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Posts Tagged ‘Corning NY’

Binghamton

Posted in Current Events, tagged , , , , , , , on April 4, 2009| Leave a Comment »

A Return to RootsI live in a part of New York state that doesn’t normally get a lot of headlines.  We’re somewhat rural with a few smaller  cities scattered across what is called the Southern Tier  that runs along the NY/Pennsylvania border.  

We have Corning which is known for its glass industry including a world-class museum.  There’s Ithaca with  Cornell and Ithaca College.  Then there’s my hometown of Elmira where Mark Twain spent his summers, writing many of his books from his study overlooking the valley, and is buried here.  Home of the late, great Ernie Davis.  We’re also known for our prisons.  I can barely contain my pride.

Then a little east there’s Binghamton.  

It was primarily known as the birthplace of IBM but after yesterday will be known in the national mind as the location of yet another murderous rampage.

14 killed.

I don’t know much about the assailant and I really don’t need to hear a lot.  I’m sure there will be all kinds of new info today and  in the week ahead, all profiling a troubled soul.  Unfortunately, we’ve heard it all before.  Too many times.

I don’t have any answers to the scourge of mass killings.  I have sympathy for the families who lost members.   I have empathy for those who witnessed and survived, many immigrants to this country.  Their terror and bewilderment that such a thing could happen in their chosen home is palpable.

And I have a degree of sorrow and empathy for the killer.  While I can’t understand how a person could be driven to such violence , I can imagine the alienation and rage that ran through his mind.  I don’t know his circumstances or what might have possibly tripped that final switch but he obviously lived in a troubled state of mind without the necessary coping mechanisms.  

That doesn’t excuse or justify his actions.  It only brings to mind the scores of people that live among us with that same anger, that same sense of separation.  The vast majority live this side of the line but more and more cross it and we’re left watching the news, horrified.

And you hope and you pray that this time will be the last.

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Big Break

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Influences, tagged , , on March 23, 2009| 2 Comments »

 

1998In January of 1998, I was still working as a waiter in a Perkins Restaurant, at the same time painting and showing  my work in three galleries.  I was still unsure as to whether I should make the jump to going full-time as a painter.  Oh, the work was well received and nearly everything I was painting sold but I was never convinced that it was anything more than a temporary whim of the public.  Something that would soon fade.  

So I delayed going full-time.

One day while waiting, a single man sat in my station.  I recognized him as someone who I had waited on a number of times with his family.  It was lunch rush and my station was full so I was dashing around.  I stopped and quickly asked if I could get him something to drink.

“I didn’t come here to eat.  I came to buy paintings.”

I looked at him and my mind was blank.  I wasn’t excited.  Actually, I was a little irked.  I was busy as hell and this guy wanted to talk.  I always sort of prided myself in giving 100% to whatever job I had at the moment, even something that might be considered menial.  Hastily, I told him that this was not the time or place for such a conversation and we agreed to meet later that day at the West End Gallery in Corning.

We met and it turned out that he was a designer/ project manager for Corning, Inc.  He knew me from my waiting on his  family and was always impressed by my service as a waiter.  He said I reminded him of waiters he knew in  Venice who treated waiting as an honored profession and would wait their entire lives.  Because of this favorable impression, when he learned a couple of years before that I was showing my work at the West End, he started to follow the work.  He said he loved the way I worked with color and the personal style of my work.

With this in mind, he was now in the middle of a project, building a new photonics research facility in New Jersey for Corning.  The project was nearing completion and he stunned me when he said he had used my work as the basis for the color scheme of the building.  Now he needed some paintings for some key spots and he thought that my work would only be fitting.  Five or six larger pieces.  And he needed them in about six weeks.  Could I help him?

Instantly my head was reeling with questions on how I could do this.  You see, my work up to that point was very small, generally little things in the 4″ X 6″ or 9″ X 12″ range with a few going up to the 18″ x 24″ range.  I had taught myself a technique that worked really well in small blocks but wasn’t sure if I could translate it to a much larger piece.  And where would I paint?  I had started building my studio but it was nowhere near ready.  I was painting on a folding table in our kitchen/dining area.  How could I do this in the time frame he was giving me?  Was I ready for this?

“Sure,” I said.  “No problem.”  Inside, I wasn’t so positive.1998

I took time off from my job at Perkins and set up on my little folding table.  Since I was only adept at painting small blocks of color, I devised my paintings to be larger paintings comprised of smaller building blocks.  It allowed me to maintain my technique.  I struggled for a few weeks but somehow the pieces came around.  I used acrylic inks, acrylic paint, oil paints, chalk and pastels- whatever fit the need of the moment.  As the deadline approached I finally began to believe that I could do this.

At the end, I delivered five paintings.  Two large single pieces and a large triptych for the boardroom.  They were happy and I was very pleased and exhilarated by the whole experience.  It had given me an opportunity to paint on a much larger scale, to expand my work.  My confidence grew in my ability to create work that was beyond the temporary whim I mentioned earlier.  I could do this.

Within a few months I was painting full-time.  All the fears I had allowed to keep me from doing this were swept aside.  That was eleven years ago and seems like a hundred.

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Motivators

Posted in Biographical, Influences, Technique/History, tagged , on February 7, 2009| 2 Comments »

991-855We went to the opening of the Little Gems show at the West End Gallery in Corning last night.  It’s an annual show of very small paintings by the gallery artists and is always one of my favorite shows to attend.  There was a great turnout and I talked with folks I hadn’t seen in quite some time, some of them the earliest buyers of my work.

The Little Gems show was the first show where I ever exhibited my work, back in 1995.  It was an interesting experience, as I mentioned in an earlier post on this blog, to sit back and see how people react to the work.  It ran the whole spectrum of emotions, from exhilaration as some stopped and talked with friends about how they liked the small pieces by this new artist, to despondency as some brusquely walked by without a second glance.

I remember a local, well-known businessman approaching me and seeing my name tag, said,”You’re GC Myers?  I love your work!  It’s just great!  But…”

Uh-oh.  There’s a but.  That is never a good thing…

“But I only buy paintings of places I know.  Y’know, a local landscape or landmark.”

What?  At the time, it was an odd sensation.  It was one of the most exuberant expressions of approval for my work I had yet heard followed within a breath by a backhanded slap.  It took a long time before I processed this comment but in the long run it helped me.  It sparked my natural contrarian nature and gave me some resolve to not to kowtow to such little minds, to paint what I wished to paint in whatever manner I so chose.  This has served me well over the years and whenever I feel I am steering my work to someone else’s criteria of validity, I pull out that incident and stay on my own course.

I’ve had other incidents like this.  For instance, there is a well-known collector from our area with a vast collection who I’ve known for many years.  He knew me before I was a painter.  Whenever we meet he is highly complimentary but has never added one of my pieces to his collection.  Several years ago I learned the reason.

At an opening he said, “I really should have one of your pieces but…”

Uh-oh.

“But I only buy oil paintings.”

Now I’ve known of this bias for a long time but hearing it from a savvy collector was a kick in  the head.  All I could ask myself was if this guy would not want a Wyeth watercolor or a Klee work on paper?  He was cutting out a broad swath of the art world with this somewhat arbitrary qualifier.  It seemed to me that it was his loss.

Again, I have used that as incentive over the years.  The “don’t tell me what I can or can’t do” factor is a big motivator for me, even now.

Hey, that makes me want to paint.  See ya’…….

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And The Future Comes

Posted in Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , on January 31, 2009| 2 Comments »

And The Future ComesThis a new smaller painting with the title  And The Future Comes, an 8″ by 16″ canvas.  It is a continuation of my Red Roof series and is, what I think, a very strong piece.

There’s a great deal of warmth in this piece and the mosaic-like quality of the sky adds depth and vibration.  There is a quiet, contemplative feel throughout the piece and while the coming light of the future seems ominous, it is also hopeful. 

This painting will be at the West End Gallery in Corning, NY  for their upcoming Little Gems show which opens February 6.  There is also a group of very small paintings that I call Redtree Thumbnails .  They are 2″ by 4″ canvasses which give them a real gem-like quality and are a great way for the beginning collector to obtain a first piece.

 If interested call Linda or Hedy at the West End at 607-936-2011. 

9909-102-redtree-thumbnail-29909-105-redtree-thumbnail-5Redtree Thumbnail #4

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Exiles

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Influences, tagged , , on December 22, 2008| 5 Comments »

A Prayer For Light  This past week I mentioned a series of paintings that I had finished in the mid 90’s called Exiles.  This series was the basis for my first solo show and remains a very prominent and personal group of work for me.  I had started showing my work publicly for the first time at the West End Gallery in Corning in February.  It was a huge first step for me.  A few months later, my mom, who lived in Florida, was diagnosed with lung cancer.  

This, in itself, was not unexpected. She had been a smoker since she 13 or 14 years old, often smoking 2-3 packs a day.  She smoked Camels.  No filters here.  Many of my childhood memories are tinged with white clouds of cigarette smoke, something that seems horrible and unthinkable now but those were different times with different sensibilities.  

A Prayer For ReliefHer struggle with her cancer was fairly short and tortuous, lasting about five months.  Her cancer had moved into her lymph system and became systemic, invading her breasts and bones.  It ended in early November of 1995.  She was 63 years old.

The feelings of helplessness and hopelessness that came from this were manifested in the faces I began to paint.  They mirrored the extreme pain we watched her endure and could do nothing to alleviate.  They were the only way that I could express the myriad feelings of that time and to this day fill me with emotion.

That is, in short, how this series came about and why I still show the work on my website.  My work has evolved over the years but  this work remains perhaps the closest to me.

exile14-smallexile15-small
exile16-small

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Quiet Rising

Posted in Influences, Recent Paintings, tagged , , on December 5, 2008| 2 Comments »

Quiet Rising

It seems a little odd to sit down and write something about why you like your own work.  I know a lot of artists find it difficult and maybe even a little distasteful.  For me, it’s about trying to find that part of a painting that reaches out to people, the part that is communicating.  I am the first person to see the work so in order for the piece to be able to speak to others it must first speak to me.  It must excite me on some level.  That excitement is a very big part of my process and carries me through a lot of long days alone in my studio.  So when I write or speak about my own work it’s so that I might understand better why the painting works.

That being said, this is a painting titled Quiet Rising which I’m showing  because I like this piece on many different levels.  On an emotional level I find this piece very calm, very quiet.  There is a nice harmony in the way the colors and forms fit together, again in a way that I find very calming.  For me, that appearance of placid calm seems to be an important aspect in my own evaluation of my work.

The path in the foreground has a curve that I find very intriguing.  I can’t put my finger on the reason but it reminds me of an element from Henri Rousseau painting.  Maybe it’s the movement of the path or the quality of the blue in the sky– I can’t be sure.  A lot of the feelings I get from a piece are not quite fully realized thoughts.  More like snippets or a tiny bit of a memory that comes to you without the whole episode, leaving you unsure if there even was a real memory there to begin with.

Whatever the case, this painting works for me and is worth sharing.  It’s being shown at the West End Gallery in Corning, NY.

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