Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Buy Art Providence (the lasting revenge)

My painting Sweater Revenge has been selected by the City of Providence for their 2011 Buy Art Campaign.  If you are in Providence you can receive a button for free if you purchase a piece of art this holiday season. My image is one of 5, so whatever your mood, we got a button for you.


There are several events planned in conjunction with the BUY ART Campaign.
Craftland hosts BUY ART Reception Thursday, December 8th, 5-8pm.
Craftland webpage 

 An art exhibit at City Hall opening December 14th.  (more details to follow).

to find out more go here.

Also I just received the actual painting in the mail on its return journey from Delaware and the RSVP exhibit curated by John Vick, at the New Wilmington Art Association. It has had quite a workout lately.

press release

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Plant Pigments -- Coreopsis


With hope in my heart, I placed the flowers in water.



After a night of soaking the water turned a lovely shade of amber. After boiling it for hours and hour it turned a dreggy green brown.



I did a little paint test. It flowed like a light watercolor.



I soaked the bottom of a sheet of cotton page.
Not a raging success but it was fun.

Monday, July 18, 2011

New Project: Natural Pigments

Coreopsis

I decided to make my concern about my health and my own studio's toxicity into a project. I am slowly researching how to make my own pigments from plants I can grow myself. According to Rita Buchanan author of A Dyer's Garden I am already growing a prime pigment flower, Coreopsis.



I am talking to Kremer Pigments in NYC about non-deadly colorfast additives.

If anyone has any advice or resources please send them my way. I will post my progress here.

And according to WildColours.co.uk you can make yarn to look like this with Coreopsis:

Saying Goodbye to Comfortable Distance










Thank you
for all of your support.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Girls Rock Camp Showcase flyer.




download a printable pdf of the showcase flyer

or click the image above to download a jpeg.

Hey Rhode Island please download and distribute this flyer.
and don't forget to bring a tissue to the show, it is very moving.

Girls Rock! RI

Friday, July 1, 2011

Craftland Friday Interview

clean living late nights in the studio.


Craftland just posted an interview with me.


Click here to read all about it.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Comfortable Distance Review by Greg Cook


Holding Pattern, graphite on paper, 2009

In Delia Kovac's painting Semi Self-Portrait As a Ski Mask, the eyes stare out of the cartooned mask doleful and maybe a bit bonkers, while the mouth hole is empty. The ski mask is often the uniform of aggression that prefers to remain anonymous — muggers, stick-up men, covert operators, insurgent fighters, death squads. Guys, mostly.

Kovac writes that the series of ski-masked heads in her exhibit "Comfortable Distance" at Craftland (235 Westminster Street, Providence, through July 16) spring from her "cold Midwestern youth" and thoughts about "contemporary unease regarding the social face of women." So for her, the paintings — with their sleepy eyes or freaked-out bug eyes and teeth — seem to be about female beauty. But I keep thinking about what it means for women to put on the mask usually associated with male aggression. Also here is a pair of giant ski masks that Kovac has knit. They're perhaps twice the size of normal, which turns them buffoonish, undercutting what might be menace.

Kovac's technique is driven by a love of stylized pattern — painting lots of dots or dashes or rings to indicate knit texture. And this is part of the charm of pencil drawings like Holding Pattern, which seems to depict a pair of guinea pigs or lemmings facing each other, belly to belly, with their long tongues stretched out and about to touch. It's an alluringly weird, tender gesture, made more charming by Kovac's cartoony line and the fact that she has lovingly drawn each little strand of fur.

Elsewhere this love of expression is the main focus of pencil-and-ink drawings like Loss + Fury, in which a bundle of curved marks add up to a sort of cloud of hair.

Her Social Structures ink drawings are a suite of studies of simplified, stylized brick fortress walls. Kovac says their inspiration came from Renaissance paintings of ideal cities, 19th- and 20th-century "feminist utopian narratives," and the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls. As drawings, they're again animated by the many different ways to caricature patterns of bricks. They depict castle walls or city walls, all empty inside, perhaps abandoned and beginning to be reclaimed by nature. As in many of her drawings and paintings, Kovac somehow imbues these charming, somewhat offhand renderings with a psychological charge. They read like Jungian symbols embodying twin feelings of imprisonment and safety.

-Greg Cook
June 21, 2011
Providence Phoenix

Here is a link to the entire article.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

studio clean up



after all the activity prepping for my show at craftland, I am cleaning up my workspace while watching a Project Runway Marathon. In series 7 the contestants had to design digitally printed fabirc. i think my textiles blows theirs away, just saying. More about the competition here.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Comfortable Distance: Work 2006 - 2011 Opens 6/16 @ Craftland



June 16 - July 16, 2011
Delia Kovac
COMFORTABLE DISTANCE

@ The Craftland Gallery

Handmade images of private and public space.
Including the debut of a drawing collaboration with Marissa Paternoster.

OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, June 16th, 5pm - 8pm

more info
Facebook event page

HOURS: Monday - Saturday: 10am - 6pm
Sundays: 11am - 5pm
LOCATION: 235 Westminster St
Providence RI 02903
401.272.4285
info@craftlandshop.com

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Home is where the heART is - New Urban Arts' Annual Fundraiser




I am dropping off this piece to New Urban Arts, for their annual Fundraiser this THURSDAY.

NUA is an amazing after school arts program.
You should support them.

here is what they have to say for themselves.

Home is where the heART is - New Urban Arts' Annual Fundraiser
Thu, May 12, 7pm – 9pm

Put on your fuzzy slippers, slip on your favorite bathrobe and make yourself at a home that has REAL heART… "The feelings I have experienced are magical. New Urban Arts is in many ways a home, filled with family, & art. New Urban Arts is one of the most important things to me in the world." –New Urban Arts Student Join us for “Home is where the heART is”, our annual benefit on May 12, 2011 in our studio to celebrate the creative home we’re providing for our young people. • Support our NATIONALLY recognized arts mentoring programs • Meet some of our young artists and Artist Mentors • Silent auction of artwork and arts “experiences” • Join in recognizing those who have demonstrated unwavering commitment to New Urban Arts • See your friends, meet some new ones and have fun!

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Feels Like Flying



I sang tenor in a 4 part harmony Like A Prayer choir with 6 members of the ASSEMBLY OF LIGHT CHOIR and the band CAVE OF COLORS. What did you do this weekend? Can't top that can you?

This performance was part of Madonnarama, a benefit for Girls Rock RI!---where musicians took on the pop songs as a challenge and an honor.

I "designed" the costumes.
Meaning I got some fabric and passed out some of my masks I made for the WITH OUT YOU I'M NOTHING exhibit.

ENJOY.
I did.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Required Reading (3 Days left of the Magical Child Repository Exhibit)

I am slowing down a little on this blog as I finally transition to a real portfolio site. (I'll give you the URL as soon as there is something to show).

So I am a little late posting these BUT they are worth the wait.

Art Middleton the Curator of the Magical Child Repository is maintaining a blog here about the project. And since he is a real writer, it is great to read.

Greg Cook did a nice write up of the whole show for the Providence Phoenix here

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Visit with New Urban Arts and the PPL Special Collection.



Emmy Bright, Art Mentoring Fellow at New Urban Arts, asked me to help kick off the first day of a week long handmade book intensive. This past Monday I ate waffles and showed some youth and mentors how to make a stab binding. We also paid a visit to the Providence Public Library's Special Collection.


New Urban Arts blogged about it.
read it here.
And the PPL Special Collection has a blog.

After 5 days, they made a collaborative editioned book.
(I will post a picture as soon as I have one.)

Monday, April 11, 2011

Artists Schooled in Online Sales. Article just published in PBN

Have you ever wanted to see a picture of me smiling really really big and talking about my internet presence. please click here

More about the Creative Capital Foundation's Internet for Artist Conference here.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

The Magic Child Repository, April 7 - May 7, 2011



My artist book/zine FORMAL APOLOGY is on view April 7 - May 7 at the Magic Child Repository, Group show of handmade books curated by Art Middleton at CRAFTLAND in Providence, RI.

Mr. Middleton asked me to create an image for the postcard. so if you've ever wanted to know what my sketch book looks like or how I store my x-actos---today is your lucky day.

I am also collaborating with Artist Mentor Fellow, Emmy Bright to create some artist book workshops for high school students during Providence Public Schools' Spring Break (APRIL 18th-23rd) at New Urban Arts.


Please join us @ CRAFTLAND on April 7th for the opening of the Magic Child Repository.


Click Here for more info.

The Magic Child Repository is a month long celebration of handmade books highlighting local and national independent presses. The show investigates the line between the designed art object and the book, showing that design and construction can inform how a collection of writing may be enjoyed on different levels, and how different disciplines can inform and embolden each other to create a product that is dynamic and unique.

Opening reception Thursday, April 7th from 5-8pm!
Please also join us for a story event with Art and Walker on Saturday, April 9th at 8pm.

The Magic Child Repository features the work of these small presses:

The Corresponding Society
Corrugated Press
Double Cross Press
Flying Guillotine
Greying Ghost
Kidney Press
Noemi Press
Rope-a-Dope Press
Rose Metal Press
Small Fires Press
Tuesday: An Art Project
Ugly Duckling Presse

Also available for perusal in our reading lounge, is work by Mara Bethel, Emmy Bright, Tom Bubul, Jen Corace, Claire Donato, If'n Books + Marks, Delia Kovac, Walker Mettling, Jenn Morea, Andrew Oesch, Kate Schapira, Dan Wood and Pippi Zornoza.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Friday, March 18, 2011

Appropriated drawing.



Here is an image from the Doodle Drag event in January.
My drawing is getting good use.

I stole this image from Golfcake.
I hope they don't mind. since we are sharing here.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Doodle Drag: Deadline Friday!



Doodle Drag is an ongoing drawing event and experiment; the brainchild of doodling mates Marissa P and LNY.

I am sending drawings over to their next project "Lights Out".

You can too.

The deadline is FRIDAY.
send your drawings in.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

The Ideal CIty is Always Walled premieres in Providence.



I will be Premiering my video THE IDEAL CITY IS ALWAYS WALLED
Friday March 18th
7 -9 PM
80 Washington St
Providence, RI

Showcase sans statements by Greg Cook



The Providence Phoenix just published a review by Greg Cook of the Crossing Currents Exhibit.

Review: 'Crossing Currents: Feminism Now' at URI

Culture Stops: the Abscence of Art



"On Thursday, March 10th, 2011, you will be asked to witness a world devoid of creativity, imagination and thought: America after culture stops.

Culture Stops! is a citizen-driven, peaceful day of action by individuals and organizations in the creative sector across the United States who share the simple belief that the power of creative thought is the lifeblood of democracy.

We come together to call attention to the deep and widespread cuts, proposed by Congress and the President to federal funding for the arts and humanities, heritage and preservation, arts education and a host of related federal programs that quietly fuel the creative sector."

Culture Stops

Monday, March 7, 2011

Invaded Skyline.


(Natalie Northrup's Untitled)

The show is up.
Open 24 hours a day in the windows of the URI College of Continuing Education Library
80 Washington Street
Providence, RI

Gallery Night Reception
Thursday, March 17 from 5-9pm




(LNY's Trend the topic)

Featuring: LNY, Arthur Middleton, Natalie Northrup, Marissa Paternoster, Kyla Zoe Rafert and Amy Squires.

Up until March 31, 2011.

Monday, February 14, 2011

New Curatorial Project



The Hive Archive and the Hera Gallery asked me to curate a window exhibit in the University of Rhode Island Library in downtown Providence with the loose theme of feminism. The window exhibit dovetails with Hera and the Hive's retrospective show entitled Cross Currents. You can see what I came up with in the month of March, until then here is a little preview.


Politics is the art of the possible. Otto von Bismarck. 1868

Feminism is a political stance. Feminism expands what is possible. Instead of the von Bismarck quote that begins this statement, in this exhibition I am using poet, activist, and essayist Adrienne Rich concept of the Arts of the Possible. Rich believes that newness and social change are made through connective creative acts. Like Rich, I see the challenge of the von Bismarck quote to be: How do we make more things possible? In this spirit I invited artists and writers, who’s work builds new lexicons of imagery and troubles well-worn parameters. Creativity can supersede cultural conventions, but when it is really effective it expands what is possible artistically, personally and politically.

This grouping of artists and writers reveals their similarities slowly. All the artists see humans as fantastic creatures capable of dark and delicate ruminations. Each artist sees through a warped mirror. They individually build new worlds of wonder or disquieted longing. Collectively they speak of the fantastic and imagined body, as a metaphor and method to promulgate questions of gender and ethical living.



Kyla Zoe Rafert, creates odd Victorian domestic settings populated almost exclusively with pensive young women. Much like the protagonist in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's classic feminist novella the Yellow Wallpaper, they are subsumed into the domestic patterns that decorate their seemingly sedate parlors. Rafert is a consummate printmaker. Formally, her etchings highlight her dead-on draftsmanship and beauty and the eeriness of brutally made marks.


Marissa Paternoster forges dark worlds. With thousands of tiny lines she builds figures that are equal parts post-modern mannerism and cartoon nightmare. Paternoster’s work ceaselessly confronts the viewer with a pained and elusive slippery subject. Her bodies are disjointed and without firm boundaries. In her work gender becomes a horrible carnival ride where desire and etiquette reveal their disgusting and abhorrent origins.

Amy Squires
uses the body as her subject. In her site-specific installations and two-dimensional works, she takes traditional feminine tropes and inverts and celebrates them. Her work is influenced as much by minimalism as it is the Feminist Art movement of the 1970’s. Her work is inherently interdisciplinary and encompasses the contradictions of combining corporeality with immateriality.


Natalie Northrup, is devoted to the poetry of formalism. Her work is stridently handmade, revealing the labor inherent to fine art and women’s traditional handwork. Beyond that her work on paper and fabric pieces speak of brevity and abjectness in the same breath. Her roughly hewn marks refuse to be refined or controlled. Her marks read like an untidy Emily Dickenson poem. Her puckered and pulled fabric work reveals the ambiguity between preciousness and benign neglect. She finds the power of ambiguity.

Arthur Middleton
, as a writer traverses unmarked paths guided by his heart light. Though seemingly straightforward his work is not simple. He mines lost historical and imagined modern spaces to find passionate, radical, and tender domesticity. He does not write to come to terms with the world. He writes new worlds into existence.



LNY
, reclaims portraiture as a vibrant contemporary art form. His work is global. It can be found on the streets of Japan, Korea, the USA, France, China and Germany. His work humanizes and commemorates individuals moving though the global diaspora. His oversized and painstakingly drawn portraits of immigrants and other dislocated subjects are found in indistinguishable urban sprawls. His work reveals the human politics of place and displacement while meshing socially engaged street art with magical realism.



Author Joanna Ruocco and artist Sarah McDermott maintain an ongoing collaboration across disciplines and time zones. McDermott deftly draws and prints sinuous lines onto textured papers. This saturation of information, both graphic and tactile, dovetail with Roucco’s dexterous uses of language and her flexible and creative lexicon. McDermott illustrated Ruocco’s book The Mothering Coven (Ellipsis Press). Their latest joint effort is the book Compendium of Domestic Incidents. They are 2/3rds of a collective that publishes Birkensnake, an experimental fiction journal.

Curator
Delia Kovac
February 2011

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Doodle Drag

I took a trip to dear dear New Jersey in January. I participated in the first DOODLE DRAG event. More pictures of the event on Joydropper.




Doodle Drag is an open art event collaboration thing created by my pals Marissa and LNY.
They just posted there first open call.

Such a simple joyful idea. Do it.

Why do we always end up drawing by ourselves? Combat isolation I say.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Wet Walls/ Winter Woes.



I live in the Northeastern United States. It has been an amazingly wet winter. There seems to be a cycle of snow, freezing rain and back to snow. There are large unyielding piles of snow on the edges of all the streets in Providence. A wee bit ago, I noticed that my dry wall wasn't so dry, in fact it was soft. Cutting into the wall to investigate we found what we thought was black mold. Horrors! We brought in a mold expert who ripped apart the wall further to reveal no mold, just wet walls. We are letting them breath and dry.

I moved all my materials behind a makeshift plastic wall as a precaution. It kinda looks like that scene from ET.

I know there is no normal. But I am looking forward to getting my studio up and running.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Refugee Reading Room @ Space 1026



I have a piece in a The Refugee Reading Room at Space 1026 organized by the incomparable Amze Emmons.
February 4th – 25th, 2011

I mailed off 125 free multiples. Get them while they last.
I will post about my piece after the opening.

Here's a peek




show info below.


Space 1026

1026 arch street 2nd floor,

philadelphia, PA 19107


When


Opening - please come if you are able

Friday, February 4th, 7-10 PM


February 4th – 25th, 2011

<--more->
In response to an invitation to exhibit at Space 1026, I proposed an exhibition in which a post utopian installation would serve as a distribution point for free publications by a host of other artists, designers, cartoonists and illustrators. After months of planning that project is about to become real.

It is my hope that this exhibition will transform the gallery space, sparking new relationships between creators and audience, and that this will lead to a range of interesting interdisciplinary connections within an experimental gift economy. This arrangement is obviously informed by my own aesthetic, but I think the conceptual connections between print, community, and utopian experiments are made stronger when put in conversation with architectural phenomena and notions of displacement.

This installation will feature works by the following contributors:

Kjellgren Alkire

Art Codex

Pat Aulisio

Mike Bauer

Diana Behl

Book Bombs -- Mary Tasillo and Michelle Wilson

Jamison Brosseau

Ellie Brown

Natalie Campbell

Tova Carlin

Chain Magazine

Cece Cole

CA Conrad

Ryan Dodgson

Josh Doster

Angela Earley

Faesthetic Magazine

Jedd Flanscha

Casey Grabowski

Geoff Hargadon

Lauren Haldeman

Kay Healy

John Hitchcock

Holly Holly Hobby Hobby

Matt Hopson-Walker

Chad Kouri

Delia Kovac

Andy Kozlowski

Michelle Levy

Max Liboiron

Lumpen Magazine

The Machete Group

Margin Detail

Kembrew McLeod

Megawords Magazine

Andrew Moeller

The Moving Crew

N55

Matt Neff

Heidi Nelson

Never Nothing

Scott Nobles

Notice Notice

Michael Perrone

Sarah Nichole Phillips

Greg Pizzoli

Poetry Magazine

The Post Family

Proximity Magazine

Ian Sampson

Carrie Scanga

Jonthan Skinner/EcoPoetics

David Tallitsch

Danielle Tegeder

Temporary Services

RL Tillman

Breanne Trammell

Pointed Press-- Tricia Treacy & Katie Smith

Frank Sherlock

Eli VandenBerg

Jenna Weiss

Brian Wiggins

Jing Yu

Match Zimmerman

And many more


Audio Soundscape composed by Scott Sherk


In her seminal book of essays, The Poethical Wager, Joan Retallack builds a complexly beautiful argument that in tumultuous times one should model the world in which they wish to live. In some small way this project aspires to be such a model.