Sketchbook Lake Watercolors

Recent Watercolors

A new series.
A return to watercolor.
A limited investigation of color.
A metaphor for the way I occasionally feel about the world.

Each drawing (I consider watercolor a drawing medium), 12 x 16 inches, on Arches cold press watercolor paper.

Labor Day in Michigan

I spent Labor Day weekend in Lake county Michigan with my friend Laura Soskin. She is part of a design collective in Three Oaks called 'Trilogy' and they were celebrating their one year anniversary with a party on Saturday night. We also took in the opening night of the Outsider Art Fair at Judith Racht's gallery in Harbart on Friday night, hit numerous farmers markets and vegetable stands, spent an afternoon at the lake, saw a very cool and retro A-frame on the lake in Lakeside and ate many a good meals. One of the highlights for me was a visit to a new retail space on Red Arrow Highway at Sawyer Road, called 'Sojourn'.

At the Lake With Chuck Meyers

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Up to ninety degrees today. There can't be too many more hot and humid days left this summer. After some work at home in the morning I head over to the lakes' edge with my watercolors and my bathing suit. I jump on my bike and pedal to the old rocks behind Waveland Golf Course, one of the few remaining areas of the old lakefront infrastructure. The rocks themselves have been in bad shape for years, and this year the gravel road that allows access to this area is eroding away with each storm. Most of the lakefront in Chicago has been converted in the last ten years to a stepped concrete structure that lack character or warmth, and makes it very difficult to swim. So I treasure the old rocks. They are nostalgic and inviting. This summer I've found a particularly good spot for swimming and painting. If the water temperature is moderate there are any number of places to jump in. The bigger problem is getting out of the water gracefully. There are obstacles such as large metal pilings and large rocks at all sorts of angles. The rocks get covered with algae and become very treacherous. But I'm careful and adventurous so I come to this place often. My friend Chuck Meyers, a very talented painter, likes to swim in the lake also and we have for the last few years we have swum together here along these rocks. I'm a firm believer in never swimming alone and it's good to have a partner when swimming in Lake Michigan. Chuck likes to get in and swim down the shoreline for a good distance. He can be in the water for 30 minutes. I on the other hand, particularly when it's warm, am one to jump in and out of the water repeatedly. Swimming a bit with each immersion but never too far at one time. I like the feeling of drying off in the hot sun after a plunge into the chilly water, and then getting hot and repeating the experience. And as a note the water is cold, and clear, and refreshing, some days you can see all the golf balls that have been hit into the water over the summer. Chuck does not like me to take photos of him, and I respect that. I can usually persuade him to allow one photo for the sake of record keeping. But the photo today turned out so well, and it captures this place at the lake so nicely, I had to post it.

Be sure to check out Chuck's website at: ChuckMeyers.com

What Am I Thinking?

That is the question I have been asking myself all week. I continue to make drawings by dipping various materials, mostly cardboard and foamcore, in India Ink and making marks by pressing their inky edges on the paper. In a way the results are a form of monotype, just one where the print is built piece by piece, mark by mark. I've been fustrated by the results and have resolved to move on a number of times. And yet I return to this technique feeling like I haven't really pinpointed what it is I'm after conceptually and visually. There are a few things I like in the process; the removal of the hand in the mark making, the inky splattered quality of the mark, and the process moves along relativly quickly. So these are the latest drawings using this approach, created just this week. Based on simple geometry, really more arithmatic based than geometry base. In retrospect, I find both the process and the result meditative. Once the concept is determined, the execution follows, an idea straight out of Sol LeWitt's '15 sentences on art'. The finished drawings are like 'mandalas', made to be stared at. They alude to many things, I don't want to mention what, but this morning I Googled; TV test patterns, Parcheesi, various city plans, rubiks cube, Japanese window screens, Chinese window screens, mandalas, Sol LeWitt...

At this point there are four drawings in the series. I'd like to create nine all together, there seems to be a nice symmetry in that number given there are nine squares made up of nine smaller squares in each drawing. The drawings are large, the paper at this point is 42 x 50 inches, but could be trimmed at some point. The inked area is approximatly 28 by 28 inches in each drawing and all are made with India Ink on Strathmore water color paper.

Dog Sitting in Wilmette

I spent the first week of August dog/house sitting in Wilmette. I always try to bring a project or two with me when I'm up in the suburbs to take advantage of the time and place to make some art. I like to thing of it as an Art Residency with a dog, a house and a car. I like this particular dog, his name is Frankie and he is adorable. He and I would sit out int he back yard and I would work on the out door table. This year it's india ink and grid-like drawings. On a dog walk I found some cardboard and it made sense to me to draw on the found materials. Here are two examples.

New City of Chicago Nighttime Panorama

I found an older set of photos from a few years ago that I had never assembled into panorama. This work comes from a period when I was shooting panoramas of Chicago from the top floors of parking garages, mostly in the evening or night, always in color. The idea was all about free access to views of the city and an updating of the tradition of urban panoramic views. I still think the photos have a nice quality about them and as time goes on, the sense of a beautiful isolation becomes more evident.