Filtering by Tag: hillyer art space

HALF WILD

Added on by Fawna Xiao.

The reception for Half Wild was last night and I am still in a bit of a high off the crowd and energy from it. The weather last night was every artists' nightmare -- cold and rain all day (monstrous puddles)... and yet, we were packed. I couldn't even get into my own gallery space for a good half hour. Mindblowing.

I love gallery openings. I get a huge adrenaline rush from running around and talking to passionate people with great questions. Last night may have been one of the best openings I've ever been a part of; it rocked.

Half Wild is an interesting show because it's in the same place as before but the look is quite different. Everything has morphed in a very short period of time -- most of the work was created in the last few weeks which also means that I didn't have time to sit and stare at them and register what I've done. Usually the framed works hang in my house for a couple months and I get to see how they look actually up on a wall before I decide if they can go out into the world. Much of the work for this show is black on white, which perhaps some people perceive as really "dark" work, and definitely a contrast to the bright colors from before. So essentially I was not sure how people would react to the work -- luckily my fears were unfounded.

I got a lot of questions about what Half Wild means and where it's from. Balance is such an important part of my work - both visually and as a basic concept. If you live a balanced life, you'll be alright. My work is constantly seeking a meditative balance -- something between chaos and nothingness (the ink on the paper and the paper itself), something between one and many (many prints have another half to them, i.e Black Mountains: East and Black Mountains: West), something between dark and light (black on white vs. white on black). The process behind my work is of focused chaos. I consider half wild a way of living, a life philosophy. Live a wild life but always have a home, a core, a focus.