I put some new pics up on my Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicholasdowgwiilo/ 

Jan. 9th and 23rd

This is just to let everyone from Wisconsin know that it was 70 degrees and sunny here yesterday.

I like my work to straddle the line where material transforms into image.  It is my hope that, in doing so, some of the emotional and intellectual attachment that the viewer feels towards the depicted imagery is also transferred to the raw material.
I began exploring this idea through the use of large blank spaces with small clusters of imagery.  These empty areas portrayed deep, light-filled vistas while remaining obviously flat (the flatness sometimes emphasized with pasted attachments).  This work was (and much of my work still is) very influenced by the grandeur of the wilderness sky as depicted by the American Transcendentalist painters and by the contrasting simplicity and modesty of Japanese Ukiyo-E prints (Hokusai and Hiroshige specifically)
More recently, I have pursued these ideas in mixed-media paintings and drawings that use labor (in a similar way to how I use raw material) as their central theme.  These pieces have some sections that are left raw and others that are fully rendered.  They retain the evidence of the time and labor of their construction but, because they reach a final, arrested state, the raw areas (and, as such, the mundane work that they exhibit) attain a sense of completeness. Frank Auerbach caught something of this idea in his statement that “one can only tell the brute truth in the middle of a quarrel.”  Though I don’t really count Auerbach as an influence, I do see a definite similarity in the way that he displays process and material in his paintings.
I have also been using bulls and bovine-like animals in my recent work.  I am drawn to them because of their ordinariness (at least from the perspective of a Midwesterner), because they are used as labor, and, contrastingly, because they are a traditional symbol of power, heroism, and male sexuality in art.  They become metaphors that mythologize the commonplace yet critique the hero myth.
In my work I seek to expose the poetry and drama of simple physicality.

-Nicholas Dowgwillo

Derya and I went to the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair a couple of weeks ago and I forgot to put pictures up…

We will be starting figure drawing sessions here on Wed. Nov. 7 and Wed. Nov. 21* from 6pm-8pm. The cost is $10 a session or $40 for 3 months (6 sessions). Please let me know (in advance if possible) if you are interested (if you are interested but can’t make it on Wednesdays let me know and we can see about making adjustments to the schedule). Thanks.

*edit* Due to Thanksgiving the second figure drawing session will be moved to Wednesday Nov. 28

Rachel helped Derya install her ghost tower in the elementary show while I (not pictured) drank coffee and made a nuisance of myself. We would later eat soup and spring rolls at the noodle place.

Derya and I put up a show at Cannon’s(sp?) Elementary School. Please look at these pictures.

I got some new records at the Salvation Army and let me tell you it was a fairly pleasing haul.

Here’s a couple of highlights:

There were about 7 Loretta Lynn records in there and a whole bunch of Jerry Lee Lewis as well.  I gotta say, all of these records have faintly disturbing cover shots of Loretta.  I can’t place my finger on the problem exactly but I’m pretty sure that it has something to do with the color choices (pink sweater with orange trim on a oversaturated brown/orange background…that’ll sell some records).  Maybe its just the forced smile.

The 50’s quality of this portrait is really strange considering the decidedly dark and tough country/blues of the record.  Seriously, this album doesn’t have one song that could accompany this beam of  smile (unless its one of those smiles which precede violence).

Highlights are the title track and her cover of “These Boots are Made for Walkin’ ” both of which have something of the swagger and staccato juke of the Nancy Sinatra version of “These Boots….” but add some twang induced lilt.

To quote the back of the record: [Loretta Lynn] holds her head high in song, proving that a woman who declares her love is for keeps and already has won the fight against the ‘dime-a-dozen’ girls who skirt the fringe of decency, to steal from another.  It’s real ’socko’ material…” WHOAH

Truthfully this record is just ok.  There are, for sure, better Bill Haley records (this one is supposed to be the great songs of the 50’s and so there are better versions of most of the songs), but the graphic design on this one is so good I had to put it up and, OH MAN, when is the bow tie and weird greased curlicue hair swirl going to come back?

My twist party.   “Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance!”  This is a collection of songs to twist to(supposedly put together by Chubby Checker).  According to the record, “twist parties are getting chic…like caviar.”  So why wouldn’t you want to get your very own twist party in a box?!?  Especially from the man “known affectionately by thousands of teenagers as ‘Our Leader’” and has “leaped the chasm that separates boys and girls from men and women.”

Seriously though, this album is packaged as “Your Twist Party”  and I really appreciate the idea of buying a readymade party; just putting the record on and reaping the social benefits.

My favorite thing about THIS record though is the original owner’s notes in the margins.  I can just picture its owner lying around kicking her feet in the air and doodling her friends’ names onto the back of the record.  There are a bunch of names on it all written in the same script: Jackie Kitchen, Bill O’Conner, Don, Rebecca Jean Walters, Chubby Checker, Ronnie Brown, Bubba Johnson, and Brenda Joyce Redm(unreadable).  Also, we are told that Don loves Carol and the writer exhorts Ronnie Brown to “go to hell.”  My best guess is that the writer is Rebecca (her name is written twice, once at the very top above the title) and that she has a secret crush on Ronnie Brown.  I think my favorite part is the iteration of Chubby Checker just under the printed Chubby Checker…it is such an irrational act…just so meaningless and dreamy…