Category Archives: Uncategorized

Father, Friend, and Artistic Mentor Jim Crane is having a retrospective of his cartoon work. The opening is this Sunday, October 20th, 2013 in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Special thanks to Arthur Skinner. Click on the poster for details.

I’m posting  “HIdden Hide”  out of chronological sequence. I completed it about a year ago. I was not going to include it in my l”Time Divides” show at the Unsettled because it did not seem  to “fit.” It is methodical. It is based on a grid. It is “cooler” and more “Pop Art.” Raul Dorn convinced me to include it during the install in the Unsettled Gallery’s small side gallery. As it turned out several artists said that this was their favorite work in the show. Go figure. What do you think? HIdden Hide is in the collection of Gabriel Luis Perez  Check out his amazing new work work at: http://www.gabrielluisperez.com

Above is a (finished?) new painting/collage sparked by a painting/drawing of Nolan Winkler’s:

Watermelon Dreams on a Starry, Starry Night

Also based on a Mexican Corbel, carved motifs repeated in the lower portion. There is some “Hidden Hide” in here. It occurs to me that I was born on the cusp of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. AbEx and Pop are often presented as being in opposition, but I obviously embrace them both. CC

Here is the set of paintings completed for the “Wide Bay, High Desert” art exchange. It has been an interesting exercise in that I was thinking “New Mexico” more or less consciously during the process. The last painting here is the most similar to other recent work. The exception being that it features a large Zia! These will be posted on my Gallery Page with titles and descriptions soon.

I have enjoyed WBHD and corresponding with the other artists on the blog. I have to say that I am looking forward to “just” painting again. Click on a painting for better views.

Work for the “Wide Bay, High Desert” project will ship soon. I’ll post what I’ve been working  on for this exchange in a few weeks. Here is one example:

You can see yucca blossoms above the agave. Some hybrid, or the agave in foreground? No matter. The mountain contour in the background below the clouds are the Organ Mountains as visible from our front yard.

I’m including a second painting here from long ago:

I  find no notations on this one, but recall that it was painted in North Carolina, probably early ’90s. I rediscovered this on a trip to see the Fam in St. Petersburg in April. Dudley DeGroot called this my Anasazi painting. I can imagine a ladder leaning into a black sun-symbol here. The sun is certainly a precursor to the agaves. Might have to revisit this form. This painting really does seem to foretell a move to New Mexico in 2005 to me now.  I had no idea.

Five Artists Interpret ab-strak-shun: a noun

Louis Ocepek, Raul Dorn, Carey Crane

Myriam Lozada and JD Jarvis

Opening Reception Saturday, May 18, 5 to 7 PM
The Unsettled Gallery, Las Cruces, New Mexico
905 North Mesquite, Las Cruces

I’m looking forward to joining in the Wide Bay – High Desert exchange in the next week. The Las Cruces crew says “Hello Childers.” Details below.

About Wide Bay – High Desert

What happens when you bring artists from opposite sides of the planet together to create an exhibition? Let’s take 4 artists from Queensland, Australia and 4 from New Mexico, USA and find out!

After much work behind the scenes, the result is Wide Bay – High Desert, a collaborative exhibition project between artists from two regional areas, with very different geographical and cultural perspectives, and simply overflowing with creative people. The artworks resulting from this collaboration will be shown at two beautiful but quite different galleries; one in Las Cruces and the other in Childers.

We’re also entering the world of digital technology to see if we can successfully pull off this joint exhibition. The artists will be using this blog to get to know each other and share their ideas as they work towards the final exhibition. Which will give you the chance to find out where those amazing finished works of art come from; how artists think, how and why ideas change and most importantly, how we’ll celebrate the official opening’s’!
 We hope Wide Bay – High Desert will help grow a new audience for these talented artists and expand their international horizons, whilst at the same time allowing everyone a glimpse into their creative processes. Thanks for joining us on this adventure.

About Wide Bay – High Desert

December again . . . I have not posted new work since the Convergence show opened last March, but I have been at it. Posting one here, working title “Sparrows,” completed (?) a couple of weeks ago. It was not by intention, but winter vines in our side yard look very like “Sparrows.” Sparrows feast on winter vine seedpods.

November was a productive, style-diverse art month with collage/paintings ranging from spare to Sparrows. I also cradled works on panels over Thanksgiving break, which sounds more poetical (or strange?) than it is.

Looking forward to a show at the “Unsettled” Gallery in March. Thinking of titles to sum it all up. Or some it all up. I’ll let you know.

Greetings Friends, 

BOOK COVER

I am pleased to herald the release of  Robert B. Ray’s latest book, WALDEN x 40 Essays on Thoreau. Robert is a brilliant professor, writer, poet, and musician.    

Robert asked me to create a simple calligraphic brush and ink drawing of Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond for the book cover, and I am thrilled that it was used. Here is a portion of the book description from Indiana University Press:

In 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved from his parents’ house in Concord, Massachusetts, to a one-room cabin on land owned by his mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson. After 26 months he transformed his stay in the woods into one of the most famous events in American history.  . . .  Ray derives his 40 brief essays from the details of Walden itself, reading the book in the way that Thoreau proposed to explore his own life — deliberately. Ray demonstrates that however accustomed we have grown to its lessons, Walden continues to be as surprising as the November snowfall that, Thoreau reports, “covered the ground… and surrounded me suddenly with the scenery of winter.”

PAINTING/COLLAGE UPDATE

I have completed or begun many works since the last posting in June. A selection of new paintings will be posted in early 2012. – Carey

November 21, 2011