Skipfolio: Throwback Shot

Skip Hill      Fall Mid 90's? North Parrington Oval

 The University of Oklahoma, Norman Oklahoma.

Much too serious....I was spilling my guts out for this Art, was chained to it. Like a crow looking for a glittery thing, mining the History of Art and the banality of Pop culture, The Mimbres...Reaching and searching, desperate for something to hustle, copy or covet...Something visually cool and intellectually deep, with ( Le Patte) just the right painterly touch ...a style, a vision of what to draw, paint, sculpt or shape.... something to get me in the Market then into fame and fortune...just like that....straight tripping...certainly high,..Half the time I didn't know what the hell I was doing with myself, with art or why I was even trying....but on that breezy, sunny day

I could testify.."That lips distill nectar."

Doing the bohemian thing like a method actor, soul-pressed, mind-stressed living that shit Daily, to make this Art. Praying  to jesus for backup and the next twenty bucks. 

Wondering every day why I wasn't in Amsterdam?

"Liefde is Mogelijk"

Vincent Van Gogh   Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, Easel, and Japanese print,

January 1889 (F527)  Oil on Canvas  60x49 cm  Courtauld Institute Galleries, London

Van Gogh cut off his ear

and gave it to a prostitute,

who flung it away in disgust.

Van,

whores don't want ears.

They want money.

I guess that's why you were such a great painter:

you didn't understand much else.

"But hey, that Gauguin was a crazy fool too..."

Skipfolio: Tripping towards Home

Skip Hill     The Prophet (He Got Game)  2009  

28"h x 24"w    monoprint with artist embellishments

The drive back through the Heartland was practically a religious experience. Six states in one day through varied landscapes and shifts of terrain, culture and time.

Tempting the speed limit, blowing past big rigs and crossing borders with the face of my son before my mind's eye. Billboards preach affirmation of my purpose, destiny and blessings... "I love you, I love you, I love you"...God.

Omens of safe return and promises all along the way. I had driven most of the trip in silence, except for my thoughts, the atmospheric noise of passing cars and whispering wind. Three-hundred miles out, I loaded the CD player with Moodswing's Spiritual High, The State of Independence featuring the seductive vocals of Chrissie Hynde.  By the time I hit the Ozarks, a slushy mix of rain and snow had limited visibility, yet I felt the truck practically drive itself homeward like a horse honing in towards its stable. At dusk, the sun shone like a divine eye through the gathering of clouds as it settled into the horizon. I couldn't help but smile at the tears gathering in my eyes listening to Dr. Martin Luther King's haunting sermon of hope  backed by a gospel chorus in the third movement.

Crossing over into the Cherokee Nation and the descending dark, riding the pony past Checotah, Sallisaw and Henryetta, another life away from Constitution Hall, the gritty streets of Philly, the Washington Monument, Stone Mountain and the Georgia pines. Indian casinos appear like cities of heaven in the distance and just as quickly fade into night behind me. The chasm of miles between here and home shrinking with every minute and the blur of white lines slipping under my wake.

One more Love's truck stop and my exit is next. Pulling into the driveway as if I had left just yesterday, I feel my heart race even as my mind eases. I sit in the car with my eyes closed and "Spiritual High" bumping loud, listening to the refrain and chorus for the last time tonight..."the state of independence shall be...the state of independence shall be.." The garage door slowly rises as Adam comes running out to the car. I lift up him, we hold each other tight without a word and I feel his tears convulsing in his chest as well as mine,... both of us engulfed in the swirl of music and this precious moment.

Skip Hill: New Work Atlanta, 2010

Skip Hill        Lekker LaLa (Kumquat)  

2010, acrylic/epoxy on canvas, 20"h x 20"w

The Real Thing?

A fingerprint has intensifed the debate about the origin of a mysterious drawing sold at auction for $21,850. Is it a bargain Leonardo da Vinci picked up under the noses of connoisseurs or is it just an old German drawing? That is the $150 million question that art scholars in Europe and the U.S. are asking about La Bella Principessa.

.....The subject is believed to be Bianca Sforza, the illegitimate daughter of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan.

  Atlanta, GA.

Lekker LaLa (Kumquat) isn't a Leonardo but rather the first painting I have produced this year.  I have been on the road away from the studio the last five weeks and had been in a creative funk for some time even before my trip began. 

      Lekker LaLa is the effort that has brought me out of the desert and will be a special painting in my body of work.

      Collectors and observers of my work always remark about the rich colors, but the challenge of this new painting has been keeping the colors muted and accentuating the contrast of ebony and the white of these long Winter days.

Skipfolio: Niki de Saint Phalle is a FloMasta!

The Firebird is Charlotte’s newest work of privately-owned public art and is a permanent fixture in the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art collection. Standing 17-feet 5-inches tall, the sculpture is a whimsical, bird-like creature covered from top to bottom in pieces of mirrored and colored glass. The Firebird was installed on the plaza of the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art facing South Tryon Street overlooking the new Wells Fargo Cultural Campus where the museum is located.

Created in 1991 by French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002), the sculpture was purchased by museum patron Andreas Bechtler specifically for placement in front of the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art.

Bechtler, a Charlotte resident and native of Switzerland, was looking for a sculpture to serve as a counterpoint to the geometric lines of the museum’s architecture, designed by renowned Swiss architect Mario Botta. http://www.botta.ch/Page/Recenti_en.php 

“When I saw the Firebird, I knew it was outstanding. I knew it would be great for the museum,” Andreas Bechtler said. “The Firebird is joyful, uplifting and engaging. It makes you feel that life is good.”

The Bechtler Museum of Modern Art is named after the family of Andreas Bechtler. Bechtler assembled and inherited a collection of more than 1,400 artworks created by major figures of 20^th-century modernism and committed it to the city of Charlotte.

The Bechtler collection comprises artworks by seminal figures such as Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miro, Jean Tinguely, Max Ernst, Andy Warhol, Le Corbusier, Sol LeWitt, Edgar Degas, Nicolas de Stael, Barbara Hepworth and Picasso. Books, photographs and letters illustrating personal connections to the Bechtler family accompany some of the works in the collection. Only a handful of the artworks have been on public view in the United States.

                                 http://www.bechtler.org/

Lillian Blades @ Hammond House Gallery In Atlanta

Lillian Blades is a FloMasta! Resurrecting Life by taking tossed and neglected materials and creating lyrical, ethereal mosaics that are open windows into memory, family myths, the past and present.

http://www.lillianblades.com/

Larry Walker @ Mason Murer Gallery Atlanta

Larry Walker is a FloMasta! In his seventies and still knocking it out like a youngster

                                          http://www.masonmurer.com/artists/walker_larry.htm

Ok, so I'm chilling with my cousin Rodney in Philly. The house on Player Drive is new enough not to register on my GPS. It's a big, red brick Georgian in a new neighborhood of upper-middle class Indians and Russians.  A police officer's family lives across the street. Inside Rodney and Cheryl's home is peaceful, serene, white walls, area rugs and sofas with well-appointed touches that mirror the Islamic faith that she practices and lives. She maintains a beautiful prayer room upstairs. Much of the furniture has been collected in the course of their extended travels through the world, most extensively through the Middle-East. Their military and government service has afforded them rich opportunities to build both valued professional and personal relationships in the heart of the region. He teases me, "Say, Man, you ever been to the Burj Al Arab in Dubai? Ever have lunch at the Muntaha? Two-hundred meters above Jumeriah Beach, The Palm and World Islands?" 
But when asked to chose his favorite spot,.."Man, I like Bahrain..."

     So Rodney mentions that he could use some help moving some things around in the basement. "Here, I wanna show you somethin'..",
He opens a door in the hall at the foot of the stairs.  I had already walked by the door several times since my stay, assuming it was closet. We descend the stairs to the basement.
I notice how much space there is under the house. Lots of storage in here...lots of Rodney's hoard of custom-made suits, stacked piles of moving boxes, and stuff they've picked up over the years.  So with a big grin and a flourish he laid out his goal to me... "Skip,..help me turn this space into a Man Cave, where I can come down here, play my music, play some pool and chill."

So I ask him, " You wanna get started now?"  

 "Bet...
yeah, Cuz'.

That'll be great."

 "Alright..."  
and like two gophers digging out a new hole, we got to work.

We put together several portable wardrobes and grabbed suits in turn by the armful, stuffing them in neat and tight..and out of sight. We waded through the boxes like water. We shoved, shifted, pushed, dragged, lifted, tossed and hauled  until we had a system in place, and a place for everything. One area was cleared out and swept. Half an hour later, another six square feet of space is unburied and freed up.

 

"What's the story on the pool table?""Hey, it's heavy, but we can put it up if you wanna try... let's do something special with this room first, before we put up the pool table."  Searching through a large box he pulls out bolts of fabrics and curtains purchased at Bahrain's famous Autumn Market. I'm selecting Afghan rugs, and rustic Iranian furniture. Then go through their collection of original paintings and drawings from Naples, Sierra Leone, Spain and Djibouti.  As the concept begins unfolding we agreed that we're going for a look and atmosphere of a sultan's tent in a desert oasis. Or a private club tucked deep in the maze of a crowded souk in Damascus or Baghdad.

Twenty four hours later we're putting on the final finish of the Man Cave.
"My Baby is going to be happy with this, Man..."