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Wednesday, Feb 18th!

Ayin Es1 Comment

 

Carol Es

“Inner Outline”

January 7 – March 20, 2009

Reception for the Artist:
Wednesday, February 18th 7-9 PM

Please join me at the reception for my very special show at UCLA Hillel’s Dortort Center for Creativity. I am presenting more than a dozen paintings, along with a 46-piece drawing installation in Gindi Hall on the 2nd floor. I am honored to be showing my work in the context of this setting for many reasons, especially since I have been using pattern shapes to create Hebrew texts as a way of connecting to a source of place and people which feels like home to me. I have been scraping together what little knowledge I have of my roots, my genetic heritage, and my Jewish birthright because I missed out on most of it as a child. This exhibition has been a wonderful way for me to embrace a long lost part of myself and share it with students, faculty, and the public. I would greatly appreciate and honor your presence.

Dortort Center for Creativity at UCLA Hillel: Gindi Hall – 2nd Floor
574 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA. 90024, Contact Perla Karney, Tel: (310) 208-3081

I will also have my new Artists’ book Horsebucket there, available for purchase for just $129.99. Such a bargain!

Back from the Dead

Ayin Es1 Comment

I know, it’s been forever since I have posted anything on the blog. My life has been chaotic and rather serious lately, since August really. Dad got sick and died, I moved my mother back out to LA, had a solo show, then I got sick, then my mother had an accident that she is still not recovered from, and a couple more deaths occurred. One being actress and collector Ann Savage, and the other being my very good friend Judith Hoffberg, a couple weeks ago.

Now I have a show going on at UCLA Hillel and the reception is on February 18th and I just got the postcards. I need to get on the horn and send them out, but I am inundated with my mother’s bills and moving her yet again from a nursing facility and into my brother’s house. It’s more work than it sounds like. During all this time I have hardly made much art, but am finally getting back into it in the form of soft sculpture. I was recently inspired by a couple of artists I was introduced to via the Saatchi website’s chatroom, which I just quit yesterday after being ensnared in my last upsetting dialogue there – over the holocaust of all things! There is quite a bit of anti-Semitism and holocaust denial in there that is just too painful to deal with for me. Not really worth my energy, so in many ways I was done a favor by getting upset enough to bow out. I met so many wonderful artists there however, and perhaps some new friends for life. It was a nice distraction from mourning my father’s death and being in an art rut, which is just an odd place to be.

Something I have learned while being in this rut is that I am searching for an entirely new motivation. I believe my whole life I had something to prove to my father in the work I was creating and now that’s he’s gone I no longer have this argument/dialogue, or chip on my shoulder to show him I am doing right by him. I only hope he recognized it somehow in the end and that I too will cut myself some slack and feel worthy of something in all my life’s work thus far.

I am currently working on a soft sculpture named Calvin (my father’s name) using his real trifocals. I need to fashion some kind of little hand gun to stick in his belt and I’ll be pretty much done and will post some images. In the meantime, here is the last thing I’ve done. Her name is Medina

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Horsebucket

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My solo show at George Billis has come to an end, but you can still see some of the pieces there in the secret “back room.” I’ve been having those after show blues, while battling an attack of major illness that has kept me pretty horizontal for the past 2 weeks. This hasn’t stop me from sketching out ideas in my trusty little Moleskin book, enough to create a small, hand-bound Artists’ book of simple drawings. I am excited about this.

 

Interesting how I was forced to make these drawings. I’ve had this annoying tremor in my hand, so while drawing in gauche with the paintbrush, I had to swipe the brush quickly as to not wind up with a wiggly line, and I really love how free-flowing they wound up. I could never ever do this if I wasn’t forced by wiggly lines or at gun point because it goes so against my grain. I’ve wanted to be able to loosen up for so many years, ever since I saw the drawings of MJP’s and James Scott. I owe them both for the inspiration. Since finishing the images, I headed over to my new letterpress printer at Aardvark to begin to process on the covers. I was my first day out in a long time, but I got much accomplished. I also went to see Sandra Bernhard at the Orpheum Theatre which kicked ass – as she always does.

 

Anyway, my new book will be done very soon,  in the next week or 2 so they can be purchased before the stinkin’ holidays. Don’t worry, I’m keeping this one under $150. It is called: “Horsebucket” and this is what I know so far:

 

5.5 x 8.5 inches closed. 13 laser-printed drawings on acid-free paper, with some original scribbly bits. Text is hand typed by artist on a 1930’s portable Underwood typewriter. Hand sewn binding, Letterpress covers with custom die on Crane’s 100% cotton Lettra paper.

 

Now for  some cool end papers and a box of some sort…

 

Something to think about while I spend my day inside an MRI machine today. 😛