Greetings from 77002: Setting up my StARTup Houston Show

The concept of the StARTup Art Fair is this: it's a pop-up takeover of floors of a hotel. Each artist (or group) has a room to make over into their exhibition space (without damaging the walls).
I walked the Venice CA edition last February, and wrote about it here.

Here is my process of redecorating room 400 at the Hotel Icon in Houston.

Room 400 before.

The hallway before.

Those cow prints did NOT want to be removed.

The cow print hanging hardware that I had to work with

Preliminary #dailytrucks hung on existing hardware.
More trucks piled on the orange chair.

Took a break from the trucks to work on hanging the On the Edge pieces in the hallway.

Getting the north edge images hung (left side of hallway).

Southern edge.
My "Eureka!" moment with the blue tape. Better than sticky notes.
This was the most mathematically challenging wall to hang.
The center piece was 5x7", the rest were 4x6".

Southern edge completed.

I installed the eastern edge vertically in the arch of the entryway and the closet door.

I placed the western edge (only had two pieces), random other pieces, and the road trip journal
in a nicely lit niche where the coffeemaker had been.

At this point, Danielle Grant came by to help curate. I was in somewhat of a quandary over how to display the trucks and she gave me some helpful tips. We also discussed the lack of lighting in the hallway.

Trucks randomly hung on existing hardware.

On the walls by the bed, filled in the space keeping the same rhythm
and extended a line to the left over the bedside table.
Took the $25 prints off the bed (too messy) and had a "secret drawer" for them in the bureau.

On the big wall, Danielle suggested "embrace some chaos" vs keeping to a strict rhythm.
I loved this suggestion and it made hanging MUCH easier! No more hanging math!

Room 400 ready to show. I then sat in the chair and took a nap.

The next post will be a video walkthrough.

On the Edge Travels East

33 Edge images made the journey to Troy, NY and only 21 returned to LA.

I mailed the pieces to my first East Coast destination, Providence. Through a nerve-wracking series of delivery misses, I obtained the box at the post office the day that I left Providence. [Next time, I think I'll pay the airline's extra luggage fee -- it would have been cheaper and less stressful.]

The "exhibit" at my high school reunion was a one-night deal in a tent (and the usual exhibition space in the hall of the library/arts building stood empty the entire weekend. Grrrr). I had previously tested the "lots of small aluminum art pieces mounted on foam core" concept at the Beverly Hills Art Show, and knew that would work well for the tent situation. I picked up foam core at Michael's en route to Vermont (my next destination) and went my merry way.

Annie's place in Vermont has an amazing woodworking workshop and it was the ideal location to get everything laid out and mounted.

So glad that I created the image/price list and had a hard copy!
Made it easy to line up everything in the proper order.

Done. Next stop, Troy.

In the tent, first sales!

Transporting the art in a golf cart to my dorm at the end of the evening's event.

Our dorm had a lounge area for our class to congregate and I displayed the art there.

What remained at the end of reunion weekend.
BIG THANKS to my collectors Carla, Mina, Annie, and Libby!

There remained one more stop for the art before returning to LA, and that was my mom's in Barneveld, NY. She and my aunt bought three more, bringing my total sales to 12.

Now they're for sale on Poshmark [or email inquiries to me directly].
There are still 8 pieces "visiting" Joshua Tree. Maybe I'll do a little road trip to gather them!

Update: On the Edge, The Journal

I have found a great way to procrastinate on the Fashion Illustration exhibition that I'm "supposed" to be working on, due in December.

Working on my "journal" that I meant to keep during the 2014 Edge trip!

Is it still a journal if I work on it two years after the journey?
Maybe it's a memoir now.

I left you hanging in New Orleans on my last 2014 Roadtrip Recap post,
not a bad place to be, by any means.

I'm getting the pages prepped with gesso. Then I'll adhere the ephemera. Most of the maps were glued into place back in May 2014. Somehow I missed a section of Montana and Idaho (Washington is already glued in) so I'll have to make an extension page. Fun times.

I've had some good help sorting the ephemera:

What is it with cats and paper? They always plop down in the middle of it! 

Eventually, I'll get the Roadtrip Recaps rolling again, this time with the journal pages as headers. So we will all know where we are on the map. I will resume the recaps with Day 8, NOLA to Panama City, FL. Stay tuned! See it in photos over on Flickr now, if you're feeling impatient.

Road Gear Sketch: iPad and Waterlogue

As described previously, I used the Waterlogue App to create artwork for the On the Edge: US show held last year. Last year my phone was too old (and full of stuff) to update to iOS6, which was required to run Waterlogue [now it's iOS7]. My iPad came to the rescue. I had to go through a very convoluted process to get the images onto the iPad for processing (more on that later) and it was well worth it.

Watching Waterlogue "paint" is hypnotic. Here's a sample for your viewing pleasure:

The Road Gear sketchbook is back in Brooklyn for the month of July.
Check it out at:

Brooklyn Art Library
103A North 3rd St.
Brooklyn, NY 11249

Open 11am-7pm every day

Road Gear Sketch: Narrative Clip

Such high hopes for this device. Such utter failure.

I knew, days after getting it, that it wouldn't work for the road trip.
[I thought I wrote about it here, but apparently not. Maybe on Facebook? Nope.]
It arrived on March 5th. I was leaving March 27.

Here is a section of captures from my first road test on March 6th, during my morning commute:

not good

On March 14, I went to Plan B and ordered a Brinno Time Lapse Camera (more on that next week later).

During my trip, I made further attempts at utilizing the Narrative.
Here I am wearing it in New Orleans:

Here are the sorts of captures it took:

I wore it on the left temple of my sunglasses while driving:

In North Carolina, 4/13/14. The last day I bothered to use it.

The Road Gear sketchbook is back in Brooklyn for the month of July.

Check it out at:

Brooklyn Art Library
103A North 3rd St.
Brooklyn, NY 11249

Open 11am-7pm every day

Yart Sale, Sunday, May 17

What, you ask, is a "Yart" sale? Yard + Art! 

The Mar Vista series is emerging from storage and will be featured in my front yard.

left: #15 [sold]                                        right: #31
Digital photographs printed on paper, 4x4" ©2006

Here's my statement about them:

From Mar Vista

I moved to Mar Vista six years ago into a suburban tract developed in 1953. I noticed that many of the homes have roofline embellishments that look very much like birdhouses. (The architectural term for them is dovecotes). I began photographing these as I walked around the neighborhood. Upon further study, I discovered there were six major styles of dovecote that could be subdivided into placement on roofline, coloration, orifice quantity and shape. My area of study was bounded by the following streets: Walgrove, Rose, Beethoven, and Palms. The photographs were shot from February 2003 – March 2006.

Photography is an integral component of my work process but I do not consider myself a photographer. I use the medium more as a creative tool to record scenes that interest me and to help organize my thoughts. When I shot these images (with a digital Nikon Coolpix 995), I was concentrating on getting as centered and symmetrical a composition as I could. My subsequent digital manipulation in Photoshop was minimal. I deliberately desaturated the colors to evoke a nostalgic feel - suggesting the look of old faded snapshots. I cropped and sized to mimic old Polaroids and to keep the encounter intimate. The final output is Epson inkjet on Epson Fine Art paper. 

Serial themes are a constant in my work - no matter what the medium or subject matter. Perhaps this arises from my work as a printmaker during my formative years as an artist, or perhaps it's my nature to organize + categorize things in multiples. Artists that work in this manner inspire me greatly -- from Monet's haystacks to Ed Ruscha's images of LA apartment buildings. I also have been influenced by Ruscha’s slyly humorous deadpan approach in his photographic work.

Many of the homes in Mar Vista are undergoing remodeling as new owners require more space. The 50's ranch homes and their whimsical details are steadily disappearing. I've recorded a few of them here -- for when I think of my neighborhood, the fake birdhouses are the first thing that come to mind.

Anne M Bray
April 2006

Interviewed by Angela Romero of Colliding Worlds

For your viewing pleasure:


Angela interviewed me in February of 2014 at the Palm Springs Fine Art Fair.
Somehow I missed the December posting of this.

I find it cringe-making to watch video of myself,
thankfully a lot of images of my work are shown!
Angela asked me a lot of interesting questions and I'm glad it got captured on tape.
Thank you Angela and Steve!

Here's the link to all of the Colliding Worlds video casts on Youtube.

Taking the A-to-Z Challenge

What started as a notion to help get posts here going on a more regular basis, the Blogging from A to Z challenge, has now morphed into a body of new work for my upcoming exhibition at TAG Gallery.
My show is titled Southwestern Sojourn.

I've been brainstorming during #myshittycommute

I've been making a list

What the heck do I use for "X"? Ideas anyone?

I've been scouring photos albums both virtual and analog for images

I've been digitally painting

I've started sending out files for printing on canvas

The new series will be Southwest A to Z, digital paintings printed on 6x6" canvases.
("6x6 for Route 66" -- genius reason provided by Adam Marsland).

Are you feeling stumped creatively? The simple prompt "A to Z" really got my motor revved!

Bloggers, sign up here for Blogging A to Z here! (900+ blogs listed so far!)

The Progress on the Process

Are any of you wondering "Where are the time lapse photos?"
Yeah, me too. It's much more complicated than I anticipated.

The Brinno set up in the car.

Ever evolving configurations of foam and duct tape hold it in place.

Sometimes it stays at true horizontal.

Other days it tilts.

The worst day a piece of foam could be seen for many many miles.

Downloading the Brinno's SD card into the laptop is easy and VERY fast.
Then the time consuming part begins.

If I were to proceed with my original concept, I would need to manually scroll through the time-lapse videos to choose captures that I like. Then I would grab a screen shot and convert it into a jpg to transfer over to my iPad. There, I could apply the Waterlogue App effects to the image.

Laptop, iPad, SD card, card reader for iPad

Screen grab. I-10 in El Paso, looking across the border to Cuidad Juarez

Waterlogue version

Frankly, my digital point and shoot takes better captures (although it's more hazardous):

What can I say. It's a learning process.

First Samples of Prints on Metal

CREATED/ LINKS/ 

[This is a reprint of my first update over on my IndieGoGo campaign, with some modifications]

Big "Thank you" to everyone that has contributed!  You are all on the "AAA" list!

First samples came in for the Pilot perk!
The Pilot is a digital watercolor printed on aluminum.
It will come with a flush mounted frame.

I got a sample pack from Bay Photo of the four possible finishes. I added float mounts to them, since the flush mounted frames weren't available for that size.

The final will have more white space around the image, I was limited to 4x6" for the special sampling deal. Going with the Satin finish (bottom left). Next I'll get an actual size (5x7") sample with the proper frame. So far, really happy with the quality.

I have to thank my fellow TAG Gallery artist Christo Brock for the concept of printing images on metal. It's a great alternative to "paper under glass".

I'll be using this format for my TAG show in June.

Out the Window Again, 90066

CREATED/ LINKS/ 

It was exactly the sort of dawn I want to capture when I'm out on the road:

Which I then filtered through my new favorite App, Waterlogue:

I'm onto something here!

The App is currently available for iProducts and costs $2.99.
[I paid for my copy]
Big thanks to Ghazaleh, of Beauty and Sass, who turned me on to this addictive App.

Overthinking

CREATED/ 

I finally got my trip plotted out.
My very rough itinerary has me driving for 30 days. That would be 30 days straight, not yet factoring in social visits + detours, my high school reunion, maybe an art colony stay. Next I'll fine tune it, after I get the exact dates that I'll be staying with my mom in South Carolina.

While I wait for my Narrative camera, I've been doing a lot of staring out the kitchen window as the sun rises. (In reality, I've been staring out that window for 13 years -- ever since I moved in).

6:12am

6:34am

I've been scrutinizing the time, how soon before actual sunrise it starts getting light, etc.

As I contemplated the scene, I started thinking, "Yeah. This is what I'll be capturing as I drive down PCH for my test run." Then it dawned [sorry, couldn't resist] on me that this window faces SOUTH. I will be driving down the coast capturing dawn to the WEST. I've been looking out the wrong window!
Then I got a grip on myself. I've got the 120 miles from Santa Monica to San Diego looking to the west and then I'll be on the southern perimeter. Which is what I'm looking at from this window. Not doing it all wrong after all!

Have I made your head hurt yet?