Show at White Rabbit, NYC!

All welcome to come to the reception on Friday, May 14th from 6 - 9pm! Good art, drink specials and fun tunes, what could possibly go wrong?

White Rabbit is a funky bar a door down from The Sunshine Landmark Theatre on Houston Street. It is located in my fav, the East Village. My co-worker, Richie, told me that his friend's friend had a show there. (By the way, Richie is the sweetest guy!) He liked the space, so I wrote the owner. The owner checked out my website and said he would love to have me show my art. He put me in ctouch with his curator and we worked out the details. Turns out that another co-worker grew-up knowing the owner of this place. My city is such a small world.

A few days later Richie and I went and had a beer there. I photographed the walls to see how my work would fit. I do not fill out the space as much as I would have liked, but since most of my smaller pieces were done on found wood, it is all I had found.

Hoping to have a wonderful turn-out the night of the reception. Spending lots of time working on the music selection for three to four hours of entertainment! Maybe I should have been a dj, this seems to be my favorite part. Come if you are in town!

Callie Art Print Store!

I am working with image kind to create a store of Callie Art prints for sale. Quality tifs are uploaded and the buyer is given an option of types of paper and frames to pick from.

http://callieart.imagekind.com/store/default.aspx

They will let you put up a free store, but it is harder for people to manuever through. The paid store, $8 a month, lets you create a friendly, welcoming store front. You then create galleries based on themes of your work for sale. Groups can be joined for more exposure and is a nice way to experience other's creations of shared subjects.

Visit the store! I had some prints made on a flat matt paper and the quality is fantastic!

My Studio

The Vital Importance of a Studio Space

“I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment. They become in a sense... symbolic of themselves.” (Richard Avedon)

“You need a room with no view so imagination can meet memory in the dark.” (Annie Dillard)

“Gather and hoard your inspirations as you live, then recapture them as needed in the studio.” (Nita Engle)

“The only thing I know is that if I get to my studio, that means I'm alive today.” (Robert Farber)

I love that my studio is in my home. It always has been, even when my “home” was a 400 sq. ft. apartment that I shared with another. One needs to always be able to work it is a vital outlet. Without the release, one may find a bottled up pressure cooker thing happening within….

The solitude can be intoxicating, especially after dealing with people all day as most of us do. The empty canvas or black sheet of paper in my case brings inspiration and desire to the forefront. Stepping into a familiar zone, one of safety and contemplation, challenging and frustration. All at once anything is possible, one just needs to start, get into trouble, see where the line leads. Be not afraid to move on, or figure out how to get out of the corner you have painted yourself into. No judges, no witnesses, censorship is in your hands. This time is vital to the artists well being, one needs to express in anyway they can, what they feel, how they see the world.

Seductive Surfaces

Seductive Surfaces

Callie Hirsch’s works on paper are succulent in nature, vibrant in colors and tell of richly hidden tales of naught. They create a sensation of lusting after a fruit in all its ripeness, nectar dripping in color, indeed tempting to touch. Found to be both alluring and intriguing, the viewer is meant to be inspired.

Since the early 1990’s, Hirsch has been primarily focused on creating sea life and has, in addition, created an extensive series of tree paintings which combine the earth and sea, the natural and the emotional, the harmonic and the dissonant, with a high degree of controlled randomness. Her intentions are purely amorphous in nature. No preliminary sketches or plans are made; the painting is created in a purely unconscious manner, made up of all that captivated the artist in her lifetime.

Hirsch is deeply devoted to the physical act of painting: that creative period when she focuses exclusively on the subtle interaction of brush, hand, paint, and paper. In planning and executing Seductive Surfaces, Hirsch first selects her palette and devises a color range in which to navigate through. She focuses intensely on mark making, depicting pathways and untold journeys of a wanderer. Her love of nature and plant life is then transcribed through the intricate web of dots encountered on each painting.

By allowing her mood, induced by music, to control the wanderings, each painting has a unique message and journey to it. The process also introduces a degree of chance and the unexpected into her works. Her musical influences include works of Tom Waits, Spoon, amongst a host of other funky tunes. When she was in her late teens, Hirsch would paint in her basement listening to such music as the soundtrack to Hair and Black Magic Woman by Santana, on a cassette player. Her surroundings consisted of taxidermy animals her uncle sent the family and found animals stored in formaldehyde jars.

The tradition of dot making in painting is indelibly linked to the Aboriginal artists of Australia. They used this technique to create story telling of their dreams, maps to find watering holes, and life stories. Callie is deeply thankful for exposure to their work as well as being influenced by such notable painters as Klee, Miro, Kidinsky, and the painter and architect, Hundertwasser. He was thought of as Austria's only hippie. Both admiring and wanting to take their ideas in a new direction, she uses this inspiration in following her own pathways and journeys.

Hirsch’s love of iridescence and working on such a deeply rich surface as black paper have taken her down new roads from her previous work in oil on canvas. She favors imperfect lines produced when painting free hand, rejects the use of rulers and tape, and has no studio assistants.

Born in North Carolina on an air force base in 1964, Hirsch graduated from Parsons School of Design for photography and received her MA from New York University, while working there full-time in the Telecommunications department. She lives and works in New York City.

Visit to Glass Fabricator!

MTA Arts for Transit Panel Production

My trip to visit to Baton Rouge!

http://www.callieart.com/Erskin%20Shop.html

I headed off to Baton Rouge to begin my adventure in picking out glass colors for my MTA Arts for Transit panels, and meet my fabricator, Erskin Mitchell.

Erskin’s glass shop was located in the garden district of Baton Rouge. I had chosen him as my fabricator because of the truly fantastical work he did on another MTA artists work, Jung Hyang Kim, in the same medium, faceted glass. A one-inch glass, the whole panel is fused together using epoxy. I will have three large panels at the station with the ocean as the backdrop.

Erskin greeted me at the door of his house in the garden district of Baton Rouge. It was not at all the warehouse I had been envisioning. I had googled him the night before to see if I could find a photo of him, and I did, it was a wonderful article about the piece he did for another MTA artist. He welcomed me into his art filled house and introduced me to his wife. She is a film producer and just recently returned from a two-month shoot, a film about American soldiers during WWII and their French wives. Later, when they took me out for a true Louisiana dinner, she told me how the wives were stationed at camps named after cigarettes. At these camps they watched movies which was suppose to help them in understanding and become adjusted to American culture. The film then follows three of these women’s lives as they move to America with their new husbands.

Erskin’s wife also works at a rape crisis center, is a very powerful advocate against political corruption in New Orleans, and the couple takes in stray animals and children who need much love and care. This couple was such the dynamic duo! To Erskin’s calm and quiet nature, his wife was jolting with electrical output, having gone through all three of her jobs, one after another in the past week. Oh, but the stories…the animal stories were my favorites. About the pekingese they took in, whose eyes fall out.

Back to the glass studio. Erskin had my “cartoons” laid out on the table, these are life size drawings of the panels in black and white. I put out my colored images of the panels and we set about finding color schemes that would work. I was most interested in glass with imperfections, streaks going through that would resemble the ocean and the life teaming through it! I found a lot of really wonderful pieces in his collection, having told him beforehand that my interest lay there. The glass companies that make these pieces put them off as cast offs and are gotten for much less then their perfectly colored counterparts.

I felt like he understood the direction I wanted to take with the color, creating depth, using the darker colors to recede, light greens and blues along the surface to show the sunlight on the water. Then we dove into the colors to be used for the jellyfish, creature and egg masses. I left feeling that I was in wonderful hands and am excited to see how he brings my vision to life!

My Berlin Adventure...

20 years earlier, the Berlin wall was brought down, today the city is a wonderful place to explore and learn of its history (my great grandparents were German citizens). Wandering the streets, you come across public art everywhere! They are very into their graffiti artists, whole sides or backs of buildings can be found with art ranging from self expression to the political. The DZ Bank, by The Brandenburg Gate, has a wonderful Frank Gehry design, which can be seen from the lobby. All this can be seen on my website:

http://www.callieart.com/

You can purchase a weeklong transit card at the airport and then start by taking a bus from the airport to the city. They have many choices for public transport, as well as being a wonderful walking city! Everyday we mapped out a different area to visit and did a walking tour of the sights to be seen. In between the sites, we discovered interesting places to eat and experience as well. East Berlin still has enough older buildings to give you the feel of what went down during the time of the wall being up. Two rather long sections of the wall still stand, one is being painted on from artists around the world, and the other is left, as it was when the people started chipping through it in 1989. We were also told about some cold war towers that still stood in the woods of Teufelsberg.

Hiking to an abandoned Cold War listening station was one of the scarier things we ventured to do. A friend of ours said it was not to be missed, and gave us detailed instructions on what train to take, and then how to hike there. She did not tell us about sneaking in.... It is situated in the Grunewald forest and built from rubble after WWII. In 1972, the hill was "naturalized" and 1 million trees were planted around the site, making it almost invisible until you are actually upon it. The US National Security Agency (NSA) built this huge listening station, which includes five domes and office buildings, now all in a state of crumble. Buried underneath it is a Nazi-military-technical college designed by Albert Speer in the 1940s, which was destroyed by the Allies. What scared me most was that it had three fences around it with only two openings cut out, and the sound of crashing bottles told me something about who inhabited the towers at the moment. We did not venture in, had we; we would have experienced the incredible panorama of the city. Apparently, you can climb up one tower and the sounds and views are just incredible. Artists also have begun trying to create a future for the towers, making it a place of creative conversations. A flashlight is also suggested, since their are no windows inside. A staircase on the outside brings you to the second floor, and then you need to use the inside, windowless staircase to go to the top. The sound experience from the dome is said to be incredible. Even the tiniest sounds are echoed throughout the dome. I am not sure if you need to have the musicians with you, or you can hear them from afar...

It certainly was a trip of adventure and intrigue with many art sightings thrown in! I am sure that my work will be inspired by this fascinating journey. Callie

I-Park Artist Enclave 2009

Wow, this is the most wonderful artist residency!  They take such great care of the artists and I met such creative people from around the world.  The environmental artists make the 300 acre walk chock full of wonder and amazement.  I was given my own studio to create in and it had a gas fireplace and a/c unit.  All creature comforts were afforded us, as well as the creatures themselves filling the night air with a full chorus of calls.  Close to the Long Island Sound and to a nearby waterfall, this place was magical in so many aspects.  My favorite part was the artists I met.  Sharing a house, meals and our art was a really beautiful experience.

The work I created there can be viewed on my website:  www.CallieArt.com

I ended up selling two of my new creations, one to a fellow artist from the Netherlands, the other to a "friend of I-Park".  I can not speak enough about what a simply fantastic time I had during my two week stay.  I will truly miss my new friends!