a-PEELING

My mother doesn’t own a vegetable peeler. Well, didn’t. While I have the benefit of a knife skills class in culinary school, I am not great a peeling vegetables. I can tourne a potato, but if I peel potatoes for mash, you’d better hope I have a vegetable peeler… or a LOT of potatoes. When my mother requested vegetable soup over the holidays, I refused unless she let me buy a peeler. She agreed with disdain, and I spent $3 on the most generic “Domestix” variety available at the local grocer. CHANGED MY LIFE, well, my cooking anyway. With one swoop across a potato, I realized how dull my home peeler was. I put the gadget on my holiday list, and it showed up under the tree. Suddenly I have zucchini ribbons in salad & shaved carrots in my coleslaw. The possibilities are wide open, ha.

I’ve done the same with paint recently. I had access to some more highly pigmented tube watercolors recently, and it affected my approach to the work I did with them. My nature is to “make do” with what I have. It is taught as a virtue in the South. Don’t get me started on all the evils of making do. It is a mindset meant to make children grateful for what they have, but it often squashes ambition and self-value in adults. That mindset combined with all the guilt I have associated with spending money, has kept me “making do” with some watercolors that are not working for me. Now when I finish a tube that doesn’t behave in a way that serves my work, I re-order that hue or something similar from a different maker. I am exploring variations & dispersal patterns & saturation unknown. The adventure has left me open to the possibilities. Vegetable peeler & watercolors. Variations on a theme.

This next Call is also looking for variations on the theme of “Wide Open”. BWAC is one of my favorite venues, known for great jurors, reliable curatorial vision, a non-profit format & even artist run. Interested? Then check out this Call for Entries from BWAC (Brooklyn, NY) for Wide Open 10. There is a distinct discount for early entry, so don’t delay. Take a look…

CALL for ENTRIES: Wide Open 10

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ELIGIBILITY: Open to U.S. artists 18+

MEDIA: Open to all media

THEME: Wide Open “encompasses all the possibilities of knowledge and freedom & love – wide open spaces…arms wide open…eyes wide open ‐ but as with all things, there is the inevitable opposite ‐ wide open to attack…corruption…failure. What kind of fantasy is this? What does it really indicate? This juried show looks to explore the idea of “wide open” in all the hidden niches of our collective psyche.” –bwac.org

ENTRY FEE: $50 up to 3, $6 ea add’l (early) or $70 up to 3, $6 ea add’l after Jan. 19th

DEADLINE: February 4, 2019 (early bird) or February 24, 2019 (final)

NOTIFICATION: March 15, 2019

JUROR: Ylinka Barotto is an Assistant Curator at the Guggenheim Museum and has assisted on such large-scale modern and postwar retrospective exhibitions as Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting (2015); Moholy-Nagy: Future Present (2016); Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim, which showcased masterworks from the Guggenheim’s modern collection (2017); and Mystical Symbolism; The Salon de la Rose+Croix in Paris, 1892-1897 (2017, for which she contributed to the catalog with entries on many of the show’s artists. Barotto is also one of the organizing curators for the museum’s Young Collectors Council, which acquires the work of emerging artists for the museum’s permanent collection. Barotto received an MA in curatorial and museum studies at Accademia de Belle Arti di Brera in Milan and is currently working toward an MA in art history at Hunter College of the City University of New York with a focus on postwar and contemporary feminism.

AWARDS: Best of Show Gold $1000, Best of Show Silver $500, People’s Choice $250, Curator’s Choice $250 & ten (10) $100 (ea.) Certificates of Recognition.

SALES: BWAC will retain a 30% commission on all exhibition sales.