New Review and Studio Good Stuff

Let's take a short sojourn away from nostalgia-land for a moment (Nostalgia-what? Just me looking back and being six kinds of sentimental in the previous two posts). We'll get back to that. But right now, I've got new stuff to chat about.

First, my review of Peter Calaboyias: A Retrospective appears in this week's City Paper. You can read it here. In the meantime, a wee excerpt:
"But these works are only a fraction of Calaboyias' oeuvre, which also includes paintings. All 29 pieces featured in his 50-year retrospective, at Shadyside's GalleriE Chiz, are pregnant with memory, and reference the artist's dueling cultural identities: Calaboyias grew up in a steadfastly Greek household in post-war America. Many of these works draw equally from both worlds, uniting Greek mythology with American mid-century minimalism."

I know, I know. French words so early in the day? This kind of thing should be confined to cocktail hour, shouldn't it? Right. I'll make a mental note to use words like 'oeuvre' only after 5:30 p.m. and in the presence of a large gin martini, up with olives, please. Sure, well-gin is fine.

In other news, there's productivity in the studio area. I present the following for consideration. The top image may not look familiar at all. However, it is actually built from something you might have seen here before. (<--To see what lies under those bees, click on the link, which takes you to a February 19th blog post). Like I said, no more dead stuff. So, out with the skeletal foot. In with the bees. (Our real live bee packages arrive around April 1st, incidently. We're stocking 3 hives this year: one for me, one for Michael, and one for my brother-in-law Glenn). So the bee dance here is inspired in part by our hive studies.


In progress: "Bee Dance"

Also, I'm working on finishing some much smaller canvases that I started in D.C. over a decade ago. They've been lying around this house for several years now. On a side note, dig my excellent studio mess. Ahhhh....what comfort. I feel like I'm home again. Oh wait, technically I am. Still, I was speaking figuratively, though.

Three small un-photogenic canvases currently in progress.
Man, they look so much better in person.
Ooo..ooo! See the studio mess. Ain't it purty?