at Gallery M Squared in the Heights later this summer at "Paper Cuts II," a two part exhibit featuring small to medium size works on paper. I will be showing two different works at each exhibit. More information below. Hope to see you there!

"Paper Cuts II"
Gallery M Squared
339 W. 19th St.
Houston, TX 77008

First Exhibit: July 10th - August 3rd, 2014
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 10th, 7-9pm

Second Exhibit: August 7th - August 31st
Opening Reception: Thursday, August 7th, 7-9pm

I've been thinking of shadows lately. Some recently observed shadows around the house:

I came across a book of Sylvia Plimack Mangold's paintings two summers ago, and her floor paintings documenting simple patterns of shadow and light keep coming to mind these days:

Some weeks back, I saw a beautiful group of watercolors by John Singer Sargent at the MFAH, but this one in particular struck me:

Earlier this month, I kayaked through Armand Bayou with a friend and visited another in Waco where I walked along the wooded edge of the Brazos River--two places where light and shadow had such a physical presence for me. These words came to mind after returning home:


She came to hear an artist speak,

          but God spoke.

He spoke through a blind woman who led her through the spotted shadows along the river’s edge--

          the “places of rest within life.”



She sat beneath a shadow just two days prior

          on the surface of a southern bayou,

and the peace filled her like the water in the palette dipped at the boat’s side

          as she traced edges of trunks and leaves.



The leaves whose spaced placements created dazzling dancing patterns along the kitchen wall

          when she woke up the day before,

and whose remains lie scattered today amid the discarded flower petals of a spring wind

          into arrangements calculated carefully not by she.


(Written May 6, 2014)

Pleased to be a part of an upcoming show in May and June at The Gallery at Fort Davis Drugstore which will be celebrating the 75th anniversary of the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis. More information regarding the exhibit and gallery can be found here. 

My first encounter with McDonald Observatory coincided with my first trip to the Big Bend Region, one of the most beautiful areas of the state in my opinion. I will always remember my first trip there. One week in spring during the third grade, I squeezed into the back of a van with several of my classmates and our elementary school teacher, and together we traveled hundreds of miles west from Houston to Fort Davis. During our stay, we galloped across Prude Ranch on horseback, marveled at the Marfa Lights, and examined the planets and stars from McDonald Observatory. During a stargazing party one night, I was awestruck by the numerous constellations, so clearly visible, which are easily forgotten when living in the city. Since then, I have returned to the area every few years, and it was during my most recent visit last summer that I was reminded, once again, of the beautiful twinkling patterns in the sky above. I was also pleasantly surprised to see so many varied wildflowers thriving amidst the typically hot and dry summer. Could their clustered arrangements be mirrored reflections of those same stars?

Had the opportunity to show at Hardy and Nance Street Studios today for Squared Up, a one day show to coincide with their monthly open studios (third Saturday of each month). While short, it was neat seeing the photos installed on the rough texture of this old warehouse wall, meeting a few other artists, and experiencing a corner of Houston I hadn't been to before.

I have returned to my wildflower constellation map idea and experimented with editing my photos on the computer today: