September is a cooling off time here in the Valley, and the cooler temps bring out all the Phoenicians like ants after a heavy storm.  The Fall season at the gallery is also a time of new exhibits and returning shows.

This year, 1Spot Gallery is bringing back our movie poster show with “Not Yet Rated 2”  The requirements are on the Ziindi site, as well as on our facebook page, Indigenous artists from the world over are encouraged to submit your art.

The book project “Byting Willows” is also progressing, and I don’t have any new pics to share, but we did discover quite a bit more original drawings back from 1995.  We’re going to take one of those drawings and include it in the show in March.

I’ve also been productive as usual this month, producing new ink drawings, along with working on a pair of Foomi’s.  And I also finished two paintings as well.

The first finished painting is titled “Read Between the Lines”, and is a piece on giving voice to the indigenous people who have no platform to voice their opinions.  Subtle statements and opinions on land, sovereignty, and equal rights are written over a multi-colored background. I used spray paints, oil markers, and acrylic for this piece. I finished up this painting in the early morning hours, and after completing this and stepping out into the quiet night and the neighborhood, it was a welcome catharsis to the anger I had when I entered my studio.

The next piece I completed is titled, “The Burden of It All”, and contains spray paint, marker, and acrylic.  Originally a darker piece, I tried using colors I normally don’t use and made the painting pop better in the process.  Some of the paintings I create have a lot of emotion in them, and I decided to show that in the title.  Also of interest is the use of gold paint in this piece, it accentuates the yellow nicely!

This month I started sketching “Do’ Tso'” again, the translated title means “Big Fly”.  One of the Big Series paintings that I have on the back burner, I was stuck translating the sketch to the 4′ x 5′ canvas, and I had left it leaning up against my wall for over several months.  Usually when I hit a block like this on a particular canvas, the solution comes into my head either several; days, months, years later.  In this case I was lucky that it was several months.  My original study for this drawing depended on surreal human aspects for the main character, as well as using grasshopper limbs as the legs to the side of the body.  However when I was scaling the study up, I saw that this approach wouldn’t be as dramatic on a grander scale.  Hence the block.

Over the past weekend and week, I resolved the crisis of hand/imagination, and am now nearly done completing the full outline of the painting.  Leaving nothing to chance or on the “fly” painting, sketching the full idea out makes painting large works easier.  I hope to get to the color phase by next month, barring other projects I have on my hands currently.

Another side item, I recently completed some new t-shirts using the new STOIC logo, a limited run of 6 dirty print t-shirts.  Check them out in the Gallery when you stop by, the sizes are small, smaller, smallest, so maybe for them young chilluns.

Right now, my stock of Phoenix shirts is low, and I only have two shirts left, and I also have Rez Deep shirts still available.

As always, thank you for listening/reading/scrutinizing/supporting my art and I’ll update you on the status of all my projects next month!