So, after a long wait, with much suspense, I present to you the islands.  They are supposed to be mini art museums, thus the walkways and little doors.  My friend and fellow artist Krista Peel has challenged me and a two handfuls of other artists to come up with mini art museums for her latest calendar project.  She will harness her mad skills to photograph these little buildings with railroad people milling about them and assign them to a particular month in a glossy, glorious calendar.  My particular take on the challenge was obviously influenced by my recent work drawing and painting the islands. 

So though I always have fun making work for KP’s calendar projects (wow!  since 2004 now), they always reaffirm for me how much I love painting and drawing as opposed to working with 3D-oriented media, as in this case with pink insulation foam and plaster.  I had much more fun painting the surface of the islands than I did doing all of that sanding.  Still, it’s nice to be able to expand into whatever realm is presented and I am pretty happy with the final result which isn’t too far off than what I has envisioned in my drawing.  Plus, as I mentioned before, this was my first foray into model railroad land.  It’s quite a place!

There are a lot of artists out there doing this model railroad thing, and other work with miniatures.  I must say, in the following cases (and with Krista Peel’s work, which is, of course, a given), I am quite taken with it:

Thomas Doyle makes strange little events happen in snow globes.

Courier, mixed media, 12.5 x 14, inches diameter, 2007

Acceptable losses, mixed media, 16 x 13.5 inches, diameter 2008

Though these following images by Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz are c-prints, they are clearly taken using diorama-like sets.  Is it any coincidence that the title of this series is “Islands”?

A Winter Walk, 2006 C-Print 39 x 65 inches

Low Tide, 2008 C-Print 50 x 40 inches

Thanks to my friend Abigail for alerting me to these artists in her blog.  Let me know if you come across others…

…to borrow a phrase from my friends Ryan and Vals’ blog, who in turn, borrowed it from our friend Jen’s mischievous nephew who uses the phrase to evade getting in trouble.  So, I am just doing this thing.  I kinda know what it is.  I know it has to do with art and that it’s due at the end of the month (yikes!).  I also know that this thing brought me to Home Depot, Michael’s, and the same hobby shop three times today, where each time, I had lovely chats about the hows and whatfors of model train building with some of the considerate and attentive members of the Ann Arbor Model Railroad Club.  Art causes me to wind up in the swellest of unexpected situations…

So, here is an image of “this thing” so far.  (And yes, I am being purposefully enigmatic to hopefully build suspense.  Of course if “this thing” flops, then I will feel a bit like a sheep, but c’est la vie, right?)

I have purposefully been laying low on the exhibition front lately, as the beginning of the year was beastly with one solo show coming down, two and a half more going up, plus juried and group exhibitions (and school and life), I was wiped!  I am making new work, which I plan to exhibit in solo or small group shows down the road, but it will be a while before that occurs.  For now, I was pleased to receive this image in my inbox today:

of my work (island paintings) in the recent International Artist-in-Residence Exhibition at the Museum of Trade and Tourism in Budapest.  Thank you to Beata for putting the show together and providing the opportunity!

I actually did two things:

1) I finally put the images of the work I made in Budapest onto my website.   That’s  an important step in the artmaking process for me.  Seeing the work together, online, is a way for me to digest it differently than seeing it on the wall.  It also officially puts it “out there” (wherever that is) for others to see and comment on.

2) Also, and bigger and potentially better (yet all part of the same package), the universe collided in such a way so that today I found myself writing an email to Richard Gillespie, TIGHAR‘s (The International Group for Historic Airline Recovery) executive director in charge of leading yet another expedition to what is now called Nikumaroro Island (formerly Gardner).  I am writing to see if I can go along on the month-long expedition starting in May 2010 to search for DNA on the island that could lead to knowledge of Amelia Earhart’s whereabouts at the time of her death and a big “mystery solved” stamp on one of the most compelling enigmas in recent history.

Now if I get a response at all from this supremely busy man, that will be great.  If I get an affirmative response from him, that will be epic.  Then I can start the extensive grant writing process that will consume me for the next few months.  Thanks to NPR’s The World for featuring an interview with Ric Gillespie about the trip and my friend Brian Spolans for alerting me to this article from ABC News.  These two bits of media helped kick me in the butt to write the email.

In other news, when I finally bring all of this work together in an exhibition, I hope to make it somehow museum-like in appearance and presentation, as though I am presenting artifacts rather than artwork, or a hybridization of the two.  On this topic I just received this book in the mail today:

which I am very excited to read.  The Museum of Jurassic Technology in LA presents fictions as though they are fact.  I am very compelled by this aesthetic of painstakingly contrived deceptions.  It is a historically rich, yet very current mode of presenting information.  I have witnessed this phenomenon in the writing of Ben Marcus, and the artwork of Hyungkoo Lee who’s work we saw at the Korean Pavilion during the 2007 Venice Biennale.  He creates realistic skeletal remains of cartoon characters.

Now, I am going to use all of this excited energy to head off to the studio!