Diablography

Boy, am I ever excited. Not only did my first artwork ever get into the first show I entered, but not too long afterward I got my first bad review!

Doug Stuber reviewed the N.E.W.Show in Arts Ramble of the Triangle and said this about my piece:

The full review of the show is here.

I'm not hurt at all. I actually laughed when I read it, and felt glad just to be mentioned. I mean, the thing must have made some kind of impression to be noticed at all.

The fact is, when I initially came up with the design (see the rendering below) I wanted it to be perfect, and my first plan was to have all the cuts made on a CNC milling machine. But that was prohibitively expensive, so I, who have never worked in wood before, tackled the thing myself.

It took me a year to get through it, and I made all kinds of goofs and wasn't too happy with the result, but I had a hope that it would be judged more on the concept than on the execution. And I guess when Carla Hanzal chose it for the show that's how she judged it.

To be honest, I entered the piece on a whim, and I didn't expect it to be accepted.

As for the hanging wire: I intended the thing to hang by two loops on the back, but they told me it needed a wire, so I complied. I figured I didn't have enough clout to demand it be done my way.

And, as for hidden meaning, the piece does have it, of a sort, but I don't have room to go into it here. I'll save it for another post.

Saturday night was Image Slam, a part of SparkCon, an effort to nurture Raleigh as the "Creative Hub of the South." Artists were invited to submit five images, which were then projected, with all the other submissions, onto a big outdoor screen. Three of my five are below. The fourth image was "Perspectives," mentioned here on September 9, and the fifth was "Structure 01," mentioned on September 13.

I love seeing how things make the rounds in the blogosphere.

The first reference I saw to Peter Callesen's mind-blowing paper constructions was nearly a year ago on Spy's Spice. He's popped up at various times since then on the other blogs I frequent, most recently being mentioned at Drawn!. I'd love to be able to follow the actual path, learning who first blogged about it and how the information spread from there.

The list below shows where and when I found references to Callesen.

• Spy's Spice (November 21, 2005)
• kottke.org (November 26, 2005)
• things magazine (November 28, 2005)
• Core77 (August 29, 2006)
• NotCot (September 8, 2006)
• ArtMoCo (September 12, 2006)
• Drawn! (September 14, 2006)

Just for fun I searched for "Callesen" on Bloglines and found him referred to in 394 other blogs. I would say that's pretty good press.

This is the piece that didn't get accepted into the N.E.W. Show.

It's made from business cards. Or, that is, it's made from cubes made from business cards. I learned the technique a few years ago when I read about this project. (It was just an idea when I read about it. Since then it has been completed and put on display.)

This is the first structure I made out of business card cubes. Now I'm obsessed with putting cubes together in all sorts of different ways. All the work is on the computer now--based on those sketches I'll build some more of these structures eventually.

I submitted a piece of sculpture (below) to the N.E.W. (Never Exhibited Works) Show at Visual Art Exchange, a gallery at City Market in Raleigh, and...it got in!

Out of 286 works submitted, 63 were chosen. Since it's the first piece of artwork I've ever done and the first show I've ever entered, I can't say how much of an honor it is for me to be part of it.

The show runs through September 29.