the past 18 months: snapshots from the studio

The last crates shipped today and the studio is blank-slate empty.  Variations, my first downstairs solo show at Wally Workman opens on June 1st.  If you are in Austin, please stop by for some art and wine and company!

Reflecting on the past year an a half, I wanted to share some of the day-to-day ink and sawdust that would eventually become this show.  These photos remind me how lucky I feel to spend so much time doing what I love.  Thank you, to all of you who have helped make this possible.  See you at the opening!

What: Variations, solo show

Where: Wally Workman Gallery, 1202 West 6th Street, Austin, Texas
When: June 1-30, Opening Reception Friday, June 1st, 6-8 pm

In the Aether

Catherine Zinser, the print room manager at the Blanton Museum of Art wrote this piece on the upcoming Variations show at Wally Workman.  This is the first multi-page article about my work to be published, and it was a lot of fun for me to read Catherine's interpretation of the new series.  She also explains several printmaking terms and techniques that are helpful to understanding many of the pieces in the show.  Thanks to Catherine for writing, and Rachel Haggerty for organizing this feature!

What: Ellen Heck: Printing Character, by Catherine Zinser
Where: Aether Magazine
When: Spring/Summer 2012
Ambiance: you ladies are making me look good...

Sculptural Friends

This week, two former classmates from the SAIC printmedia department showed up on Beautiful Decay (one writing, one featured). It was great to see Matt Nichols's new work: powerful, meticulously crafted, and a little irreverent. Four years ago, he did a series of paddle ball sets with the faces of tragic celebrities screenprinted to the front of the paddles. I still think of them every time a reference to River Phoenix comes up. In the same class, Easton Miller, the writer of the piece, was working on an intricate series documenting the many different types of male pattern baldness with illustrations burned into wood. I always loved the way it smelled when he was working on it. As you can see, they've both gone bigger and more sculptural in the last few years.



Also in the realm of sculpture, this time kinetic, one of the newest drawing machines from our amazing studio manager at Kala, Jesse Houlding, is on display now at Alter Space. These pieces move with the same perpetual-yet-changing persistence that allows one to stare into fireplaces or waves on the beach without getting bored. It's fun to see the first marks on the canvas in this video:



Also in this series is a set of truck drawings created by letting a 16-pound shot-put roll around on carbon paper in the bed of his truck. I hope these pieces are titled things like, "Trip to Safeway" or "Normal Commute: Tuesday, April 10." Whatever the names though, I love these drawings.



What: new work from Matt Nichols and Jesse Houlding
Where: Hungryman Gallery, and Alter Space
When: March and April 2012
Ambiance: manly men making meticulous mobile matter, meubles, and machines

The Robe at the Cleveland Museum of Art

The Cleveland Museum of Art has recently purchased The Robe for their permanent collection.

I'm so happy that a piece from the Plus A Century portfolio - so influenced by Cassatt's color etchings - will be housed permanently alongside the masterworks to which it alludes. And, for anyone in the Cleveland area, the museum will be exhibiting Mary Cassatt and the Feminine Ideal in 19th Century Paris in the prints and drawings gallery from October 14th, 2012 - January 20th, 2013. Stop by and be amazed!

What: The Robe
Where : The Cleveland Museum of Art
When: hopefully for a very long time
Ambiance: a real, no-kidding, serious art museum where you might need to wear white gloves...but haven't you been wanting to wear white gloves recently?

New Year, New Artists at Groveland Gallery

The work is shipped (and according to FedEx, rolling through Utah at the moment) and on the way to Groveland Gallery in Minneapolis, which opens New Year, New Artists on the 20th. A good way to start off 2012!



What: New Year, New Artists
Where: Groveland Gallery, Minneapolis, MN
When: January 20 - February 25, 2012
Ambiance: a warmly-lit show nestled under oxidized copper shingles on fairytale eaves

Good Press

For those of you who love a perfect-bound art magazine and off-the-press eye-candy, Uppercase is always fun to find in the mailbox. The current issue (#11) also has one page dedicated to my practice (so if you decide to subscribe, please start with #11!). Also, the cover for this particular quarter is awesome:

Open publication - Free publishing - More craft

And another fun new find: Printeresting, the content-rich printmaking blog toured Kala Art Institute (where I work) in mid-November. If you look in several of the photos from the workshop, you will see five square prints hanging upside down in the rafters. Those are stage one (one woodcut complete) of the print that eventually became this:



It was a fun little surprise to see that they'd eeked their way onto the web in infancy.

What: good press
Where: in your mailbox and on the web
When: November/December 2011
Ambiance: good reads - one analog, one digital - and fraternal feelings for the ink-fingered printmaking community at large

Featured Artist: Leslie Lewis Sigler

Artist and fellow Austinite-turned-Californian, Leslie Lewis Sigler has recently put together a solo show at the Faulkner Gallery West titled, "Objects of My Reflection." In their review, the Santa Barbara News-Press wrote:

In this show, Sigler brings a meditative, realistic still life aesthetic, a painterly eye and attention to objects both mundane and ceremonial. Shiny sterling silver vessels and heirlooms hang happily alongside lovingly fastidious paintings of a desk fan, an espresso pot and a vintage telephone, looking gracefully iconic in this setting.

Some of the more "precious" objects and heirlooms are presented in triptychs and other multiple panel contexts, giving works like "Revival" and "Family of Heirlooms" the character of personality-endowed object worship and transformation into art. From the evidence here, Sigler has a real gift, as a painter and thinker about how painting functions.

I couldn't agree more. One of my favorite of her most recent paintings, Hand-Me-Downs (below), is a rare example of an image that captures the silent beauty of a still life, while at the same time allowing the viewer to understand an open-ended narrative that gives the painting staying-power. These are works with which you can live; they subtly maintain your interest, remaining beautiful because they always have something new to say.



Another of my favorite pieces, Scalloped Creamer, was recently part of Atkinson Gallery's Small Images show. Again, Leslie is able to take a still life and make it something more. It is beautiful, but it is also a cold, hard object yearning for warmth and life that it can only reflect.



I'm looking forward to following this series as it continues to grow, quietly telling a library of stories with a vocabulary of polished surfaces and discreet compositions.

What: Objects of My Reflection and other works by Leslie Lewis Sigler
Where: several Santa Barbara galleries and her site
When: ongoing
Ambiance: still lifes that move the imagination