In/ConFLUENCE: A Peek At Phil Laber's Work

For over 20 years now, Phil Laber and I have been saying "We should have a show together sometime.....".  There is a reasonable overlap in our work.  We both love color and texture.  We frequently explore social and political ideas.  We both work in several media.  How hard could it be to put together a show........?

20-some years later we finally put together a show called In/ConFLUENCE.

I want to take this opportunity to give you a sneak peek at Phil Laber's work.......

Digital collage on shaped canvases.  The last time I taught at Northwest Missouri State University, Phil was working on these pieces.

He made a whole series of these roller-based pieces (inspired by the image left behind on a print roller).

Here are several pieces from his 'House of Cards" series.  In/ConFLUENCE has several of these prints in it.  Even with nearly a half-dozen pieces from 'House of Cards', we're still only able to show about half of the series.  It's big, and it's cool.

Check out one of his sculptural prints.

Here are a few images of Dawn Wolford-Metallo and I setting up In/ConFLUENCE at Quad City Arts.

Starting to get things hung....

One of Phil's rollers I had mentioned earlier.

Here's Dawn trying to stay focused on hanging the show while being harassed by unseen/unnamed entities off camera.

Her focus pays off!

Come check out In/ConFLUENCE at Quad City Arts Gallery in Rock Island.  If you want to see more of Phil Laber's studio work, check out: https://www.philiplaber.com/.  (I've really only scratched the surface of his oeuvre (That sounds worse than it really is.....)).

Next time we'll explore how to be a carved frame of leisure.....

Mystic Guru Becomes Spent Youth and Two Nuggets For Your Consideration

After years of hanging around my studio, I think Spent Youth (formerly Mystic Guru) is nearing resolution.  It will be one of the pieces in the show In/ConFLUENCE at Quad City Arts.(check out their website by clicking https://www.quadcityarts.com/)  I just need to finish painting in some detail areas.....

This area with the wording is going to get hazed over with a fairly thick wash, so it will be subdued in the final piece.  I already have plans to reuse this image in a carved frame for another piece I'm working on called Bro Kin.  It's rare that I have anything that resembles 'a plan', but this time I actually do.....maybe.  You can read about Bro Kin in an earlier post by clicking HERE.

.....and haze layer (c'mon, you knew it was coming)......

Wet.

Dry.

With some brownish-black outlines to accentuate the relief shapes.

I need to go in and give the relief shapes more attention/paint so they visually pop out.  The warm colors on top of cooler tones was not visually working as well as I had hoped.  Time for something slightly different.

Two nuggets for consideration:

Nugget 1.  In my previous POST about painting Los Reyes, I was doing some color mixing of yellow and cadmium red on a palette.  My brush wasn't nearly as clean as I thought, so I had to get rid of the first brush load of paint because it was contaminated with a brownish-green sludge.  So I grabbed a 'idea starter' canvas that had been lying around for over a year, and smeared all of the contaminated paint on the canvas to get it out of the brush.

The takeaway from all of that exhaustive brush cleaning was that I am way more intrigued about working with whatever this 'idea starter' piece/thing is.  A reasonable person's takeaway lesson probably would have been they need to take better care of their brushes/equipment.  But as a wise man once told me, "Nobody learns their lesson....".

Nugget 2.  I have mentioned a couple times now about the upcoming show In/ConFLUENCE at Quad City Arts.  What I haven't mentioned is that I'm going to be showing with my long-time friend and former mentor, Phil Laber.  He's a force of nature in the studio.  I will give y'all a sneak peek of one of his pieces here.

Pretty cool stuff.  Anyway Phil's and my opening is for In/ConFLUENCE is Friday December 8th at Quad City Arts (It's part of GalleryHop!).