Squirrels

I am sitting in the rocking chair that I have so poorly taken care of over the years since Otto was born and staring out the window. Why is this significant you ask? Well, it's important because the chair is in the exact position as Matt's easel was just a week ago. This room was his studio, but now, it's my reading room. I LOVE my reading room. You will not find me out of this room for weeks, maybe months even. In the years since Matt and I have been together, he has controlled any extra space with his paintings, painting tools, easels, paints, you name it. I know you feel bad for me right? You should. It's hard to be a dedicated wife, supporting every act of creative reach your husband desires.
Oh, you want to know about the new studio space? It's pretty awesome! And it's not in the house. It's conveniently located over the hill and on the other side of Greenwood Cemetery in Sunset Park. We got an amazing deal on rent and the size is just perfect. Phase II has started and if you haven't been following along it works pretty simply. Matt posts an idea for a painting on a status update, you email him at mattheldproject@gmail.com if you'd like to participate and either he "casts" you for the project, or doesn't. If he does, you do as he asks with your camera and creativity and submit a photo by the deadline. Then he gets to put the pieces of the random people posing together and make it a masterpiece. Sounds simple right? Cool.
Well, while all you folks are chomping at the bit to be a part of it, I will be staring out my reading room window at the squirrels climbing up the tree across the street!

Posting Light

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Matt and I have been busy with getting so many different things organized - lecture in Savannah, finding a new studio space, making daycare arrangements for the youngest, getting organized for a spring show, finishing up the details from Kickstarter, finding a printer for the rewards. Phew! We have lots to tell you and I promise to post something interesting, witty, and shocking soon! Stay tuned Internet!

Kickstart my heart

So internet - I have not been neglecting you but various new things in my life have taken precedent over updating this blog such as planning for Phase II, submitting two grants for Phase II, fund raising on Kickstarter.com for Phase II, applying for a NYFA fellowship for Matt, planning a school fund raiser, planning for a trip to France in the Spring (Matt got invited to do a residency in Vence for the month of April), working full time, trying to find studio space that is "affordable", sleeping, and loving on two kids. The last mentioned being the most important because for every little thing we do - the driving force is those two little faces.
"Matt Held: facebook portraits" at Denise Bibro Fine Art, comes down this Saturday at 6:00PM. If you haven't had a chance to check it out, you should do so, like now. You could ask us if the show was successful. I would say yes, and no. We've received some wonderful feedback, but the economy still sucks and nothing has sold. That's part of the reason for launching the Kickstarter project, but also because the budget for this piece of the project is much larger. It will require a larger space for Matt to work in and more volunteers from the group.
Kickstarter is a web platform for creative types looking to fund projects - kind of like a micro-patronage networking site. Artists are quite limited to either sales of work, grants or both and let's face it - when sales are down, more people are competing for the same grants. Kickstarter gives us a chance to connect directly to people who can spare $10, but not a $1,000 in support of an artist working on a project they believe in. Sounds good right?
So yeah, Phase II needs space, much more space, but if you pledge your support, you also get some cool stuff in return, like an exclusive print, or a drawing from the portrait project. Check it out - pledge period ends October 14th.

Many Thanks!

I wanted to thank the lot of you who were able to make it to Thursday's opening! It was a great turnout and the installation looked fantastic! The show is up through October 3rd, and if you didn't make it to the opening, I hope you get a chance to see the show between now and then.
I am working diligently from now through the end of the year to finish up the first phase of this project and will be announcing the exact details for what will happen in phase II as I get closer to the transition. Stay tuned!

Words on a Portrait - Sharon A

Ok. I am kind of cheating on this one. Sharon Arnold is the subject in "Sharon A". She is also an artist, curator, and all around good kind of gal (or so we've gleaned after some back and forth emails and mutual "friends"). She threatened to write a post on her Dimensions Variable blog a while back and around the same time my google alert came through today telling me it was up, she sent Matt and email as well (yes - I am a total google nerd and have all sorts of google alerts set up for various things. I am like a google alert collector but we can talk about that another time).
Anyway. Back to cheating. I love what she wrote and so instead of asking her to write something specific for this blog, I will link her page and quote her.
My favorite? ..." the New Portraiture. We're invited into the scene, the stories are curious, and the pictures are snapshots of real lives; often drafted by the subject themselves. We want to know more about them, most likely because we are like them. Rather than some lofty idealised representation of culturally enforced perfection, potraiture has become not only an exaggeration of the idea but also a Cinéma vérité, a hipster editorial, a perversion, a study in heightened banality, an idea of excess, a reflection of ourselves; or at it's best, a really fun study of people finding each other in a living web of connectivity."
You can read the rest of her post here.

Words on a Portrait - Konstantin

I think sometimes the simplest photograph has more power than the complex. The original photo - later to become the portrait "Kontantin" was so simple - a glance caught in such a beautiful environment with such vibrant colors captured Matt right away.
Konstantin sent us a note with a little story behind the photo. Here are his words:

The photo [was] taken on the 1st of January this year in Chamonix, France. To be excact, on top of the Aiguille du Midi, at about 3800 meters. We had had a long night before, starting to celebrate New Year's eve early in the evening. At ten, we had "Happy New Year" for the first time with the Russian group from the apartment next to ours, who were celebrating in Moscow time.
The next day, no one really wanted to go skiing, so we went up every sightseeing point we could reach by cable car or train around Chamonix. It was really cold up there, around -20° C and a lot of wind, so I was happy to have this old down jacket with me.
A last word to the goggles: The goggles have been up the Aiguille du Midi once before, about 30 years ago, when my father was ski mountaineering in Chamonix.

Artist on the radar

I often think of topics for random posts on my way into work in the morning. If I can’t think of something clear and concise I will think of two or three words to drop into google, do news runs on those two or three words and see what comes up. Today, I did just that. I dropped in “portrait painting” to the search bar and clicked the “news” tab and up came a few articles on the Mona Lisa Incident, some other random portrait painting articles and this one.
It somehow seemed familiar, maybe something I should already know about, so I click in and discover it’s about a recent graduate from VCU – Stanley Rayfield. The thing is, I do know of Stanley Rayfield. He sent us an email last week asking if Matt had any advice for a recent fine art graduate. We took a look at his website and all we could say was WOW! The guy can paint! I mean he can really, really paint! What advice could he give him? MOVE TO NEW YORK!
There are very few people in this world that walk out of their undergraduate university – a degree in fine art at hand – that see their future as bright as I hope Stanley realizes his is. I wish him all the best and I hope HOPE to see his work in person very, very soon. Congratulations on the Smithsonian exhibition, Stanley.