in the works

My slowly bubbling brain is currently working on a few ideas,

hence the MIA status of me on my own blog...

I found this old pic of me and compared it to a current image and thought it was funny that I still am the same person, just in a bigger body.

I know I can harness that zeal, I just need to tap into it far more often....there is a cookie involved, maybe that is the key.

One of the many things I am working on, is figuring out how to un-stretch myself so thin...

I need to be of a more substantial thickness.

I am finding that being creative and also analytical is a very hard swing to ride.

 All the grown up responsibilities are currently weighing me down and although I am well aware that they are necessary yuckies, I still need to do them. So I have stopped fighting that fight and simply laid out a plan to tackle them all and free myself slowly from the taffy.

I think I have an entire arm free now...so it is only a matter of time before I get the other one free and saw off my legs!

Soon or so very soon, I will be posting new work and new events!

I just know it

Prettiest Rejection

Dear Ms. Wiesblott,

Thank you for submitting your recent work to George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film. We welcome the opportunity to review your work, and appreciate your interest in the museum.

I am writing on behalf of Alison Nordstrom, Curator of Photographs, to inform you we are unable to accept work from your series for exhibition or inclusion into the permanent collection at this time. Our exhibition schedule for the next year is already in place, and we do not consider the work contextually suitable for our permanent collection. Please understand this decision is not a reflection on the quality or subject of your work but the result of our need to grow the collection in careful and particular ways.

We offer our thanks and encouragement, and hope you will continue to keep us up to date on new projects by reviewing www.geh.org for changes to our submission guidelines. Thank you again for your interest in the George Eastman House.

All best wishes,

Tasha Lutek,
Photograph Department Intern
--
I am so happy they spelt my name right and looked at my work.

Made the Paper!

ART REVIEW : All about the print — In its 16th annual Juried Open Show at the Faulkner Art Gallery, S.B. Printmakers presents a varied lot of work

By Josef Woodard, NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT
October 30, 2009 12:00 AM

SANTA BARBARA PRINTMAKERS 16TH ANNUAL JURIED OPEN SHOW
When: ends today
Where: Faulkner Gallery East, Central Public Library, 40 E. Anapamu St.
Hours: 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Friday
Information: 564-5608,
http://www.sbplibrary.org/, www.sbprintmakers.com

Printmakers need love and exposure, too. The wide and varied world of printmaking tends to get spotty public forums in the art gallery scene, in Santa Barbara and beyond, which makes at least the annual Printmakers show at the Faulkner Gallery something special. The current 16th annual affair, run by the ongoing umbrella organization Santa Barbara Printmakers, offers plenty of reasons for a look.

This year's selection, curated by juror Gordon T. Fuglie, is an especially strong and interestingly varied sampler of regional printmaking work being done. Familiar artists from around town, and from various media affiliations, include Anthony Askew, Nicole Strasburg, Siu Zimmerman, Barb Parmet and former Santa Barbara City College teacher Pamela Zwehl-Burke.
Zwehl-Burke's art has been taking some intriguing turns of late, as seen in a floral-based show at the Elverhoj Museum and with two pieces in this show, tethered to an anti-racist theme. Her solar intaglio pieces, including "There never was a 'POLAK,'" bring together vintage mug shots and other texts in a format suggesting ersatz agitprop, aimed at a positive agenda.

First prize was given to David Graves, whose work — as well as that of Askew and Zimmerman — was also seen in another recent printmaking group show at the Santa Barbara Tennis Club (a recent addition to the map of art venues in the area). With a light-spirited charm evoking design aesthetics of the '50s, Graves flings bubbly linear elements on pale color grounds, a pale green shade being the grounding hue of choice in his prize-winning "Kinfusion."

Compared to brighter, bigger and visually louder artistic avenues, printmakers are often dealing in subtle areas of expression, with understated manners and methods. From the beholder's perspective, that often translates to closer scrutiny of the work. Nina Warner's "Drift," for example, is a compact little vertical abstraction, laid out in muted gray tones, but it reveals a quiet inner life to those who care to look.
Though much larger in overall scale, Garrett Spiers' mosaic-like composite of small blossom and plant images, "Nothing Being Equal," similarly presents its case in understated, enigmatic shades of gray. Carolyn Hubbs' "Santa Monica" goes alluringly dark, as well, offering an almost film noir-flavored street corner ambience, and Monica Wiesblott's solar etching "Only the Sound of my Breath" is a foggy view down a country road, validating the title's poetic ambiguity.

Different angles on landscape — the soft-edged textures of Karyn Walsh's "Fallow Fields" and the harder-
edged, Japanese woodcut-inspired "Angel's Landing" — are placed side by side in the show, as if to present a study in contrasts. In other directions, Teresa Zepeda's silkscreen piece "Fair Lights" is a loose, impressionistic take on shimmering lights promising distant merriment in the night.

One clever creation off in its own expressive corner, compared to the rest of the exhibition, is Bob Mask's "French Bath + Landscape," a three-colored screen print, with plenty of white space — the better for the eye to breathe. A large, unclad woman's backside, post-bath, looms and floats in a pictorial space with a fragment of yonder landscape outside a cock-eyed window, in a scene fit for a post-Matisse dream.
All in all, the 16th annual exhibition comes together nicely by spreading out its vantage points, as befits a medium made up of multiple sub-mediums. The show confirms the idea that printmaking is alive, well and creatively fired in our area code.

COURTESY PHOTO
Carolyn Hubbs' "Santa Monica" joins an eclectic mix of prints at the 16th annual Printmakers show at the Faulkner Gallery.