SANDY GARNETT ART BLOG

I made this sculpture and started another on the weekend.  I turned the mahogany, my second lathe experience, oil and waxed the piece.  The base is slate.  I will start to make more of these figures.

As a professional self-represented fine artist I spend a lot of time researching more efficient means of accomplishing tasks, whether they be office or art related.  When it’s promo time I get bogged down with some of the admin that an office assistant could really help with.  I finally have part time help but not on the office front.  My data is scattered in Microsoft Office, a Filemaker database I designed years ago, Quicken, macmail, and MaxProg Bulk Emailer to name a few.  Wouldn’t it be nice to solidify this data?  I am looking at the new version of Market Circle Daylite.  I have an older version but this one works seamlessly with macmail.  Increasingly my business is email based, and I am constantly referring to email as I used to refer to paper receipts as many of us are.  This product is not expensive but the time to switch things around in the office is… another day in the life…

I sold this door to my new collector Laura.  I’ve been painting figures on doors for a decade, usually several a year.  These figures are studies for what would become my Field of Figures sculpture.  Thank you Laura.

The Open Studios was a success.  I sold some work, had a ball with my collectors and new buyers and I enjoyed time with my artists in the building.  What more can an artist ask for?  I did not shoot the show, which was stupid but what can you do?  Make more art and find more buyers…

I’m prepping for my open studio on Saturday and Sunday.  I will be showing an assortment of work.  What else?  I may be paid to make a copy of an eight year old painting that was lost on route to Tokyo.  This is interesting.

Here is the new ‘Miles’ Field of Figures.  This will be installed with my collectors in April.  There are 32 floating figures in each Field of Figures sculpture I make.  I have sold 3 of an edition of 32.  The edition number is large as a result of the developing complexity of the project.  Each collector subsidizes the creation of another figure form, which is disbursed into the existing collections.  Eventually each sculpture will have 32 completely different figures in it.  I began the project with three figure forms in each of three sculptures.  These figures are so expensive to make I could not make 32 different figure forms at once.  So I developed the above system to grow each sculpture one collector at a time, an elaborate chess game of sorts.  This chess game will get more complex as it develops.  Ultimately I envision a show with half the Field of Figures in the same gallery, all with different environments.

I started working on this sculpture last November.  I worked with Miles, my model and my collector’s daughter.  She came to the studio, I took her profile and created a figure form out of it.  The figures in this sculpture are silhouettes that I turn on a lathe in bronze.  I call the steel structure the environment in which these figures exist.  This environment was designed with built in lighting that is controlled by a dimmer on the bottom.  This explains the larger bottom and slim top, so the lights can shoot up at angles to enhance the figures.  The sculpture will be mounted to the wall so it will not sit on a pedestal.  The shadows of figures dance around to the vibrations of people passing by.  My collector requested a glass case as this piece will live in a beautiful restaurant and Inn with high traffic.  I went with tempered and the glass pieces are adhered together. 

 This was one of my most complex sculptures.  Upon completion of the sculpture I am obsessed with this series again and want to make another figure form.  I think a mobile environment would be interesting.  I will be happy to see the work at home with my collector.

Last night I sold my first painting out of the renovated painting studio I spent months working on with my assistant.  My collectors Kim and Patrick had things to say about my upstairs renovation, which they had never seen finished.  They really got a charge out of my winter activities when we went downstairs and they saw what I have done to the basement.  Kim took a plant painting, one of my old Reconstruction paintings from 1997 and a dear friend.  I’m a softy on her because she owns 20 of my paintings and has supported my career for a decade now.  They were blown away by my water studio or basement studio.  This felt good and today I build on the energy.  Below is  a before after of my new computer area.

Here is a before after of the archive area in my water studio.  The before  shot is a clear picture with the inherent spatial issues I contended with to make the space more user friendly.  In the first renovation 2 years ago, right when I bought the space, I ripped out the drop ceiling, grinded 1000 lbs. of rust off the ceiling, primed the ceiling and sprayed it white.  This cleaned the space up significantly but the ceiling was very busy, the space was dominated by poles , and the open studio plan made focus on one area of my creativity difficult.  In the after shot you see how the space is dramatically improved.  When I go down to work now there is a pretty flow to the space, the lighting is gorgeous, there are designated areas for various tasks, the space is clean and I want to work.  I also now have a very attractive gallery to show collectors my current work.  This renovation like my upstairs residential loft is a gift that keeps giving and makes me a better creator… worth every penny, blood, sweat and tear.

I call my Norwalk, CT property the water studio as I can hear water sometimes in the plumbing and as the day after I bought it a hot water heater blew above my unit and knocked out half of the drop ceiling, which was hideous and which I had planned to eliminate anyway.  I ripped the ceiling out for another 2 ft in studio height to expose the nice large I beams, but the ceiling was so busy that my recent renovation included sheetrocking half the ceiling to make it quiet again.  Below is before after of my computer area.  The renovation was two part, one two years ago and then the past couple months I went to town.  In the below shot you’ll see my cherry space and the last thing left for me to deal with is the pocket door issue on the bathroom and the mini kitchen area (I’ve got the mini fridge, microwave, blender, coffee maker for that little area).