Top 10 Ways You Know You've Gone Froggy.

Now that I'm back in France, and I've conquered my jetlag, I've had some time to reflect on more than a few things. Being in the states--specifically--in Brooklyn for such an extended stay has made me realize something.

I've become terribly French.

Nothing like a trip back to the US to make you understand just how much your sensibilities and ways of thinking have changed. There's really no fighting it:  I am a complete AmeriAngloFranco Hybrid Freakshow.  The Proof?

Top 10 Ways I Know I've Gone Froggy.

1.  I very strongly believe that lunch should take at least 1.5 hours. There should be a law.  Seriously.

2. If you invite me to your house and within the first 10 minutes you haven't offered me a a drink, preferably a glass of wine, I will likely write you off as a heathen.

3.  During casual social gatherings in the US I have to constantly remind myself to just say "hello", but DO NOT lean in for a kiss unless I want to get some very confused and slightly horrified reactions.

4.  (And speaking of  casual) I'm terribly over-dressed for almost every occasion.

5.  If you add up the price of the 300 bottles of perfume and over-priced facial moisturizers in my bathroom closet, the resulting number would FAR exceed what I paid for my first car.

6.  I only smile when absolutely necessary.  It prevents wrinkles.  I do however enjoy a trip to the tanning salon where I pay good money to be baked until slightly crispy and I have reached a bronze color that I refer to as "Will Smith".

7. I iron all of my clothes, including my socks and undergarments...and resent those who do not.

8.  If I'm at a restaurant and the waiter brings be my check before I ask for it, I subtract 2.5% from said waiter's tip.  Mean...but true. (Please refer back to item #1 on this list.)

9.  If I don't have coffee after every meal I become intolerably grumpy. I'll even drink that swill that Starbucks calls coffee if necessary.  Just gimme the f*cking coffee!

And last but not least, on the list of ways I know I've gone froggy....

10.  I find very politically incorrect and/or inappropriate sexual jokes totally acceptable as polite dinner conversation. Don't believe me?  Invite me over for dinner sometime and I'll tell you the one about the really tall lady and the midget.

Anybody in the Washington DC Area?

6x6 is barely finished and I'm already prepping for the next leg on my 20111 exhibition tour.

Next stop:  Washington D.C.!

I haven't been to Washington DC in over a decade and this is my first solo exhibition there so obviously I'm thrilled!  Also, I'm so sick of NYC right now that every time I see a bearded Brooklyn hipster in orange skinny jeans I have to close my eyes and count quietly from 1 to 50 in order to keep from throwing myself onto the F train tracks just so the pain will stop.  Oh the glorious glorious pretentious PAIN!

Anyway, if you're in the DC area.  Come meet me in 3D.  One rule:  Don't be creepy.

The deets:

As part of the FOTOWEEK DC 2011 FESTIVAL you are cordially invited to the opening reception for

(Re)calling and (Re)telling

An exhibition of work by Kesha Bruce.

November 5–November 12, 2011.

Artist Talk and Opening Reception:
Saturday November 5th, 2011.
2 - 5 PM.

(Re)calling and (Re)telling uses maps, 

drawings, found documents, and family

photographs to create new, hybrid

narratives that address aspects of

African-American history and

experience through memory

and storytelling.

Morton Fine Art
1781 Florida Avenue Northwest
Washington, DC 20009-2647
(202) 628-2787
www.mortonfineart.com

This is my LAST exhibition for 2011 and my last stop before heading back to Frog-land.

Be there or be square.

Werd.

Wheelin' and Dealin'!

I'm sorry I haven't been posting much here about my New York City adventures.  The past few weeks have been the most fun and drunken challenging period of time I've experienced in a recent memory.

I've been busy every day at the gallery selling art and busy every evening drinking rhum cocktails at tiki bars on the lower east side doing follow-up and marketing work.

At least 3 nights a week you can find me at the local bar slamming over-priced cocktails and playing drinking games a non-profit art space attending a workshop or networking event. Meeting new people and getting drunk with them discussing art with them is pretty much my life's core focus at the moment.

My party work schedule is so tight that I can barely keep up.

So forgive me if I seem hung-over or perhaps still drunk a bit frazzled or distracted.

God Bless Art and God Bless Tequila America.

Meet Me in NYC.

Part of the reason I've been so AWOL from blogging is that instead of having fancy lunches and taking photos of all the glorious French food I've been eating, I've been planning this 6 week art event.  The whole project only lasts 6 weeks, but it took my business partner and I the better part of a YEAR to plan, organize, and fundraise for this baby.

And now that I'm in NYC, of course, every day of the week is moving at absolute lightspeed x 10.  I have appointments and places to be, I forget to eat meals, and half the time I don't know what day of the week it is.

Good Stuff!

I'm an experience and intensity junkie, so this is my sweet- spot.  Sure I miss France, but I've barely had time to think about it.

Art has officially taken over my life, but that doesn't mean we can't still be friends!

How many of you live in the NYC area?  I'd LOVE to meet y'all.  Why don't you find a way to make it to our next gallery opening?  It's not every day that I make it to NYC, or to the US for that matter. Plus my gallery throws the best openings in town.

A few sexy pics from the opening of Please Standy By: new work by artists Stacia Yeapanis and Readymade777.

Click here to see the full Flickr photo set.

 
Couldn’t make it to last week’s opening?  No Problem!  Come to the next one:

Violently Happy: New work by Jacqueline Norheim and Cara Lynn Kleid.
October  6 -12, 2011

Opening Reception: Thursday October 6th,  from 6-8 PM.

Baang and Burne Contemporary Art
547 W 27th Street suite 309 (3rd floor)
Btwn 10th & 11th Ave.
New York City

Be there or be square.

Seriously.  All the cool kids are doing it.

I Survived the Snownami.

I'm writing this from the great state in Indiana visiting me mum. I booked this trip to the US because I have not one, but three exhibitions planned back to back and I had planned to attending at least the closing reception for the first one near Chicago last week.

Unfortunately my reception got canceled by the Snowpocalypse.

Two days before the reception, Chicago got pounded by a storm system that pounded them with with 2 FEET of snow. Here in Indianapolis we didn't get snow, instead mother nature treated us to a 3 inch coating of ice that paralyzed the entire state and left many without electricity or heat.

How's that for a homecoming party?

We were all but trapped in the house for nearly 3 days. Luckily my friend Danielle managed to make it to our house on the 3rd day. She helped me dig out my car and my mom's car. No, No. Let me rephrase that. She helped me chisel my car out of an effin' glacier with a hammer. A frickin' HAMMER!

Once we had liberated the cars we were feeling quite triumphant. Here is me with my mini shovel and my nearly 18 inch tall and 3 inch thick Ice trophy. The bugger weighed nearly 15 lbs. No kidding.

But besides that, all is swell. In spite of being technically out of the office, I'm getting a TON of work finished, and more importantly I was here to help out my mom. I was like a gladiator shoveling out her car.

I am a total bad-ass.

New Work in Progress and One Naughty Drawing.

Leave it to me to fly all the way to another continent to take a technical workshop on printmaking and encaustics, only to come home and start making sculptures. You really never know what part of your brain will get tickled when you let new info in. I can't be bothered to make drawings or paintings at the moment. I'm way too interested in making three dimensional objects that I can touch and hold. Oh, and I'm making them in concrete.

Why concrete? Two reasons:

1. Beautiful and incredibly flexible material (surprisingly enough) with so many options and ways to form it.

2. It costs practically nothing and can be bought at nearly any common hardware store.

(You know how much artists love hardware stores, right?)

3. Concrete is hard, heavy, and tough i.e., it's bad ass.

At the moment 3 sculptures are curing in my garage. They aren't done yet since I still have finishing work to do, but still, this is exciting stuff. I have no photos, but here are the idea sketches from my sketch book.

Of course the actual objects look nothing like the drawings. I made the sketches before I'd ever even mixed my first batch of concrete. (Wishful thinking?) As soon as I started applying my mix to my armature everything changed. But hey, that's half the magic!

p.s. Thank You to my friend Mr. Aaron California for pointing out the perverse implications of the second to last drawing.

Perve!

Welcome Back to New York - Part #2

Of course the main point of taking this trip to the US was to take part in the WSW Summer Arts Institute. From the level of instruction to the fabulous meals provided by WSW, the entire experience was a really valuable and constructive one.

Tatana Kellner and Cynthia Winika are both very patient and attentive instructors as well as being really powerful artists in their own right. Having the opportunity to work with them came when I most needed it. Their level of mastery and enthusiasm for their chosen mediums was absolutely contagious. Their idea kept all of the workshop participants going on their individual projects and helped us all keep our minds off the fact that were were working with hot wax in the middle of a heat wave.

Nothing loosens up my brain better than learning a new skill as a debutante. When I’m not expected to be an expert there is a level of play and willingness to take risks that doesn’t usually happen when I am working in a media that I call my own.

The entire experience was about learning to make art, yet not once did I feel the need to actually…make art. I was so focused on the technical aspects that honestly, I wasn’t too concerned with coming home with finished works. And since we were learning 3 techniques in just 4 days, it struck me as a bit arrogant to think that I could even accomplish such a thing.

The second day I was upstate, I went to the local goodwill to look for old books or any printed material I could incorporate as collage elements into my work. I ended up finding two very interesting, although incredibly racist books, on 'The Wild West' published in the 1920’s and 30’s. Under the influence of vocabularly such as "savages", "destiny", and "massacre", I let the text and images in the books guide me into new territory so to speak. I just responded to what was written in the books. New stuff happened.

Oddly enough however, the 3 pieces I did actually work on look strangely like my normal work in a lot of ways. I always hope that a new medium will suddenly transform my imagery or the way I work, when in reality, no matter what I do end up looking like I made it. Whether I’m making cupcakes or paintings. Clearly I’m always me.

In other news: New stuff happening in the studio…I’ve been mixing concrete in my garage….more coming soon!

Welcome Back to New York - Part #1

Stuff I Love about New York:

The sky as seen through the stencil of tall buildings that wear watertowers like crowns.

Stuff I hate about New York:

Your ass might get shot...by a gun painted in a stylish color.

Guns or no guns, my trip to the great state of New York was fabulous. It was the perfect balance of city and country. I arrived at JFK, caught a taxi to Prospect Heights, and was then promptly whisked off to a roof-top wine tasting party in Manhattan. That does not suck.

My first 48 hours back in New York were so delicious that it felt like New York City was throwing me a welcome back party. Yes, New York. I love you too.

Anyway I did so much stuff that I don’t wanna bore you with so I’ll skip to the highlights:

1. Wine and cheese at Balthazar’s with my partner in art-world domination. Followed by a performance by Carolee Schneeman at Location One. Yes that Carolee Schneeman.

2. Bought my favorite OPI nail polish colors: Big Apple Red and Midnight in Moscow

3. New running shoes!

4. Free tickets to see “Fela” on Broadway. So good I got goosebumps.

5. Two Hour lunch at Old Homestead SteakHouse.

6. Girlfriend Gallery hopping meet-up in Chelsea.

7. Complimentary Dinner at Maze by Gordon Ramsay at The London, followed by a tour of the kitchen.

Dude I was in Gordon Ramsey’s kitchen! (And no he wasn’t there… which is kinda fine with me cuz let’s face it---he’s a scary man.)

All that and I haven’t even told you about the week I spent upstate.

To Be Continued…

Home again, home again, jiggety-jig!

People. As much as I love to travel, I can honestly say I have never been quite this happy to be home! I got back to the Barbie Dream House on July 13th. My luggage arrived on July 14th. (F*ck Thank You Air France!) I stopped being jetlagged on July 18th. I will resume blogging sometime before July 23rd.

So many pictures, so little time! Gimme a sec to catch my breath. I'll be back shortly.

Coming To America.

Well ladies and gentlemen, I finally finished doing our vacation laundry and now it’s time to repack! Tomorrow morning I’m headed to Brooklyn baby! In fact I’ll be in New York for 2 weeks. This year will be the first time I’ve experienced a good old fashioned 4th of July in America celebration in like---7 years. Then I get back to France just in time for Bastille day. In true Aries fashion---I can never get enough beheadings fireworks!

More importantly this trip to the US will be my first in 2 years. Two whole years! I wonder how quickly I’ll get my American accent and swagger back this time around. Every time I go back to “the States” my brain goes through a slow transformation: It usually takes me roughly 24 hours to stop thinking in French and starting all my sentences, then having to restart them in English. Within 48 hours, I’m back to thinking in English and only a few French words pop up in my brain. By day 3 I’m All-American again and using the F-word like it’s going out of style.

Anyway besides doing a lot of gallery visiting in Chelsea and Brooklyn, and eating too many meals with my friends, the main reason I’m going is to take an intensive art workshop at the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale New York.

Every year WSW hosts a Summer Arts Institute which offers intensive courses in printmaking, hand papermaking, ceramics, letterpress printing, photography, and book arts. I’ll be taking the Cross Pollination: Trace Monoprints, Paper Lithography and Encaustic class, taught by Tatana Kellner and Cynthia Winika. I’m especially excited because the last two days of the workshop we will actually be working at R&F Handmade Paints and learning the basics of encaustic painting. I’ve been toying with the idea of taking this class for 2 years now. Needless to say I am so excited to finally learn some new techniques that I can incorporate into my own work. Tell me this video of a book in-progress doesn't make you just wanna jump up and make something:

Artwork aside, I plan on taking advantage of all the good things that America has to offer like, shopping on Sundays and 24 hour restaurants that serve meals that are bigger than your head. How sad is it that what I’m looking most forward to is eating and shopping?

If you live in the NYC area or you know of any interesting cultural activities that I can do in between my capitalist-obesity fueled orgy, please do leave ideas and activities in comments.

See ya on Bastille Day!

Bacardi & Hairy Legs.

By the time you read this I will be driving to the airport. Once again FrenchBoy and I are off for one glorious week at the Amirandes resort on Crete. It was so good last year that we had to go back and do it again.

The only thing we don't like about the place is the price of the coffee. Five euros is a steep price to pay for a lukewarm cappuccino. So, we opted for the most logical remedy. Last week in Paris we bought a travel case for our Nespresso machine so we could take it with us to Crete. Yes. We are taking our expresso machine on vacation.

I haven't packed anything yet, but I figure all I need is my swimsuit, my sunglasses, and a pair of busted flip-flops so everyone will immediately understand that I'm American. I'll pick up a couple of bottles of booze at the duty-free shop at the airport before I board, and that will be that.

Oh speaking of busted. I managed to remedy my Frodo-feet issues with this device, which would just be so incredibly wrong, if it didn't work so damn well. I will finally be wearing my Choos without drawing a crowd of horrified gawkers.

And since our suite has a small private pool, I don't even have to shave my legs. People this is the life!

Epilation be gone! Bring on the Bacardi!

Thoughts on Lucien Freud at the Pompidou Museum.

I saw the Lucien Freud exhibition at the Pompidou Museum in Paris this weekend.

When I was working on my BFA at the University of Iowa I had a few professors who talked about both Lucien Freud and Susan Rothenberg with an almost religious fervor. Until this weekend I'd only ever seen Freud's work in glossy art books, so I was really looking forward to getting a chance to rediscover them in person.

What can I say? I have no doubt that Cécile Debray is one of the Pompidou's strongest curators. The show was good of course. Small and compact, but good, and filled with some pretty recent works. I know this all sounds a bit flat, but what else can I say that hasn't already been said better about Lucien Freud?

And to be honest, with the exception of the 3 garden, floral paintings, nothing in the entire exhibition really moved me too much. At least not in the same way that a Francis Bacon painting literally makes my heart race or how Alice Neel's paintings give me goosebumps while simultaneously making me cry on the inside.

Some random thoughts & commentaries I had about the show:

1. "I thought it would be much more impressive." I once heard a Texan say these exact words while standing at the foot of the Eiffel tower about 6 years ago. Now I know how he felt and I am sorry that I have been making fun of him for all these many years. Also, I though the paintings would be bigger. Literally bigger.

2. The exhibition audio guide was useless and annoying. I am a museum audio guide junkie, but after paying for this one--I wanted a refund. It's bad enough that I have to walk around looking like a complete freak-show wearing those stylish headphone sets circa 1986, so I most certainly don't like being talked down to by a palm-sized device with a posh British accent.

3. Almost all the paintings were framed behind glass. I'd never seen that before. Interesting and weird. I don't understand why this is so. (If anybody has insights please speak up in comments.)

4. The garden paintings were AMAZING. The color was....like little mini earthquakes. While the rest of the masses were jockeying for position infront of the fleshy portraits, my husband and I stood mesmorized in front of them looking back and forth at eachother like "Holy crap. Are you seeing this!?"

5. I wish my paintings could make mini earthquakes.

That is all.

Last Minute Escape!

This weekend we took a last minute get-away to Paris. As much as we love the Barbie Dream House, we very much enjoy getting away from Metz. Also, I needed a cheeseburger. So, we hopped on the TGV and away we went. We stopped by the Pompidou to see the Pierre Soulages retrospective, and spent about an hour at the elles@centrepompidou exhibition which was just massive in every sense of the word.

The Marlene Dumas paintings just knocked my socks off. If you can get to Paris this year, get thee to this show. After February 2011 most of this work will go back into storage untill the next time some wise curator decides it’s time to pay attention to women artists again. Ahem. Moving along.

Contrary to popular belief, the highlight of our weekend was of our weekend was not inhaling cheeseburgers at the Hard Rock Café while head-banging to System of a Down. Nope. The highlight of my weekend was scoring not one, but these two pairs of Jimmy Choo Nimbus sandals on sale.

Actually only one pair was on sale, but my lovely FrenchBoy managed to talk the sales girl into giving me the 2nd pair at the sale price since I simply couldn’t choose between two Choos.

(I bet you can’t say that real fast 5 times in a row!)

Ladies and gentlemen, I am in shoe love, but obviously I cannot wear these babies untill Spring officially arrives. Unfortunately it is currently minus 3 degrees here in Metz France, so I’m in for a long wait….which is actually a good thing cuz right about now my feet look like Frodo Baggins.

Seriously--My once lovely tootsies are lookin’ a bit rough around the edges due to the fact that I’ve been stomping around in the snow in my Harley Davidson Motorcycle boots every damn day all damn winter. So, for the next 28 days my feet will be in serious full-time in-patient rehab. I cannot be seen wearing my Choos with effin’ hobbit feet.

I’m just keepin’ it real.