Poof! Goodbye 3 South Stafford Avenue.

Top: Last Week.
Bottom: This Week.





In a blink of an eye, Paradise has moved. What took a year (add another year from the Park Avenue studio) to fill/install, in a weekend it was gone.

Seeing it empty, it's as if applegate Art was never there. Our art brought this worn out, tiny space new life, filled to the brim with color and imagination. It was good while it lasted.

But as I blogged previously, we have only moved on. Paradise never ends. Our new studio space at home is already beginning to flourish. In another blink of an eye, applegate Art Studio's vibrancy will be alive again for all to see and experience.

To peep or not to peep.

Last night was the opening of the January ArtWorks mixed media show.

There my "Paradise Through the Peep Hole" door stood proudly. My art voice speaking a tad louder than usual, sporting blinking star lights, a tape running CNN news constantly on a TV/VCR and a running electric clock showing randomness of time.

In a nutshell, the "point" of my door is a statement about how I feel the 24 hour news stations have too much influence on how people form their opinions these days. For many, their opinions now merely mimic what they've heard on "the news". They only caw like large black crows, in leafless trees, do. "Never More" they cry in that haunting tone of emptiness.

The other side of the nutshell, there is the peep hole. A way out. The ladder. An escape, if you may, from the barrage of cawing negativism and undertone of glee in their voices as they "report" their latest interpretations of doom.

When one looks thru the peep hole, they will see "Mary" glowing brightly, a golden angel baby spinning with joy, a ballerina spinning with life and a white lamb of hope.

Thru the peep hole one can regain their lost sense of personal integrity. With a scent of fresh air, once again, see an unfiltered sunrise coming over the horizon. Form an original thought. Taste hope and know a solution can always prevail, if one allows oneself the freedom to believe that's so.

As the artist, I thought a door with a peep hole and the title "Paradise Thru the Peep Hole", would be enticement enough to invite the viewer to look thru the peep hole. But interestingly enough, last night as I stood aback from my piece, being the fly on the wall, I watched people look at my door, but did not peep!

Being a solution orientated artist/man, I could know longer let people miss the opportunity to transform through the door of doom to the other side.

What to do?

In a gallery office, I found a bottle of White Out and wrote on the black arrow pointing to the peep hole (how subtle is a black arrow, I ask?) and wrote the word "peep", adding a white arrow. Lo and behold the heaven's parted! Standing back again, I watched the people now tenuously take a risk and make the "peep". My voice became clearer.

Whatever it takes, huh?

In my life, all I ask for is the chance. Opportunity. To live, experience the other side of the door. Ironic that sometimes it only takes the willingness, energy to peep.

Paradise not lost, only moving.

John Milton not to worry. All is still right with the world, it's just going to shift a bit. Paradise of the heart is still very much alive and vibrant. Only it's shell is physically moving.

Back home again.

A cleansing period. Out with the unneeded, finding objects I had lost track of. A stirring of the pot. Making connections of separated ideas and concepts, all resulting in new concepts of art. A strengthening of my art voice.

Back to 3002 Springhill Avenue.

How nice it will be to, once again, create art in my robe and slippers.

applegate Art & SPCA!

As part of our community outreach program, applegate Art is exhibitling 3 original cat paintings for sale in the SPCA cat adoption area. All revenue generated by sales will be donated to the SPCA to help in their continuing effort to find homes for great cats.

Shawn (pictured) is there and waiting for you today!

SPCA

Art for Autism

The assignment, take a given duck pin and turn it into a piece of art which can be sold at a silent auction to benefit the Faison School for Autism. applegate Art is happy to say our "Autism Lamp" sold for $150 to help the cause.

If you have a lead, suggestion as to how/where applegate Art can continue to participate in its outreach program, please leave us a comment.

Our art is a gift to share, to use it to benefit others is our goal.

(Story covered in Style Weekly, Dec. 10, 2008)

What you don't see is what you get.

(Note: click on an image to enlarge.)

(View looking in peep hole on the door.)

As I continue to create my latest piece titled "Box of Doom", it occurred to me, I am probably spending almost as much time working on the back of the door as the front. At first, I was amused by this. Here I am spending so much time on a view most people will never take the time to look at. (It would be interesting to be the fly on a wall to see how many people actually walk around the door to look at the back.)

Then the thought struck me. As an assemblage artist, it's the construction of a piece that can bring me the most satisfaction. There is a distance between the idea and the construction of that idea. I can spend an hour sometimes, looking for that just right screw to make the attachment I need to make. Yet, when I find that screw, the distance is met, adding another layer of completeness to the piece which may never be realized by anyone else but myself.

A side note: I made the decision years ago, to not use glue unless the situation called for it. Too easy to just glue here, glue there. It short cutted (poetic license) the problem solving process for me. Not to mention, glue never gives me the satisfying feeling of permanence.

I suggest the next time you look at an artist's assemblage piece, not only enjoy the concept/idea/message of the work, but also muse "look how they decided to attach that piece to that piece..."

It's part of the art, it is the art.

Self reminder. This thought looms larger than the "Box of Doom". When I look at the "front" of something in life, maybe I should take another moment to also look at the "back". The construction of what I am looking at. Maybe then, I can have the opportunity to really understand/comprehend what I am looking at.

Possibly it's what I can't see that makes all the difference?