Denver International Airport Installation

Denver International Airport ‘here to there” art installation in main terminal.

One of my contributions... “Mapped,” 18 x 24″ collage with acrylic on wood panel.

I've somehow neglected to post news about my artwork at Denver International Airport (DIA)! Several enlargements from recent travel-inspired collages are part of an ongoing exhibition in the Main Terminal. An associated DIA Art Gallery show has already ended.

You don’t need to go through security to see the artwork. The installation is located on the 5th level—in the passageway directly below each of the east/west bridges, behind the rental car counters. Ask one of the cowboy-hatted greeters if you can't find it!

Details from three of my collages, all interpretations of travel, were enlarged and are included in the "here to there" installation along with those of fellow Expand artists Mary Williams, Ken Elliott, Carol Ann Waugh, and Victoria Eubanks. The panels were designed so that the elements from one image "travel" to visually connect with another -- quite a collaboration.Just making connections in Denver? You'll need to leave the secured concourses and head to the main terminal to see the work... a fun diversion, near a brewpub, if you have the time!The words that accompany the installation read:

here to therewe are wandererswe leave trails as much as we take trailsfoot steps through cities, woods, prairiesthreads that tie us to these places and each otherfragments of vistas and colorbits and pieces — we collect and leave behindcorners and u-turns that bring us full circlewe amble, we soar, we connectwe are masters at gettingfrom here to there

"Speed," by Janice McDonald, 18 x 24" collage with acrylic background on wood panel.

It's been a real thrill to see my artwork whenever I'm coming or going... or meeting up with friends/family who are! Check it out if you are traveling through Denver.

Botanicollage

About this time last year I was working on a series of nine collages with a botanical bent... and I'm really excited that they are now on view at the Loveland Museum Gallery as part of Xylem, a show of contemporary botanical artworks. The exhibition runs through March 15th in Loveland, Colorado. (Botanicollage has such a nice ring to it that I may have to continue the series!)

You're invited: open studio this weekend

October 17th-19th:Friday 5-8pm, Saturday 10am-6pm and Sunday 10am-5pm

Here's your chance to visit my collage studio! See work in progress, check out the abundant paper stash, and peruse available collages, both small and large. I'd love to show you around…Park Hill Studio Tour to benefit the Art Garage*

A map to ALL open art studios in the neighborhood is available atthe Art Garage, 6100 E. 23rd Avenue, Denver, Colorado

Free event.

*10% of sales benefit the Art Garage.

Hope you can drop by! And for my far-flung friends, I'll post pictures next week.

Collage commentary: Eric Fischl

I'm in the midst of reading artist Eric Fischl's autobiography, Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas — about the vagaries of the art market and his career trajectory. Whether you appreciate his work or not, the story is well-told and pretty fascinating. He writes about art and process in a way that is refreshingly approachable. I really liked his comments on collage, excerpted from the hardback edition, page 214-215...

"Early on in my life I wanted to embrace the margins, but as I grew up I came to realize that so much of my life has been a search for normal. I have consciously tried to make work that took fragments and pieced them back together—impressions and bits of memory collaged into foreign lands or suburban settings, all with the purpose of making them appear seamless. I was reliving my experiences as I was painting them, always at the point just before things fall apart.

Collage is the most important innovation in art since perspective was discovered in the fourteenth century. It's one of the defining techniques of modernism, especially for the surrealists. Perspective is a mathematical construct that creates the illusion of deep space. It enabled painters to move art away from the religious icon and into the realm of realism. Perspective imitated how we see. Collage, on the other hand, is an artificial construct that imitates how the mind works. It breaks down the world of images into fragments of memory torn from their original context. It's ahistorical, which is why avant-garde artists embraced it. My colleagues eagerly employed the collage technique and made it central to their art. They experimented with how far apart—at what distance both physically and intellectually—you could place two disparate images on a canvas and still create a formal composition that had dynamic tension, even if the juxtaposed images were essentially arbitrary.

I was uncomfortable with fragmentation and meaninglessness even though I appreciated it in other artists' work. I needed the world around me to make sense, though not in a stultifying or overdetermined way. Rather, I felt an obligation to give my audience the impression of a coherent moment that was emotionally charged and fragile, but still holding together long enough so viewers could reflect on what it meant. Except in the case of the multi panel paintings, I did not want to make my audience put something back together in order to understand what it means."

I never tire of working with fragmentation in my own artistic practice... Ripping remains my favorite artistic gesture. Salvaging, editing, and re-ordering fragments to create new imagery, relationships and meaning continues to engage my curiosity day in and day out. I believe I compose with fragments to create some level of coherence that reveals itself to the viewer over time, perhaps not immediately... interesting to think about artistic motivations.