Dan Jarvis

My friend, former student, and artist extraordinaire Dan Jarvis just posted some images to his blog from a body of work he's developing.
Check it out! it's really good.

Permanent Wave

Here's my entry for this year's faculty exhibit at Moraine Valley Community College. Titled Permanent Wave, it's sixteen letter-sized VanDyke Brown prints pinned to the gallery wall.

I've had the idea for this piece in mind for several years. Inspired by a Laurie Anderson piece from her album United States Live, the writing of Carl Sagan, and by a general appreciation of humor in art (which is supposed to be oh so serious), I scanned several pages from a 1967 book on hairstyles and topped it with the Pioneer plaque (which was co-designed by Sagan).

This piece was completed pretty quickly. The faculty show came early this year, much to my dismay (the beginning of the school year is always very busy), and none of the other work I have in progress was ready for exhibition. So, I decided to try this idea. It was originally going to be done in cyanotype, but I changed my mind at the last minute to VanDyke brown. That process is a little more fussy than cyanotype, and my hurrying through the printing resulted in a few minor flaws in the piece. I was going to reprint, but decided to let them stay. I kind of like the visual noise they add to the piece. 

MVCC Faculty Present New Work

DeCaprio Gallery, Moraine Valley Community College

September 20-October 14, 2010

Pareidolia Collages

Here are some recent collages, made over the summer. I've been playing with this idea on and off for a while, and posted some of them here and here back in April.

These pieces started as a way of paring down collages to essential elements.  I'm combining an old snapshot with a face from a magazine to explore ideas of pareidolia. 

They aren't terribly difficult to create, but they are more time consuming than you might expect. The 'right' pairing of two unrelated images can be elusive.

I'm not sure where these will end up. A few of them have some annoying wrinkles (thin magazine pages don't hold up well to being coated with glue), so I'm not sure if I want to pursue an exhibition. I'm really enjoying making them, however,  so much so that most of my attempts at making more traditional collage pieces over the past few months have failed. The simplicity here is what is appealing to me.

For now, I'm making more of these, and mulling over what the end result will be.