The first, by Robert Brugger, is this "corner view" or "small view," a sort of intimate view of older buildings that I have found myself recording and noticed that my painter friend Don DeLew in Long Beach had started doing.
On the Saturday, I bought this little view of an old house tucked away in Redondo Beach around Robinson and Greene somewhere.
After that, I found this:
an oil pastel of a riptide that I had to have, so I thought about it all night and went back for it the next day. The shape of the rip and the laciness of the sea foam and the varieties of the waves competing over that rip spot pulled me right in (no pun intended). Then, on top of it all -- remember, I painted the ocean surface in the same spot at Marine Stadium for over a year and had ample time to find out about the short medium and long light rays in the water (red, yellow, blue), and this one has the perfect red, yellow..yellow-green...green...blue-green...blue of the light rays in/on the water and this one has it all. In other words, I really appreciate it.
I need to decipher the signature again. This oil pastel was done by a lovely young woman who has a beautiful body of work along this theme in oil pastel.
Both of the pieces I bought in the 2015 Art Walk have similarities to work I do, and/so/yet I had to have them. They were both within my budget (for two Art Fairs).
Taking those two and my budget as models, I set out to do some "quick landscapes" with an eye to selling small ones like these in a similar price range. That was a good idea in terms of the little painting series I turned out; however, they took me as long as any paintings I do: two weeks each, so that idea is out.
Unfortunately, after the passage of a fantasy school bill, my art budget is gone. I'm paying for the school districty to completely destroy a lovely old school and its surrounding neighborhood. A lot of money was spent topass this bill, putting 30 some million dollars directly into the hands of a school district with an oversight in name only (at the end of the year: duhhh, have you ever watched how teachers budget? throw it all out at the end of the year and buy new stuff. If we don't spent the money we won't get it next year. The educational organization works that way. It's the largest problem in education and the most firmly ingrained. This kind of "entitlement" is the worst. BTW -- it's not the money: it's who gets it and who spends it and on what. This measure was not about the children: it is about the developers, who have flooded the schools by double building on single family lots. I have one behind me that has an environmental waiver to do so, granted by the Hermosa Beach planning committee. The homes built here are shit: built of shedwood, allowed by planning dept. It is nnot intended to last more than ten years: that is something for "The Way I See It." This is art purchases, constrained by the entitled, the builders, and breeders.
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ReplyDeleteIn short, No more art budget: NIMBY Carpetbaggers came in and stole it to tear down of a well-built integrated (i.e. with the land and surrounding neighborhood) school to build an unnecessary school. I don't support the damage to the community in any way that the building of a new school to replace the old one. I love to support education, historic preservation, and the arts: three times the above art budget I used to put aside to spend to support whom and what I like is going toward the destruction one district-owned building, one of the original four schools for expansion and reduction of student enrollment. They sold off another of the four buildings in the 70s or 80s: wonder what is there now??? Board swept that under the table in their cry that they must have a new school. Why? Theycouldn't hold on to the old ones, fully integrated with the city plan, the flagship school saying "Where there is no Vision, the people perish." They're killing us. All they needed to do was maintain what they had: the schools were build with a vision to the future and the educational bureaucracy lives only in the past school year.
ReplyDeleteWent to this year's Art Fair and found the prices up more in line with my own. Increasingly commercial and noticeable artist dissatisfaction with cost of booth vs. returns in promotion and sales. New Art walk will be stsrting at South Park this year with very reasonable booth space for a few hours in the evening ... though I'd rather be included as a studio visit. Schlepping a tent table chairs and paintings is not my forte: schlepping paintings for an exhibit is enough without having to provide walls. I think that is what holds back the Art Fair: tent setting up is done by people who do it regularly, who do art sales outdoors on a regular basis, which is more commercial by nature: we need to have small items out for passers by to buy as souvenirs. Not everybody heads out with a budget to buy a one of a kind art work to support local artists at a once-yearly-exhibit. It's a great way to build a unique collection. I saw a night painting of a Foster's Freeze I fell in love with this year; unfortunately this year I spent time talking instead of buying. Sigh.
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