The American Institute for Conservation of Art and Historic Works wiki

The American Institute for Conservation of Art and Historic Works (hence forth the AIC) has an interesting wiki of a pretty technical basis that I just stumbled across. It's not pretty or fancy but you can get in touch with your inner artist geek reading about varnish, stretchers, paper resizing, mountmaking(!), and other arcane and not so arcane topics.

What led me to it was research on varnishing. Whew!

Like other wikis, there is a wealth of information and huge gaps in areas where no one has actually stepped up to write an article someone else recognized as useful enough to generate a placeholder page. Since the target is conservators, most of what I've looked at was rather dry and technical, but extremely informative. 

Got some time to kill? Check it out at: http://www.conservation-wiki.com/wiki/Main_Page.

Hobbes the Cat - a rememberance

My 3 person show opens tonight at Gallery 414 (read about that here), but right now I'd like to say a few words about  our cat, Hobbes. We made the difficult decision to put him to sleep, and yesterday was the day.

Hobbes joined the household about 12 years ago, arriving on our back porch one wintry day, looking for a place to stay warm. We put a box out there with a blanket, since we already had one cat, and we were not all in agreement over whether we needed a second one.

If you've ever had a cat, you know how that works. By springtime we were a two cat household.

Hobbes and our other cat, Spike, after some initial conflict, eventually came to terms with each other. I'd not call them friendly, but peace was maintained. Spike was a friendly, affectionate cat. Hobbes on the other hand, was reserved and standoffish, and not one to abide by attempts to love on him. He'd give you about five seconds - ten if he was feeling generous - then you'd better be ready to leave him alone.

He was a ginger tom, with a stubby tail, which led us to conclude he had some manx blood in him, and was, in his mature years, rather bulky. "The upholstered watermelon" was one of his nicknames.

It was John, our oldest son, who christened him "Hobbes" because he was orange, like the character in the comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes."

Changes coming to the Ralph Art Website Project

As I get ready for the B/W&C show, opening on October 22 (that's less than 2 weeks away!), I've also taken it upon myself to redo the Ralph Art website (http://www.ralphart.com).

This started out just being a re-theming, but as I delved deeper into it, I found myself doing a number of more structural things; things that affect functionality and easy of use AND updating.

I'm moving to a new hosting provider: Namecheap.com - who despite their name provides (so far) excellent inexpensive hosting, name registration, and SSL certs. This appeals to the left-brain me who works as an IT systems analyst 40 hours a week.

Couple of things that I'm adding: using Flickr to host all the gallery images - this should speed up page loads for site visitors; and email updates, should you choose to opt in to that. I'm also using a different template which to my eye is cleaner and easier to navigate.

I'm hoping to have it up before the end of the week. Look for an announcement here and on my Facebook page.

Cheers!

Varnishing day

With the B/W&C opening less than 3 weeks away, I'm gearing up prepping for the show. Over the weekend, I framed about half a dozen pieces, attached D-ring hangers, and wrapped everything in plastic.

While doing all this I noticed one of the older, larger pieces had some areas where the gloss of the paint was uneven, which left me dissatisfied. Although I don't always do this, in this case I decided the cure was to (drum roll!) varnish the painting.

A photo posted by Ron Crouch (@ralphart2018) on Oct 3, 2016 at 9:35pm PDT

I'm not sure why, but I always get a little nervous about varnishing. I think it's mostly from what I read about doing it as a young art student, primarily about the need for a "dust-free environment" - like that actually exists.

My practical experience has generally been relatively trouble-free. I use Liquitex Soluvar gloss varnish, thinned with just a small amount of turpentine, and paint it on with a 3-inch white bristle brush. I have less of a problem with dust than I do stray hairs off the brush.

So after pondering the notion for most of the day, I got home, cleared off a flat horizontal surface, poured out a little varnish and turps, and started brushing. After I finished I had enough leftover varnish to coat another older (but smaller) painting I'd decided some time ago to varnish next time I got around to it.

Clean up is relatively simple - use turps or mineral spirits, although in my opinion, turpentine cleans it out better. Important note! If you are thinning the varnish, read the instructions - it probably tells you to thin with turpentine. DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE OF IGNORING THIS ADVICE! The results otherwise can be awful - at least they were for me, years ago. Your mileage may vary.

So, why varnish? The usual reason given is to protect the painting, put a removable/renewable layer on the painting - all good advice.

Why do *I*?

Primarily because I tend to work thin, sometimes without a lot of medium, and the paint - especially in dark areas, can have a chalky, flat quality which looks sort of crappy. A layer of varnish will (for me anyway) make the colors instantly deeper, richer and uniform in their gloss.

It's a personal thing, to be sure, but over the last couple of years, I've pulled out several older pieces that I've not been completely satisfied with and hit them with a coat of Soluvar and WHOOSH - it's like a new painting. A good painting.

So, feeling brave? Just do it.

Don't use spray varnish (ugh); get a brush and smear that shit around.

You can thank me later.

Coming October 22 - B/W&C Group Show at Gallery 414

Update on the show I've organized at Gallery 414.

Show title: B / W & C - Paintings and Photograph by Ron Crouch, Leo Wesson, and Kipp Baker. It will be at Gallery 414, located on the near west side Fort Worth at 414 Templeton, just north of 7th Street and east of University Drive.

The opening will be Saturday, October 22 from 6 to 9 PM and will be up from October 22 through November 20. The gallery will be open Saturdays and Sundays from noon until 5 and by appointment during the week.

I don't know how it is that I've become friends with so many photographers - I've known Leo for over 35 years, and Kipp since my days as an undergraduate at TCU (I'll let you do the math there, thank you). Both have done countless favors for me (many but not all of a photographic nature).

I’ll be showing mostly recent paintings with maybe a couple of older, pieces, while Leo and Kipp will be showing photography. In addition to the Gallery 414 website, the 3 of us also have a website up with more information about us and the show, which can be seen at:

http://bwc-artspace.com.

Once we've got the final mix of work for the show we'll most likely feature it on the bwc-artspace.com website, but for now, here's a little taste.

Short technical update

Quick note on a backend update I made to the Ralph Art Website, which is being hosted on OpenShift (www.openshift.com), which is a fabulous service for the more geekishly inclined of you out there.

As some of you know out there, during daylight hours I'm a systems analyst/defacto support engineer for a bunch of corporate websites. So I felt inclined to do some tweaks that will improve performance. This entailed the functional equivalent of moving from an efficiency apartment to a one-bedroom. It wasn't a far move, but I did have to pickup everything and move it.

Doing this also gave me an excuse to keep the old copy of the site for a test platform.

Anyway...enjoy!

Ralph Art Website relaunched

Woo hoo! The new Ralph Art website is now officially live!  I cut over the DNS for http://www.ralphart.com a little while ago, so now the redesigned site is the one you'll see when you go there.

If you are curious or bored, the old site, with all its warts and poor display on mobile devices, is still visible at http://old.ralphart.com. The last redesign (mostly just a reskinning) took place about 3 years ago (give or take). I'll probably leave it there for a while, for curiosity sake.

The new site has (in my opinion) a much improved organization, with lots of large images of art. For once I did not do the complete redesign myself, instead I started with a template and heavily customized it. This let me create a responsive, mobile device friendly site with a minimum of effort on my part. Yes, I have been known to be lazy.

Leave comments below if you feel so inclined or find a glaring mistake somewhere.

Thanks!

New Website!

Doing a soft launch of the new Ron Crouch /  Ralph Art website. For now the URL is http://new.ralphart.org. After I've made sure I've gotten all the rough edges sanded away I'll be changing that to http://www.ralphart.org. The old site is still at http://www.ralphart.com -- haven't quite decided what to do with that. I may eventually point that at the new site.

If you see a problem, email me or direct message my Twitter account @RalphArt.

I'm using responsive design (should look good on desktop/mobile/tablet) and hosting it on Openshift.com.

A painting progression - Kipp

Finished a painting of my friend Kipp the other day which turned out pretty well. I actually thought to take progression photos along the way (smartphones are actually good for something other than texting), and thought it might be of interest to others to see how a painting takes shape.

First -- I usually start off by doing an underpainting or sketch in burnt sienna. This gives a warm undertone to things I find appealing. At this point I'm primarily looking at getting proportions and basic placement the way I want it.

If you look closely you'll see a light grid drawn in pencil. I've worked with photographic sources most of my painting career but have changed how I use them. Back when I was in grad school and for about 10 years afterwards, I shot 35mm slides and would project those.

These days I mostly shoot digital, using my phone, then print them out on a color laser and grid them off. They each produce a slightly different look. In addition to gridding, sometimes I'll print out the photo and project it on the painting surface using an Artograph opaque projector.

Second -- I usually work from the edges towards the center, doing more of the background elements, saving faces and other centers of interest towards the end. This has the effect of lulling me into working looser on these bits since (in my mind) they aren't the "important" parts.

Curiously enough, because I work more freely, this has the side effect of sometimes transforming these areas into the centers of interest in the final painting. The sweater, for example, took on this role.

Third. At this point I was pretty far along, but I wasn't completely satisfied with where I was with it. The painting was clearly of Kipp, but there was something about the likeness I wasn't happy with, and I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was. I was about to leave it as it was when...

(Fourth - brief interlude) -- I noticed it was Kipp's birthday. Since I was painting this portrait for my own amusement, I decided to do a little quick study as a birthday present. I found a piece of old 1 x 12 in the studio that had been cut up for some now-forgotten purpose. The aged pine had a nice middle-tone that served as a toned ground.

I spent about 45 minutes during my lunch hour just having fun with it. When I was done, I looked at it and saw it was by far a better painting than the one I'd been fighting with for the last several days. So now I couldn't just leave it...

Fifth - I stared at the painting and the study, trying to sort out why one was so good and the other not. I went back in, wiped out what I had done with a turpentine-soaked rag (the painter's best friend), and started over.

A fair amount of the problem was some subtle proportional issues with the shape of the head and what-not. The rest of it was just that the painting was overworked - the surest way I know to ruin a painting.

 So I finally finished; it still wasn't as wonderful as the study but it was definitely improved. And somedays you just have to be satisfied with improvement over perfection.

 Hope you found this interesting!

New Painting: Texting Women

After a prolonged period of non-art production, I've actually been fairly busy, comparatively speaking, since last December. The other day I finished "Texting Women" (title subject to change), which I started not too long ago.

Apologies for the awful photo; it was shot with my cell phone. Done in oils, finished size is 30 x 40.

Coming soon (I hope) - prints!

I've recently become intrigued by the idea of producing a few giclee (or do you say "geclee") prints of some older art. A giclee print is essentially a high-end inkjet print made using archival inks on archival paper.  

This interest was sparked by the desire to share a couple of specific works on paper for which I'm not willing to part with the original. A big part of the success is starting with a quality digital image, which adds considerably to the initial setup cost; this would most likely involve having whichever service I use do the scan using a commercial scanner. 

That being said, I'm thinking of doing a test print or two using a smaller image I can scan myself.

Informed friends (thank you, Marshall Harris and John Moore) have shared their experiences and suggestions and I'm hoping to continue to tax their generosity and good will! 

After a prolonged absence...

It's embarrassing to see that the last post on this blog was almost 2 year ago. Sheesh. That is going away NOW.

What's new? Oldest son is back in Texas, after a seven year stay in Toronto. He's now in Austin, working for Whole Foods. Youngest son has one more year at Texas State University. All my once far-flung offspring have returned, only a 3 hour car trip away.

The art? Sigh...

In the Fort Worth Museum District

There are several not-to-be-missed shows over in the Fort Worth Museum district these days, which caused me to put aside my visceral hatred of what the City of Fort Worth is doing over there.

First off, if you haven't done so yet, GO TODAY and check out the Lucian Freud show at the Modern. I'd been waiting with barely concealed eagerness since first hearing of it last year, and it does not disappoint. An absolutely fabulous show. Warning, if naked people upset you, take a Xanax and get over it.

The accounts I've read of Freud's life would lead one to conclude he may not have been the nicest person to wander the earth, but he is by-god one hell of a painter.  This is, by the way, the only US venue of this outstanding show, and is up until October 28, 2012.

Once you've finished with the Freud show, you owe it to yourself to wander over to the Amon Carter Museum, and check out the show, American Vanguards: Graham, Davis, Gorky, De Kooning and Their Circle, 1927 - 1942. The Amon Carter does a consistently good job on shows like this. Before you leave, also find the exhibition, Industrial Monuments: Photographs and Works on Paper from the Machine Age. I'm  a sucker for works on paper and actually enjoyed this more than the American Vanguards show (as good as that was). You may need to ask a guard where the Industrial Monuments show is on display - it's a little hard to find.

A retirement

I first met Jim Woodson, lo these many years ago, when I was a long-haired painting major at TCU. And now, some 38 years later, he has the audacity to retire.

I had a number of excellent instructors when I was at TCU and Jim was at the top of the list.

He had a gentle way of guiding one back when you'd strayed a little too far off the path without making you feel as though you'd screwed up or wasted a lot of time and effort

His wife Barbara threw a retirement party for him last Friday that was a gathering of the tribes. I saw old friends I hadn't seen in 20 years and students that could have been my kids.

Dan Shepley, a friend from high school days who later was a college roommate, made it down from Indianapolis. Back in the day, Dan and I lived in an apartment that was across the alley from Jim's house. Watching Monty Python at Jim's was one of our Sunday rituals (along with eating Mexican food at Pancho's Mexican Buffet).

Good times...

Good luck, Jim, and thanks for everything!

Tom Reynolds Trio

We dropped in at this month's Kimbell After Hours (2nd Saturday of every month) to hear the Tom Reynolds Trio. They were amazingly (but not surprisingly) good! I missed their first set but the set we heard was brilliant - composed primarily of swing and other jazz, performed by Tom (on guitar), with Andy Crisanti on clarinet and an outstanding bass player (whose name I did not catch).

I've known Tom since our sons were in Boy Scouts together years ago, and he's a prince of a fellow, in addition to being a phenomenal guitar player. Andy Crisanti was once principal clarinetist with the Ft Worth Symphony before retiring. He said he'd gone full circle, since he started out playing swing back in the 1940's.

A thoroughly enjoyable time. Tom plays frequently at the Scat Lounge in Fort Worth, as well as putting in appearances elsewhere in the DFW area.

Thank, Tom!

The Portrait Project

A few years (quite a few, actually) I decided to start a project that I referred to (in my mind) as "One Hundred Portraits." After the first dozen or so, I decided it was just "the Portrait Project."

The goal was, loosely stated, to do a portrait of everyone I knew. Talk about a never-ending task. Regardless, I've completed around 50 (give or take).


Last fall my good friend Leo Wesson, who I've known and worked with for over 30 years, came over and shot a massive number of works on paper for me on his digital camera. Among the stuff he shot were most of the portraits. After much screwing around, I've finally posted my favorites on the Ralph Art website.

The pieces that comprise the project follow a fairly standard format: all are more or less mug-shots, and are on 22 x 30 rag paper. Not all are paintings; quite a few were done as drawings.

It's been fun, and I'm certainly not finished (I meet new people every day), but only a few people have seen them, and usually only a handful of the pieces at that. If you know me, you probably know quite a few of the people in these works.

A big thanks (again) to Leo, who made this possible.

Enjoy!

New: John on the Ice blog

Rather than posting stuff on this site, I decided to set up another blog for updates about John's Antarctica adventure. It's called John on the Ice (clever, I know). This way folks won't have to wade through my ponderous pontifications about Art and the like, when all they really wanted to know was how John is doing.

By the way, by my clock, he's enroute to Los Angeles now from Denver, where he had his company orientation. He departs from Los Angeles later this evening for Auckland, New Zealand.

The Penguin has departed

A quick note: oldest son John departed this afternoon for Antarctica, where he'll be working for six months (doing food service for the inhabitants of McMurdo Station).

His first stop is Denver, where he'll do a couple of days of training in Denver. From there, after a brief layover, he'll fly to New Zealand. The final leg of his journey, from Christchurch, NZ, to McMurdo, Antarctica, will be aboard a military transport plane.



McMurdo Station, on Ross Island (on the southwest corner of Ross Sea), is the operational hub and logistics center for the United States Antarctic Program, which in turn is part of the National Science Foundation. McMurdo is the largest installation on the continent and is the gateway to all other US bases.

During the active (summer) season, around 1,200 people are based there. They are just entering the spring season down there; average highs for September are -5 F, and average lows are -20 F. December is the warmest time of the year - average highs are around 30 F, with lows down to 21 F.

Curious about the weather? Check the McMurdo webcam.

He'll be there until March of 2012. It should be a great adventure.

New 4th of July painting

Well, I finished this on the weekend of the 4th. I started it about
nine months ago. Also: I'm not so much finished as I am tired of
screwing with it. Maybe it will grow on me. I don't dislike it as much
as I did 3 weeks ago so there's hope.



(Photo taken with my iPhone, which is why it looks so crappy.)

Saturday May 14 is Spring Arts Goggle

Don't forget, Saturday May 14 is the spring edition of the twice yearly Arts Goggle on Fort Worth's Near (or is it Mid) South Side. In years past most of the action was concentrated along Magnolia Avenue between 8th Ave and Hemphill but it's slowly spread in all directions.

Lots of art and music, lots of fun. Printed handouts are available at most venues and locations of events can be found on the web. DFW.com has musical lineups, and Fort Worth South has a printable PDF of both art and music programs. Facebook has a page as well.

My old friend John Moore has a closing reception at Arts 5th Ave which I will be attending, and I'm told a friend will be playing at Shaws's, so chances are I'll be there at some point. In addition to the art and music, this is a great opportunity to see some of the redeveloped spaces in the area.

Be there or be square!