a map's little spell

The site is live.
I'll be adding to it almost daily and I'll announce the updates here. Scroll down for tonights show opening info, and have fun wandering around the site. From the emailed announcement:

This web-based project explores the suburban landscape and its poetic complications. Consisting dozens of linked together pages of artwork, including four complete artist's books, the project takes the rough structure of a house, its lawn and the nearby street.

To maneuver through "a map's little spell", move the cursor over the images until the cursor becomes a hand, indicating a link. Click to jump to a new image. Click on a window and you move into that room; click on an image of stairs and you move up or down them.

Many links take one to unexpected places, or long strings of narrative images, each with many of their own links. Wander around... I'll be adding pages daily to the site so it will keep growing.

1 day left!

Finally! The show is up and it looks great. Adam's work looks really good alongside mine and we're both excited about the show - Adam even sold a piece yesterday during hanging! We also made a last-minute collab drawing.

I drove up Tuesday to deliver work, then up again yesterday to install. That's a lot of driving so I thank Jah for audiobooks.

Thanks to J.T. and Bailey for blog mentions. Bailey wrote a poem!

Tomorrow the website will go live for all pals who can't make it, and I'll be adding to it over time. Another chunk of work I haven't mentioned is some prints I made late last week, and I'll be showing those here next week (with a tip of the hat to a pal for the idea and another pal for the paper).

Here's the show info for those who can make it:

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A MAP'S LITTLE SPELL
New work from Warren Craghead

September 29 - October 29
Greater Reston Arts Center
Reston, Virginia, USA

Drawings, prints, sculptures and an online project
(available at www.amapslittlespell.com)

Craghead likens his studio to a bomb crater where pieces of notebook paper, cardboard, post-its, and foam lie in piles surrounded by scraps of pen and pencil drawings, string, plastic, old junk mail, and magazines. Combining clutter into humble yet poignant collage, sculpture, and web-based projects, Craghead offers a witty commentary on the strange beauty of the suburban landscape.

Opening Reception
Friday September 29, 6pm - 9pm
Artist's Talk 7pm

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Also showing:

The Suburban Excavation Project
Recent work by Adam Grossi
www.adamgrossi.com

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Greater Reston Arts Center
www.restonarts.org
12001 Market Street, Suite 103
Reston Va 20190 USA
703.471.9242
info@restonarts.org

3 days left

I drove all the work up today, after several late LATE nights getting things ready. I'll post some installation shots tomorrow, and Friday I'll write about the website once it goes live.

another GRACE show update

Work is moving along - my frames are all together and a few of the drawings are getting finished with all the rest close.

The scond body of work in the show is a bunch of sculptures made with mostly paper - sometimes I think of them as 3D drawings. I had some of these in some past shows, and 3 older ones will be in this show. I did several new ones too, with a starting place much like the drawings I wrote about yesterday.

For these sculptures, I started all of them with the same chunk - a 2.5 x 3.5 x 1/16 inch piece of styrofoam. From there they all go different directions - like the cookie cutter houses in a neighborhood that over time end up looking different. I've raided my kitchen and hardware store for crazy materials - right now theres a huge flap of wallpaper hanging off one that looks hilarious to me (I may just be really tired though).

Tomorrow - website.

Reston show update

As usual, sorry for the no posting. I'm working like a madman to get ready for this show that opens next Friday. I'll be trying to post daily from here on out but we'll see how it goes...

I left off on the last update with how I got the show. I had plans for various things but ended up with not enough time to do them properly, so I'll be saving those schemes for later (I actually have a file labeled "schemes").

What's ending up in this show is 3 bodies of work: A series of around fifteen 24 x 18 pencil drawing/collages, a series of ten small paper sculptures and a website. All the work is using the suburbs and suburban experience as a theme.

The drawings are along the same lines as things I've done before, but with some twists. To mirror the "cookie-cutter" aspect of suburban tract housing I wanted to start with all the same paper - 24 x 18 vellum bristol, right out of a pad available at any art store. From there they all go their own directions. I'm trying to push the work in a few new ways - more thoughts about cubism and how to relate that to our photograph-laden environment; more references to art history and my own history; and bringing back a sense of craziness and narrative I used to have in my comics and collages, alongside the refinement of more recent work.

I'll be framing all of them so there's that to do as well. I'm happy with how they're coming along and I should be able to get them done without too much insanity.

Tomorrow I'll post about the sculptures and Friday about the website (wth a sneak preview for all 3 of my readers)!

15 months old!

More show updates as I find a minute or two...

GRACE show update 1

It's going to be light blogging here (as you've noticed) because I'm simultaneously rushing to get the work for the show done and also dealing with a huge deadline at work. Viva drawing and Viva Buffy!

I will start a little about the show. It's in Reston Va, the first "planned community". I grew up on the other side of Fairfax County (outside DC) and Reston seems a lot like the rest of Fairfax - strip malls, tract housing etc, with a twist - there WAS planning done and an attempt at a "Town Center" and downtown-like area.

I made a proposal for the show last year, talking about my work with suburban imagery and ideas about how one experiences that environment. I also proposed doing a fake "community newspaper" that would look like one of the many real estate or auto-sales newsprint mags that float around any area, only mine would be filled with crazy art things.

So I got the show, and they paired me with Adam Grossi (they have 2 concurrent, but separate solo shows there). Adam, now based in Pittsburgh, grew up in Reston, and if you check out his site you'll see our work could hook up nicely. He does a wide range of good stuff, so I was glad to be showing alongside him.

ALIVE!

I am alive. For anyone still looking here, sorry for the two weeks of silence. A horrible cold, followed by an emergency room visit for a really bad infection (but I did get painkillers), all wrapped up in trying to get this show done.

Updates will resume tomorrow on the show at GRACE, and things are moving along here in the studio.

A few side notes - Wife of the Year danced in a contemporary opera two weeks ago (crazy show about a river in Alaska - she was the West Wind), Princess of Albemarle says "ball" and sometimes "hi" and "bottle". Also, she can twirl while dancing at times.