My House
All settled into my new house, shared with two of my best friends. It's all dinner parties, drinking wine, summoning cats, sweeping the floor, exploring new streets, re-directing the mail.
I've got big plans for the year (textile designs and sewing and books, but shhh...) - On the flipside, somehow I can't help but feel extremely overwhelmed and futile all the time. Magic potion cure needed.
happy family
A sweet little portrait of a father and daughter that i was commissioned to make for a family in Victoria.
p.s. You can order one for yourself too! Click here.
p.s. You can order one for yourself too! Click here.
Art Shows
by Armand Cabrera
Art shows are hitting new lows these days. The worst offenders are front loaded with fees. They take money for a jury fee, a handling fee for stored shipping materials and even a hanging fee in some instances. I would never pay to hang my work, I don’t care what the venue is. These shows make their money off the fees. Many galleries now keep themselves in existence with these kinds of scams.
If you allow the show to recover all its money before the show opens then there is no incentive for the show to be promoted or to bring in collectors. Which brings me to another little scam where galleries ask for the collector lists of their artists. Never relinquish your client list to a venue. A venue that has no clients, charges you for space and doesn’t promote you in anyway is worthless to your livelihood as an artist and your career.
In my opinion there is nothing professional about these venues and you’re better off renting a public space for a night or weekend and advertising and hanging your own show or a show with a group of like-minded artists.
A lot of artists hold the opinion that it is an honor to show alongside other juried artists. Many times a gallery show will pay a nationally known artist to show at a venue from the upfront fees they collect. It’s sort of like an anchor store at a strip mall; they pull in the other stores. Big name artists are given spots or paid to show to get others to pay for the chance of showing with them. If you are juried into a show you’ve earned your spot no need to feel someone is doing you a favor or you’re lucky.
Art is hard enough, don’t let people take your money or take advantage of you. Shows need good artists good artists don’t need shows. Participate in shows that support the artists and their work and take a percentage of sales; this way the expense and work is shared by the venue and the artists.
Art shows are hitting new lows these days. The worst offenders are front loaded with fees. They take money for a jury fee, a handling fee for stored shipping materials and even a hanging fee in some instances. I would never pay to hang my work, I don’t care what the venue is. These shows make their money off the fees. Many galleries now keep themselves in existence with these kinds of scams.
If you allow the show to recover all its money before the show opens then there is no incentive for the show to be promoted or to bring in collectors. Which brings me to another little scam where galleries ask for the collector lists of their artists. Never relinquish your client list to a venue. A venue that has no clients, charges you for space and doesn’t promote you in anyway is worthless to your livelihood as an artist and your career.
In my opinion there is nothing professional about these venues and you’re better off renting a public space for a night or weekend and advertising and hanging your own show or a show with a group of like-minded artists.
A lot of artists hold the opinion that it is an honor to show alongside other juried artists. Many times a gallery show will pay a nationally known artist to show at a venue from the upfront fees they collect. It’s sort of like an anchor store at a strip mall; they pull in the other stores. Big name artists are given spots or paid to show to get others to pay for the chance of showing with them. If you are juried into a show you’ve earned your spot no need to feel someone is doing you a favor or you’re lucky.
Art is hard enough, don’t let people take your money or take advantage of you. Shows need good artists good artists don’t need shows. Participate in shows that support the artists and their work and take a percentage of sales; this way the expense and work is shared by the venue and the artists.
Making a Mark
By
Armand Cabrera
Brush strokes carry a message whether you will it or not. The stroke is just like the artist at the time he makes it. All the certainties, all the uncertainties, all the bigness of his spirit and all the littleness are in it. ----- Robert Henri
Painting at its best is communication. A successful painting communicates to others on a personal level. The artist, to be effective, must share something of themselves to make that happen. Their art must carry truth in it. Many times people confuse the truth of a thing with its outward appearance but that is just illusion. The truth of a thing is the whole thing. Not just its how it looks to the eye, but also its character, how it makes you feel. The artist in observing the motif decides to express themselves by capturing it in paint.
The great artists and illustrators knew this and poured their thoughts and emotions into their work at every level. They infused their work with beauty, power, passion and care in spite of personal challenges, deadlines or outside influences. These artists left a bit of themselves for all to see and in doing so made their mark on the world of art.
There are ten thousand people in the United States who can paint and draw to beat the band. You have never heard of them and you never will. They have thoroughly mastered their craft and that is all they have—their craft… Merely knowing your craft will never be enough to make a picture… If you ever amount to anything at all, it will be because you are true to that deep desire or ideal which made you seek artistic expression in pictures---Harvey Dunn
Project your mind into your subject till you actually live in it. Throw your heart into the picture and jump in after it….Art is not a transcript or a copy. Art is the expression of those beauties and emotions that stir the human soul. ----- Howard Pyle
Armand Cabrera
Robert Henri
Brush strokes carry a message whether you will it or not. The stroke is just like the artist at the time he makes it. All the certainties, all the uncertainties, all the bigness of his spirit and all the littleness are in it. ----- Robert Henri
Joaquin Sorolla
Painting at its best is communication. A successful painting communicates to others on a personal level. The artist, to be effective, must share something of themselves to make that happen. Their art must carry truth in it. Many times people confuse the truth of a thing with its outward appearance but that is just illusion. The truth of a thing is the whole thing. Not just its how it looks to the eye, but also its character, how it makes you feel. The artist in observing the motif decides to express themselves by capturing it in paint.
N.C. Wyeth
An artist must be sensitive enough to discern the whole and to infuse his paintings with the most important aspects of the thing. This not only takes the skill to paint but the openness to understand and make decisions about the subject depicted. There is facility and thoughtfulness and insight. It is opinion manifest through their ability as an artist and it is hard work. It shuns the superficiality of affectation and artistic mimesis.
Hovsep Pushman
There is a lot of technique being thrown around nowadays. Illustrators and artists are hiding behind technology and routine copying and photographic collage. This slick surface work, lacking any personality except in the most superficial way is completely devoid of the hand of the maker. In my opinion this is artistic cowardice. To remove the artist and their opinion is to remove the art from the craft of painting. Anyone, given enough time and effort can be taught the mechanics of image making but the mechanics alone do not produce a work of art. Art can be anything and take many styles but for it to be meaningful it must always carry the mark of the artist. All great art has an individual point of view.
Dennis Miller Bunker
Harvey Dunn
There are ten thousand people in the United States who can paint and draw to beat the band. You have never heard of them and you never will. They have thoroughly mastered their craft and that is all they have—their craft… Merely knowing your craft will never be enough to make a picture… If you ever amount to anything at all, it will be because you are true to that deep desire or ideal which made you seek artistic expression in pictures---Harvey Dunn
Isaac Levitan
Can anything be more tragic than to feel the infinite beauty of your surroundings, to read natures innermost secrets and, conscious of your own helplessness, to be incapable of expressing those powerful emotions? ----- Isaac Levitan
Howard Pyle
Project your mind into your subject till you actually live in it. Throw your heart into the picture and jump in after it….Art is not a transcript or a copy. Art is the expression of those beauties and emotions that stir the human soul. ----- Howard Pyle
Self portrait as a crazy cat lady
This is a self fulfilling prophecy.
Glad to find that there are a collection of cats who live nearby my new place. I put a saucer of milk out by the gate yesterday and went back a few hours later to find it all lapped up.
Glad to find that there are a collection of cats who live nearby my new place. I put a saucer of milk out by the gate yesterday and went back a few hours later to find it all lapped up.
Walter Hunt Everett
By Armand Cabrera
Walter Hunt Everett was born on August 20 1880. He spent his childhood on a farm in Haddonfield, New Jersey. In his teens he attended The Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art. Sometime later he attended the Drexel Institute and studied under Howard Pyle.
Everett also taught briefly at the Spring Garden Institute and The School of Industrial Art from 1911 to 1915 but quit when he felt teaching was too confining.
Bibliography
Walter Everett Forgotten Master
Step by Step Graphics Volume 4 Number 1
Benjamin and Jane Sperry Eisenstat
200 Years of American Illustration
The Illustrator in America (3 volumes)
Walter Hunt Everett was born on August 20 1880. He spent his childhood on a farm in Haddonfield, New Jersey. In his teens he attended The Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art. Sometime later he attended the Drexel Institute and studied under Howard Pyle.
He began getting professional work in his early twenties. Everett worked for The Saturday Evening Post, Scribner’s Monthly, Women’s Home Companion, McCall’s, Collier’s,Ladies Home Journal, and illustrated a number of books. He provided color frontispieces for the eighteen volume set of The Works of Louise Muhlbach.
Everett’s early work shows the influence of Pyle and other successful illustrators of the day like E.A. Abbey. The designs while strong are simple and the color is subdued.
As he matured his work became more personal. He developed an intricate sense of design and color and he incorporated more figures in his work. His later work becomes more focused on flat planes of painted color and even more sophisticated designs. His brushwork is bold and free but never sloppy or haphazard.
Although he was in demand as an illustrator through the 1920’s and early 1930’s, his temperamental nature and perfectionism caused him to miss deadlines. In a fit one day he burned most of his life’s work and very few originals survive. He was married briefly but his wife left him when he continually failed to pay bills and rent on time. He ended up moving in with a brother in Pennsylvania sometime in the 1930’s and spent the end of his life painting for the pure joy it gave him. Walter Hunt Everett died in 1946 at the age of 66.
Bibliography
Walter Everett Forgotten Master
Step by Step Graphics Volume 4 Number 1
Benjamin and Jane Sperry Eisenstat
Henry C. Pitz
1900-1960, 1880-1980, 1860-2000
Walt Read
I want to thank Kev Ferarra for some of the Everett pictures and information in this article.
Other Articles on the web about Walter Everett
Fake Beirut posters
Simply because i am head over heels in love with the band Beirut.
Number one is inspired by Sicily and murder mysteries, and the second is inspired by lust and darkened mansions.
Number one is inspired by Sicily and murder mysteries, and the second is inspired by lust and darkened mansions.
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