These aren't published yet. They're not even made yet! I created a sort of mock-up of how they likely look for the video I'm working on - Luciano Iacobelli's actual hand-made chapbooks will be brighter and more beautiful.  I own a stack of LyricalMyrical chapbooks, so I scanned and digitally pasted and played until the wee hours! :-)

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Peeps, oh jeeps, it's coming. Been working on it relentlessly. FCP X (which I now know for sure I don't like - among other issues, it doesn't save prior project versions, boo!) began crashing every few minutes today, and stubborn peep that I am, I kept re-starting it. I wasn't finished! (That's not the thumbnail, but one good ole YouTube offered, sort of cute.) When I do finalize and post, exhausted without sleep for days (daze), you will give it a gander, I hope!

Now I have to change the backdrop for the text sequences, and probably make background a little more pink here. Also the very back of a metal chair is evident in two of the poet clips, which I'll have to remove by pasting some other wall over it. Details!

But the process of video editing is in the details.

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The Art Party/Poetry Salon at Q Space was lovely, warm, intimate, loving. We did a number of poetry readings, chatted, a truly wonderful evening that was convivial and special in all the ways that are most meaningful to me. Thank to everyone who came! You made it a spectacular evening! (I'll add more photos later.)

https://sites.google.com/site/brendaclewspoetry/Poempaintings-BrendaClews2013.pdf

Attached is a free .pdf download of the paintings in the show, the poems associated with them, and groan, the prices. While I believe, given the quality of the work and their size, the prices are fair, I have not posted them in the information cards on the walls. For those who need to know how I generally calculated the cost, the paintings are priced around $1.50 - $1.75 per square inch (the general rule of thumb with this method for pricing is to charge $5.00/square inch and up).

As an example, Charcoal Poems, which took 5 months to paint, and considerable dredging of my inner life, is 60" x 60" = 3600 square inches. At the lower price of $1.50 per square inch, the cost would be $5,400. I have listed that particular painting at $5,000. Many of the paintings are 24" x 30", or 720"sq. At $1.75 per square inch, these would be $1,260. I have listed most of them for $1,200. I only mention this so that you can have some idea of how these paintings are priced.

I have also provided options for various prints on paper or canvas through FineArt America if you love one or more of my paintings but aren't at a point where you can or wish to purchase the original.



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direct link: Installing art show @ Q Space on May 15 2013

(...this is just a little snippet that I spent far too long on this morning. I have to learn FCP X! Like seriously and quickly.)

Installing paintings @Q Space. Jacques Albert and Nik Beat, two friends who helped me install the show, went beyond the call of duty to help. The 5' sq painting wouldn't fit in the van cab and so they walked it to Q Space! I can't tell you how grateful I am! Thank you guys! You'll see them in the video when they've just arrived with the painting. Lol.

All in all, rather a slap dash clip. The motion stabilizer in FCP X both cropped images and sometimes just blacked out the surroundings - it's interesting, and it does work. A way-too-fancy title - FCP X remains a challenge to learn - and I forgot to ask someone to hold camera to include me in the vid, but the paintings are there, and it's fun, and come to the party tomorrow night if you're in Toronto. Q Space, 382 College St., Toronto. From 8pm onwards.

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Installed at Q Space! I rented a van cab and wouldn't you know it, the 5' sq painting wouldn't fit! So Jacques and Nik, bless them, walked the painting to Q Space. It was a beautiful warm sunny day, so that part was ok, just the high wind made it at times like a sail. I love those guys!!!! When they arrived, we hung everything. This little iPhone pic doesn't get the last one on that wall, and you can see the blankets I brought so we could take the cardboard corners off (protectors) and make any adjustments in the hanging wire. All the poetry coffee shop patrons working on their laptops writing their masterpieces moved to the back while we hung the paintings, and re-hung. It's all done, and I took a bit of video so will grab some better pics from that later on. Whew! On, whew. xoxoxo

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All the paintings are safely cradled in their frames now, and the 5'sq one re-stretched tight across a stretcher. Working without stopping, it still took us 3 hours to complete this job! I'll post a better pic when they're installed at Q Space tomorrow. ::smiling::

This photo is of the last 4 that I just painted like 3 or so weeks ago! The (water-soluble) oil washes dried and then I finished them in ink. My focus was on the back, and I chose to not use any 'flesh' tones at all. But, also after I painted them, I realized, a series of paintings on the derrière...

Also today I'm thinking the FineArt America images I did maybe look a bit crass because commercial, and it's not meant to be. Why post the gallery at FineArt America? Who knows, ask the birds or flowers or the wind. Just did. Seems a safe enough place to post, and besides, they do sell reproductions of your work and you can even make a little from those sales (ie if you buy a card for $6.50 I make under $2.00, so it's not lucrative at all, just a nice offering for people who love your art). I hope posting a gallery there hasn't offended anyone.

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This is an experiment. Once I get the html figured out, I will post to the new gallery-style website I set up because of this show at brendaclews.com.

I have been working 24/7 taking photographs, finding 'descriptions' buried in the archives of this blog - thank gawddess I keep everything here! - and uploading to FineArt America. Why did I pick that site? Who knows, ask the birds or flowers or the wind. Just did. Seems a safe enough place to post, and besides, they do sell reproductions of your work and you can even make a little from those sales, and people who might wish to purchase the actual paintings can see the price and contact you directly.

There are 12 paintings in all. I don't know if they will all fit at Q Space. Whatever doesn't, will come home again. Luciano recently re-arranged Q Space so that the bookshelves are no longer in the front of the cafe but in the back where the poetry readings are, leaving a smaller but brighter and more friendly space for art in the front where the storefront windows are. I had originally chosen and prepared new pieces for the previous space, which was darker, more closed in, but larger. Anyway... let me start pasting and posting in the html from FAA.

When you click on the first painting, you'll go to FAA where you can see all of the paintings by clicking "Next"..... enjoy!





                                                               

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"How can this be called painting?

"Henrique Oliveira has a very peculiar way of painting, one that makes him a painter. The decision as to whether what he does is painting is not up to him, in this case. And it is this peculiar way of working or his artistic process that turns what he does into a very special painting. Far from conventional.

That would justify the development of his plastic research that has wood as the material of his installations and that I dare call paintings. It is not paint, but the scraps of wood that lend color to his “paintings.” Wood scraps that carry the discoloration of time. They become paintings that do not remain on the flatness of a canvas. They are engineering works of complex pictorialness and subsequent visual precariousness. They are far from formal constructive paintings. They would be rather classified as gestural abstract art in face of the obvious unconcern about the superposition of the wood sheets. To the viewer, it looks more like a visual disarray that is characteristic of the place that inspires him and where the scraps originate from and through the artist`s creative gesture are made pictorial."

From an essay by Ricardo Resende: http://www.henriqueoliveira.com/" from P E Sharpe's post on G+.



This is what I wrote in response (posted here so I can find it more easily later on), and I expect to get either clobbered or ignored for it:


This piece that you posted (and I haven't read any of the comments yet) finally broke through my issues with what I might term academic art - art that needs an interpreter, a critic, an over-tenured reviewer, to explain it. It's painting? Oh, really, the painter might ask. But, then again, a whole academic industry has risen around modern art - we need 'explainers,' after all. We support entire faculties who 'explain' to us what 'art' is 'about.' And so on, ad infinitum. Ok, so I'm not the only one who has been at this cross roads many times.

What broke through when feeling my way into this spectacular piece was how art went into crisis with the advent of the camera, really really freaked, and still hasn't fully recovered, likely never will, things split off in so many directions after that, and critics became a necessary part of an 'art piece,' almost justifying art's very existence (when it received the stamp of official art approval that is).

But what if. What if art split into different attempts, some landscape become abstract art (essentially); others into super-realism (do what the camera does but better); and then into installation art.

This phenomenal tree is installation art - if it fills the space that the photograph suggests it does.

And what would I think if I saw this image without the fanfare of 'proper art' and the critic's beautiful poetic writing?

Oh, to be crass, I'd think 'movie set.'

And then I realized, the 'new' art, which cannot sell, really, except to a museum where there is money and space, or a wealthy private collector, where there is money space, or..... to a movie director, where there is, if not space, money.

This thought blew me away and I have not yet fully recovered.

This incredible twisted tree trunk of many metaphors would look incredible as an image in a movie.

Then the true power of the art here would find its niche, its public. It's not painting, therefore I would say, it's filmic!

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'Mezzotints' finally up. It's rained for days. I literally ran outside with 3 paintings when a bit of sun peeped through yesterday. Getting them up at FAA makes me search through my files and add the poetry to the description, which, in turn, gives me the full text for posting next to the painting when it's hung at Q Space on, jitters, Wednesday. So all's good!




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My fascination with Fascinators is quite rampant these days. I made one, the process pictured below, with the 'hat' part being an old bra cup, with a bit of black Russian lace (that I bought in the 'garment district' on Queen St in Toronto), feathers and sequins (both of which were given to me), and a hot glue gun; it cost less than $5.00 to make. Compare this to the $75.00 and up price tags of Fascinators. It was my second one; I must take pics of the first one I assembled for this post and add them at some point.

Then, at one of those stores that imports from South America (I love them), I found some little Fascinators on sale for $10., nothing like the ones you wear to weddings of course, but totally fine for my increasingly eccentric look at poetry readings around Toronto.

I am making the Fascinator part of my 'look.' If people see me be-veiled often enough, they'll get used to it. 'Oh, yeah, she's the old lady poet who wears black lace veils, the Fascinators (that she makes from bra cups - oh no, they won't say that!).'



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