.......yesterday i was reminded of where i was a year ago

Yesterday, I found myself looking through photos of my trip to Italy. Today, it's about just a week short of when I went last year with thirty other college students.

Having read my friend Katie's post the day before, about her experience of where the two of us were a year ago, I started thinking about those longings I had in my heart then. Katie and I were just beginning to get to know each other, and I think we both hoped we would become better friends living with each other for a month in a foreign country. But what drew our hearts together most of all was our desire to experience something in Italy so much larger than ourselves. We wanted to know something so beyond ourselves, our imaginations, and our abilities. We were open vessels longing to be filled.

So,
I've been thinking about those longings I had in my heart then, and those longings I have in my heart now, a year later.

I still feel like an open vessel longing to be filled with such wonder, delight, and beauty---enough to allow me to confront the pain of being human. I am longing to be filled today in my old hometown, seeking out how to see an old place with child-like eyes. I know today, that that is what allows me to be daily present with the loneliness and the fear that comes with being human.

the view from Katie's & my window, last January

-------if you haven't heard it before, go listen to Noah & the Whale's song Old Joy

"Left, Breathless."------ I'm co-curating a show!!!!

Jason Leith and I are curating a show----this Saturday!!---- at the Salvation Army Alegria in Los Angeles, through a project called Art & Shelter. 

The location itself helps those affected by AIDS and HIV, providing immediate resources (food, medication, etc.) for them, as well as long-term resources (subsidized housing, chapel services, etc.). The most unique thing about the Salvation Army Alegria though is their program Art & Shelter---which believes strongly that everyone deserves to be exposed to art, and that you shouldn't just be providing for the bare needs of a person, but you should also be providing them with "excess". And the way they do that best is through consistently putting art on the walls of their facility, and having art openings!

So, that's what we're doing----putting on a show for Art & Shelter.  The title of the show is "Left, Breathless." Here's our show statement, the thing that ties the five different artists works together:

"Left, Breathless is a collection of recent works by Jonathon Puls, Ashleigh Allard, Amber Johnson, Dan Callis, and Amy Scofield. The artists address the instances we find ourselves stripped of our shells and left naked. These works are about moments of sifting through the remains of deconstruction and confronting what is left.

With little context for the struggle, we find our faculties displaced and our vision impaired. We are left with a longing to move past the impasse, yet the struggle itself calls for us to move through. The selected works by these five artists address the moment we are Left, Breathless and insight is beyond our capacity. It is then, when our perception of the light has diminished, that we must resolve to take the next breath into reality, a future undeterminable and vague. Still, the vulnerable exposure in these moments holds the potential to restore sight and renew authenticity."

------Hope to see you at the show!

The Salvation Army Alegria

2737 W Sunset Blvd 

Los Angeles, CA 90026

three things I'm in love with

Berlin, Germany

July 2010

I took this picture on my trip to Germany this past summer, and have no idea why I've kept it hidden this long. In reality, it is the epitome of three of the major things that I am constantly drawn to both in photos I take, and paintings I do (even in things I buy!): --color, --grids,--architecture. And one other one I just now thought of was: my obsession with things that are extremely similar, but just slightly varying. I even day-dream of making a painting that is just an entire grid filled with slightly different shades of white (or any color really).

 It is refreshing to me to have this ordered, laid out structure---that sets down the foundation for everything. The excitement then for me is getting to discover the slight differences between each square--getting to explore each section within the frame, essentially. The compare and contrast section of tests always were my strong-point.

Reflecting on these things, I feel like so much of it is clearly traced to my family. Two of my brothers and my Dad are all engineers, and my grandfather and uncle are builders---so in a lot of ways... it makes sense that I think in terms of structure and order, grids and architecture. The love for color though (especially bright color), I think is all my own. 

on my studio wall

it's pouring rain outside right now, and I even just heard thunder---
campus is just an absolute flood.

I had to run from my last class to the painting studio, just a few minutes ago, and was stuck outside the locked door for a full minute, trying to scramble through my bag to find my i.d. card, getting dumped on----finally found it, and burst inside, and I'm now currently seeking refuge in my studio, until my next class starts in a half hour.

So I thought I'd share my drawing of Ray, which I did a few weeks ago in class, and is currently hanging on my studio wall

last year's drawing of the same model, Ray

Garnett's Birthday: Huntington Beach Pier 17

marvelous friends, indeed. 

One Orange Wall

love the contrast here of stillness (i.e. major straight on, straight-forward geometry) with past movement, past actions. 

absolutely nothing happening here, on this wall, in this space----- but so many traces of recent (& not so recent) activity.

 posting and removing, opening and closing, attaching and dismantling, painting and scraping. 

Tuesday

i tend to post at a pretty slow and steady pace, and sometimes end up posting photos or paintings from a month or two ago (if not longer). but the best part about this is that I also tend to post images that that day felt like me, felt just how I was feeling.

 sometimes it's the colors, or it's the composition, or the subject matter. with today being a tired tuesday, full of much work ahead of me, something simple, subdued---but highly ordered---hit just the spot.

{Italy}:: Part 5

a freezing cold day in Venice ----heading towards San Marco Piazza.

{Italy}:: Part 4

the tamed & the untamed

{Italy}:: Part 3

today,
I had office hours with one of my professors and was telling him about the shadows of Italy-- and how they compare to California. I don't think I've ever paid so much attention to shadows before, as I do now.

It never occurred to me before that the shadows of a particular place can be yet another way to get acquainted with a space (or sometimes even reacquainted). Before, I used to only notice the bizarre, the quirky, or the most dramatic of shadows. Now, not always, but much more, I am paying attention to all kinds of shadows-- even the simpler ones. 

Italy is a place filled with iron gates: surrounding their buildings, covering their windows, blocking off the sacred altars of the cathedrals. That's where it all began to change. I became obsessed with the pattern of the iron gates, and that evolved into becoming even more excited and interested in how the silhouette of these ornate and fabulous patterns were being projected onto the ground, onto the walls, or even onto the hem of my friend's coat

California shadows are much less ornate, maybe even less dramatic--- but fantastic nonetheless. It's been a great way to become reacquainted with a space, noticing the shadows, in their simple, quirky, "only Southern California" type of way. Such a good grounding in re-establishing where I am, right now, at this moment. 

.

{Italia}: Part 2

Italian architecture is a dream. It's this wonderful balance between geometry, pattern, history, & renovation. The colors they choose to paint their buildings with are fantastic, and it seems like anytime something needs to be patched up they just choose a "relatively similar" type of color to cover up the mishap--- creating some of the best walls and surface treatment I've ever seen. 

{Italy}:: Part 1

took this of my dear, dear friend Katie Winters with her disposable camera on our last day in Italy, in the Bobbili Gardens

really looking forward to sharing more in the next few days (& weeks) about what kinds of things I saw & learned. Katie Winters, was one of the most wonderful surprises of the trip---loved getting to know her gentle, ever-giving, sweet soul; getting to experience first-hand the way she sees & does life