On view at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art SEPTEMBER 26, 2012 – JANUARY 6, 2013.

All works are available through Lisa Sette Gallery.

http://www.jenbekman.com/shows/year-life-8-string-theory-drawings/

I started these gouache on paper drawings in late 2010, about the same time I was due to give birth to our first baby boy. Needless to say it was a time of immense change and anticipation. During my pregnancy I decided not to make any art, instead I stored all the ideas in my memory bank for future use. After our son was born it all came flooding out. Within a year I had made a mountain of work, bought and remodeled an apartment building and helped raise a new baby with the help of an equally busy husband.

Why take on so much – crazy? Part of it was having all these ideas stored up inside of me and wanting to see them realized. Another part was proving that a woman artist who has had a baby can have a family and still do the work.  In the contemporary art world we aren’t supposed to talk about our feelings or our personal life – unless there is some sort of irony or sarcasm involved as a way to deflate any real feelings of happiness or frustration. Why not come out with it?

During this crazy year these String Theory Drawings were the one constant in my life. I would come to the studio for a couple of hours each day and escape into my work.  The evolution of these drawings and how they slowly cam into focus over time – each little line stacked upon itself, each color responding to the next brought me peace and solace in a time of roaring distraction.

These 8 drawings hold the life of a year.

String Theory: A description of physical reality in which the fundamental entities are not particles but tiny string-like loops. Different oscillations of the loops correspond to what we now consider different “elementary” particles. String theory is a leading candidate for a “theory of everything”. All drawings are gouache on paper.

For more information please visit Lisa Sette Gallery.

By Allison Arieff

Fragments of Carrie Marill’s fantastical Visual Aides series are as surprising to the eye

as Obama’s uttering of “clean coal technology” is to the ear. What at first seems a

bucolic glimpse into agrarian idyll reveals itself to be a mind-boggling mash-up: equal

parts pre-industrial arcadia and post-apocalyptic terrain.

Be Realistic, Demand the Impossible sounds like an awesome Tony Robbins

affirmation: in visual form, this work by Marill seems to me a perfect illustration of our

present-day realities (not to mention a spot-on assessment of the current political

climate). The pioneer-era obsessions of America’s recession-weary urbanites—

heirloom livestock, recycling, alternative energy and water conservation—co-exist

tenuously with other, less-eco pursuits like pampered pets, exotic birds, and um,

nuclear power. This motley assortment of quotidian elements seems to co-exist in a

waiting for the other shoe to drop sort of way. Are those dark clouds encroaching or

receding?

To Read More …. Allison Arieff’s essay

I have a continual struggle to maintain a vegetarian diet. Bottom line, I like meat but I don’t agree with how the animals are treated in factory farms.  My way of boycotting this behavior is by abstaining from factory raised meat. The good stuff is out there, the animals which are treated with respect and not pumped with hormones, but they are hard to find and expensive. My exposure to documentaries, books and articles on the meat industry leaves me feeling heartbroken for the lack of respect these animals are given during most of their lifetime. I am not opposed to eating meat, I crave protein and have a hard time satiating that craving with a vegetarian diet. This body of work is a way for me to face these animals and see if once again I can convince myself that their unhappiness is not worth my craving for meat.

The Persian Miniatures have intense color, minute attention to detail, and a corralling of nature, all of which are enhanced by the limitation of a single viewer, a seemingly controlled experience. On the other hand, the Japanese Scroll Paintings are inherently expansive in their reach. Their focus on nature is much more expansive and unbridled.  There are vast panoramic scenes that are aided by the genre’s composition and can be viewed by many at a time.

My challenge in these works was to combine both expansiveness and inclusiveness into one painting, whilst using the similarities of pattern and use of gold as a foundation for my process.

For more information please visit Lisa Sette Gallery.

In 2006 I was traveling thru France and found brilliantly colored printed “visual aides” at a flea market. Originally these visual aides were didactic drawings used in classrooms in the late 1950’s to illustrate for children different aspects of the world (farming, industry, water tables the seashore, etc). I scanned, archived and reproduced these images on watercolor paper and updated them with specific current events which relate to the state of our environment and how humans anthropomorphize the planet. The chosen events were applied to the drawings in a similar style as the originals so the completed image becomes a “Where’s Waldo” of what’s evolved and devolved environmentally and socially since the 1950’s.  Collectively the works introduce contemporary issues and ideals into a 1950’s world view creating a sometimes satirical, but persistently critical look into to our collective past and future.

For more information please contact Jen Bekman Gallery

2 prints from this series are available at 20×200.com