Harvest Festival Time

Crazy busy here all week, preparing to deliver paintings on Monday for a local show of my portraits at the Cooperstown Art Association, and also getting ready for the Beekman Boys Harvest Festival in Sharon Springs. I did the Harvest Festival last year and while normally I don't do these sorts of events, I am happy to be involved with this one as it is a great way to support our local economy, farmers and craftspeople. Unfortunately I might have had temporary amnesia when I signed up again because I forgot how much work it is to do so many small paintings all at once, not to mention when that coincides with a another deadline, a husband on a week long business trip plus kids that have to be driven around and fed. I think I am doing better than last year though, in that this time I was actually finished with the painting part of the paintings two days before the event, rather than one day. heh.

I will be pleased if I get even half of what I have to do, done today. I still have to paint the edges on about 10 of the small paintings put hangers and labels on all 37 of them, edit all the jpegs of them, document everything, finish packing up and load the car tonight. I also have to finish the color at least on one and a half more portraits for the show at the CAA (will have to finish the edges, etc on those on Saturday and Sunday evening after a long day at the festival, blech). But MOST importantly, I have a very much needed hair appointment midday. I plan to avoid the cameras this weekend again, but just in case I better cover up the grey.....

Anyway, I better go, wish me luck and let's hope the rain that is in the forecast for this weekend, takes a sharp left and avoids Sharon Springs!

Update With Pictures and LINKS!

And again, weeks have slipped by since I have posted here. Sigh. In my defense however, I have been pretty busy. Half my time has been spent in the garden and the other half has involved a lot of driving and watching girl's softball and soccer games.

The garden needed so much attention, I am truly ashamed of how poorly we kept it at the end of the season last fall. Um, actually I think we just sort of left everything out there, the watering can, the hoses, the dead plants in the beds, and fled the scene at first snowfall. I guess there was a good reason for all that but right now it seems like pure laziness. So I have decided to go all hardcore gardenchick and have been spending a lot of time in the garden in the last month, reorganizing it, weeding, mulching, planting and did I say weeding???? There are a lot of weeds out there. Anyway, I have been posting pictures in a photo album on FB which you can view, I have made it a public album. I am making a superhuman effort to keep up with things out there all summer instead of doing what I usually do which is bailing around July when it gets hot and too weedy. hehe, is weedy even a word?

Barn Study#325, 5"x7" Oil on Panel, 2011

And a few other brief updates. I have been working a little bit and very slowly. It feels like it took me forever to prep eight small format panels, paint, photograph and edit the images, and post them on my sales blog, but today they are finally all up. Although I wouldn't be a bit surprised if I messed up all the paypal buttons! Also, the winner of my last birthday giveaway, Denise Rose, chose one of the paintings (pictured above) from this group so I am shipping that out to her within a few days. I would have liked her to have her gift in a more timely manner, but I haven't done too many small panels yet this year for her to choose from......


I also recently painted five small bird paintings for a local show called 'Fins, Fur and Feathers.' I am sure there will be a lot of fun art in this show, but all I could think of doing was black bird paintings, and I mean that in a very literal sense, they are pretty much just black. I did some drawings (above) but I knew when I got to the paint, they were gonna be a really deep dark black (below). They were also incredibly difficult to photograph and so they must be seen in person. Totally worth a plane ticket to Albany, a car rental and a hotel in Cooperstown to come see them, right??? haha. Well, if you can't do that, you can see the crappy images here and if you don't already, go ahead and 'like' me while you are there.
Black Bird#4, 5"x7" Oil on Panel, 2011
I photographed them several times in all different situations and trust me, this was the best I got. I guess they are holding their secrets.

And one more link; I was having a twitter conversation (follow me@tracyhelgeson) with Robin Pedrero this morning even though I am fairly bad at keeping up with the threads there. Anyway, a friend of hers sent me a link to a map contest, which looks reallyreally cool, so I am passing it along. Looks like a good kid activity for the summer, and/or a fun detour for an artist. I love maps and even though I can't recall ever actually making one, I think I may try my hand at this one if I have time. Maybe a map of my garden since that is the only place I ever go anymore, heh.

Visit US on Black Friday

Landscape Study #300, 5"x7", Oil on Cradled Panel, 2010

I am an equal opportunity shopper so I am not going to tell anyone here not to spend your money during this shopping season at a mall or at a big box store because sometimes ya just need a big bag of socks and there is nowhere else to find one, even though I am currently boycotting Target, hate Walmart and only go there if I am ABSOLUTELY desperate and there is not even a Kmart within an hour of here either.

Oops, I digress.

But I do hope that you will at least spread your money around and help support artists and craftspeople who pour their hearts into making things while often barely making a living wage at it. Electronics are nice, and I like a good new gizmo almost as much as the next person, but ultimately my most cherished gifts have been the crazy little ceramic pots/sculptures/collages/picture frames/other not quite identifiable objects that my kids have made for me, the earrings that a friend made for me, a necklace made by another friend. My husband has given me wonderful gifts over the years such as a beautiful woodcut by an artist friend of ours from Utah, a painting by an illustrator that I idolized when I was in college. Even though the computer Doug gave me one year was awesome! amazing! useful! and crashed within 2 years! I would ultimately prefer my art collection if I had to choose between the two.

So please visit my little gathering of artist friends at The Fine Art Department and also at the Small Art Showcase; between the two collections you are bound to find something beautiful and creative to give your loved ones, your friends, coworkers, and/or yourself!

I would also like to pass along more links to some other sites:

My old friend (and I mean that literally, we were co-barflies back in Philly in the late 80's, which now makes us old friends) Charlie has gained quite a following on Facebook and Twitter with his unique observations on life and has now put them on shirts, bags, etc at Shot of Wry.

I have never met Sarah in person, but she is a very good friend of Charlie and his wife Cecily who was also my co-barfly and best friend back in the 80's. One of Sarah's photographs hangs in my living room and I often spend some time with it, soaking in the sadness and beauty.

Lately I have been wearing more wood shavings from the hen house than jewelry and in fact I went so long without even putting on a pair of earrings that I had to recently "re pierce" the holes in my ears that I have had since I was thirteen, but that hasn't stopped me from drooling over quite a few items on this Etsy page. I may just have to forward this page to my husband so that he will be able to more easily do HIS holiday shopping this year, heh.

Two of my very good friends in real life make wonderful one of kind, "upcycled" jewelry and clothing, although lately I am seeing way more jewelry at Quirky Works than clothing. If you come to visit our town, you will see that EVERYONE is wearing their creations! Oh and you can like them on Facebook to receive updates.

Julie worked at the gallery in NYC that represented me for about a year and a half before they closed (STILL devastated about that, btw) however I was lucky enough to have made two lasting friendships (the other being the gallery owner) during that time and Julie might currently be my leading collector of small format paintings. Anyway, she has an Etsy page and makes the most wonderful cross stitched ornaments. Go see.....

And the other day I asked for links on my public facebook page and believe you me, there is a TON of shopping to do in the comments section of that post!

Ok, that should be enough to get you started. And please, PLEASE, if you make handmade arts/crafts and have a sales site or know someone who does, post the link in the comment section here. Now don't be shy about it, I WANT you to be able to show your work and now's the time to be flaunting it posting it......

So have a good turkey day in between all this shopping! I will be taking a vacation form my blog, BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Plus.......

Earlier this summer, I came across a NY Times article about The Fabulous Beekman Boys. Their story sounded familiar (city folks plunking down on a money pit/farm in upstate NY) and it turned out that they live in a nearby town, which practically makes them our next door neighbors in rural terms.

I checked out their website, bought Josh's books (funny and yet poignant, both of them) and then decided I needed their goat cheese. So one day Ginger and I drove up to their shop in Sharon Springs and Brent was behind the counter. While Ginger played out front with two of the most adorable baby goats ever, I hung around until a few of the customers left (ok, yes, stalker-ish behavior, I know it and I totally admit it!). Eventually, Brent and I started talking, comparing notes on farming, gardens, weeds, their TV show which was in the midst of airing on Planet Green at the time, friends in common; he knew a college friend of mine when he worked with Martha Stewart, and other local silliness.

At one point we were talking about the 2nd Annual Harvest Festival that he and Josh were organizing to bring attention to the food grown by local farmers, and Brent invited me to have a booth; most people sell their farm produce but several booths sell art and crafts sort of items. I told him that I don't do events like that but on the drive home, I started thinking, why not? I could do this event. I could show my small little landscape paintings, and help support something I strongly believe in as well. I have experience doing trade shows and so I am familiar enough with showing and selling my work to the public, even if I usually prefer not to do it. Plus, since I was in the midst of preparing for my solo show I really thought I needed MORE to do!

I worked on some new paintings at some point on July I think (not sure, this last summer is a bit of a blur to me now) and with those in addition to the ones I already had in my painting drawer (see above), I currently have 26 finished paintings. I have about 10 that are half finished and last week I was able to spend a few days to start even more new ones. So altogether I have 43 in progress, and my goal of to finish all those by Saturday, plus maybe a dozen more small Black Paintings. Ahem. Ok......

However, they ARE all very small (5x7 and smaller) so it is possible, I guess. But I will have to be really disciplined in order to finish them up, PLUS photograph and document all of them, PLUS prepare for the rest of the event, not to mention regular real life kid/pets/chicken related stuff that you know is going to interrupt me every other minute. Luckily though, a friend of mine loaned me a tent so I don't have to buy one, the cards are already at the printers, and besides painting, all I have left is to organize all the other stuff; bags, sales books, tools, maybe lighting, etc., so I think I will be able to get that part of it together in an afternoon or so. Heh.

Maybe I will post each day's tally of finished paintings here. Good excuse to be here every day, right????

And PS. The Beekman goat cheese AND the soap too, is AWESOME! I have gone back several times to buy more cheese, can't hardly live without it now!

PPS. The gallery reception on Saturday night was wonderful, more on that in another post, because now I must go paint!

Vermont, Plan D

Plan D was actually the first project I had planned for my time at Vermont Studio Center. I have wanted to sit down and focus on my mark making for a long time so I merged that with an old concept that I had briefly worked on a few years ago involving small squares of colors. I lost interest in that as it didn't really do what I had imagined it would, but I kept thinking how I wanted to put tiles together. So when the scratching became a stronger element in my work, I combined the two ideas and saved it for Vermont.

Over the past year, I have had all kinds of plans about how to set up the project but eventually I simplified it as much as possible and decided to refocus on the mark making aspect. And because I wanted it to be all about process, meaning I wanted to expand my mark making skills without feeling compelled to refer to those marks in future work, I decided to make it a give away at the final open studio at VSC. In keeping with that I also decided not to document the pieces, and only took a few general photographs of the project as it progressed. I wanted this to be all about my internal process.

So, process. I stocked up on about a million 4 inch squares. Well actually only 120 but it seemed like more. Heh. I also had some larger squares which only made it to the underpainting stage. I had planned to have them all gessoed before I left for Vermont but things got crazy busy before I left and so I ended up having to do all the prep after I got there. Then it took me several chunks of time over a few days to do the underpaintings and I admit to being mighty sick of the whole thing by the time I finished all of those! I didn't have a specific plan about the composition on these and I did do a few that would end up being one color as in my original idea. But I then decided to incorporate some of the more abstract elements that I was also doing in the border paintings; small sections of color at the edges, borders, contrasting squares in the centers, etc. I did at least a dozen of each composition, knowing that color would differentiate them later. By the night of the first open studio, I had all the underpaintings finished along with the first layer of glaze. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of that but this one has a bunch of the underpaintings in progress as well as a few that already have color:

Things in general after that got pretty hectic, I had all the other work going on plus there were artist talks, readings, etc so unfortunately I put off doing the color and scratching on these for just a bit too long. I ended up doing far fewer of the squares than I had planned and on one memorable night I seriously considering bailing on the whole thing entirely. But the next morning life seemed was all bright and shiny again and I decided I could do it after all. (Note to self: Never make any decisions after 1am;) I counted out how many I needed to have finished so that all the residents and staff could each take one and just focused on doing those. I ended up finishing seventy-two of the 4"x4" squares.

It was really a challenge to feel like I was varying the colors as well as the marks in each one. Um, especially after about #43. I settled on making very small shifts in color and by the end, both the marks and the color got pretty minimalist. There are a few squares floating around out there that only have one scratch running right down the center. Heh. I also learned that the most successful marks tended to be the random ones, marks that were not very representational, and that really carried over to the marks I made on the other paintings as well as what I have been doing since I have been home. I tried using some different tools to make the marks, but for various reasons I ended up preferring the little rubbery pointed tool that I was using in the first place.

My self imposed rules for Plan D were:

1. All the give away pieces would be on 4 inch square panels.

2. Because the project was to be all about process I would be giving away all the panels, without documenting them.

3. I also decided that I would stick with the initial colors that I chose for the glazes, no wiping off the paint to change the color and no working back into the painting later. Whatever I put down first, I had to make work. This was somewhat of a time saving rule;))

However, it turns out that the whole thing ended up being so much more than my process and it had such wonderful and unexpected results. In some ways, I think Plan D was really the most valuable project for me in Vermont and gave me some really good things to move forward with.

The unexpected things that happened here were:

1. They looked AWESOME all grouped together! I had always pictured this project as being only squares of solid color so I was very surprised to see how the small patterns on each square formed so many larger patterns. It was also interesting that the panels even worked together at all, considering they were all painted with no thought about how they would fit together later.

2. More than anything I wished I had been able to observe and possibly document the other residents as they were choosing and deciding on which one to take (I wanted to see the other resident's studios so I couldn't be in my studio the whole time). I was able to be there for awhile though and it was really interesting to watch a few people making their choices. Some people would pick out one, then change their mind a few more times before deciding on one, others connected with one particular piece right away. SO much more to do with this aspect of the project!
Matt Clark, Kimberly Dark and Kate McGraw making their choices.

Marcie Kaufman showing me her choice.

3. As I was walking through the other studios, other residents were so excited to show me which square they selected and it was fascinating to find out why they picked a particular painting. I think this was the best part; immediately seeing hearing why and how a fellow artist chose something I had made. Sometimes I feel a bit removed from that aspect of my work; why someone finds a certain piece appealing.

4. I was secretly glad that the all black piece ended up as one of about 10 leftovers. It was my favorite and is now part of MY collection!

So Plan D gave me so much more than I had imagined it would. Now that I am home and eying the balance of the half finished 4 inch panels, I am working on some ways to incorporate these other elements into this fourth new direction that I have going.

Very exciting!

It's a Big Sale!

Ok, here's the thing. I don't have much storage. We live in an old house with NO CLOSETS and my studio is in the attic which has knee wall storage, suitable for packing materials, mouse poop and bins of my kid's artwork, yarn, and photographs. I have one flat file drawer, maybe two tops, to keep the small paintings in that are on my sales blog. Both drawers are now full, and I would really like to clear them out so that I have somewhere to keep the new small format paintings I plan to paint as soon as I get back from my artist's residency in Vermont.

So it's a good time to move these little ones along. And to smooth the way, I have decided to offer all the paintings on the sales blog at half price until January 1. A big discount, it's true, but I really want them to find good homes and I also really want to paint more, so it's a win-win for me.

And if you hurry and buy something, there is a very good chance you will have it before the holidays. Everything is just sitting here, all ready to pack up and ship out. The mouse poop costs extra though. Heh.

New Venture

Horizon Lines (Seventeen), 2008, Oil on Panel, 5x5

Last summer, I set up a blog to show work that was either in a show or in the inventory of the galleries that represent me, as well as to post a bunch of small pieces that were in a local gallery that doesn't keep up with a website. It was suggested to me more than a few times that I should sell the small pieces myself and while I didn't say I never would, I was too burned out at the time to decide how to go about it. But time passed, stuff happened, galleries closed, sales sputtered and I recently decided to go for it.

A big part of this decision was made because I realized that I still love to do the small format paintings. I began painting again by working small (less pressure) five years ago and I guess that it is still in me. It's also a great non-pressured way to keep painting during this slow stretch that I have going. Um, so I don't go cuckoo again. heh. They aren't usually the pieces that gallery want to exhibit, too small, too low of a profit margin, whatever, yet I think some of them are my most successful paintings even if (or maybe because?) they are so small.

And I won't lie, a bit of income would come in handy right now to at least cover my supplies. Not my main motive here, but there you go. It is an element.

So I revamped the other blog and I have posted the pieces that I did a few months ago, which did not sell at the show. I have many more new ones on hand that I will start putting up each day or so after they are finished and photographed. I am also continuing with the Horizon Lines series and #Seventeen is shown above, which has been posted and is available.

The blog is now called "Tracy Helgeson" which is extremely witty, I know. The link will be on the sidebar of this blog, which gets a pretty good amount of traffic and I am just going to start with that for now. I may send out an email with the link, but I am not a pushy salesgirl and that will probably be about it for marketing. Oh, and I might casually suggest at some point in the next few months that these small pieces make really good gifts, but that's it, I promise....