a m e l i a   f a i s   h a r n a s

Super concise two-month recap:

1. Hammondsport: success with two sales and First Place in my category, Drawings & Graphics.
2. 60 Hours: success with 100+ participants, no major damage due to fire & seriously good vibes - results can be viewed here.
3. Grandfather Fais: broke his hip in late June, but had successful surgery and rehabilitation, returning home and continuing physical therapy. It's been intense for the Fais Family in terms of transitioning the grandfolks into grandfolk-living, but we're happy they are able to stay home in good hands.
4. Market Street Neighborhood: moved to a second floor apartment on the east end of Market St., meaning that I'm sticking around Corning (for the time being). This includes studio space!

I've sent along this small embroidered piece to a group show in honor of Reading Frenzy's 17th Birthday. If you don't already know about this rad bookstore, then check it out here. 

The opening is tonight, and obviously, I would love to be there--and I will be, but just in spirit.

Note: This is my version of the Paris Métro map; the X (embroidered using my own hair) marks a particular stop where a particular escalator has a particular brand of escalator friction jazz music (at least it did last January) that made me particularly happy.

Next up: The Southern Tier Biennial Show - September 17th

My rule for sketchbooking while I was in Europe was to always sketch directly in pen. No pencil allowed. This meant that any mistakes would present the challenge of creative correction: how do I save the drawing despite error?

I started this page on the second day in the Prado and finished it during my fourth day in the Louvre. The top right hand drawing went terribly, so to cover up my mangled drawing of a mouth, I resorted to big guns (my black copic calligraphy pen) and added the black background. But then that looked pretty cool, so I went with it, drawing with the idea of black entering into the composition.... and I'm quite pleased with the results!

The Louvre: 

My favorite find in the Louvre was the rocketbooster prophet. The monk who painted this piece must have been especially imaginative and especially favored to get away with something so bizarre. After hundreds of rooms of medieval madonnas and saints and crucifixes, this one stuck out like a sore thumb...

Sketchbook excerpt No. 1:

After standing in a snaking, ribboned-off line for a good half hour in spitting drizzle, complete with accidental jabs from umbrella points at eye level and a smattering of languages, I found myself inside the Musée d'Orsay once again. Almost immediately, I noticed some things that haven't changed since my last visit three years prior: they still seem to be renovating the same sections of the building (at snail's pace!) & they allow way too many people/school groups in the museum at the same time. This meant that I had to attempt sketching at high over-my-shoulder pressure; I also encountered this at the other blockbuster museums like the Louvre, Uffizi and Prado, but these are hardships a sketcher must bear. Instead, I found that achieving intense, trance-like focus on sketching helps block out any awareness of the proximity of onlookers.

At d'Orsay, I discovered that I kept gravitating towards Pierre Bonnard, an early 20th century painter, probably because of the loud colors, patterns and design (my current affinity for fluorescent orange may have some sway). I also greatly enjoyed comparing the variety of stylized portraits between familiar artists like Gauguin, Manet and Gérôme and new-to-me artists like Jacques Émile Blanche, Louis Anquetin and Émile Levy.

But, what was most striking to me was how much I fell in love with Denys Puech's "Aurore," (below), which was stationed in the grand ballroom, an impressive blow-out of gilded decorative molding and lit-up crystal garlands just dripping in sparklepower. 

This canopy and cape of hair was so expertly carved by a son-of-a-farmer, that I stood for as long as I could, marveling at this marble, until a group of highschoolers started sneakershuffling in...

After a solid 4.5+ hours, one full page in the sketchbook and a furtive snack featuring Babybel & Duplo under a set of stairs, I bade adieu, merci et à la prochaine to one of my favorite museums in Paris.