Koi Study, by Callie Hirsch

I will never forget the first time I witnessed Monet's Stacks of Wheat Series.  It showed me the relevance of doing a study on one subject.  To really meditate on the visual and see just what it has to offer.  Below is my Koi Study.  Their beauty and mystery is captured and frozen in time beneath.

Taken over a series of visits to the Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, NY.

New Works on Paper, 2016

No Gray Areas, 2016, 9" x 11" acrylic on hand made black paper.



Nerves Unfurling, Reconnecting

Recent surgery left me tired and hardly able to paint for long periods of time. Working at home on a table, the following works were created. As the weeks went by, my hours at the table grew.  This series kept my spirits up and the tv off.  I call it the Recovery Series, or on my website: Nerves Unfurling, Reconnecting.





Nerves being cut greatly assists with recovery, it keeps the pain manageable. but then they start growing back, reconnecting, and at times, misfiring.  The sensations are jarring, it makes you really ponder the body's healing process. The twitching lessens, the feeling of normalcy returns, and you are happy to be of healthy body and mind once more. These paintings reflect the moods I encountered while waiting for the sense of normalcy to return.  Patience is what I was told I needed, I think what I really wanted to hear is that I would return to a normal state, that my recovery would not forever scar me and leave me misshapen.  I wanted re-assurance.  Art making allowed me to leave my body and just be in my mind, to forget for some period of time what I was going through.  Of course in the end the body pulls us back in.  The fight of mind over body can only be sustained for but so long....  For sale on Etsy,

Open call to sculptors

Robbie Gordon is looking for sculputors to add to his LA outdoor gallery.  I visited with him on my way to my new gallery in Palm Desert.  A stop off in LA, via Route 1, gorgeous.  If interested, please go to his website and see what he is about & how to contact him.  Would certainly look good on your resume to have your sculpture represented in LA, and Robbie is very fair with his commission fee.

The gallery in his home is reserved for his art, which is in abundance.  He is quite the passionate artist.

Artists, Best Business Practices

Business Week Article

An excerpt from Business Week article:

Send Out Postcards

Callie Danae Hirsch, 43: Paintings

Web site: www.callieart.com
Studio: Brooklyn, N.Y.
Day Job: Telecommunications analyst at New York University

What works: "No one is going to make your career for you. As an artist, you need to get your work out there to the public. I send out postcards for all my shows, and people seem to collect them. I update my own Web site, put together address lists, and create the postcard design myself. I also show in non-traditional places. My work was featured in the luxury furnishings shop ABC Home in New York City, in celebration of Earth Day. I also enter juried shows constantly and participate in artist residencies, which afford me time to concentrate on my art."

A visit to the Tentacle Exhibit at the Monterey Aquarium, CA

The show was amazing, so many tentacle creatures to experience.  The octopus unraveled at the flash of my infrared beam on my camera.  I adore the cuttlefish, and they had them in abundance.  I was delighted to witness two cuttlefish in a mating dance ritual, it was simply incredible.

 Mating ritual!

I was in a trance watching the sea life in action.  They had to kick me out at closing time.

Please help to save our oceans, vote to save our planet when considering a president this election.  Life is not about money, it is about the continuation of life, help keep our planet healthy.

 ~ callie

Featured in NYU ~ Art Digest ~ Fall 2015

Moonlighting: The Artist in the Office Next Door 
by Renee Alfuso

By day, Callie Danae Hirsch programs telephones on campus as a communications analyst for NYU's Technology Operations Services. But when work ends she heads home to paint, relieving the day's stress with her iridescent acrylics.

Hirsch (STEINHARDT '96) has been an IT employee at NYU for the last 25 years but has always made time to pursue her passion for art, earning a master's degree in studio and environmental arts and exhibiting her work in numerous international shows. She even won a commission to design a subway station for the MTA Arts for Transit program.

All of Hirsch's paintings are inspired by nature, and her lifelong fascination with sea creatures is reflected on her canvases. "In my art I bring to life the enigmas that exist just below the surface," she explains. "Deep in the fabric of my being is the desire to generate excitement about the world in which we reside."

Hirsch's dream is to someday visit the Great Barrier Reef, using the sales from her paintings to fund the trip. In the meatime, Hirsch says she loves working at NYU - which allows her to be an artist but still pay the bills - and enjoys that her office job is so different from her creative outlet. "I think if I had to work in something like graphic design all day, I wouldn't want to go home and create because I'd just be burnt out, so IT is such a wonderful opposite, " she says.

- Renee Alfuso

Wonderful News Indeed!

Being "discovered" can take a lifetime (if it ever happens), as many singers, actors, and musicians know, and so I feel extremely fortunate to be able to support myself with my day job so that I have the freedom to pursue my art, my true passion, in the evenings. 

I finally got the attention from the owner/curator of a large gallery in CA. One step down, many steps to go.  The process consisting of negotiating what the art to be shown should look like, creating art pieces especially for the gallery (size and look), shipping the art (which was then lost in NJ for quite some time), then coming up with pricing (based on previous sales), my work is ready to be framed and hung at, drum roll please......

Imago Galleries, Palm Desert, CA

Fantastical in Blue, 2015

How did this come about? How did I get noticed? I submitted art for acceptance in an art journal, which is sent out to galleries for free.  The artist pays for the inclusion and gets a copy of the journal, if selected.  In hopes of getting noticed, one partakes in this practice.  It just goes to show you, you just never know.   Exposure does pay off, just may take quite some time and the artist needs to have the passion to just keep moving forward despite the silence...  The director informed me that she rarely looks at these journals and on a whim took it to bed for a night's viewing.

Together, 2015

The other day I was presented with a fortune that read:  "You will conquer obstacles to achieve success.", the cookie delivered a double fortune, because one sometimes does need to be hit over the head, the second one read: "You will come to the realizations in your life that change you forever."  I interpret that change to be believing in myself as an artist.  It is so very easy to have doubts.

Recently my day job really got me down and I wondered if I would ever be able to support myself with my art, I think this is a wonderful start on a new path facing the right direction.

May you all be healthy and gravitate toward a peace existence.

Callie 
www.CallieArt.com