Steve Banks: Punching Holes in the Rah-Rah: Im-promp-Tu-Tu

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Detail Shots From Works in Impromp-Tu-Tu

This past Friday was Final Friday at Bucktown Center for the Arts, and consequently another reception for Impromp-Tu-Tu. I had my camera along and shot some detail shots of some of my pieces in the show. I had every intention of cracking out the camera during the opening and snapping a few images of actual human beings enjoying the show. After shooting the detail shots, the camera stayed safely in my pocket -unused. Oooops.

Anyway, it was a nice chance to zoom-in on some passages in my pieces. Some of them -especially the 8' tall Fandango, are unwieldy in my studio, and I haven't taken any close-ups. Fandango is oil on canvas and comprised of three image layers.

This first image has one of the few glimpses of the undermost layer peeking out.

Dialog Series: Dipped Cone Variation.

There are two layers of painted images underneath the 'dipped cone'.

Dialog Series: Chocolate Bar Variation.

You may notice that the color/dialog squares are different thicknesses based on the cast shadows.

Carnival.

Carnival has two layers of painting/images plus some incised drawings in the base image (the faint white lines).

Here is a close-up of the, for lack of a waayyy better term/description, the 'Multi-Feet Motif' which I utilize in both my painted works on canvas and in some of my sculptural works to connote a possible 'Trojan Horse' scenario (i.e. a bunch a warrior dudes/bad things sneaking up in a larger carapace/package/facade/delivery vehicle).

As seen in Carnival:

As seen in the sculpture Trojan Horse:

Dialog Series: French Fry Variation.

Dialog Series: Double Cheeseburger Variation.

Visitors. This is another example of an image where you can barely see the base-most layer of imagery. The original base painting was actually oriented vertically. Layers two and three were horizontal. Some day I may dig up some of the sketches for the first couple of images out of old notebooks and post them on PHITR-R.

Just a little of the base image pokes out just right of center in this image (very little of the incising done in the base layer can still be seen (at least in a photograph)).

Until next time.....

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Shake-and-Bake: The 72-Hour Art Show

Ooooda-Lolly!

This week I had an opportunity to put up an art show at Bucktown, -and when I say a week, I mean that on Saturday, I proposed the idea of the show, and by Friday we had the opening for the show. The added bonus was that we didn't start loading in artwork until Wednesday (roughly 50 hours before the show opened). The show: Im-Promp-Tu-Tu.

Although the time-frame was extremely tight, it was certainly do-able. The major ace-in-the-sleeve was having access to artist with work at the ready. In some ways it is like cooking, if you start with good fresh ingredients, you can't go too wrong. The same was the case here. If we could get the artist to get work inside the gallery in time (and since working with artist can, at times, be like herding cats, it's not a given) for the show, the rest would take care of itself.

There wasn't time to generate any invitation PDFs or develop any kind of coordinated marketing for Im-Promp-Tu-Tu, so I just snapped some quick shots of pieces as they were dropped off at the gallery and pasted them into a couple of e-mails. For those friends (and actually quite a few strangers now) who have chastised me for being one of the last humans on the planet without a Facebook account, this is an instance where Facebook would have been the perfect tool to get the word out about something happening on such short notice. So, to you I say "I will probably start one up before the year is out". To me, you can say "I told you so". Thanks, I needed that.....

Here are the publicity shots: