ANNIE HECKMAN

Today the house of cards finally went up, after many attempts. I was reminded that the classic problem of the house of cards is that the builder gets excited towards the end and trembles, destroying the whole thing. That happened a few times. Photos tomorrow!

The vendor of the day is Glow Inc. Their products are pretty remarkable. Their *weakest* glowing paint, the white paint I’m using for this project, is bright enough that a fellow artist thought the work was being lit by a blacklight when there was no light source present. In fact, my room-within-a-room is much more lit up by the installation itself than I had anticipated, and I’m having to make adjustments to make the pieces more discernable because they’re casting so much light on each other. If these kind of technical glow details interest you, the Glow Forum (managed by Glow Inc.) might be a good site to visit. It features a ton of questions and ideas about how to use the paint, and feedback from folks at the company to help people understand the paint’s properties and capabilities.

And a very wise, discerning artist I am honored to know has featured my work in his writings at the Chicago Art Examiner. Check out this article from Darrell Roberts, “Have you ever wanted to see art that glows?“, and drop him a comment to tell him how smart he is for being interested in phosphorescent art!

A search for ‘glow in the dark’ on Youtube yields some interesting results. Here’s one of them below:

Darrell Roberts, Chicago City View, 2007, oil on canvas, 10 x 8 inches

This weekend I’ll be making my way over to see a new series of abstractions by Chicago-based Darrell Roberts at Thomas McCormick Gallery in the West Loop. Surface Matters is opening this Friday, February 6, from 5-8 pm. The experience of staring down one of Darrell’s paintings is hallucinatory and tactile; encrusted, vibrating surfaces formed by heavy layers of chunky oil paint fold around the edges of his canvases to make a sculptural form pop from the wall. And the fun he has making them is clear, maybe even without getting to know him — this is someone who really loves to paint and spread the feeling of powerful visual experiences. An archaeological dig for your eyes.

I had a great studio visit with Darrell Roberts yesterday (who has an upcoming solo show at Thomas McCormick Gallery in Chicago opening next week). The coolest part of looking at the in-progress bone piece with Darrell was watching him arrange the pieces and getting a sense of how someone might approach them to build out of them. This was in my studio away from home, in East Garfield Park, where it’s easier to stage things and set up installations. Meanwhile the factory — painting both sides of the paper pieces with phosphorescent paint — continues:

in progress - painting the cut-outs

I also got a chance to visit The Art Center in Highland Park this week. Their space is huge and I’m working on plans for how to best build an enclosure so the piece can be viewed in the dark/light cycle it needs to glow and recharge.