ART
PUBLICATION
RESULTS

At ArtAndArtDeadlines.com, I spend a lot of time preaching about the benefits of Art Publication and why you should enter art shows.  So, it only seems fitting that I publish my occasional results that address both.

In June, ArtAndArtDeadlines.com posted a blog about The Flaneur, an Independent Art & Culture Newspaper.  I followed my own advice and submitted one of my favorite pieces called Pieces of Me: Fat.  Below is the front page of the latest edition of The Flaneur along with the page on which my piece appears.  Click the image below to go to The Flaneur!

Michael Mitchell Interiors hosts Art For Charity, May 19 to June 13, at 438 King Street, Charleston. The gallery will be open daily 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

“I saw a way I could use my contacts and talents to help the community,” Michael Mitchell (pictured right), owner of Michael Mitchell Interiors, said.

“I look forward to working with each of the non-profit groups to raise money for their very special causes this year and in future years.”

Through regular gallery hours and special invitation-only receptions, artwork sold from local and national artists raises money for local non-profit organizations including:

• Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Hollings Cancer Center
• Charleston Breast Center
• MUSC Children’s Hospital
• Five local Habitat for Humanity affiliates
• Ronald McDonald House
• American Red Cross
• South Carolina Aquarium
• Roper Saint Francis Ryan White Program. 

Art For Charity features a wide variety of artwork from local and national artists. Artists include:

• Carol Kamm
• Marty Biernbaum
• Deanna Bowdish
• Terry Brennan
• Joe Byrne
• John Crum
• R.L. Gibson
• Heidi Darr-Hope
• Toni Elkins
• Rex Hunter
• Jon Ives
• Kim Keats
• Karen Keen-Day
• Stephen Kishel
• Alicia Leeke
• Elena Madden
• Debbie Martin
• Betsy McDonald
• Easter Melton
• Bruce Nellsmith
• Betsey Stevenson
• Darlett Stone
• Carl Turner
• Marlies Williams 

The style of the work ranges from traditional to modern, is both two and three dimensional and encompasses a variety of media.

Ashley Wieters Redmond, Director of the Ryan White Program, said, “The Roper Saint Francis Ryan White Program looks forward to their new partnership with Michael Mitchell and his Art for Charity event this year.”

“I believe the event will help bring awareness to the community on HIV/AIDS and services the Ryan White program offers while supporting Lowcountry artists. It’s all for a good cause.”

I am finishing up the last few pieces of a show named Psychomachia–a year-long project with Arizona artist Jerry Portelli.  I am sad to see the creation portion of the show coming to an end, but excited about being able to soon reveal the work and see the show get legs.

I have started laying the groundwork for a new show, yet unnamed, with South Carolina-based artist Michaela Pilar Brown, that will revolve around the changing image of mental-illness in our new, digitized, fast-food world.

My husband Jon Ives has finally found his mojo again as a photographer, and we have secured spots in a group show during Spoleto.  In addition, he installs work at The Shops at Carousel Gardens on Monday, March 22nd, and we have both applied for the Knoxville Art & Culture Alliance‘s 2010 Arts in the Airport Exhibit.

Changes are afoot, folks, changes are afoot.

Have you ever had a piece of artwork stolen? Me too…more than once. Within the past two weeks, “Sally,” part of a triptych called “Sue . Sally . Sara .” was stolen off a gallery wall.

I received both a phone message and an email from the Director of the organization and the Director of the gallery–frought with professionalism and concern. My response? “Stuff happens,” and “Hey, I take it as a compliment…I’m theft-worthy.”

For me, the theft poses questions like…“What was wrong with the other pieces in the triptych”…not “How could this happen.”

As a gallery owner and then director for many years, please take my advice on this one. Do not have a hysterical fit that reinforces the idea that all artists are crazy and irrational.

Yes, I understand that you may be attached to the artwork. “Sally” is a part of my masthead at RLGibson.com, but you’ve got to let it go. Galleries and their owners and directors do the best they can; do me a favor, and give them a break. Most of them are insured.

Do you have a story of art theft and intrigue to share? Send me an email or leave a comment on this post. Have Happy Holidays!

The media in which I work is Xerography.  And I’ve spent years trying to find the technique that works best for me.  SC Artist Kim Lemasters introduced me to Xerography and showed me his method.  His method didn’t work for me…my first methods didn’t work for me.  Years later, I’m comfortable with my own process and find that it is still changing.  As my aptitude increases, my results change in unexpected ways.

For years, I worked on wood.  And honestly, I still prefer to work on wood.  However, I had work on wood that in my gut I knew was good that I couldn’t get shown.  I reworked some of the pieces on canvas and sent them to the same galleries as juried entries for different shows…and voila!  They were juried into the same galleries where they had previously been rejected.  It was at that point that I had to confront the issues of satisfying the marketing and realizing that it was not all about my process. 

I began producing ALL of my work for show on canvas while producing a few pieces on wood here and there because I loved them.  The result was a long resume of national shows and a secret belief (held by all artists I suspect) that some galleries and jurors simply have better taste and fewer biases about what constitutes “art” than others.

I decided to enter the Arts & Culture Alliance National Juried Exhibit of 2009 featured on the September Deadlines Post of ArtAndArtDeadlines.com.  As an experiment, I entered two pieces on canvas and a triptych on wood…just as a last hurrah for my sadly rejected wood pieces.  Only one piece could be juried into the show.  Wouldn’t you know… the wood triptych (pictured below) made the cut.

So, the moral of the story?  Oh hell, I don’t know…never give up on a piece you believe in?  have faith that eventually a juror will get it?  there’s no rhyme or reason to taste? 

Pick one.  Your guess is as good as mine.

It has to be said…I love Shakespearean literature. I confess to being a Romantic.  I confess to loving Hamlet.  I confess to having committed to memory endless passages of hackneyed lines so as to have them on the tip of my tongue at just the right moment.  I confess that I derive inspiration from the cadence of every line.  I confess.  I confess.  I confess.

In 2004, I lived in a tiny town in South Carolina with a lovely community theatre called the Pine Tree Playhouse.  Its players are still among my dearest friends.  In the summer of 2004, we decided to do Shakespeare in the Park in hopes that a handful of the 3500 residents would come and watch.

About 100 people saw the show over 2 weekends, but we were not discouraged.  Shakefest was born–a day long Shakespearean festival to be held outdoors…a festival dedicated to fresh, and often odd adaptations of Shakespearean literature–from a mobster version of Julius Caesar to a black and white TV sitcom version of The Three Witches scene (see pictured left).

I saw the festival through its first two years before I moved, and I still can’t stay away.  I’m not on stage anymore, but I attend every year.  Well, the time for Shakefest 2009 has come–Saturday and Sunday, October 17th and 18th.  I’ll be there for my dose of inspiration.  Join me.  It is only $5 for adults and $3 for children for the full day. You can enjoy the performances as well as a turkey leg, a few baked goods and lots of costumed performers.

Come in costume… the Queen is waiting!

I’ll see you there!     R.L. Gibson

I find myself working on Gluttony for the Psychomachia series today. Gluttony is represented in a Biblical sense by the bite of the apple.  Thematically, gluttony is being represented by the sideshow freak “World’s Fattest Woman.”

My subject is the world’s fattest woman only metaphorically, of course.  And then I began to wonder how many women live as the world’s fattest woman everyday–wallowing in guilt over their own perceived Gluttony, often false or imagined.  I wonder.

Okay, I added a blog category today–Links I Love. I trip across them and have them sent to me all the time.  Here’s one that made me smile–the Alphabet Soup Work Generator.  Thanks to Toni Turbeville for this one.

Send me the links that YOU love!

–R.L. Gibson

As many of you know, this blog as well as ArtAndArtDeadlines.com are produced via a wordpress.org platform.  I am a wordpress devotee, and I successfully made the transition from wordpress.com to wordpress.org despite my limited knowledge of CSS and such.

I still use wordpress.com for my work blog www.ADayInTheSmokies.com, and today I ran across a official wordpress.com logo contest that looks like alot of fun.  There is nothing like a side project to get the creative juices flowing.  I don’t believe my blogs qualify because they are wordpress.org platforms, but I’m going to participate anyway.   Click Here to visit the full post.  Here’s a cut and paste version of the WordPress Logo Fun post:

While we’re away, we’ll be running a contest to see who can use the WordPress logo in the most creative way. Take advantage of your camera, graphics applications, crayons, and anything else you have at your disposal. Create a post on your WordPress.com blog, upload your image or images, and leave a comment here with the URL of your post. Please make sure to leave the URL to your post in the comment text or the entry will not be accepted.

We’ll get you started by providing some official WordPress logos, but the rest is up to you. I’m sure you can do better than the photos I’ve included here. We’ll keep an eye on submissions and post some of them to the @wordpressdotcom Twitter account during the week.

The deadline for submissions will be 4 p.m. EST on Monday, October 19.

We’ll create categories based on the best submissions and run polls to let you select the winners. Prizes will include WordPress.com upgrades, swag, and maybe other surprises. Good luck!