Anne Banks Collage Award

I feel very honored to have received the Anne Banks Collage Award for my piece entitled Purpose in The Art League's Bits and Pieces exhibition this April. It was such a pleasure sharing more about my artwork in an Q&A with George. Read the interview here: http://www.theartleague.org/blog/2015/04/22/qa-with-fiber-artist-kevin-mccarthy/ Also on view is Ecumenical Blue, in The Art League's April All-Media exhibition. 

New Work

This is work I have made since September 2014. I'm back to exploring. While I miss weaving, embroidery is so portable, and the incorporation of photographs really appeals to my underlying interest in exploring identity and memory. 

The abstract embroideries Memory in Color and One Night are stitched on photographs from the past. When I was in high school in the late 90s and in college in the early 2000s, we used to still get photos printed. Using old-school disposable cameras and film gave us only one chance per shot. If your finger was in front of the viewfinder or flash, you accidentally clicked a picture of the ground or someone's leg, or your hand shook and blurred the image, too bad. You may not even discover your mistake until you got the film developed and saw the effects of your unskilled picture taking. 

The photos in these works are leftovers, mistakes, accidents. The teabag on the surface gives the artwork structural integrity so that I can create a thick layer of stitching; adds a physical element to an ephemeral representation of a memory; and, further conceals the already unclear image in the photograph. The stitching on top adds a vibrancy that reminds me of what I see when I close my eyes after looking at a bright light. Like identity, these stitched images are complex and layered. Like memory, these stitched images are not clear and some areas are more vibrant than others.

As I stitched, I realized that these memories are over and that these photos exist nowhere else. I don't have the negatives. The moment they captured has passed and the memory of that moment has blurred. 

Memory in Color

3x5", Found Materials 

October 2014

One Night

3x5", Found Materials

November 2014

Robert & Sara Genn's The Wandering Studio

As a world traveler myself, I especially enjoyed Sara Genn's blog post this morning and want to share it with you all. If you don't know of this blog series, I highly recommend it. I'm not a painter, but I always find The Painter's Keys blog insightful and inspiring. http://clicks.robertgenn.com/wandering-studio.php

What makes "good" art?

Around the world, people endlessly question what makes art good. What does good art look like? I found some interesting insights into this query on www.artbusiness.com/how-to-recognize-the-best-art.html.

I picked out my three favorite responses to share with you:

DeWitt Cheng, freelance art writer and critic, Bay Area, CA: Jorge Luis Borges wrote, "Music, states of happiness, mythology, faces molded by time, certain twilights and certain paces-- all these are trying to tell us something, or have told us something we should not have missed, or are about to tell us something; that imminence of a revelation that is not produced is, perhaps, the aesthetic reality." While art has become, in the experimental 20th and 21st centuries, impossible to define-- critics learned long ago to stop being prescriptive, perhaps a little too well-- Borges's tentative manifesto makes a good starting point-- as long as we don't succumb to mystical mush. Good visual art looks stunningly right and, in retrospect, obvious, or inevitable-- yet it's also continually surprising. It is a powerful paradox. How can someone have possibly made this? How in the world could it not have been made?

Robert Shimshak, Collector, Berkeley, CA: Good art is timeless. It will assume a new relevance to each generation, and to yourself as you grow. It will connect to the past and feed the future. It has a simple and rigorous beauty that commands your gaze and thoughts whenever you look at it. The best work will break your heart. As a collector, you will know it when you see it. It's personal. You will not have to be convinced by anyone to acquire it; it will be something you simply must have. It is like a good marriage that completes a feeling inside you, something that lasts forever and grows with time.

Marsea Goldberg, New Image Art, Los Angeles: Originality, representational of the time when it was created, passion, a frame of reference, freshness, intellectual content, and is uniquely identifiable as the work of that particular artist. The art should effortlessly have as many of these characteristics as possible-- or none at all. It also has to have magic; if you try too hard, the magic could fly away. The artist needs to have a vision and it's important that the work doesn't go into a dead end. It's helpful if the artist has the capacity to reinvent their creativity through various skills and mediums.

Marilyn Morgan Hillery

The Pearl Fincher MFA in Houston, Texas is exhibiting my grandmother's artwork this month. The display is in their Marilyn Morgan Hillery Community Art Gallery, named after my grandmother, an active contributor and board-member.

I am so thankful for all that my grandmother has taught me about art, and just letting me experiment in her art room as a child! What a gift to be given - making art for pleasure.

Smriti Dixit

Just discovered some fantastic fiber art by this Indian artist: http://www.artalivegallery.com/artists.php?cat=artists&scat=161

Michael: thank you for introducing her work to me!

Got into the show!

I'm pleased to write that Bandhini was one of 40 exhibition finalist artworks, out 200 submissions, chosen for inclusion in Infinity Art Gallery's Black and White Exhibition!

Follow the link to view the exhibition: http://www.infinityartgallery.com/black-and-white/