art diva studios

Recent Work, Reception & Art Blowout Sale

art diva — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 06:01:07 +0000

I have new never-displayed-before & recent work up at Cafe Zope thru the end of July, so please stop by, grab a cold ‘n’ tasty beverage, a delicious crêpe and check it out.

Cafe Zope
344 N. 4th Ave.Tucson, AZ
July 13-30
Tu-Fri 9am-3pm
Sa-Su 8am-5pm

***RECEPTION***
***SATURDAY, JULY 17, 5-9pm***
Snacks catered by Café Zope, wine available, or BYOB

Now, about this art blowout sale thing:
Please buy something at Zope if you’re so inclined, everything is less than $50, and that’s not just per piece, that for sets of 2 pieces or more!!! Why are you getting such a deal? Because the Mr. and I are moving back to our hometown of Austin, Texas on July 31 and would be very grateful for any donations towards our move. How do you do this? The awesome staff at the cafe can handle any sales and I’ve authorized them to part with the work right off the walls so you don’t have to wait to collect your item(s). But more importantly, I’d love to see your shining faces at the reception on Saturday to give you a big thank-you/good-bye hug.

P.S. Never fear about Tu Scene – a re-launch event is also in the works towards the end of the month that will explain all.

A Musical Homage to My Pops

art diva — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 15:35:00 +0000

My dad’s musical taste in rock from the late 60′s and early 70′s inspired me enormously in my early teens, and still does to this day. So as a Father’s Day tribute, I made him a mix CD — I wanted to make it all prog/proto-prog but it came out as more of a mish-mash of 60′s psych & garage, ranging from pop-ish to prog-ish, also a lot of instrumentals. So here’s to you, Dad: Trimmer of Live Oaks, Player of Accordion, Auditor of Wrongdoing, Baker of Bread, Wielder of Tractor, Walker of Dog, Dissassembler of Houses, Laugher of Everything, Reader of Epistemology, Director of Choir, Student of Accounting, Fan of Spurs, Mechanic of Cars, Eater of Barbecue, Watcher of History Channel, Builder of Fences, Advisor of Finances, Cook of Stew, Master of Woodstove, Visionary, Nerd, and Renaissance Man.

ENJOY

Tracklisting:
I Said, She Said, Ah Cid – The Animated Egg
House of Many Windows – Bobak, Jons, Malone
Playground (instr. out-take) – Deep Purple
If Not This Time – Fifty Foot Hose
Wow – Front Office
Bubble Gum March – Capt. Groovy
Ceyladd Beyta – Ceyleib People
The Beginning – Collectors
12 O’Clock, July – Mussies
Strange Girl – Kate
Red Lady – Phil Cordell
Play your game – The Unfolding
Pretty Girl Why – Buffalo Springfield
When I Arrive – We The People
Strangers From the Sky – Kim Fowler
Pancake Trees – Jefferson Lee
Flim Flam Man 2 – Velvet Seed
Rich Man Poor Man – Rumble
Malaguainia – Alexander Rabbit
Vacuum Cleaner – Nowhere Tintern Abbey
No Silver Bird – The Hooterville Trolley
Alligator Wine – In-Sex
It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry – Bloomfield, Kooper, Stills

Re-post from TuScene – Open Questions on Artistic Practice: New Releases

art diva — Wed, 26 May 2010 23:16:08 +0000

Re-posting a few questions I posed on Tu Scene earlier today because I was kind of ready to ask them in terms of my own personal artistic practice lately (see the TuScene comment further down), although I felt given the conversation with my friends about local Tucson art, it was a good idea to start with TuScene, as I am trying to put forth more deeper-level questions and incisive comments on the blog. Quality, not quantity. But much like Mr. Leviton says in the comments, I feel these things take me, personally, some time to process, which is why I have such a difficult time articulating my thoughts in writing. Yet initially in talking to people, no problem — no problem at all! I can nerd out and rant for hours. But I don’t think the conversation really carries the weight and legitimacy of the topic. As I say below, it took several days of reflection to even ask what I felt were appropriate questions to respectfully ask the readers, and it will probably take me much longer to arrive at some answers for myself. Nonetheless, I’m quite pleased a nice little conversation got going right away with other Tucson artists and gallery proprietors I truly admire.

A few days ago, some artist-friends and I got into some post-game commentary over beers at Congress about a show we’d seen earlier in the evening. We’d all seen about half of the work before other other venues around town within the last year. In the heat of the discussion, I agreed with them that seeing replays was kind of a turn-off and just brought down the presentation as a whole. Now I’m not so sure how much it really matters. We’re hardcore art nerds and go to nearly every show that we can so we probably see, and I mean really look at and remember a lot more art than most people. I think this cross-pollination exists only in our little unofficial ivory tower, since we’ve strayed so far from the casual art appreciator who may visit one gallery that caters to the tastes of their particular social scene, but not another. With this in mind, I’d like to pose a few questions to artists, gallerists, academics, and art professionals:

Do you let your work “leak” on the web (your personal site or Facebook, Flickr, etc.) before putting it in a show? Or do you reveal it publicly in an exhibit, then put it up on the web?
Do you prepare a body of work, then share it online? Or do you post images as you complete each piece?
Are there (loose) professional standards for any of these practices, or are they still developing as technology expands?
To what extent does revealing your work depend on context? For example, if you have work in a major show, do you keep everything secret until the opening? If it’s a less-important show or a short-run, do you recycle old work?

Colorspaces

art diva — Mon, 17 May 2010 05:52:21 +0000

quite possibly one of the most challenging drawings I’ve ever done. The drawing bit itself is only about 4" x 4", but the unanticipated intricacies took about 6 months of various re-dos and psyching myself up that I could finish it.

colored pencil on wood

finished May 2010

relying on scans and Photobooth lately since I don’t have funds to purchase a new digital camera yet.

Colorcube

Quite possibly one of the most challenging drawings I’ve ever done. The drawing bit itself is only about 4″ x 4″ but the unanticipated intricacies took about 6 months of various re-dos and psyching myself up that I could finish it.

Colored pencil on wood
Finished May 2010

*
Lite Brite RGB Colorspace [original gif]
Colored pencil on wood
Finished May 2010

Both part of the Staring at Screens series. Can’t believe it was exactly one year ago I first started this set!

*Relying on scans and Photobooth lately since I don’t have funds to purchase a new digital camera yet.

Colorbars set

art diva — Sun, 16 May 2010 18:43:14 +0000

Part of the Staring at Screens series.

Acrylic on tear-off gift wrapping paper from the book 18th-Century English Floral Patterns
Painted over the course of winter 2009 – spring 2010

Exploring another facet of screens, color science, art/creativity, what the human eye sees/absorbs/interprets/reproduces in this set. Specifically the idea of art as decoration, like wallpaper, as a receding into the backdrop of living spaces, not really serving an intellectual/spiritual/emotional purpose except to compliment the furnishings. Yet why do we decorate? We still feel these trappings provide a touchstone for self-identification, an object we see that expresses how we feel inside, a thing we connect with emotionally. In the Colorbars set, the connection we have to decoration has been broken down into math, a means for machines to reproduce our visible spectrum through a glass screen. I painted these in a faux naïve style not to much to show the rudimentary function of machine, but to demonstrate the human impulse to reproduce things visually AND to take in images others have reproduced, whether it’s taking snapshots on vacation or watching television. However, I am also wondering if these things are imposed on us by western society. Do we follow these threads because we are at leisure to do so? Is it because of our educational canon, that one be “well-rounded”? Or is it truly some sort of instinct? Do children enjoy coloring in coloring books, would they do it naturally, or do they do it because it’s an activity directed to them by authority? What if we weren’t attached to images?

video/painting/portrait

art diva — Sun, 16 May 2010 17:37:11 +0000

I was finishing one of the last of the colorbars paintings, working directly from my computer screen. On a whim, I decided to fire up photobooth and shoot a video of me painting (I’m always firing up photobooth on whims!). I was hoping to get the painting on the desk in the frame since I thought that’d be more interesting, but the screen wouldn’t tilt down far enough. When I played it back, I was surprised at how much my face changed once I started painting: the muscles relaxed, the eyes softened from tense, sort of brooding and intense, to – and here’s a word I don’t use often – peaceful.

painting from Rachelle Diaz on Vimeo.

Mechanically inclined: Cloth Studies

art diva — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 23:34:23 +0000

Ink, acrylic, and colored pencil on paper
April 2010

Many times I feel a need to take apart someone else’s art to figure out how it works (but not put it back together), just to satisfy my curiosity. These cloth studies were inspired by Pattie Lee Becker’s Ropes exhibit I saw at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art earlier this month. Her drawings brought me back several years ago to the memory of this dude who lived two apartments down from an ex-bf. His 300 sq. ft. efficiency was covered top to bottom in massive drawings and paintings of loops, knots and intertwined strings. The paintings weren’t really that great, I don’t think he’d ever shown any of his work, he just seemed like a normal guy who was obsessed with these shapes. This obsession perplexes me. Cloth studies aren’t anything new, but besides just a drawing exercise, I was also trying to get inside the mind of someone captivated by producing the same object over and over, seemingly indifferent to the evocative repercussions of repetition. While my work has themes, I feel like I’m trying to show different sides of the same thing in various ways. I suppose I tinker because in the future I may need to draw upon the lessons learned, kinesthetically figured out. For me, there’s really no better way to learn than to attempt and apply it to myself. I’m also fascinated by The Other: obsessive and compulsive artists who must be constantly active, people for whom drawing is an end in itself. The drawing I’ve done lately is a means to something else.

More Mouthpieces

art diva — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 22:58:19 +0000

Pencil, ink, acrylic, collage
March 2010

My scanner really sucks at picking up pencil drawings! This quality is terrible, but a scanner’s all I have at the moment as my digital camera broke a couple of months ago.