Facing Ourselves

There's a really interesting exhibit at the Main Art Center in the Downtown Kingsport Association right now called "Facing Ourselves" Here are the artists who are involved:

And here is the description of the show:

The Challenge: 15 photographs of 15 artists who create 15 portraits. Any media. Any style. Six by six inches. Period.

The Result:Facing Ourselves, an exhibit of nearly 225 portraits.

Viewing the Exhibit:

• The source photograph of each artist hangs by the portraits of that artist.
• Each position in a grid of portraits corresponds to the same artist in all grids.
• These positions correspond with the placement of  the photos above.

And here's my self-portrait:

(c) 2011 "Cindi Huss" by Cindi Huss

But I don't do faces. I'm not good at them. They're hard and people get cranky when you portray them badly. So you might ask why on earth I committed to make a whole bunch of portraits. Well, you see, like most other things that are good for me, I lay the blame squarely at my mother's feet.

Eating my lima beans and Brussel sprouts. Her.

Cleaning my room. Her.

Taking a shower once a week as a kid whether I needed it or not. Well, OK, that was mostly Dad.

So, fine. My folks were all about bringing me up right and teaching me to do what was good for me whether I liked it or not.

And that's why I took on this crazy project. I learned a lot including that I can, indeed, do faces. I still find it to be a, shall we say, character-building exercise, however.

I also used conte crayon for the first time since elementary school and really enjoyed it and learned that I still have plenty of room for imporvement, but most folks weren't to cranky, so . . .

The installation is difficult to photograph due to the gloss sealer on some of the paintings and the plastic bags on some of the pastels and charcoals. However, you can visit the exhibit on the 2nd floor of the Downtown Kingsport Association (140 W. Main St., Kingsport, TN) through July 28 or see the rest of my portraits and the original photographs we all worked from on my website.

Work as Art

Well, I've completed two weeks of working in the gallery at the Downtown Kingsport Association as part of my exhibit and I like it. A lot! As I wrote to a friend, "You (or at least I) get a lot more done and slack a lot less if you (or I) know someone could walk in and witness either your remarkable industriousness or your deplorable sloth at any moment!"

I got addicted to my 8' high, 12' wide black felt design wall VERY quickly. Currently I have my newest finished piece (based on the Quebecor/Press area of downtown Kingsport that currently is being demolished) hanging on the wall:

Structural Artifacts: The Press I (detail below)

 

as well as a work in progress that I started about a year before we moved (that'd be 2007):

This was the first "After the Storm" quilt I started. Since then I've completed three others.

The opening went well Nov. 4, but I was too busy hanging out with folks to take pictures. There were never so many people that I couldn't chat with everyone, but there were no breaks either. Thanks so much everyone who attended. And for those of you who couldn't attend, here's what the gallery looks like:

At the end of the room you can see my workspace. The right-hand wall is the main display wall (the left-hand wall is primarily windows, but I'll have photos hanging there by the Dec. 2 reception), with "The Truth As I See It," my new "Further Up and Further In" (photo coming soon), "After the Storm II," silk art fabric entitled "Dichotomy," "Contemplating Madness," another new piece called "A Matter of Perspective" (photo below), and a grouping of small work (also below).

I will host another reception on Dec. 2 and should have made significant progress on the "After the Storm" piece by then,

The DKA has asked to extend the exhibit until the week of Jan. 3, which I am happy to do.

Jessica Fischer of the Kingsport Times-News wrote a lovely article on me and the exhibit. Thanks, Jessica! And I'll appear on Channel 11's live Daytime Tri-Cities on Dec. 7 (show begins at 10 a.m.)