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Friday, April 12, 2013

OZ Totem - Not TOTO this time

In my first exhibit of OZ, I wanted to present this wonderland of OZ from a different perspective. The original artworks were from paintings from the knees down! I then realized, that this perspective was from Toto's point of view!!!

Presently revisiting this body of work, I've been experimenting with the different elements of this series, playing with them as if they were building blocks. The most successful of this experimentation is this new OZ totem, which combines a child's mannequin with the yellow brick road leading to OZ painted on it, sitting on a cube showing different parts of Dorothy's life. Tthis makes external our journey through life onto a body and on a building block.

Below is link to an article on the first OZ exhibit at Nash Gallery, Easthampton, MA

  http://www.valleyadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=7772

Thursday, April 4, 2013

OZ & The Ruby Slippers















As I journey down the yellow brick road, exploring the tales of Frank Baum's OZ, I discovered that in fact the "ruby slippers" were silver in his original tale. When MGM released their film version of this story in Technicolor, they changed Dorothy's slippers to ruby for greater visual impact. In the studio, I've been moving the various components of my OZ pieces around and coming up with some surprising pieces. To the right I've combined a small section of Dorothy at the crossroads,  which is the small painting with the X with the mannequin piece with the yellow brick road, which used to have the ruby slippers pictured above. Journey Down the Yellow Brick Road, the hands beckoned viewers to journey down the road with me.