Officially a Master.

Front (from Left): Jennifer Dunlap, Angela Branco, Tempest NeuCollins, Betty Hart

Far too quickly two years have flown by and I find myself on the brink of graduating. This is my last ‘Open Studios’, and thus the last chance you’ll have to see where I’ve been more-or-less living since arriving in NYC. I just finished a large piece (see below) that I’ll be showing for the first time. I hope to see you all there, but if you can’t make it, please check out the new piece on my website.

Iowa III, Watercolor, india ink, pencil, pen, sharpie, and varnish on homemade paper with acrylic medium backing.

The written component of my senior thesis for SVA. I used the assignment to grapple with why landscapes were important to me personally, as well as how they function within and reflect contemporary society.

The View From Here

Art shows us ourselves outside of language. It taps into a collective store of beliefs, visions, and myths to offer a familiar yet bewildering blend of contemporary society. Artworks that remain from the past are husks of something that was once more rounded, fleshy… alive. Without a contemporaneous store of cultural knowledge, we can’t instinctively relate to these works. They become curiosities and puzzles, different from the art of now. Landscape art sticks out as an ever-evolving yet constant subject. Each generation has its own cache of landscape art, and these landscapes carry the myths of the day, shifting meaning and emphasis with the passing generations. But as the terrain itself is largely constant, we can note the changes and interpret the piece with relative confidence. In the case of contemporary landscapes, we can access the collective and glimpse the current human condition.

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Dear all,

Below is an invitation to “Exit”, my upcoming thesis show at SVA opening in (gasp!) three days, with the reception happening on March 3rd. I’ll be showing two new pieces which you can pre-screen on my website, as well as an older drawing that isn’t located in the digital world.

Please consider attending, I would love to see all of you.

Very best,

Tempest

Dear friends, family, and supporters,

As most of you know, I’m currently entering the last phase of my graduate career. This last year has been a time of great change for me, thanks in large part to the amazing teachers and artists that I have had the pleasure of working with since moving to New York. Last year brought about the evolution of my work from photo-related images to large scale watercolor drawings. I’m pleased with my recent work, and am very much looking forward to seeing where it goes in the future.

I have a few shows coming up. SVA is holding graduate open studios next week and I’ll be there for the entire evening of the reception (see flyer below). Additionally, I’ll be showing in the second senior show. I’ll post the invite upon receiving it, but if you would like to save the date, the reception will be on Thursday, March 3rd. Finally, there will be a second open studios on April 28th. I hope you will be able to make it to some of these, but as usual, I will post the work that I show on my website. If you can’t make it to this round of open studios, you can view the work digitally here.

I appreciate the ongoing support I get from all of you.

Best,

Tempest

I’ve finally photographed and added my recent work to my website. Check it out in the ‘Drawings, Fall 2010‘ and ‘Watercolors, Fall 2010′ sections (the watercolor is newest and what I’m particularly excited about).

india ink and watercolor

This weekend, I saw a show that I highly recommend to those of you residing in NYC. Gerhard Richter at The Drawing Center. I wrote a review of it, it can be found here, on Duckrabbit’s blog.

“Gerhard Richter’s lines are full of contradiction. At a glance, they appear to be gestural; pencil scribbles making vague, abstract shapes. They seem simple, bordering child-like. But a closer inspection reveals how astoundingly beautiful the marks are. They have an unclassifiable quality to them, a subtle gyration and throbbing sway. They seem both confident and tentative at once, refusing to be solidly classified as either, but also refusing any middle ground. They are somehow both, fully and without dilution. They are beautiful, intriguing, and mesmerizing. And yet, Richter removes himself from the process as much as possible. The drawings were made by taking a pencil, inserting it into a drill, and using the spinning vibrations to create the lines. He dispels the notion that the artist’s touch is important.” …

I reviewed Dawn Clements work on Duckrabbit Digital’s blog. Excerpt below. The entire post can be found here. Happy reading!

“Dawn Clements’ large drawings bear the scars of her process. Wrinkled, torn, and dirty, they mark an artist who physically throws herself into her work by kneeling on paper, dragging it across the room to a better perspective, and unceremoniously folding it to access the center. The completed drawings are never framed, but hung raw; thin, white, crumpled paper with surprisingly intimate ink renderings covering the surface. Concurrent to Clements’ process, the viewer has to physically maneuver the drawing, crouching and craning in turn. Thus, the works become as much sculpture as drawing in their physicality. But what makes Clements’ work endlessly fascinating is the way that it envelopes the viewer into her world. In J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, Franny becomes obsessed with a religious mantra. This mantra, when performed constantly, will allegedly incite religious feeling in the reciter. Similarly, when a viewer of Clements’ work becomes suitable absorbed in the details, she begins to experience the piece not as a viewer, but as the artist. The participation is no longer rote, but instead, active. … “

Despite my earlier proclamation, I got such a good response at Open Studios that I decided to update my website after all. So, if you weren’t able to make the show, you can check it out digitally.

drawings:

http://tempestneucollins.org/index.php?/project/miscellaneous-drawings-spring-2010/

and photos:

http://tempestneucollins.org/index.php?/project/trilobites/

April 29 through May 1, 2010. The Reception will be held April 29, from 5-9PM.

This semester has been quite turbulent for me–Since graduating from PNCA, I’ve been struggling to ‘find myself’ artistically. I was feeling as though I had to find a way to do art in a more direct manner. Photography was a bit too removed from the materials; I yearned to CREATE something with my hands. Over the past year, this has taken on multiple forms, from stop-motion animation to small moquettes that I would then photograph.

Fairly recently, I rediscovered drawing. At this moment, I have cast aside photography and been focused on developing this new-found interest. And, so, at open studios the primary focus will be on the drawings. Those of you that show up will get a sneak peek, of sorts.

Hope to see you there!