Runcible spoon, a monkey and two redefined nudes

This first new paperwork, Monkeyboy, was born while sketching some ideas for a work inspired by Lear's The Owl and Pussycat for an upcoming show at Northeast Kingdom Artisans Guild.  I found myself fixating on the runcible spoon, while on the radio I overheard a man talking about eating the brains of a living monkey. I was also meditating the life of a child I have watched grow to adulthood, and his mother, who raised him manipulating, him, as did her mother, confusing love with power, dining on an elixir of repression and unimagined dreams. He is at death's door, like Hansel, fattened by the witch, his only reward is the promise of eternal life in the magic kingdom of God.

Monkey Boy, or

"My darling Monkeyboy, you're just so sweet, I could eat you all up."

11 x 14 x 1.5

Cardstock, enameled paper, tin foil, rice paper

"Daddy long-leg, 1972". Going through a pile of old works, I came upon two nude drawings I'd done when I lived on Hemenway Street in Boston, in my first solo apartment in that city.  I reframed the male, retitling it, after noticing a slight anatomical miscalculation, revealing my lack of formal, disciplined training.

Male Nude 

10 x 12

Pencil

"Nana's Pimple," another nude, also with peculiar anatomy,wearing fishnet stockings is a version of a woman I'd been enamored of way back in Baltimore.Removing the drawing from it's acidic mat I began playing with the drawing keeping the yellowed paper as the border of the polygon design, giving her a bold new setting, maybe with a little elegance to enhance the weird fondness I have for the drawing, and for lovely Joan R.

Nana's Pimple 1972-2015

10 x 8 x 1.5

Pencil Drawing, Cardstock, foam board, Rice paper

you can also see more of my work at my website: www.frasewhitepaperglass.com

Expulsion from the Garden

Part III

Expulsi de paradiso

Flight

20 x 30 x 3

Acrylic, Watercolor on cardstock

Murmurations

We are all Jews looking for the promised land. 

 Humanity has continued to populate the earth, looking for homelands, that exotic land of milk and honey. They flee the oppressors, internal and external, in the land of their birth.  It is my belief that life is growth and learning, expanding our hearts to goodness, kindness to others and our minds to knowledge.  Is it not true that that one treat others with the respect with which they uphold their own self? Yet some of those who mouth "do unto others" still listen to those seeking power, who pretend to purify by calling for death and destruction, chanting with forked tongue, spewing hatred and violence.  The voices of vengeance and retribution take over the slow progression of good, of love and caring, assuring the minions that after the slaughter, peace will prevail.

Fanning the Flames

with

 Inflammatory News

12 x 13 x 3

The flocks gather, and the horrors of the past repeated. 

Stockades are filled with munitions.  

No crops are sown, no harvest follows.

We are the pets of our anger, the avengers for the lust of our gods.

lethal murmuration

12 x 13

A third work is in  progress, to consolidate this trilogy of fear.  My hope is that beneath this testimony of the worst of humankind, there lies within the human heart, and mind, the belief that included in the necessity for survival is a true universal desire for home: peace, freedom and boundless unity of the good, the caring, and the truly brave.

Flying Fancy in St. Johnsbury

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRkM3tlaJPg

Click on the youtube video link to view 

Flights of Fancy

an exhibit of my works, 

in paper, glass and rock

 at 

The Northeast Kingdom Artisans Guild

 St. Johnsbury, Vermont

 January - February 2015.

    Your tour for the evening features 

the sweet dulcimer music

 of 

Sally Rogers

and 

lilting jazz-inspired waltzes by

Dimitri Shostakovich

The Joy of In Progress

The most beautiful moments in the studio are often during the progress of a work.  A idea being refined, or often enough, redefined.  A work not quite there, but like a child, showing a spark of purity, of essence, ripening, maybe of necessity, but towards a never ending goal. Here are some works a present, and some, now completed, but in transition to that moment when it is done, it is good, and a point where it can only be taken further by the viewer.

    Here is my drafting table covered with a watercolor sketch and an oil in progress (my first in decades) for a window I am working on, and other set asides (inactive or in contemplation) reflected in a mirror.  

Above and below are pieces of a cut paper work, laid about seeking the correct color and overall position in the work.  The basis of the cutting is an emotional toiling to understand the human need to be free of violence, hatred and coercion. We all, like the biblical legends of the Hebrews, are all in search of a promised land, a land of milk and honey, a heaven on Earth.  Many of those seeking refuge know that everything promised in heaven is already here on earth. 

 And somewhere, in the here and now, that is possible.

 On the cluttered cutting table below lie pieces which show the nativity of past works--on now completed and on display until the end of the month at the Northeast Kingdom Artisans Gallery, 430 Railroad St., St. Johnsbury, VT.   The first few butterflies adorn The Green Man, a mythical who heralds the arrival of Spring, and two heads that would become the basis for "Finbarr, who lived by the sea and love to tell tales of fish and foreign lands", and "Flying to Bujumbura".

paper cutting glass: Can you spot 10?

paper cutting glass: Can you spot 10?: Flying Back to Bujumbura:  When the original blue sky began bubbling, it was time to redo the work.  The ruined pale blue tag board was repl...

Can you spot 10?

Flying Back to Bujumbura:  When the original blue sky began bubbling, it was time to redo the work.  The ruined pale blue tag board was replaced, but then a number of alterations naturally began to evolve.  See how many you can spot in the completed work.

 Flying to Bujumbura I

(12" x 18")

Flying to Bujumbura II

(14" x 22")