So the darndest thing happened last month, waited until now that it's a reality to blog about it. During Thanksgiving week I got an email from Chris Farrell, the "Creative Disruptor" for Golden Artists Colors, shown above with me at the Broad Street Gallery in Hamilton. Chris was developing a promotions idea for Golden's acrylic grounds for pastels sizers used to prepare non-traditional surfaces for drawing. He'd been tooling around the web and found my blog, saw that not only was I completely insane & considered everything I come in contact with as art making materials, but was a dedicated Golden fanboy: For a while I'd been taking pictures of my work with a tube or jar of Golden's placed strategically in the hopes of attracting exactly that kind of attention. It worked.
And as it just happened to work out, Chris' idea for a first rate demonstration of what one can do with the AGP sizers was to have someone draw on a door. And as fate may have it, I'd been turned onto the idea of painting on a blank closet door from Home Depot just the month before. Put quite simply you cannot stretch a *perfect* canvas on such scale for the $26 that a standard blank door goes for, let alone buy one pre-stretched, and above is an image of me from October 6 realizing that I'd hit the jackpot.
I will probably never stretch another canvas again for the rest of my life. I hate the stuff anyway. It's klunky, clumsy, filled with ridges & bumps, needs to be stretched and cared for. Ffck it; Give me a door or a pile of wood scrap and just get out of my way.
Preparing to execute what turned out to be my practice door in the swank studio location formerly known as my living room, with another larger scaled version of the landscape motif arrived at during the Utica Greens Fest live mural performance in September.
The supply kit assembled at The Art Store in Syracuse for the assignment: Unison pastels, black and white by Rembrandt as the Unisons were sold out in those shades, and a nice bundle of my favorite Neocolor II caran d'ache water soluble crayons. Along with the trusty Princeton Umbria #8 filbert brush I'd painted the entire Greens Fest mural with.
The state of my first attempt at drawing & painting on a door at the time of this blog posting -- Still not quite there but some of it seriously rocks.
So yeah, I'd already saved up some lunch money and gotten a door when I checked my blog's email re-direct and there's Chris with what can only be described of as a chance in a lifetime. Namely to go to the Golden plant in New Berlin NY at their expense and draw on a door to demonstrate how the AGP sizers can transform any similar surface into a crackerjack drawing medium. We met up in Hamilton, hammered out a deal on the phone and this morning it became a reality.
Arriving at the New Berlin plant at 8:28am sharp.
Part of my little tour of the plant where Chris showed me the lead-lined vault with paintings stored in a manner that would survive the detonation of a low-yield nuclear weapon targeting the facility. Almost activated the security death laser on my way out too, will be more careful next time.
The Barn, which houses the Golden artist residency program which I WANT IN ON. Gorgeous top to bottom with much of the original work.
So here we are up in the main studio space on the 2nd floor of The Barn with the first of two blank doors they had for me to go nuts on.
Project coordinator Todd from the Golden's design team, documenting it all. They ran a video camera to show a time-lapse progression of the drawing and shot certain closeups of technique. So for me this was a public performance, the results of which will be boiled down by their video production team into about four minutes. Hot.
Getting a visit from Barb and Emma Golden about halfway through the morning session. Barb advised me on applying for their residency program in the spring for the 2014 which does include jurying of applicants by an independent review panel of arts professionals. I want it!!!
The status of the door at lunch break with the blah-sky which had been bugging me all morning.
And bammo, 4pm on day one, pleased as punch. When leaving I regarded it as unfinished needing at least another hour. Now I'm not so sure.
The piece isolated ... not bad. Plan for day two is to start off by fixing the pastel down and then setting it aside, cracking into door #2 and making a decision later.
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