The Sam & Adelle Golden Foundation for the Arts
237 Bell Road, New Berlin NY 13411
Click here to visit the Golden Foundation website to learn more about their residency program & how to apply.
Or click here for the Golden Foundation on Facebook to stay tuned on upcoming events, including the Made in Paint exhibit at the SAG Gallery featuring the 2014 residents. Opening reception Saturday April 11th 4:30pm - 6:30pm at the Golden Artist Colors Plant just up the road.
Chenango County, New York.
Felt great to get back to the barn again for the first group of residents for the 2015 batch. Had wanted to be among them but commitment to the Tech Garden and the ongoing Macartovin Building project space in Utica will make this year evaporate mighty quick. Next year a month in the hills should be a more reasonable prospect, would like to enjoy the opportunity without feeling compelled to scurry off for show maintenance.
And indeed, I arrived in a foul mood after a revelation about an upcoming engagement became clear during the drive down. Hadn't thought my way through it yet upon arrival and upon walking in was literally bombarded with a megaton yield blast of artwork that this industrious trio had churned out. I'd heard I was in for it this time as far as work to see but good golly ... Twelve steps in the door and I was feeling rotten about not having been painting enough on top of the item already on the mind, so my apologies to anyone there who saw me scowling away for the first half hour. Boy was I ticked off.
Then Bill appeared! with Smarties for everyone, and after that everything was OK.
I owe you one, Bro.
First up, Martha Clippinger who may be from Dunham but we talked NYC for a few and after her residency she's off to prepare for a new show in Chelsea, if I recall correctly. Martha had recently spent time in Mexico studying rugs made in the traditional style of the region, which totally continues over into how she was weaving these pieces together. Most are High Flor acrylics on strips of plastic sheeting with gobs of manipulated gels which she would combine by peeling off & combining layers. There's an element of chance and ephemera to her work which I found quite refreshing!
Find out more about Martha's vast catalog of experimentations by visiting her website here.
Martha Clippinger
Martha Clippinger
Martha Clippinger
Martha Clippinger
Martha Clippinger
Martha Clippinger
Martha Clippinger, and I like this one!
LOL, first laugh of the day: I thought these were business cards, pocketed one on instinct before being told they were a game of chance. Which viewers had been nicking cards from all day thinking the same thing. They'll never add up now.
Matching hair, painting, glasses and scarf!
Painter Tom Spleth with just a smattering of the museum full of work he generated upon coming in contact with the arsenal of materials available to the residency program artists. When on a roll I can usually either start or finish about three paintings a day. Tom was finishing three of them every hour if my headcount of the total amount of work on display is accurate, and presuming 8 hours every day was devoted to sleep or other necessary out of studio activities. He as also the first of the three I spoke with, confiding in him that I was in a rotten mood which improved immediately when told that his background is in ceramics -- Thought those forms reminded me of Miro jars.
Check out Tom's website by clicking here, this guy is one badass artist, and it takes one to know one I've been told.
Tom Spleth
Tom Spleth
Tom's incredible stash of brushes. That big green one in particular. I want it.
Tom Spleth
Tom's display in the coveted upstairs studio, and I left out the works in the stairwell, the works on the walls downstairs, the works in the foyer, the quarter-mile long string of them hanging from a Goodyear sized blimp moored to a flagpole behind the barn, likely more tucked away that he didn't feel compelled to show after running out of thumbtacks. Good gracious.
Tom Spleth
Tom Spleth
Tom Spleth, and I like this one.
Tom Spleth, and my favorite from the batch. Made me think of a frog for Jessalyn Haggenjos' lilly pond painting.
Hangin with Kojak!
And finally Shea Humbrey whose work almost drove me from the barn in frustration. Did not know what to make of it at first. I'm trained to look at pictures, see how they are made, evaluate technique and decode the imagery. When there isn't any I don't know what to do and sometimes forget that not all artists look to the residency program to paint pictures. Some are there to do their own evaluations of materials for implementation back in their native studio environments and sadly I'd not bothered to find out what Shea's ambition for his residency were. Took one look at the test pieces he had laid out and literally grumbled "Great, I'll just come back when he's finished with these" and stomped off. Clueless.
Do yourself a favor and visit Shea's website by clicking here to see what he will be doing with this research. The Carl Sagan on painters.
Shea Hembrey, and there you go. He was in search of the perfect black and white, and this would be the place to come looking. Told me he'd found the black, which combines three other acrylic compounds in addition to the bone and carbon blacks Golden produces. His uses some deep red and a light interference solution which did look quite different when viewing the samplings side by side. Hadn't found the white yet though, and I genuinely hope he does.
Shea Hembrey, and these were amongst the three "finished" works he had on display, didn't think to ask if they'd been done before or after his residency began.
Shea Hembrey
Shea Hembrey, and not one picture amongst all of it. There's a reason.
Shea Hembrey
Shea Hembrey, and his perfect black is actually on the piece at far left to the back. I think.
Shea Hembrey
Shea Hembrey, here working with colors & like the others that deep orange is a custom mix by Goldens for Shea based on days of painstaking experimentation with hue, shade, viscosity, light absorbance/reflectance ... I squirt the paint out of the tube onto a little plate and dip my brush in it. This guy is a chemist.
Shea's carefully compiled sample bins which track his progress in combining pigments to arrive at that absolutely perfect shade of black. I'm glad he found it!
The good old upstairs studio, where I did my project for Golden Artist Colors design team in December of 2012. They haven't been able to get rid of me since! ;D~
Quick! What color is my hair?
Proper!
Click here for information on the Made in Paint exhibit featuring the 2014 Golden Foundation residents, opening Saturday April 11 at the big SAG Gallery at the Golden Artist Colors plant!
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