A Trip to Art Basel Miami

On Saturday Julie and I were in Miami for the 10^th annual Art Basel Miami.  I was there to do some research.  Julie has been quite successful doing art shows and placing her pieces in the homes of collectors for the past 10+ years.  I have just become a full-time partner in JKR Studio and it will be my responsibility to discover more avenues to showcase Julie’s talents.  I figured why not start with the most important art show in America.  There was a quote from Bill Gates that says,  “If you're going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big.”  I love Julie’s work and I wanted to see if there was any difference between what she is doing and what the galleries would be showing at Art Basel.

Art Basel is held twice a year, one in Miami and the original in Basel, Switzerland.  It has been called the Olympics of the Art World.  Nearly 300 galleries from around the world arrange themselves into the Miami Convention center and show you their finest collections of contemporary art.  There were a couple of individual artist booths at the show, but the aim of Art Basel is to showcase what galleries the have access to.

So we headed off to the big show bight and early Saturday morning.  To be honest, I was expecting to have to wade through an ocean of art that was made for the sake of shock and effect and not to show off skills and techniques.  (MY OPINON: if you wrap a baby doll in duct tape, glue it to a canvas and then pull out its hair.  Then you have given in to Shock and chose not to use skill).  To my extreme pleasure, there was very little of that here.  The show was special in that as you walked around everything you saw was a new experience, a new idea and an original technique.  This is why I came.

There were the recent masters like Warhol, Pollack, Lichtenstein and Picasso just to drop a few names.  I was excited to see the pieces, but when you see those paintings it is like looking at a textbook and seeing history, its very hard to tell if you like it because it’s famous or because it’s good.  Then you turn a corner and your eyes are delighted to see something you could have never imagined, a beautiful wood sculpture by Tony Cragg, titled, "Red Figure” or sparkling mannequins with tinsel tube heads called “Soundsuit”, by Nick Cave.  The show went on like this.  Booths upon booth of imaginative and thought provoking art were filling the Miami convention center. I took away many good ideas.  I don’t know if we will need to take the path of showing art in Galleries, but it was good to see how other artists get their work in front of the public.

End of season

We just got back from New Orleans and our last art show of the year.  It’s kind of sad and I already miss the excitement of “where are we going next?” and fun of being on the road, seeing new sights, meeting new people…  If it weren’t for the shows I might be a hermit, never leaving my studio or talking with anyone besides the cats.  Thank god for the forced deadlines and the forced exposure.  I thrive on it, maybe even need it.  The expression on people’s faces when they see my work, the kind words, the ultimate compliment when my art becomes a part of someone’s home…  Wow.  Russ loves the travel too, he says it satisfies his wanderlust. 

A few weeks ago we got a new, double-sized booth tent.  It’s not that much harder to set up and take down, but the rewards… oh it’s like a luxury suite!  The expanded size lets us show the larger paintings to a much better effect.  You can actually stand inside the booth and look at the work without feeling claustrophobic.  Nice.  I'm looking forward to using it for next year's shows!

blackbirds

Last month Russ and I were in the DC area doing the Bethesda Row art fair and visiting his sister Suzi.  On Monday after the show, we went for a drive along Skyline Road, just at the beginning of the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Oh, it was glorious.  The trees in all that gold.  You’d think you’d become blasé about seeing one gorgeous tree after another, but no, the eye continually seeks out the next visual treat.  By evening, I was telling myself, I’ve got to paint with more gold. 

So, in my studio last week, I took out a canvas, covered the entire field with shades of yellow and ocher, even using my hands to help spread the water and pigment (leaving me with yellow fingernails for 2 days after).  After that dried, I did some trees, but not just any trees, some trees that resembled wise old witches!  I learned this style from studying the works of early 20^th century Chinese masters.  The piece was starting to come together, but it lacked something I couldn’t put my finger on.  After staring at it for two more days, it became clear that those trees needed some birds.  At first I thought maybe a flock of blackbirds scattered over the branches.  But no, that’s not meaningful enough.  Ah… a pair of blackbirds in conversation, right off the center archway.  Perfect, exactly the mood I wanted!

Julie

The First Post

The Artist Julie-Keaten-Reed

Her views, life and story

By RKR

When Julie was a child in Wyoming, her favorite refuge was the quiet expanse of the Wyoming landscape, wide open and full of stories.  There she found a source of wonder and a connection with nature, riding the rugged hills and the lonely meadows.  “My mother would take us on long trail rides into the mountains with everything we would need for a week.  There we were free to explore the world and create our own reality.”  They were great times and opened the door to an unusual way of looking at life.

After spending 35 years absorbing the things around her, she finally started finding ways to express her visions.  A five year stay in Japan was the tipping point.   Full of ideas and desire, Julie picked up a brush and began to paint her world.

As a child Julie was surrounded with art and artists because of her grandmother, Carley Craig.   A life-long artist, Carley started in fashion design when she was still a teenager.  In the 1930’s she worked at Paramount Studio under Edith Head.  Moving on from there she produced and taught art for the rest of her life.   She eventually came to Atlanta and became a well-respected and collected fine artist up until her death in 1990.  Like any child, Julie didn’t always appreciate the array of modern art that her grandmother both produced and collected.   Seeing all this fine art inhibited her from trying to create her own works.  “It was very intimidating to see all of my grandmother’s work and feel like whatever I could do would look silly in comparison.”   As time went on, though, and with more trips to gallery openings and museums, Julie developed a skill that is difficult to teach, an eye for beauty through composition.

 “We all create our own reality.   I choose to see beauty and paint it.  I don’t necessarily paint what I have seen but instead what I want to see.”  This simple theme comes through while looking at Julie’s pieces.  It brings a wave of calm to the viewer.  The art is open and clean and lets you step into the pieces as if you yourself are creating the story of the painting.

Julie works are on both paper and canvas with traditional sumi ink and either watercolor or oil paints for color accents.  She came upon her style though a selfish desire to not be restricted by conventional sumie rules.  This allows her to use an ancient brush and ink style and bend it with her mind and desires.  The pieces can be described as soulful, calming, stunning.  Julie has done something uncommon:  she has taken an ancient painting technique from Asia, filtered it through her exposure to so many different modern and European genres, and created a body of work that brings together a contemporary Western sensibility with traditional Asian minimalism.

“Trees at Dawn” 2011 Sumi ink and watercolor painted on canvas 5’ x 3.5’

The simplicity in this piece is hard to achieve.  A credit to Julie’s artistry is her ability to not paint, to stop before the image fully emerges, allowing viewers to enter each piece, adding their own embellishments, completing their own stories. 

Using one color and seldom more, each painting has a truthfulness that you often see in black & white photography.  The images stand off the canvas and the color makes you feel as if you’ve found the secret of each painting.

Julie is currently showing at special events and seldom chooses to use galleries.  The works are her personal accomplishments and she enjoys seeing where they are going and meeting her collectors.  Many a night has been spent installing art works and enjoying wine with her new friends.