art – Page 6 – joy murray art~stories~life

Final Days of Entangled – Anka Gallery

September 26, 2010Posted in Artists I Love, Portland Art ShowTagged artLeave a comment

You can still get to The Entangled Show at Anka Gallery in Downtown Portland on Wednesday or Thursday. It’s up til October 1st. I finally made it today and it’s wonderful. The space is quite wonderful, in what used to be a hotel ballroom back in the 1910s. The wooden ballroom floor gives the gallery a warm feeling and wonderful spirit. The art is quite amazing. Andrea Benson’s work is stunning and thoughtful. Her use of sketches in encaustic are transcendent. She using some color and a figure with a face, adding an intriguing element to her already compelling work. Bonnie Meltzer’s work using various material, featuring a lot of crocheted wire, is amusing and colorful and a textural treat. There are amazing photographs by Ken Hochfeld of entangled thickets. For some he’s developed a mirror image style and the figures that appear in the join are magical. The large string ball paintings of Todd Griffith “round out” the show nicely. If you haven’t had a chance to see it yet, try to get there this week. You won’t regret the entanglement of time. If you can’t make it, Google any one of the artists and check out their work.

Portland Art Gallery – Anka Gallery.

Dressed

September 24, 2010Posted in Fabric ArtTagged art, art doll, cloth doll, dolls, Fabric art, hand made2 Comments

I got my reader doll dressed and coiffed today. I had recently read a great book on making cloth dolls and how to make precise little garments. I tried a few but went back to draping and attaching the garment to the body. Since I am working by hand, I like using the garments to shape and add character. I love it when the fabric pools into a shape all its own. I also am still attached to visible stitches — not every stitch, but enough to show the fragile nature of human structures. Precision is not my nature.

Now I just need to make her shoes and her book.