2nd BAC Members' Salon

While at the Boatworks today I dropped off a piece of artwork for the 2nd BAC Members' Salon. This will be a brief exhibition on display inside during the Mural Dedication ceremonies, and will remain up at least through the December 6 monthly meeting. That meeting will deal with the usual business, but it will also be one of our Salon events, at which members choose a work to display and will have the opportunity to talk about it with whoever is there. I brought a couple of things, but after some discussion, decided to put this one in the show.

I won't be there on the evening of the Salon, so I'll put the story here for anyone who wants to know. The print is called Trance, one of the first woodcuts I did after finishing my MFA and moving back to NJ. This print gets its title from the trance films of Maya Deren, which I was exposed to in an experimental film class at SIU. Deren wrote, directed, and starred in the silent films, which featured odd symbolism, simultaneous multiple versions of her character interacting, and sudden odd dream-like transitions from one location to another. I wanted to capture this approach in a single carved image. My solution was to overlap the various points in the narrative (rather than a series of separate panels like in a comic strip), letting one scene melt into the next. The plot was borrowed from an actual dream I had about 10 years earlier- people in a church eating roses covered with butter and honey. In the print I adapted it a little, the roses growing near a church (Sacred Heart Cathedral Basilica in Newark), but having the character bring one home to prepare and eat, before going out to get another. Got a friend who was not put off by unusual ideas to pose for 8 charcoal figure drawings (the vintage looking fridge, typical of my work, was actually in her apartment) which I adapted for the print composition. In general I was pleased with the results, though it would be several years before I would attempt another compostion of such complexity.