Laying Track

Palmer Hayden, from John Henry series.

I recently read a story about building the first railroads. How each day material would get ferried forward and new track laid. Then the train backs up and picks up more material. Next day, start over.

Some days it's like that when I'm making art. I'm backing and then I'm laying new track this week because making art isn't just paint on canvas or ink on paper; sometimes I back up and write.

This morning as I set out to write I came across an injustice, seemingly small in our world of appropriated images becoming commonplace. I was looking through my images to illustrate the blog post title of laying track and then decided to google laying track.

Palmer Hayden, The Janitor Who Paints

I came across the picture above that was being used to promote a workshop "Sounds of American History" based on an authors book on John Henry. I searched for an attribution to the work, found none, but was just able to make out the artist signature.  Palmer Hayden it turns out spent more than his share of backing up to move forward. He focused on the African American experience with works from the urban background of Harlem as well as his (now) famous John Henry series of paintings created over 10 years. Link to Hayden on Wikipedia.

Please folks, if you are going to use an artist's work (even a deceased artist) to promote or illustrate something online, how about an attribution?

So....many days are filled with satisfying the preconditions to that studio time when you are actually at work on art. this past week was one of them.

First of all, PR and kudos for a great exhibit  curated by Cathy Nolan Vincevic for the Gordon Nash Library.  The exhibition titled, The Book Remade" is focused on books re-worked, re-organized, painted, cut ornamented or embellished. I'm happy to have my artist book, "Three Little Kittens Rekindled" included in this international group of altered books.


Curator and Head Librarian Cathy Nolan Vincevic

I wrote a blog post about the construction of the book back in March. My book was constructed with traditional hand binding techniques but made to resemble Amazon's Kindle.  That post has more of my thoughts on the distribution of literary material, our embrace of electronic media and the copyright of that material originally found in oral tradition.  The Gordon-Nash Library's blog contains the complete listing of artists. On display through April.

Preparation is underway for spending the weekend in Boston at ComicCon where Susan Shulman and I plan on exhibiting Kalicorp Art Mysteries.  Although as I write this the fallout of Mondays bombing of the Boston Marathon is still playing out. My heart goes out to those injured and lost loved ones in this horrific violence.

We'll Be at the Hynes Convention Center on Saturday, April 20th from 10am -7pm and Sunday, April 21 from 10am - 5pm.
(Email from the organizers indicate this will go on as planned - and artists are donating to the Red Cross for the Boston Marathon victims relief effort)

Gathering the promotional material for Artist Alley

Link to the latest from the Kalicorp Art Mysteries Blog