Personal Effects at Kemper Museum

Personal Effects exhibition at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art March 23–October 12, 2012 This exhibition, drawn from works of art in the Kemper Museum’s permanent collection, explores the portrait and the still life as depictions of objects imbued with both personal meaning and wider cultural iconography. The memory of an activity stilled, a hint that someone [...]

pen and ink drawing of Miguel Rivera

Miguel Rivera is chair of printmaking at the Kansas City Art Institute.  He is a wonderful teacher – gentle and thoughtful.  He has a great face and as soon as we met I asked if he’d model for a portrait.  You can learn all about Miguel and see some of his work on his web [...]

A Chandelier for Cecily and Mike

December 23, 2011 — just barely in time for Christmas — I completed this cool chandelier for my daughter and son-in-law’s dining room table.

Coffee Table for Jen and Chad

My niece and nephew asked me to make a coffee table 24 x 24 inches and 14 inches high for their living room.  I think they really meant 24 x 36 inches, so I’m gonna have to make another it seems.  Still, there’s something wicked cool about this one — aluminum top and silver-gilded turned [...]

Danson pen and ink drawing 81 x 42 inches white and black pen on paper tinted rich brown

Drawing of my friend Danson – again, white and black ink pen on tinted paper.  In this piece, I really LOVE the color I painted on the paper.  It was so luscious I hesitated to draw over it.  I’ve been layering up these colors, mixing pigment suspensions in water and using a spritzer to apply [...]

“Scotty” pen and ink drawing 92 x 45 inches on watercolor tinted paper

Artist Archie Scott Gobber generously agreed to model for me.  We had a pretty good time together — I’d asked him to bring along something of his work and I was thinking he’d bring something large I could place behind him when I photographed him. He brought some very small stuff, actually and I got [...]

America Now and Here – Kansas City

Famous artist Eric Fischl and film-producer friend, Donald Rosenfeld were in Kansas City to select work for an unusual exhibition called the Kansas City Collection.  At the same time, Eric was promoting his dream of a traveling exhibition of post-911 American arts.  Eric had already selected my work for the KC Collection show when I met [...]

PVC Heat Shrink Baren Cover

From time to time it’s been difficult to obtain quality takenokawa (bamboo husk) for recovering my barens.  For some time I’ve wondered about alternative materials for baren covers, especially about using heat shrink tubing.  I bought some six inch wide clear layflat PVC heat shrink tubing (12 inch circumference), cut a length about 2 1/2 [...]

Robin 85 x 45 inches – large scale pen and ink drawing in white, blue, black inks on watercolor tinted paper

Robin Carnahan portrait completed April 14, 2011.  I first tinted the paper a deep blue using Prussian Blue and Carbon Black pigment suspensions in water.  Then I drew in layers of white ink, blue ink, and black ink back and forth until I felt the drawing was no longer improved.

“Joel” Large Scale Pen and Ink Drawing in White and Black Ink on Tinted Paper

REALLY love this one! I was tempted to title it “this is not Joe’s face” after Magritte’s famous not-a-pipe. In 1991 I was in Japan with a group of US, Canadian, and European karate guys led by Tsutomu Ohshima.  Ohshima Sensei organized a fabulous and exhausting tour which included visits to Hiroshima, Miyajima, Kyoto — [...]

Next Page »