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paintings

drawings, graphic design, paintings
Mouthpieces
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Pencil, ink, acrylic
January-February 2010

Lately I’ve been doodling a lot, trying to regain a sense of design. It’s funny, because although I’m a full-time graphic designer (and production artist and customer service rep and project manager and copywriter and…), I feel I’ve lost a sense of visual design, of creating and arranging elements within a space. Or maybe I’m just now seeing the differences between the two, because I don’t have any creative blockage when it comes to arranging information (text and images), but in composing an image that’s not an accident, or taken from life, I’m at a loss.
observations, paintings
Staring At Screens painting #2, and some thoughts on technique/theory vs tips/tricks
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Staring at Screens painting #2 (original photo)
Acrylic on canvas
worked on June-November 2009

An issue of layered solids

Although I have a BA in Art with a concentration in painting, I was never taught basic techniques how to wield acrylics or oils. Yet, at as artist, I’m highly skeptical of “tips/tricks/helpful hints.” in art. I was taught Technique — Hannon excersies in the form of life drawing for three years: one in high school, two in college. That was helpful. It validated the experiments I’d done, discoveries I’d made on my own around ages 13-15: there are no lines in the world, only variations in shadow.

In 7th grade, a piano teacher showed me how to “improvise”: certain cadences and arpeggios that could create a new piece or transition an existing song in performing with an ensemble (vocalist, instrumental). It killed, to this day, the composing I’d done on my own since I was 7. I felt I learnt more from music theory, which was pure math and pure ear, dissecting intervals, the algebra of counting, without any connection, any “tips”. “Ear” was what I felt naturally. While I didn’t always get all the math equations of the annual TMTA theory tests correct (but close enough to get a 95-100% score every year for 10 years), I aced the listening part of the exam every year. It was like the final round on Wheel of Fortune where you’d get R S T L N E on the board: depending on grade level, there’d be 2-5 questions with different notes filled in. The moderator would play the whole melody and you’d have to figure out the rest; to use the Wheel of Fortune example by grade 9, you’d be lucky to get a couple of R’s and one N, I think the last one I took in 12th grade had the key signature and the first two notes out of 10 measures. It was also like “So You Want to Be A Millionaire?” in the sense that in the early years, you could ask the moderator to play over certain measures as often as you needed, by the upper levels, they could only play it through, no special requests, maybe three or four times. No colors or flashing lights, just melody, just intervals, just the distance between two things.

I also entered a new school in 7th grade, and enrolling in a new school means new competitions, chosen or not. A classmate, J., was a pianist and a good student, like myself. Yet we passively hated each other. She was a memorizer of literature, algebra, science, Chopin. I felt the knowledge I sought, and while I had an desire for it, it was a desire for utility, for creativity, not for… well, I still don’t understand people who learn based on memory to this day, over 15 years later.

What I was sold as “improvisation”, as creativity, in 7th grade connected empirical knowledge and interpreted emotion, irrevocably, instead of figuring out the connection on my own, as an artist. So, sure, I could probably take a painting class and be “taught”, but I’m so paranoid of the creativity being killed for life. Figuring out on my own how to paint layers that are also solid colors is a puzzle. With music, as with art, I have to use mathematic and scientific processes to work out and to feel, to creep my way to the solutions of the problems for myself
news, paintings
Can’t Stand Up, Don’t Fall Down
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I’ll have some paintings in this warehouse art/music show… one night only!

$5 gets you art, drinks, food, music
Starts at 9pm
901 N. 13th Ave. Tucson
digital, paintings
TV Screen
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(needs some photoshop tweaking, not a very good photo)
Acrylic on wood
June 2009
part of the Staring at Screens series

Heard this on NPR yesterday: As TV Changes To Digital, White Noise Fades Away
A familiar sight and sound is disappearing as digital TV takes over from analog: television snow and the “white noise” that accompanies it. (related commentary)

Original photo:
digital, paintings, photography
One down…
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The first painting in my Staring at Screens series is down, several more to go.

Acrylic on canvas
2009

Here is the original photo, doctored in Photoshop for exposure/saturation to create the painting:

My digital camera has been dying a slow death since the summer of 2008. Finally, back in March 2009 I couldn’t get it to come up at all (I have since purchased a new one); it would only take blurry pictures that look like analog television signals. But it kind of works out because I already had an idea to work with a series of images exactly like this and was wondering how I’d find source material without a TV set.

This project is about un-pixelating the screens we stare at all day: computer (including internet, email, video, social media), cell phone, TV, bank ATMs, post office, touch screens credit card payment at the grocery store/convenience store/big box stores, etc. The addiction, the relief one feels when pulling the eyes away, the awareness of ubiquity. It’s akin to what I mentally dubbed in Texas “air conditioned bliss.” It’s the same feeling, only visually, that you get when you step into hot, hot summer-baked air and bright sun outside from working in a cool, even chilly, climate and light-controlled building all day long. It’s about the invigoration resulting from discomfort, or from a mere change from “comfort” and “stability” stepping into uncontrollable elements.
paintings, portrait, press
Arizona Daily Star Caliente feature
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An interview with yours truly and Tucson familia (PLAY, MAXED ART, Dinnerware Artspace) in the feature article of this week’s Caliente, the Arizona Daily Star’s arts/entertainment section. Check out the slideshow, too!

There’s an intro and 4 different sections.
- Intro
- PLAY’s black light art show in March (all my quotes are here)
- 7UP Performance Art night at Dinnerware
- Troppo Fabuloso spring fashion show (I had pieces and did styling for this event but was not mentioned in the article)
- Citizens Art Studio/MAXED ART
paintings, portrait
Black light portrait of César
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This is a portrait of my husband, César. Photo was taken in tungsten (regular) light. I used to have a black light, but can’t find it. Featured in a black light art show at PLAY in Tucson, AZ.
Acrylic and black light-reactive paint
March 2009
paintings
Bombs Away
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Bombs Away
Acrylic & latex on wood
January 2009
Shown in Dinnerware Artspace’s art, politics and the soup of change show earlier this year in Tucson, AZ
Click here for more information on the history of the piñata as a global symbol originating in China, Europe and the pre-Columbian Americas.