Hurricane Isaac

Hurricane Isaac hit the new Orleans area on the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The storm wasn't officially recognized as a "hurricane" until the 10 p.m. report. Official reports are given at 10 a.m. & p.m. and 4 a.m. & p.m. The storm took forever to become organized. It also took forever to pass through this area. Hurricane Gustav hit Louisiana around the same time in 2008.

Evacuation, for Isaac, was voluntary in my immediate area. Lower lying areas had mandatory evacuations. Since Isaac was not expected to be as strong a storm as some previous ones, I decided to stay put. But I knew from past experiences that a tropical storm could still mean high winds and/or flooding.

When Isaac's winds had finally died down enough, I looked outside to see if I had any roof damage. One of my ceramic roof ridge tiles had fallen on my driveway and shattered. Some of the other tiles were simply displaced. So, this storm fell somewhere between Katrina (most) and Gustav (least). Other people in the region had much more damage.

This storm had me too agitated to paint. However I did render some sketches that I will post on my blog art at random. Look for them in the near future.

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The last painting in this batch has to do with an annual festival that takes place in old Memphis during the month of September. It is known as the Cooper-Young Festival. Along both sides of two intersecting narrow roads, artists and charitable organizations and individuals set up their tents and tables. The Saturday I went, the streets were very crowded. Anyway, the 2005 festival poster lead me to this stained glass sun design. The painting didn’t go according to plan, but it captured the event for me.


acrylic on canvas, 5" x 5"

yo

On my first day in Memphis, August 28, 2005, I visited the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. That happened to be the last day of a show called, “Patrick Kelly: A Retrospective.” The 80s clothes, he designed, were known for their use of colorful decorative buttons. Kelly was an African American who was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi. In 1979, he moved to New York to study at Parsons School of Design. In 1985 he showed his first collection. He died in 1990 of complications from AIDS at the age of thirty-five. The bright colors of the buttons I saw in the show lead me to create this painting.


acrylic on canvas, 5" x 5"

xo

Perkin’s Restaurant and Barkery is a chain of restaurants I discovered during my stay in Memphis. I ate breakfast at one of the restaurant locations most mornings. You pay as you leave the restaurant. While standing in line for the register, I would browse an assortment of bakery items in a display case. This painting is representative of a display of muffins.


acrylic on canvas, 5" x 5"

wo

On my last night in Memphis I went with a friend, and a couple of her friends, to a restaurant called Yia Yia’s Euro Bistro. It was one place I had not tried yet. The colors in this painting come from the colors of the inside décor – including mosaic tile work. We had a fun that evening and I had fun painting.


acrylic on canvas, 5" x 5"

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One of the first days I was in Memphis I visited the The Pink Palace Mansion, which is the headquarters for The Pink Palace Family of Museums. Before leaving I purchased a book on the mansion. When I started painting these paintings I seized upon a motif from a photo in the book. It was part of a decorative plasterwork located in one of the rooms of the house. That is the basis for the image you see in this painting. I went with pink for the color of the motif since came from the Pink House Mansion.


acrylic on canvas, 5" x 5"

uo

My second Nashville stop was the Tennessee State Museum where I viewed the “Rau Collection: Six Centuries with the European Masters.” The show included artwork from the early Renaissance (1425) through the mid-20th century (1955). Each room, of the exhibition, had a different color to denote specific artistic schools. In my design I used the room colors for each stripe as well as the background of my painting. Beginning with the “to” and continuing with this painting, I used a color and its tints. It is an effect I sometimes use in my dot art.
acrylic on canvas, 5" x 5"

to

Many of the mini malls in Memphis have a uniform look. Each business has the same red for lettered signs, the same brick color and similar foliage. Anyway this piece is a response to the mini malls. I visited several of them while shopping for necessities.


acrylic on canvas, 5" x 5"

so

Another restaurant I visited in Memphis was Napa Café. The bright artwork on the walls hung in contrast dark red walls and dark green woodwork. I took colors that I saw there and came up with this painting. I enjoyed the food and the atmosphere when I dined there.


acrylic on canvas, 5" x 5"

ro

On one of my first days in Memphis I tracked down the Peabody Place Museum and Gallery to see a collection of Chinese art. This painting is based on a green sculpture of a lion creature featured on the museum brochure. When I searched for the museum online, I noticed the name has been changed to Belz Museum of Aisian and Judaic Art at Peabody Place. The sculpture, on this page, is similar to the one I depicted.


acrylic on canvas, 5" x 5"

qo

AAA’s Tennessee tourist guide helped me locate some interesting restaurants during my stay in Memphis. One of the restaurants listed was Rook’s Corner located at a Hilton in the German Town area. The lobby of the hotel was very modern and striking. The corridor to the restaurant was painted yellow and included contemporary works of art. When I created this dot painting, I mimicked the curvy pattern and colors of the artworks I saw.


acrylic on canvas, 5" x 5"

po

While in Memphis a fraternity brother showed me two of his separate landscaping projects. Both involved colored cement. The cement used in the backyard of a townhouse was a yellow-brown color. In the other project, the cement path from the main house to a new basketball court, was purple. Thus I combined the colors from both projects in a dot painting. In addition the colors turned up in a photo published in the local paper. That was coincidental. Anyway, I was very pleased by the color combination.


acrylic on canvas, 5" x 5"

oo

Sometimes a certain icon will pop up in my daily life. If it repeats several times, there’s a good chance it will show up in my artwork. My story begins with rabbit images featured in an art show at Cheekwood Art & Gardens in Nashville. Artist Joseph Peragine chose a white rabbit as he explores the theme of “vulnerability” following 9/11. Also in the show included images of Sherman tanks. Apparently, the design did not do well in tank-to-tank combat.


acrylic on canvas, 5" x 5"

When I arrived back to Memphis, I thumbed through a book I bought at Cheekwood. In it I stumbled across a photo of a sculpture located on the grounds. Sophie Ryder built her sculpture, Crawling Lady Hare, in 1997, when she was an artist-in-residence. It was constructed out of tightly bundled galvanized wire supported by a steel armature.

The following day I met an art professor, my family put me in touch with, over at Rhodes College’s Clough-Hanson Gallery. There was an exhibit of T. L. Solien’s work. Several of his pieces included cartoon-like rabbits. I don’t remember if this one is in the show, but it was similar to the ones included in the brochure I picked up. His surreal images depict events in his life.

Some weeks later when I was back in New Orleans I noticed a newspaper story about a giant pink bunny sculpture erected on an Italian mountainside. A Viennese group of artists, calling themselves Gelitin (Gelatin until 2005) stated that the giant stuffed toy was “knitted by grannies of pink wool.” The idea was to give people the feeling that the rabbit was the giant, Gulliver. People who have visited the sculphttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifture have been invited by Gelitin to upload photos to the website photo album.

Well having encountered these four instances of rabbits, I decided it was a good symbol for me to represent my evacuation to Memphis. Also, the day I went to Cheekwood, I was trying to keep my mind off the fact that Rita was delaying return home. The excursion was an additional escape, if you will. For this painting I decided to paint a simplified white rabbit with a green background. The white rabbit was one I first saw At Cheekwood. The green background has to do with the Cheekwood gardens.

While in Memphis I saw a film entitled “Forty Shades of Blue.” It was filmed in Memphis and the director was on hand to take questions after the movie. Unfortunately, I didn’t like the movie enough to stay. In fact I hated the movie. In the plot, there was a love triangle with people that just did not interest me. Overall I found the film irritating and depressing.


acrylic on canvas, 5" x 5"

That being said, some of the background shots included flickering blue lights. I previously have discussed bokeh/circles of confusion. Well that part interested me. My order of canvases, beyond the first eight, did not arrive until the day before I left Memphis to go back home to Metairie.

Back in the New Orleans area I saw many roofs of houses covered with blue tarps. Well, that’s the blue I used to create a background color. My composition had a number of variations of that same blue color. This is the first instance where I consciously mixed something from Memphis and something from my return to the New Orleans area as I continued working on these dot paintings. As for the title, it is pure coincidence that "no" (New Orleans) was the title for this content. The title for each of my dot paintings, in this series, is assigned according to its date of completion.

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When I made my day trip to Nashville, I first stoped at The Frist Center for the Visual Arts. Inside this large modern building was a group show entitled The Fragile Species: the New Art Nashville. The shows theme was “vulnerability of the body and the transitory nature of life.”


acrylic on canvas, 5" x 5"


One piece, in the show, caught my eye; it was called Especially Considering Exposure by artist, Barbara Yontz. When I made my dot painting I imitated hanging threads with my dots. My colors choices were influenced by the show as a whole. Many of the works had a medical feel to them. Not every show I see moves me to make art, but this one did.

lo

lo” was inspired by Paulette’s, a French restaurant, in an Midtown Memphis. It is in walking distance of a movie theater and a performance theater. The interior tile work inspired my color choice. When I asked my server about the speedy service at the restaurant, she told me that the staff is aware that diners are anxious to get to a movie or play. I enjoyed the dishes I ordered both times I dined there.


acrylic on canvas, 5" x 5"

ko

At the University of Memphis Art Museum, I attended the opening of an exhibit called “The Perfect Show.” All the pieces were by artists who worked in very detailed compulsive manner of perfectionism. There’s one piece that had black enamel dots that was the specific trigger for this one.


acrylic on canvas, 5" x 5"

An interesting point about the show was that it was originally supposed to show the at the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center in the summer of 2005. However, the CAC did not have enough money to follow through. Anyway, I’m glad I had an opportunity to see it. I went to a program given by the curators of the show who talked about their experiences in pulling the show together.

In painting the dots on this piece, I mixed paint with acrylic polymer gloss; so these dots are translucent. When I finished I thought more about the green mold that plagued folks who had water in their house. I’m glad I did not have to contend with that issue.

Dot Pillow

Last Thursday I moved to another hotel in Memphis. This is a shot of a pillow from the lobby of the first hotel. It is one of two pillows. The pillows were on chairs near a big flat screen television. Folks watched the weather channel as the Hurricane Gustav made landfall.



In the meantime I've been taking a lots of pictures while visiting parks and gardens in Memphis. I've been keeping busy, but I've been too agitated to make any art. When I packed, I did manage to take some color pencils, color sticks and water color pencils. Bringing painting supplies was just too involved. Now I'm monitoring Ike's progress. Tuesday is the day that
the forecasters promise to have a better sense of where Ike will go.

Dot Sofa

This is the pattern from a sofa located near the hotel bar. It's one of those long curved ones. There are lots of cool patterned objects in this hotel.

Dot Rug

Currently I’m in the Memphis area having evacuated from the New Orleans area. I’m keeping an eye on Hurricane Gustav’s progress. Here’s a shot of the rug in my hotel room. By coincidence it happens to have dots in it.