Artists – Linda C. Everson

Night Dreams in CLUSTER Exhibit

Linda — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 04:30:29 +0000

Night Dreams
© 1998. Linda C Everson
28″h x 20″w framed

A CLUSTER is a group of similar things or people positioned or occurring closely together. My solarplate print Night Dreams, is currently in an invitational show, CLUSTER, at IceCube Gallery in Denver.

My dreams tend to have clusters of images, ideas, fears, or emotions that keep repeating themselves over and over. And I may have these dreams multiple times… sometimes months or years later. These are called “repetition dreams”. I quite often dream of flying, floating, or falling and I can’t ever stop that process.

In my print, Night Dreams, I included many small figures; some floating, some standing. The figures cluster, swirl, and lurk on top of and around the goddess faces. The multiple faces create a multi-tiered level of mystery. Sigmund Freud said that “dreams are the window to the sub-conscious”.

Bertil Vallien, who’s famous for his sandcasted glass sculptures, often included small floating figures in his vast boat and torso sculptures. His beautiful artwork influenced my own use of floating figures and also the use of vibrant color, transparency, and multiple layers of imagery.

A SOLARPLATE is a steel backed POLYMER PLATE that is light sensitive. Transparencies can be exposed unto the plates by sunlight or UV light boxes. In the Goddess series, I used Kodalith transparencies of photos of goddess faces which I spliced together after printing them in the darkroom. I drew the floating figures onto these transparencies with a opaque pen. After exposure, the solarplate was etched in water which dissolved the unexposed areas, creating textures in the plate.

To create the multiple “flat” background colors (greens, ochres, rust, tan) I made acetate cutouts (like a puzzle) which were rolled with the etching ink and then printed on paper on an etching press. Dark brown and ochre inks were then wiped onto the textured solarplate, and that was printed on top of the flat colors. This required tedious registration and many runs through the etching press to create all the layers of color.

Several years ago, I did a whole series of solarplate prints called the Goddess Series and another called the Torso Series, all based on Greek and Roman sculptures and reliefs which I photographed. In many of those prints, I included small floating figures that swirled through the larger figurative images and/or backgrounds. Some other Goddess and Torso prints that are not in the Exhibit and also are not on my website are depicted below. Please see my CONTACT PAGE is you’re interested in more information.

Mirror Image
© 2002. Linda C Everson
18″h x 11″w image size

Paper Doll Torsos
©2001. Linda C Everson
10″h x 25″w image size

Enchantment of the Trees and Forest
© 1997. Linda C Everson
11″h x 24″w image size

Antoni Tapies death

Linda — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:48:54 +0000

A favorite mentor, Antoni Tapies, passed away on February 6, 2012 in Barcelona, Spain. Although Whitney Houston’s high profile death headlined all the US media at the time, his death was not well heralded here. However, Antoni Tapies was much more intriguing to me! I had visited his Tapies Fundacio several times in Barcelona. His art was both quiet and reflective, and also often large and forbidding. It too, could cause much emotion!

His use of graffitti and texture were elements that I admired and use in my own art. If you look at his artwork and at mine, your would probably not see many similarites, yet our visions were fairly similar. We both liked surface and texture, both made use of symbols and language in an abstract manner.

Please read my former blog about Antoni Tapies. I will cherish his memory and his art.

Inspiration – “objects you see”

Linda — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 03:29:16 +0000

I just saw a great art show Triggered Momentum by Sabin Aell, a contemporary photographer, at Walker Gallery in Denver. The subject matter was quite unusual… BATH TOWELS! What also impressed me was her artist statement. Sabin had stepped outside and saw a “bizarrely shaped form: a towel”. The towel was frozen and had ice crystals on it; so she had a “you know it” moment … which is “triggered by objects you see”. Sabin immediately knew what was the subject matter for her next art series…. frozen towels.

The frozen towels took on a new form in her artwork. They danced and swayed in space, vaguely resembling many other things in the eyes of the viewer. This transformation of one odd object into something else was quite beautiful. It’s something I also try to do with my Arborglyphs monoprints. I see tree bark markings and they become something else. It’s what creativity is about… seeing and transforming. The objects you initially see become something else. Like magic!

Map of Heaven play

Linda — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 02:08:25 +0000

I just saw the premier of the play Map of Heaven by Michele Lowe at DCPA in Denver. The story is about a rising female artist in New York and her busy physician husband. It isn’t so much a story about art, but instead focuses on relationships and maps, the path one’s life might be taking and how it can be changed irrevocably by an incident. In this story, several lives are sent on different paths after an ethical tragedy. Coincidentally, the artist’s paintings are MAPS! And the physician is a radiologist who looks at ‘maps’ of cellular tissue in mammograms. Except of course he messes up one very badly. Very clever and interesting interplay between the maps of 5 people’s lives. However, I don’t know if agree with one reviewer’s view that the theme was about:

the healing power of art.

Stephen Batura artwork

Linda — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:15:28 +0000

I was just at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art admiring the Stephen Batura’s show Edits with his wonderful acrylic paintings that were based on his collages of fashion. However, its difficult to see the ‘fashion’ in his art because of the closeup views and chopped up angles. That’s what makes this artwork so interesting to me. Stephen Batura has

a focus on texture that extends beyond the given context.

The above quotation about his artwork resonates with my own intentions in my Arborglyphs artwork. Texture is the focus, NOT the representation of the original image. While Batura’s paintings seem quite abstract in a glance, upon much inspection you see elements of reality – the flow of drapery, the collar of a shirt, or a portion of a body part.

I also like the way Batura uses triangles and other sharp angles that seem to overlap and collide with each other. There is a sense of layering here. However Batura’s use of a typical rectangular canvas with the angled imagery centered on top of a bland background color was boring. I think the paintings would have been more effective if he had created ‘shaped’ canvases. I created many shaped paintings in the past, and found that makes for an interesting departure from the typical horizontal shape.

Graffiti art – StrassenKunst show

Linda — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:24:09 +0000

From August 27 – Sept 19, 2010, one of my Arborglyph monoprints is in an international exhibit called StrassenKunst at Artspace Gallery in Richmond, VA. The theme of the exhibit is artwork INSPIRED by graffiti with 59 artworks chosen. There are photos of graffiti, paintings with graffiti images, jewelry and sculpture scratched with graffiti-like symbols, and so on.

Graffiti art isn’t just street art, nor is it always gang related. While graffiti today is often thought of as destructive and a form of vandalism, it has helped arhaeologists decipher interesting cultural practices and has brought history to a forefront.

The first graffiti art was created over 30,000 years ago at Lauscaux caves, and a few summers ago I visited that wonderful site. I have a penchant for cave art, rock art, petroglyphs, and pictograms, and those sites are inspiration for my Arborglyph monoprints. My graffiti inspiration is the from the markings on aspen tree bark in Colorado by humans, animals, or nature’s own scarring. In the American west, many trees were first engraved by the Basque and Hispanic shephards and the term Arborglyph (tree with a glyph) was born.

Apparently, the term “graffiti” came from the Italian term “graffiato” which means “scratched”. Graffiti generally means any writing on a public place, and it has been done over the centuries by the Greeks, Romans, Mayans, Vikings, and Celtics, to name a few. I was in Pompeii this summer, and the archaeologists had unearthed some interesting graffiti on walls there. In China, Mao Zedong was known for publicizing everything, including a 4000 character graffiti slogan on a wall. Throughout history man has yearned to “make a mark”.

Although their are many controversaries over some artists such as Bansky from England, graffiti has become more accepted in some fine art circles. Artists such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michael Basquiat did graffiti in subway stations and in the streets. Later they both became famous by showing in fine art galleries in the early 1980’s, and numerous videos were made of their lives and art. Interestingly, Basquiat in his early graffiti years left his “tag” SAMO in many places. The symbol I use in my art title in the StrassenKunst exhibit is SAM. I wouldn’t claim that I use “tags” in my artwork, but I do use symbols in the titles that are my own “alphabet”.

A “tag” is the most basic writing of an artist’s name, it is simply a handstyle. A graffiti writer’s tag is his or her personalized signature. Tagging is often the example given when opponents of graffiti refer to any acts of handstyle graffiti writing (it is by far the most common form of graffiti). Tags can contain subtle and sometimes cryptic messages, and might incorporate the artist’s crew initials or other letters.

Subsequently there are many graffiti INSPIRED artists and art exhibits today. I personally do not condone defacing public property with art. However, photographing graffiti art (on trees) has proven to be an interesting subject matter for me.

Moore Inspired Exhibit

Linda — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 22:31:11 +0000

Tonight is the opening reception for the exhibit Moore Inspired at the Botanic Gardens in Denver. My ceramic sculpture Reclining Mother was accepted into this juried exhibit through August 1, which displays Colorado artists whose works were inspired by Henry Moore.

Henry Moore’s wonderful sculptures are on display in the Botanic Gardens until January 31, 2010.

Henry Moore’s use of organic forms in his Reclining Figures influenced my creation of Reclining Mother while doing ceramics in college. I was attracted to the primitive and archaic attributes in his forms and surface. Although my sculpture is ceramic, my earthy and reticulating glazes were influenced by Moore’s use of surface on wood and rock.

The ‘hollow’ or negative spaces in Henry Moore’s figures were significant in my own sculpture as well. These enclosures lead the eye back into the embryonic figure. Although reclining, my ceramic figure has movement. My sculpture is small in comparison to Moore’s monumental figures, but it still is a non-representational ‘mother earth’. Moore’s sculptures were tied to the earth as well.

See more information on Henry Moore lectures and tours at the Botanic Gardens.

EMBRACE – Installations at DAM 2

Linda — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 22:02:42 +0000

The Embrace show at the Denver Art Museum was one of the more extensive and interesting installation shows I’ve seen. Seventeen artists created their own ‘dialogues’ with the unusual architecture in various areas of the museum. Although ‘painting’ was a term often used to describe the art; the installations encompassed everything from plastic, cloth, wood, mirrors, found art, sculpture, video, and so on.

In addition to the interplay of the art and architecture, the use of language, interesting materials, and the interaction of the audience in the artwork were also important components of the Embrace exhibit.

El Anatsui’s Rain Has No Father? was a huge ‘cloth’ made of found bottle tops that were sewn together with copper wire. It was displayed in the African Art area where you observed other ancient African art in it’s proximity, seeing a common link between the traditional and the contemporary. His analogies to the Rocky Mountains and raindrops in shimmering clouds was remarkable. DAM is well known for it’s Native American collection and the art reminded me of Native American blankets and clothing as well. The flowing nature of Anatsui’s ‘cloth’ negated the actual stiffness of the metal components, and I admired the sheer amount of work involved in creating his ‘cloth’. Although his art did not have the same use of the diagonal wall spaces that was so obvious in other installations, the shadows created on the wall behind the ‘cloth’ were beautiful.

In Chamber, Charles Sandison used the diagonal walls and ceiling of a cavernous space for his video projections of swirling colors, letters, words, and symbols. Language was an important component. What I enjoyed about Sandison’s installation was that the viewers were also part of the artwork. Their bodies created shadows on the walls, so they were also ‘creators’. The images swirling on their bodies and clothing made them into mini artpieces walking throughout the space. The art repeated itself, yet it was constantly changing. It was a wonderful experience!

Another artist who’s art involved the audience through the use of mirror’s was Zhong Biao. In Mirage his combination of abstraction and different sized figures at different perspectives and angles added complexity to his huge painting.

In Twilight’s Compendium, Shinique Smith’s installation was probably the smallest in size. Yet her “binding and bundling” of found materials (usually fabrics) that were “unwanted, abandoned, coveted, and mass-produced” was an intriguing environmental comment on multiple levels. Many years ago I did a lot of sewing and also worked in the fashion industry, so her materials were reminscent of past experiences for me. Shinique Smith’s artwork is autobiographical, and tells stories not only about herself, but others as well. Again, language is a important component of her artwork.

Christian Hahn’s art did not relate to the architectural space of the building so much, but his use of space within his paintings was quite intriguing. His uniformed figures within unusual environments were prettily colored, yet somewhat scary and hazardous. The scenarios created conflicting emotions of “playfulness and aggression”. There were countless stories and possible lessons to be learned from Hahn’s art.

The walk up and down the stairways of DAM gave me multiple perspectives and created questions on several of the installations. Did I like the spray painted art of Katharina Grosse better from above or below? Where did that cord on the Jessica Stockholder’s plastic art on the staircase wall lead to? Was it interesting to view one installation through another installation? Would John McEnroe’s drippy art fall? Would I get cut by Matthew Brannon’s humungous knives? Why did the children love the bungie cord installation by Tobias Rehberger, but I got claustrophic? How did his interpretation of ‘rain’ compare to Anatusi’s ‘rain’? Did Rick Dula’s painting of the skeleton of the Hamilton building emphasis the complexity of the buildings structure?

Embrace was a wonderful exhibit at DAM and if you missed it, you can learn a lot from the 2 volume catalogue. There are many photos of the artists in the process of creating those extremely intriguing installations. The engineering feats alone were substantial. I find that as an artist, I learn so much from other artist’s comments, processes, and artworks.

Inspiration – James Coignard

Linda — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 04:44:10 +0000

A French artist born in 1925 whose paintings and etchings I admire is James Coignard. He dealt with extremely tactile surfaces and the use of some graffiti. The structure of his 1980’s paintings in which he used squares or rectangles to draw the viewer into the artwork had much influence on the structure of my own monoprints.

My Arborglyph images are also ‘squares’ laid upon a background surface and they tend to float on the surface of the print. Many people have commented that the Arborglyph squares in my monoprints look 3-dimensional, or like floating windows. The window effect is very significant in James Coignard’s paintings and prints as well.

Coignard was coined for doing carborundum etchings, as was Antonio Tapies, Pierre Marie Brisson, and Miro. Carborundum etching was ‘invented’ by Goetz in the 1960’s. It’s a process where silicon carbide (an abrasive grit). is applied to printing plates to create tone and dense areas of black . It actually is the ‘reverse of etching’, because it builds UP the plate instead of the plate being incised. The process can create a very textural quality.

I was recently interviewed on www.blogtalkradio.com/annette-coleman in the Artist name names, what artists inspire their work episode. Coignard and Antonio Tapies were two favorite artists I mentioned.

Inspiration – Antonio Tapies

Linda — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 04:44:34 +0000

Artists are often asked what other artists inspire them. Yesterday I was interviewed on www.blogtalkradio.com/annette-coleman in the Artist name names, what artists inspire their work episode. I thought I’d share my thoughts about inspiration in my blog also.

One of my favorite art books is The Language of Antonio Tapies: Surface and Symbol. Both surface (texture) and symbols are a major element of my artwork as well. Antonio Tapies is a Spanish artist who does prints, mixed media paintings, assemblage and sculpture. In the 1950’s he did Matter Paintings in which he used sand, dust, and other materials that suggested fossils, cracks, and fissures. Matiere painting refers to use of texture. Tapies also often used letters, graffiti, and calligraphy- like symbols in his artwork, possibly because he came from a family of bookmakers. In my Arborglyphs series of monoprints, I also use calligraphy-like symbols. Tapies once said, “Art is not decorative, it is a philosophical system or language that contains a total vision of the world”. I like his use of the word “language”. Although my Arborglyph symbols have no specific meaning, they often ‘seem’ to evoke a memory of something in the viewer’s eyes.

I was also inspired by a video about him at the Tapies Foundacio in
Barcelona, Spain. Tapies was filmed walking in his garden, home, alleys and pathways, where he observed what he called “glimpses” of the fairly mundane things. Texture on the cobblestone, scratches on an ancient door, shadows in the garden, or flickering light across a rugged wall. All these so called unimportant close-ups of the world played an important role in his abstract imagery, and I also make the same close-up observations of nature.

If you look at his artwork and at mine, your would probably not see many similarites, yet our visions are fairly similar. We both like surface and texture, both make use of symbols and language in an abstract manner.