Joann Wheeler Fine Art from Detritus

Killing Frosts

2009-12-14T14:27:00.003-05:00

Midwinter approaches -- this one is called Chronos, and it is seasonal in that Chronos/Saturn had his celebration at midwinter in Roman times. It plays on the time-aspect of "chron" by means of a heavy watch rim around the image, and the whole thing is based on a page out of the almanac listing Killing Frosts and Growing Seasons. The turning point of the year, the longest night, moves toward the return of the light.

I've been living too much in the outside world lately -- events and committees and dramas are getting in the way of real life! Time to hibernate a little . . .

All Souls Celebration and Art Auction

2009-10-01T16:12:00.006-04:00

October 31 in Pipeline Alley between the National Transit Building and the Annex -- and in the studios. Artists are invited to set up installations, altars honoring their ancestors at noon on October 24. All Souls or Day of the Dead is celebrated all over the world with music, dance and special foods. Come in costume, and bring food, drink, music and friends!

From October 24 -October 31, there will also be a silent auction of donated art work in the basement of the Annex at 210 Seneca Street, future home of the Artists' Gallery. We have run out of funds to bring spaces up to code, so all proceeds will benefit the building fund. Artists who wish to donate work can contact Joann Wheeler 814-676-5303. Work will be on view every afternoon leading up to the All Souls celebration.

Oil Region Indie Fest 3

2009-06-16T14:25:00.006-04:00

This year's Oil Region Indie Music and Art Fest had a good, good feel, very hands-on -- happy people of all ages playing and singing in corners, on stages, on the sidewalk. The guys who were on stage an hour ago could be seen playing with their fans. And it wasn't just hands-on music -- hands-on pottery, stained glass, chalk, ceramic tiles. . . lots of creative people expressing themselves all up and down the street and in the Open Studios of the National Transit Building. We didn't need any of our rain options (indoor jam areas), there was plenty of good food, thanks to the cooperation of the Northside Business Association, and the sun shone all day long. We couldn't have asked for a better day or a better crowd!

Oil Region Indie Music and Art Festival 2009

2009-06-05T21:58:00.008-04:00

Long, long time between posts -- and lots of activity outside the studio in Oil City, PA. Next Saturday, join us for the third annual Oil Region Indie Music and Art Festival. We have moved it this year to Seneca Street and joined forces with the first Summer Saturday Street Fair. That means from 2:00 to 9:00 there will be food, vendors, stuff for the kids -- and original music all day on two stages. If you play and sing, pick a corner and set up and perform -- in the Transit Building, in the Annex, wherever.

Stained glass and pottery demos will be going on, reiki massage, a drum circle, and artists will be showing their work indoors and out.
The event will be held rain or shine -- but let's hope for shine!

In other news, check out the new social networking site for Oil City artists at (look for a link to the right) www.nationaltransitstudios.ning.com .

Invitation

2009-04-08T16:05:00.005-04:00

A sample of why I haven't been blogging or making art -- things are hopping here! Still no photos of old work to post, I seem to spend my life in meetings lately. I'm posting this one because I think it will be fun and any artists who want to join us are welcome -- bring a favorite piece of work, finger foods, and a party mood!

The following weekend, May 2, the Transit Building will host the Oil City School District Art Show -- 2,000 pieces of work from every student in the school district. Come on down!

Vernal Equinox SOLD

2009-03-21T10:52:00.006-04:00

KORE RISING is a re-run, yes -- I still haven't gotten around to taking new photos, I'm afraid. I am posting Kore again, because this is the time of year she is intended to celebrate. Kore is Persephone, who spends half her life as queen of the underworld, and March 20, the vernal equinox, is the time when she rises from the underworld and starts the whole cycle of blossom and fruit over again. I posted her before for the New Year -- well, back in the day, this was the new year!

And in spite of the chill today, I have seen the speartops of the spring bulbs poking up, and the little birds that live in the ivy of the Penn DOT building have been screaming Spring since the beginning of February. Turns out they were right, as they are every year! I have bought a big box of baby arugula to celebrate the first return of green.

Millennium

2009-03-14T08:43:00.009-04:00

MILLENNIUM (12" x 20") is another assemblage in a styrofoam packing piece. It draws on several fairly conventional apocalyptic images: the last angel blasting the last note on the Last Trump is a Renaissance angel cut from a Christmas calendar with wings of maple seed "helicopters;" the scythe collaged onto the bottom is part of the face of a clock.

This piece was done as the Y2K heebie-jeebies were getting lots of attention, but since then, I've noticed that every couple of years, there is a new "The End of the World as We Know It is Near" scenario. The last election was high on some people's radar; 2012 is next, I understand. Somebody must be making money on it!

Open Studios today and tomorrow at the National Transit Art Studios, 206-210 Seneca Street, Oil City, PA, noon to 5:00 p.m. Come and visit -- I am in Studio E in the Annex!

Psychopomp

2009-03-06T17:24:00.006-05:00

PSYCHOPOMP is a 21" x 22"composition in a styrofoam packing case frame with a window in it. It is one of the attributes of the god Hermes -- it means the conductor of souls from the land of the living to the land of the dead. You can see the winged cap as he swoops by the window. There are dozens of little bits of glitter hanging in mid-air (mounted on pins, really) to mark his passage.

I recently talked with an old friend who is familiar with my work, and he asked if I was still dealing with death -- which took me by surprise. But when I went back to look at my work, there it undeniably is. And there this piece was, overlooked in my digital photo collection, waiting to be posted.

I didn't take new pictures last weekend as I had planned -- instead I did my taxes. Death and Taxes! The inevitables. I'd rather be artistically inspired by death than by taxes, though, I guess.

Hiatus

2009-02-25T21:29:00.001-05:00

No photo tonight -- I have run out of photos, though not of work to photograph! I hope to have some time this weekend to shoot another batch of work. Last year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I did a series of small 3" x 5" paper photocollages, which I keep like a deck of cards and add to from time to time. There are over 80 at this point. It is a pleasure to do them, very quick and meditative, and not large or serious enough to make me postpone starting!

I also have a few pieces of larger work that have never been photographed or even seen the light of day for a long while. I'll decide when I dust them off if they warrant posting or not. And I am starting to work in my studio, though not as much as I would like to.

Thanks for looking so far -- thanks also to people who have dropped by the studio to see some of the work up close and personal. More to come soon, I hope!

Saturn Conjunct Venus

2009-02-21T10:38:00.008-05:00

SATURN CONJUNCT VENUS is a 29" x 29" paper photo-collage behind an old-fashioned, wood-framed window screen. When two planets are conjunct, it means that they are very near each other in the same part of the heavens from our point of view on earth, and they are said to influence each other.

Venus is, of course, the planet of love and Saturn is the planet of constraints and inexorables, like Time, Taxes, and sometimes, in the Grim Reaper role, Death. The romantic pinks of the Valentine collage give way to tones and images that are both fiercer and colder here. And whereas the other one can hang on any living room wall, this one is a more uncomfortable composition all round.

Valentine

2009-02-16T11:17:00.006-05:00

VALENTINE is a 25" x 36" photo-collage which I am posting to close the parentheses on the February 14 holiday weekend. We had a very busy time in the Transit Art studios Saturday and Sunday, welcoming visitors from the area and also those who came to take part in the three-day Bluegrass Festival.

This piece is built around a central image of Botticelli's Birth of Venus, fractured and superimposed over a heart-shaped, mysteriously whirling Kali-esque figure. The whole collage is covered with a layer of glaze and tissue paper, to blur the hard edges and add to the mystery. There are a lot of romantic pink tones, but the Valentine itself is smoky black and gray, very "noir" in spirit as well as in color.

Open Heart

2009-02-11T20:07:00.004-05:00

OPEN HEART is a 5" x 7" assemblage deep inside a styrofoam end cushion for a big, old-fashioned toner cartridge. I've been saving it up for Valentine's Day! but am posting it now, because we have Open Studios in the Transit Art Center this weekend and it promises to be busy.

There are windows cut in each side of this piece, and each one gives a tiny view: a tranquil scene, a pair of dice. Inside the main chamber is a Kirlian photo of a child, the Tarot card representing the Lovers, and a little mirror. And at the front is a big piece of glass that looks like ice, melting away.

The ice jam on Oil Creek broke up and moved out into the Allegheny earlier tonight, so we won't have a flood here this year after all. Deep breath, relax -- how good the melting of the ice feels!

History of the Age of Pisces

2009-02-07T07:24:00.006-05:00

HISTORY OF THE AGE OF PISCES is a 15" x 15" collage/assemblage on a painted styrofoam base in a 4" deep custom shadowbox frame. That frame was a great extravagance -- I had a show at De Havilland Fine Art Gallery on Newbury Street in Boston, and I went all out. Since most of my work is what you may call self-framed, this is the only one that has this kind of professional presentation.

Pisces means, of course, fish and there are four fish images, one primitive, one with an East Asian feel, one Gothic-Renaissance, and one late Victorian. The Age of Pisces is supposed to have covered roughly 2,000 years and to have ended right about now. In the last image, the fish is cut in half and is spilling out the human adventurers into the air of the next age. Wheee!

Isis Raising

2009-01-31T08:18:00.006-05:00

ISIS RAISING is an 8.5"x 9.5" composition/acrylic painting on styrofoam and paper that superimposes the myth of Isis and Osiris on a modern background: there is an upright piano and a bed painted in the niches at the bottom, and a modern-day Isis weeping just behind Isis' winged shoulder.

It is the woman-as-rescuer fantasy -- we've all tried it at least once. When Isis finds her husband Osiris cut into pieces, she tries to use her magic to put him back together and raise him from the dead. But with a vital piece missing, Osiris cannot be revived.

Osiris' spirit rising out of the papier-mache mummy is the plastic package a tube of paint came in, transparent. The hieroglyphics are real, copied from the Egyptian book of the Dead.

See Saw

2009-01-26T08:29:00.004-05:00

SEE SAW (6.5" x 8.5") is a small composition on styrofoam, one of my first experiments with this material. It doesn't set out to say anything profound -- a little whimsical play on words and an attempt to capture movement, the picture falling off the wall and hitting the see-saw, which throws its collection of beads and broken china into the air. It sets the tone for using words and word-play as the basis for an art work. Often while I am working a phrase gets caught in my mind and I'll be embroidering on it the whole time I am composing the piece. While not ambitious, this little piece is one that fits itself in almost anywhere, and for that reason I like it.

Wheel

2009-01-22T14:49:00.005-05:00

WHEEL is an 8" x 14" painting/assemblage in a styrofoam box -- actually, the bottom portion of the box that formed the base for Open Doors. It consists of a Wheel of Fortune in front of a figure taken from the visual tradition of alchemy -- a man with the head of the sun, stepping through the spheres into the world of time and juggling planets in his hands.
When we were growing up, we always ended up with Wheels or Wheeler-Dealer as nicknames (my brothers bore the brunt of that). This piece takes the last name to its mythological outer limit! It also juxtaposes blind fate and a figure which seems to have mastered it -- and truly, fate only goes so far in defining what happens to you, for good or ill. You also happen to it!

Self-Portrait

2009-01-18T08:53:00.004-05:00

SELF-PORTRAIT is an 8" x 9" painting/assemblage on a styrofoam packing piece. Contained in the profile self-portrait are partial portraits of my parents. The glasses that show up from time to time in my work all came from a time when I worked in a human services agency located down the street from a rough bar in Cambridge's Central Square. On Monday mornings I would come in to work and harvest the broken glasses from the street in front of the bar!
The large open eye is the interior eye, of course, the one that doesn't suffer from myopia or need bifocals! Intuition, the ability to see what is really going on, was something I was working on when I did this piece. You can't see it on the photo, but there is a little ledge under the eye and on it is pasted the rather mysterious quote from Scripture, "if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light."

Turn of the Century

2009-01-15T20:31:00.005-05:00

TURN OF THE CENTURY is a 9" x 12" assemblage in a shadowbox. I experimented again with painting and decoupaging on the glass to give it a time-stained look. It's an attempt to create a certain kind of Victoriana -- the fabrics, the china doll's head (actually fimo and sculpted by me), reflecting the old meaning of "turn of the century" just as we were collectively approaching a new turn of a new century. Y2K seems so long ago now! Anyway, it's just a little meditation on the nature of the passage of time.

I've always leaned toward the cluttered, comfortable "grandma's house" look, especially in winter, and most of my furniture, lamps, knick-knacks, etc. would feel right at home in 1910. This piece fits into that thrift shop decor almost as well as the flower arrangements under glass that were so popular then.

Lunar Aspects

2009-01-11T08:29:00.007-05:00

LUNAR ASPECTS (11.5" x 13.5") is composed in and on another styrofoam packing piece, using acrylic paints, transparent foil, and transparent plastic to layer the faces one over the other. The yolk of the egg/full yellow moon is a woman curled up in a dream state. The other faces in the egg may be the characters in her dream that are incomplete and hard to grasp -- like the faces we think we see on the full moon's surface.

The whole piece is about the gestational quality of sleep and dreaming -- how often does it happen that you wake with an answer to a question or a piece of inspiration that has come to you overnight? Last night was the first full moon of 2009, so this seemed a timely piece to post today.

Open Doors - SOLD

2009-01-07T10:27:00.008-05:00

OPEN DOORS is painted and self-framed in the 8" x 14.5" lid of a styrofoam box that once held test tubes. It is the piece of work that most consistently elicits pleasure in a wide variety of viewers -- I think it is hopeful and happy!

We look through a series of open doors in a gray, old-fashioned, and rather sedate interior to a door that is open to the bright light outside. Three mysterious glowing glass balls have rolled in along the floor to entice us outside, where a column of light waits just beyond the door. It is reminiscent of the house I lived in in Somerville, MA, but even more, it represents my slightly agoraphobic desire to hole up and hibernate, one that I fight every single day at this time of year!

Today the Oil City streets are covered with black ice and I slid my car into the ditch, so I inched my way back up the hill to enjoy a totally justified day of working from home. But tomorrow I will follow the glowing balls again -- that's, after all, why I imagined them!

Fourth House

2009-01-06T08:42:00.006-05:00

FOURTH HOUSE is painted and collaged on a 15" x 42" mirror, and it leaves a mirror framed in the middle so that the artist can look at herself from time to time. It is a rendering of the fourth house in my own astrological chart, the house of family and home, beginnings and ends of life. It seems to make sense that when you look at yourself, you keep your eye on those things! You can just see the chart behind the curtain: the Sun and Mercury, Saturn and Neptune, all within a few degrees of one another. This piece is not for sale. Instead, I recommend that everyone make one of their own -- it can lead to some very interesting reflections, if you'll pardon the pun!

Kore Rising SOLD

2008-12-27T08:41:00.010-05:00

KORE RISING 2.5' x 5' This is painted and collaged onto the window portion of a standard-sized french door. I like the confusion about where she is, behind the glass or in front -- it's like she's coming through the glass, rising with the sun behind her, her tissue paper dress flying in the hot solar wind. Real glass painting, which this is not, has that confusion, too, of painting in reverse on the back what is seen on the front.

She was the third in a Kore series (the other two now live in Annapolis). One of my friends refers to her as "the angel," another as "the nekkid lady." But Kore means maiden and in Greek mythology referred to Persephone. Whatever else happens to her, Kore triumphs once a year when she rises with the new year at the spring equinox. I'm posting her now to correspond with our New Year. Happy 2009!

Dream Tree - SOLD

2008-12-20T20:24:00.010-05:00

DREAM TREE, screen door inset with paper collage and assemblage behind it. I'll be saying good-bye to this one, too, after the New Year. This is a real favorite -- it's dense and rich and if you look closely, you can see a little tribute to Paul Klee in there. It's hard to photograph it because of the light reflecting off the shiny paper stock.
I've been told it's an introspective piece, and I think that's true. It took forever to do, and I'm glad it's going to the home of someone I like! I'm also glad that it will help me pay the rent on my studio. It's like a message from the forces-that-be that I have made the right move.

Hades Ikonoklastes - SOLD

2008-12-16T21:45:00.007-05:00

HADES IKONOKLASTES acrylic and paper mixed media on glass is the piece I left behind yesterday. It will now be part of the collection at Venango campus of Clarion University, a great home for it!
Everything else came downtown to my new studio, in a driving rainstorm -- safely, thanks to my friend Dan's efforts. I'm still moving in, but at least the work is up on the walls.
This Sunday is Open Studio for last minute Christmas shoppers. I have a series of about 80 small 3" x 5" paper collages, and I am framing some of them to sell as small, more affordable items -- we'll see how that goes. I'm thinking of calling them Dreamscapes. I love doing them, three or four at a time -- it's a very meditative process, like a waking dream.

Animus Caduceus 2

2008-12-10T18:29:00.006-05:00

ANIMUS CADUCEUS 2
Another 6' turned post painted and decoupaged, this time with the snakes of the caduceus woven around the face on one side.
I spent the better part of the morning in my new studio, trying to stretch a gallon of very thick and sticky flat white wall paint so that it would cover the whole space. New plasterboard, no primer -- it's a small space, but it sucked up every drop of that gallon. There were areas that looked like catacombs -- I debated about leaving them, but then went for the all-white gallery wall look. If I go in tomorrow and see too many thin spots, I'll have to buy another gallon.
The work moves in on Monday, and I am thinking of putting this piece just inside the door.

Animus Caduceus 1

2008-12-05T21:54:00.007-05:00

ANIMUS CADUCEUS 1
I found the approximately 6' tall turned wood post that forms the base for this collage in the basement of a house I lived in in Massachusetts. My landlady called and said she was having someone come in to clean out the basement and we should take anything we valued -- what a find!

It was the first large, serious piece of work I undertook, and it still has a special meaning for me. Half of each face is golden, a god -- and there are people throughout our lives that we project that golden face onto. The secret is to know that each person we encounter carries a god, even the most unlikely and unlikeable ones. That takes the pressure off the ones who blind us so much with their golden brilliance that -- for a while, anyway -- we can't see any human failings in them. Who can live up to that?

Child Tiresias

2008-12-03T16:56:00.005-05:00

CHILD TIRESIAS 10" x 14" acrylic, terracotta sculpture and assemblage in styrofoam. This one is the mirror image of Grandma's porch in the last post -- but a very different treatment. Tiresias was the blind prophet who as a punishment from the gods spent eight years of his life as a woman and as a result, had more insight than anyone. I gave him feet of oil-based clay! As a woman, I can't imagine that he learned enough in only eight years! And all his sense perceptions are scattered around and compartmentalized and not integrated, eyes in one box, ears in another.
This was not a planned piece, but one that just grew out of what I had on hand. A lot of people ask me about the hieroglyphics -- they are invented.

4007 McWhinney Street

2008-11-26T10:06:00.008-05:00

4007 McWHINNEY STREET 10" x 14" acrylic and assemblage on styrofoam.
We always went to Grandma's house for Thanksgiving when we were small. This piece represents her red brick front porch, and tries to evoke the fustiness, photos, and face-offs that are part of "family." Note the can of worms at the bottom! Grandma was afraid of a lot of things, from the weather to demon alcohol! and we protected Grandma, mostly by not telling her things. People say they can see a face in the negative space between the two women facing each other. I didn't intend it, but I can see it, too. Some elements of a piece of art create themselves! This piece is not for sale, though my mother (facing Grandma) is quite proud that she has been featured in exhibits.

Chronos 2

2008-11-23T15:39:00.009-05:00

CHRONOS 2 is another 9" x 12" shadowbox. It has a medieval castle and a banner and a space-age feeling collage all co-existing within a big "time portal" on the glass. How far away are we from those times? We've seen progress in the development of mechanical things, yes, but how much progress have we made in dealing with other human beings and nations? Was it Gandhi who, when asked his opinion of western civilization, said he thought it would be a good idea? And who said that if we didn't remember history, we would be doomed to repeat it? We could settle space, build castles in the air, but if we carry our current level of greed and violence and fear with us, well, we might as well be living in a hut in the middle ages, waiting for the plague to strike. I did this collage around the time of the first "Desert Storm" operation, when Crusades and the horrors of technology were much on my mind, and not much has changed since then.

Chronos 1

2008-11-22T07:12:00.002-05:00

CHRONOS 1
First serious snow of the season is on the ground here today and nobody is outside -- this 9" x 12" assemblage in a shadow-box is based on the page from the almanac called Killing Frosts and Growing Seasons. A good reminder that creative work comes in cycles of time and that hibernation is part of the natural cycle. This piece gives time a face, painted on the glass of the frame over the assemblage. Not a particularly friendly face, but on closer look, the mouth open to devour is a pair of hands holding the soil of the next season. Time for a nap! to gather energy for the next productive period.

Solar and Lunar Aspects

2008-11-20T14:58:00.003-05:00

SOLAR AND LUNAR ASPECTS
This is the piece of work I always turn to when I have to introduce myself. It is a 14" x 18" painting/assemblage on two joined styrofoam packing cases. It brings together the studious, responsible, orderly me with a wilder side and gives them a certain balance. At least, I like to hope so!

So why a blog? To make myself get back to work. To make myself get my work out into the public eye. It's so personal, I shy away from that, but it's time. My goal is to post several pieces a week here, starting with older work I already have on hand. As of December 1, I am renting a studio in downtown Oil City's National Transit Art Center to use as work and exhibition space. The 12 pieces that are now on display at Clarion University Venango campus will come home to my new studio instead of to my living room. Exciting! Scary. The hermit is finally going public.