Art Too Contemporary

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

It is interesting how growth with the passage of time aids in our understanding of so many things. I have been spending my evenings lately going through many, many files in my office and weeding out things I no longer need. In my “Gallery File” I ran across a printout of the Artists Submission Policy for the John Pence Gallery in California. I had contacted them in regards to an exhibition they were collecting art for titled, “The Nude.”

The bottom half of the page is full of my handwritten notes. I had e-mailed an inquiry and during my follow-up call, I was told that they had checked out my work online and my paintings were “too contemporary” and they had no need of sculpture. This was January 20, 2003.


I include here some of the works that they might have seen. I still have these, having rarely exhibited them as I kept creating newer and newer images. I must say that finding this paper made me laugh, for I rarely get labeled as “TOO contemporary.” Hindsight and much experience give me a better understanding of where I was at the time. These artworks all sell for $300 or less. They were all done from 3-hour life drawing sessions in Austin, Texas.

This is a primo example of an emerging artist who was simply not ready to be exhibited in a gallery. There is nothing particularly horrid in the work, it is just too early in my development and also, the prices are way too low for a gallery to even bother with, certainly not a gallery of the reputation and clientele of the John Pence Gallery. Anyway, I think their response is a keeper for my files . . . and maybe someday, I will again hear the criticism that my work is “too contemporary.”


If you would like to see more of my early paintings, visit these pages on my site:

• 1996-1997 Figurative Oil Paintings
  
• 1996-2000 Figurative Oil Paintings
  
• 1999-2001 Figurative Oil Paintings
  
• 2001-2002 Figurative Oil Paintings
  

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Oh – I recently submitted an entry of two painting to an online self-portrait competition. I could really use your support - please vote (once each day is possible) to help me win the $2500 CASH People's Choice Award:

http://Kellyborsheim.see.me/aw2011
In the upper right hand corner, click on the star you want to vote for (left star is 1, a low rating, while the star on the right is a 5-star highest rating).

Thank you so much!

Que Imaging Cruse Scanner

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

I recently returned from a semi-whirlwind 24-hour trip to Houston, about a 2.5 hour drive from my studio in central Texas. My friend Tom invited me to see the Impressionists exhibit going on now at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (“Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art”). I had not had time to even read about the show, but I can say that it was better than I expected for some reason.

We both got to see some works by artists we had not heard of before. Surprisingly, I fell absolutely in love with two still lifes of peaches by different artists (Renoir and ___ [I cannot remember]). And, the main attraction, a Vincent Van Gogh self portrait, was rather unappealing to me. In that work and a floral piece across the room, he used a pasty bluish green that just made me think of ill health. Fitting perhaps and well done, but not something I wanted to spend time with. I also decided that Manet was a better artist than I thought.

Years ago, I began to change over to digital archiving of my 2-d artworks (vs. having professional large format transparencies shot). When New Era Publishing in Austin, Texas, stopped creating hi-res scans of artwork by artists not within their decorating business, I began to look elsewhere. All I found in Austin were scanners that consisted of placing one’s art between plastic sleeves and a roller! Sooooo not acceptable!

It took some digging (oh, I love the convenience of the Internet), but I decided that the Cruse Scanner was what I wanted to have document my work. Nothing would touch the original. I could scan almost any size and have everything properly aligned. I could create art on paper, canvas, or wood panels and get all of my hi-res scanning done in one place. And most important of all, I would get a high quality scan. The closest place I found to me was Que Imaging in Houston. Wow. All of these artists around here and NOTHING like this in Austin or even central Texas!


Here is an image of the Cruse scanner at Que that I took when I made my first visit there last November. You might notice my pastel on black paper “World Traveler” on the stand. He looks small in comparison with the size the Cruse can actually accommodate. The guys at Que (including the owner Bob Abbinanti) have been so informative about the technology and helping me to learn more about another end of the art business. They are very kind to work with, and I am grateful that thus far, I have been able to schedule an appointment and get my scans done in one business day, saving me a lot of downtime in travel to Houston. I recommend their customer service and their quality!

So what is the big deal about the hi-res scanning? Well, unless an artist outright (and on paper) sells her copyright with the art, she retains all copyright. And that means, for one thing, that if I get some hi-res scans or (as in the past) large transparencies of my work, I can create high quality giclée fine art reproductions of my work. This allows people who love the image, but cannot justify the price of original works of art, to be able to enjoy my art in their own home or office. And even if someone wants the original, it could be sold, and again, the giclée allows more people to share the joy. For example, the original pastel “World Traveler” sells for $2100 (25” long), whereas the large giclee (24” length) sells for only $275, with smaller sizes available. Why, that sounds downright affordable for gifts, too!

So, what exactly is a giclée? Want more information? Visit here: http://www.borsheimarts.com/giclee.htm


This second image is a detail from the scan of my “World Traveler.” You can see the lines of the original black Italian paper and the texture of the pastels I used in the original. It is quite cool actually and I have been so impressed!

Another great reason for the hi-res scans are that once I get my big museum show, it will be so much easier to create those large promotional banners!
Yours in art! And working every single day . . .

Fish Lips Stone Carving

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Today Italy celebrates 150th year since its unification. Funny, for a place that has seen so much history and change and influence from so many other cultures over the centuries. For your thinking pleasure, here is an interesting link someone posted on Facebook about Italy and its relationship to the rest of Europe. Happy birthday, Italia!

But long before I knew anything about la bella Italia, I knew that I was part Irish, from my Grandpa Mike’s side of the family. So, I would like to share with you today one of my GREEN sculptures!


"Fish Lips"
Green Marble (Canada)
one-of-a-kind
17" h x 6.5" w x 23.5" d
$4000

http://www.borsheimarts.com/sculpture/2006/fishlips.htm
This particular marble from Canada has a blue-green color overall. It is a very hard marble, but as you can see from the way I carved her, she has many, many layers. She is unusual because generally stones that have layers like this have one direction in which the pattern is in straight lines. To get curves, one carves perpendicular to these lines, pushing back into them to make concentric circles. This stone has no such property. She has lovely zig zags from all directions. It simply amazes me.



So once again, when the stone has a complicated personality, I carve a relatively simple shape. I have been making the "fishlips" expression since I was a child. I do not know why it is so much fun, especially for young children. Since the "Lips Series" tends to be a bit different from my representational style, I wanted to use it to do some exploration. I hope you enjoy this stone sculpture.

Fish Lips has been sealed, like all of my other stones, and is a hard marble. It should be fine to display either indoors or out.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Old World Stone Carving Competition

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Mark your calendars for April 9 & 10, 2011, and join me and about a dozen other stone carving artists for the “L’arte Antica Old World Stone Carving Competition” at The Vineyard at Florence in central Texas. The vineyard and Villa Firenze will house an art exhibit and festival that includes live demonstrations off to one side of the hundreds of acres out there.

2011 April 9 & 10
Saturday: 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Sunday: 11 a.m. - 4 p.m.
The Vineyard
8711 FM 487
Florence, Texas 76527
Contact: KAMBRAH GARLAND at 512-924-7447 or ph. 254.793.3363
www.thevineyardatflorence.com E-mail: stonecarvingevent@gmail.com
The competition will be judged on Sunday afternoon at 2 pm by no less than 3 independent judges. Prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places will be given.

FREE to attend; see paintings, photography, sculpture, art shop (notecards and more)
Oh, and do not forget the wine tasting!

Continental Cut Stone in Florence, Texas, provided the stone. I went into their boneyard and chose a block of PINK limestone! for the mere fact that I have never carved this stone before.

The competition is purely informal. As long as we have two days worth of work to do on our stone, we benefit the viewing public. Since I do not have a portable air compressor, I will be using only hand and electric tools. I also wanted to remove a little bit of the weight of the stone after I came up with my idea for this rock.

Here are some images of the starting of my project. The first image shows my new stone (3rd from the left, in the foreground between the two marbles. A crème limestone block is seen on the far left). In the second image, I increased the contrast and darkened the image so that you can see how I scratched in the circle and vertical bar compositional shapes. Then I drew with pencil (and later crayon) the figure of the angel and the possible stairs on the right. The stairs are a tribute to Michelangelo.



In this last image, you may see the break in the stone beyond the horizontal line I drew. This was also another reason I wanted to start my work early – to get to know the stone. It is very different from the marbles and alabasters that I have carved before. This stone appears to have random air pockets with small orange crystalline forms. I will not work more on this project before the competition in part because the beginning stages are the most dramatic for people to view, but mostly because I have so many other things that require my attention right now. I will leave this stone carving as my play project during the arts weekend at the Vineyard.


I hope that you can make it out there – it is really amazing to see what my colleagues can create in two days! I will also have several 2-d and 3-d works in the art exhibit inside the Villa Firenze, as well as some of my popular art notecards. Join us?

Stone Carving Pelican Lips

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Each day that I work to carve out the interior forms of my marble “Gymnast” I wonder if I am insane to have chosen to do this. However, the more the air enters the stone carving, the more I see that I made the right decision. It is slow going, and I can only appreciate that I have electric tools to speed it up a little. The difficulty has been in REACHING those inside areas.

While I work, my mind drifts onto thoughts of lips. I need to carve more on the “Gymnast”’s face, but I want to wait until the interior is more defined and I can focus on the face.

So, I will share with you part of my lips series in stone sculpture: “Pelican Lips” His dimensions are 12.5" h x 22" w x 6.5" d.

The stone is a brown marble from Canada, but the patterns in the stone look a lot like petrified wood. At the time that I carved this one, I had been seeing a lot of bird forms around me. I have watched pelicans (and their funny suicidal-looking hunting dives, straight down and head first into the water) along various coastlines throughout parts of my life. One side of the thick slab of stone in this sculpture shows a pair of human lips, while the other features a pair of pelicans. Bringing nature to humanity ;-)



If you enjoy this artwork and are interesting in purchasing him, please contact Don Elliott at the Franklin Barry Gallery / The Frame Shop
617 Massachusetts Avenue
Indianapolis, Indiana 46204
Tel. 317.822.8455
E-mail: theframeshopindy@aol.com

Layaway is accepted, too! Thank you for your interest in stone carving!


P.S. In this last image, you may see how, as a direct carver, I am drawing directly onto the stone. The stone tends to pale in color during the carving process, but once he is polished his true glory appears!

Awe in Stone Carving

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

“How did you do that?” is one question that seems to define the word “awe” for me. That is the one of the reasons I cannot seem to make a simple design in my sculpture – the attempt to make you (and me) feel awe. But I know that I also do it for the light. Mainly here, I am speaking about undercuts. I get frustrated enough because I am a slow producer, but then in the course of doing the work, I always seem to want to push myself to tackle a new challenge.

So, in my current marble carving project, the “Gymnast”, I thought creating a face that I can hardly reach was bad enough. Today, I took a masonry bit and drilled through the stone to create a space between the upper body and the vertical thighs. The “Gymnast” is in a tight pike position, with her toes pointed to the heavens.

I cannot tell you how wonderful it feels to drill from one end of the stone to the other and have the drill bit emerge on the other side … in the intended position! Twice even – once over the breasts but under the arms and the second hole was created below the breast line. This seems like a no-brainer, but sometimes it is easier to measure the angle of the drill when one is not right on top of it. It is helpful to have someone else around on occasion to act as an extra eye or hand, but it did not happen today and I wanted to get on with it.


After I created the first two holes, I then changed to one of my new favorite tools – a double cut carbide tip on a 6” shaft. As seen here in the photos, I used it to go in from the top between the arms to start to connect holes and open up the space a little bit. I tend to stand back from the piece often to check my proportions and line. At some point, I drew in a line for the bird’s eye view of the breasts, keeping the line further out than I really want to cut. I can refine the line later, but I will never be able to retrieve cut stone.


In this last image, I am looking over the left shoulder of the “Gymnast” and down into the small opening of her folded up form. Really, what was I thinking?

My goal was to finish this marble sculpture before I returned to Italy in May, but I would be surprised if I can pull that off. Still, it is good to have goals.

Sculpture Challenge Texas

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Oh boy, did I screw up! I meant to write this post two days ago… you ARE invited!

Saturday, March 5, 2011: Sculpture Challenge (Texas) fundraiser for PAWS Animal Shelter

Hours: 10 am to 5:30 p.m.

Over a baker’s dozen of sculptors with even more art will be on hand for this event out in the sculpture gardens and grounds of my friends Philip and Michelle Hoggatt. They are two of the kindest, most generous people you could ever meet and they host this annual event for a local charity.

Plus I will be introducing my newest marble carving “Back to Back” – yep, the one that you have watched getting carved here on occasional blog posts. This marble sculpture will be entered into the Sculpture Challenge. Each artist is allowed to enter one piece and those attending the event get to vote on their favored works. It is a friendly competition, but the real goal is to help find homes for puppies of any age and needed funds for the shelter.

I will also have a few selected smaller works on exhibit and am just happy to be forced from a semi-seclusion. Do not get me wrong – I love to be alone and it is necessary for my process, but everyone needs a balance. It will be fun to connect with old friends and meet some new people.

Please come on out if you can (and if you have not received this too late):

CARVED STONE, INC.
5300 Bell Springs Rd. Dripping Springs, Texas 78620
Contact: Philip & Michelle Hoggatt Phone: 512-858-5665
Admission requires a $10 per person donation to PAWS. All ticket proceeds benefit PAWS. Also, if you purchase one of the sculptures entered into the Sculpture Challenge, 20% will go to PAWS.