World Famous ArtBlog

This is the Lucas Bowl Plaza. Our new public restroom which looks like a toilet.  I did the “Drain” in the seating area with all the things people have dropped down the toilet.  There is even a little dog drinking out of the “toilet”.

The four people who performed the First Flushes, won this honor through auctions; two silent auctions, one on eBay, and a live auction on June 2. All the proceeds went to help fund the Bowl Plaza.

Cool Cars Attract Cool Chicks! – - Enid, Oklahoma, September 1953

I am back from Florida, with a few pieces I completed there using stained glass techniques on my 3-dimensional drawings. This is Illustration Board, Glass and Wire
and mixed media – titled:

“Cool Cars Attract Cool Chicks!  – - Enid, Oklahoma, September 1953″   13″x25″x6″  Illustration Board and Glass  $650.

I have now several of these. I exhibited three of these type drawings at the Smoky Hill River Festival in Salina last June where I won Second Place!   I made this piece last March while in Florida. It was sold at the Kansas City Art Institute’s Alumni Auction last June.

“Kansas City Art Institute Party (late 1920”s) – - – All GREAT Artists – - -
That’s Teddy Larson squeezing Fern”
That was the caption on the back of my mother’s picture I used for this piece.
(Teddy Larson ran the Tea Room at KCAI in the twenties and thirties and Fern became my mother several years later.)

Illustration Board, Glass, Wire and mixed media – - c 48” width.

2011 Ponca City, Oklahoma Art Festival

Two pictures that tell a great deal about the story of the great disaster last September at the Ponca City Art Festival.  A 70 MPH wind with an inch and half of rain destroyed about 90% of my work.  The lower is being awarded a prize in Sculpture.

I felt like I never wanted to do an outdoor show again; but have now done six shows since November.

Award third place in sculpture at the Ponca City Art Festival

 I have not quite recovered from this
event.  I did buy a new tent and have used it several times.  It takes about an hour and a half to set it up, so this year I have been
using a cobbled together EasyUp that is much
faster to put up. The frame is an old steel one
that is/should be durable.  The frames in the
new EasyUps are aluminum and are very
fragile and are easily destroyed in just normal
use, not to say anything about wind and such.

I feel that I want to be the judge of when and if
I quit doing these shows – not outside forces.

“Pig Trophy” Ht: 21”
Porcelain – $600.

The Flying Pig Gallery will have a nice selection of work to view and buy.

The piece below:  “Cow Trophy for the Admirer of Fine Cows”  Ht.: 30”
Porcelain, mixed media.  $750.

I am getting to the point in life where my main concern is the exploration and the making of new art (as it always has been).  I am still doing shows, but would like to not do as many custom pieces (these still can be fun under the right circumstances).

The picture below taken at Fort DeSoto Park near St. Petersburg, FL is an example of some of the source material I am considering using.  Of course, there will most likely be some kind of recognizable object in these pieces, some way, somehow!

Maybe one of the new visual sources for new work.  

The Gallery in Lively Downtown Lucas, Kansas is open whenever I am here.  If I am not here, the Grassroots Art Center (one block south of the studio and gallery) will be happy to let you in.  If they make a sale, they get a cut – we both win; and YOU are the ultimate Winner, as you will have a Wunnerful Piece of Porkelaineous Delight – OR – you could even have one of the new non-clay series, the Three Dimensional Drawings!

The Three Dimensional Drawings are also on exhibit at the Flying Pig Gallery.

PS – – Someone asked why I didn’t mention my time at Pittsburg State University (in Pittsburg, Kansas) in the late seventies.  That was some time ago and still a bright spot in my career!  That was a great time for exploration and learning about Clay, Art and Life!  I saw Marge Schick (the metals prof there who makes the most incredible work – she had a big spread in American Craft several years ago) a couple of years ago when she came up to the Beach Museum in Manhattan, Kansas for her artist’s talk during her one person show there.  So much has happened since then, that it is difficult to include everything!