I’ve been threatening to make art for about 5 years now. I have a pen drawing of men I drew in high school, framed on the wall, hanging in Georgi and my office. The drawing is colorful and inspired by Camus’ The Stranger and shows, even then, my taste consisted of hard angles and primary colors. 

I also have a giant flag I conceptualized while living in San Francisco in 2003. That flag is mounted on wood and is black, white, and teal. Though my idea, Tom Coggia actually created and printed the piece for me. So I cannot take complete credit for it.

I have recently desired to make art but have found little time for it. I have been busy the past several years: grad school, decorating two homes, starting a business, writing and blogging. I never managed to squeeze it in. This want to make something intensified sometime around the time Ben and I purchased our lake house in Dutchess County, New York. I made a few things, most notably a pair of blue and green portraits, that ended up featured in the New York Times story on our house, and relationship, a few years back.

Back then, while upstate, I often prepped, yet never finished, more art projects. I collected vintage fabrics and wallpapers and cut the shape of my hands out of them. I intended to make colorful and textured wreaths from them, using pushpins on cork. I have a box of hands, nothing made though. I painted a little and found these awesome household goods boxes, cleaners and poisons, from the 60s in the garage that I intended to collage in one way or another. Again, I never did anything with them.
But then I decided to challenge myself. I have been collecting lots of art over the past couple years. My obsession has moved from collecting books and furniture and clothing to art and posters. So I decided to start painting.

I convinced myself I’d create 100 paintings by Christmas with the intention of giving many of them away as holiday gifts. I began using acrylic on Bristol and using art tape to create lines and angles. This was not always successful. And it was not fun. There was no rhythm. And it was too clinical. When I write, when I cook, I don’t follow instructions or rules or measure. I feel it. I get a pace and go with it. Usually the results are successful and sometimes they’re disastrous, but the process is always fun and emotional and fast.

So I scrapped the art and the painters tape (which ripped the Bristol too often) and I decided to work on collages instead. I painted again on sheets of paper. I used thick and gloppy paint on some and watered down paint on others. The results were dried sheets of paper with varied textures. I then took scissors and cut. I cut squares and triangles and rectangles and dozens of other shapes. And then I glued them down and I liked the results, but the glue was messy. I then moved on to rubber cement and that worked too, but the fumes got to me and there was something missing from the results. They were too flat. So I experimented with mounting tapeon painting number 11 out of my anticipated 100. I finally found the rhythm and the desired result. Clean, textured, and 3 dimensional.

Then I set to work. I painted over 100 Bristol sheets. I used almost every imaginable color, but brown. I hate brown. And I painted and painted and painted. I did all the painting over about 12 hours during a 2 week time period.

Then I took the stacks and cut. And again, over hours and weeks, I went to work. I cut so many shapes that my hands bleed from a blister formed. I arranged the cut outs in piles all over the house and in bowls separated by like colors and complimentary colors and shapes and sizes. Then on one Friday night I laid out the remaining 89 5x7 cards all over my floor and until 2AM I arranged the shapes on the cards. This was rhythmic and fun and brought me great peace upon completion.

I awoke to a floor covered in art and then I took to taping. I ripped mounting tape with my hands and took the assembled art and completed each of the creations. I then signed and numbered them, photographed them, and uploaded them one by one to my blog.

I then dispersed many amongst my friends, which was a little sad for me as I believe they’re really remarkable as a group. See them all here.

Finally, I can call myself an artist. I have found a material and a method that worked. I am thrilled at the results and in 2011 I plan to apply this experiment to larger scale and more complex creations.