yesterday....

ghosts and grey dresses,
apparitions, the cold breeze...





hint (1 and 2)
10" x 22"
mixed media on paper
angela simione, 2010

practice, practice, practice...

this is what today's practice looks like-


untitled
15" x 11"
mixed media on paper
angela simione, 2009

anonymity
redaction
identity
a document of Unimportance
a document of lost stories
unknown histories
histories that don't matter

who gets to be pictured and who doesn't...

and those white socks just kick me right in the heart.

fear and portraiture...

ah mannnnnnn... i've got a doctor's appointment this morning that i forgot all about. geez. i really don't want to go. i hate the doctor's office. hate, hate, HATE. i always get nervous they're gonna ask me to do something humiliating... like take all my clothes off and call everyone in to the room to poke and prod and gawk and comment. not all that far fetched, actually. something along those lines happened once and, now that i think of it, i should have sued or at least complained and got that doctor in trouble but that doesn't have anything to do with today and there should be no reason for the removal of clothing at this particular appointment. at any rate, i've been pacing back and forth since i woke up. i'm all anxiety. silly. i'll go, i'll go. i'll be a good little girl and do what i'm told, i suppose. ugg. maybe it'll give me something to write a poem with. that's looking at the bright side, right? ha! art-nerd alert! :)

i think it's safe to say i've been on quite the poetry kick for the passed few weeks. probably due to my two mini-vacations and being away from my paint, but it sure has been nice. i got a bit of painting done yesterday now that i'm back at home and it felt really good and i kept bouncing back and forth between my canvas and my notebook, one practice feeding the other.

the redaction pieces i've been making have become quite a nice tool in my bag as well. when i first started making them about two years ago, i had no idea what i'd use them for, all i knew was that i liked them and felt like it was a beneficial thing to do. i've always seen them as art-pieces in their own right and want to frame a whole bunch of them, but lately i've been using them for book-making and poetry stuff like the one in my post below. but not all of them will get used that way. some of them are meant to stand alone- act as a little scrap of evidence... allude to a lost history or identity... to talk about loss and silence and fragmentation. they are portraits in their own right. little biographies. the dangle of a secret.


and i am sleeping in my battle
9.25" x 6"
redacted book page
angela simione, 2009

pink...

i spent all day digging and pulling and looking, rooting through my heavy portfolios, making piles and systems and rituals. my back hurts. damn iffy disk. but progress has been made, even if just a little. and it was sort of romantic... sitting outside in the cool sun with all my portfolios laying open. i remember the day each drawing was made. every single one. they all, no matter how sloppy or misguided, made me smile. wide and warm and full of thanks... like when you watch children playing.

just a small collection of work found in the depths of the art pile...








all works-
angela simione, 2007

page by page...

in progress...
a new process...
teaching myself about poetry one slow, painted page at a time.






angela simione, 2009

the words are the white of the paper. it is patient work. it isn't perfect but the method makes me consider each line, each word on its own... it makes me dig in and sniff around and pay close attention to how words want to move...

words want to move like pages, like wings, like a burn.

loose teeth...

a little collection of Artist Trading Cards. these things are so much fun to make!
they are tiny! 3.5" x 2.5", the same size as a baseball card. totally cute!

available at black fence.

on a roll...

3 more little apron paintings in the bag, a ton of work on the next maid portraits (soon. very, very soon), and these:



this is one of the mono prints i made for the SJICA last month. i'd spent hours working on the very first one and, after pulling that print and a few ghosts, i painted back in to the original plate with sepia and black ink to get this piece.




and this is one of the ghost prints, touched up with a bit of black gouache. yum.

both pieces:
untitled
22" x 15"
mono print
angela simione, 2009


the top piece is available now at black fence.

sisters...

i've been saving a big stack of drawings and mixed media work that i had cut down in to small, irregular squares just waiting for a bright idea to come along. but more and more, the idea of storing stuff for some far-off rainy day that might not ever show up has got me not only in the mood to start letting go of the unused items in my life but, also, to start putting some of these little gems to good use. so the other night, i got the big stack out and noticed that a ton of them function beautifully as formal abstractions in their own right and a boat-load more of little pieces that seemed ideal as a backdrop for something more realistic- environments with potential. i decided to just play and see where i'd end up.


sisters
7 1/4" x 7 1/4" (irregular)
mixed media on paper
angela simione, 2009

this is the third time i've used this image and the more i use it the more i love it. it helps me revisit my own childhood, my sister's and my past, being alone together so often and finding ways to get by, play, feel happy, and scrape something together that could resemble dinner. i feel so close to this image and this won't be the last time i use it. not even close.


sisters detail

available at black fence.

the birthing of a new ritual...

i started my morning the way i always do- a pot of coffee and scribbling away in my journal. but rather than jump straight in to painting after that, me and inga went on a hike first thing. no one was really out and about yet so we had the entire acreage of the vineyard to ourselves. it was lovely, bright, and still chilly enough to wear a sweater. the birds were the only other life awake and in the huge silence of the woods that line the edge of the vineyard, sleepy mosquitoes buzzed lazily by without biting me even once.

when we got back to the house, i brewed a second pot of coffee and then sat on the front porch with the book i've been reading and finished it right away- letter to a child never born by oriana fallaci. without a doubt, one of the most intense things i've read... a document of sadness and loss in the extreme, "And before me stretch valleys of sadness where pride blooms in vain". beautiful... and i grieved with every printed word, every embarrassed confession, every hard judgement... a pleasure to begin a new day feeling wholly compassionate and sensitive toward the world, toward honest people- an honest blessing if ever there was one.

and then in the studio, i worked calmly and slowly for about 4 hours before deciding that i had had my fill of heavy seriousness and took a break to play with some lighter subject matter. the big gulp paintings rise again:




untitled (Angela's Backyard 4)
15" x 11"
gouache on paper
angela simione, 2009




untitled (Angela's Backyard 5)
15" x 11"
acrylic and gouache on paper
angela simione, 2009

the white in both of these little paintings is the white of untouched paper. the black is velvety, matte gouache, and in #5, the stripes and spills are defined with bronze and copper fluid acrylic. so much fun! and so worth the time it takes to harness a steady hand. :)

available at black fence.

territories 13

7.5" x 5.5" (paper size)
embroidery on paper
angela simione, 2009

available at black fence

play...

untitled
6" x 6"
mixed media on paper
2009

just something sweet.

this afternoon...

while waiting for paint to dry...



untitled (sisters 6)
15" x 11"
graphite and masking tape on paper
angela simione, 2009




detail

somewhere around 4am and after more coffee than i should've allowed myself...

lineage study
15" x 11"
graphite and erasure on paper
angela simione
2009

a study of the painting i'm working on... you know, the one i keep talking about. :)

survey says...

bronchitis. yick. i suffered from chronic bronchitis as a child and all the way through my teenage years. once a year, i'd be laid up for a minimum of a week due to this damn thing but i haven't had this bad a battle with it in at least 5 years. i'm at war right now guys and am only resurfacing from my self-induced NyQuil coma long enough to write this blog, take a shower, and snuggle with inga for a bit. for the past two days i've only managed to stay awake for about three hours at a stretch, sleep for four, wake up and drink more medicine and crash back out once the delirium takes hold. bear with me if i'm not making much sense right or if my grammar takes a trip to bizarro land.

in spite of this health horror, i have managed to get a bit of drawing done while i wait for enough sanity to work on the big painting:


missing (1)
7 1/2" x 5 1/2"
water-soluble graphite and gesso on paper
2009


missing (2)
water-soluble graphite, gouache, and gesso on paper
2009


together on my paint covered desk...


...they fill me with a strange happiness whenever i look at them. i stand at stare at them while i drink my morning coffee... a brew i should be avoiding right now but hey, i rarely make decisions based on shoulds. quite a few of my influences are evident in these two little darlings - Ellen Gallagher and the photographer Laurent Askienazy are probably the two most obvious. i'm always happy to see a touch of those whom i admire cropping up in my work. it makes me feel like i finally have a lineage to cling to, to call upon, to learn.

thoughts on paper...

humble, common, mundane - we all have a daily relationship with paper. we cringe at the junk mail we receive, we peel it back from sticks of gum, we turn page after page of magazines. we're used to it. it occupies a space in our daily lives that is so rampant, so huge, that we don't notice it. we take its presence for granted. and as far as art substrates go, it isn't hard to acquire.

there are plenty of artists in the world that draw on backs of envelopes or crumpled receipts. and these artists, for however much flack they take before gaining some sort of critical recognition, are doing something so fundamentally human that it flies well below the radar of ART and challenges our perceptions of what art is. the fact that a scribble on a stained napkin can be validated as a fine drawing is such a wonderful thing and i enjoy the big emotional response that type of art generates.

it is this extreme level of familiarity and banality that makes work on paper seem so much more intimate than work on canvas or linen or wood. i think using common, easily acquired materials is one of the big reasons why works on paper have become so important. there's even a magazine dedicated to it: art on paper. and the enormous volume Vitamin D is a testament to the importance of drawing itself... drawing for it's own sake and in it's own right, in no way connected to painting or planning.

drawing has been received as being something much more than a preliminary action, a way to jot down ideas or work out the kinks of a different piece. it stands on its own as a completely valid art form and i love that.

drawing is an action that we've all taken part in. we doodle when bored and scribble in the dirt. our coffee mugs leave little abstract drawings ringed across the kitchen table and we find animals hidden in cloud formations. we are all drawing all the time.

the commonality of drawing paired with the banal readiness of paper is largely responsible for why i've gravitated so strongly toward exploring its potentiality for making endearing, emotional, thoughtful, honest work. it's just so immediate and seems to showcase the passage of the human hand in a more observable,tangible way than oil on canvas. oil paintings always achieve a level of refinement but a drawing, no matter how refined, always seems to carry a quality of rawness (in my opinion, anyway) and a level of humility. i'm attracted to this occuance and need to explore it.