Uncategorized
I'm a little late posting this, but Marcel the Shell With Shoes On: Things About Me (the first children's book that I painted) was on NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams. Nightly News anchor Brian Williams went to the co-authors' home to interview them and little Marcel the Shell. Check it out!
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Hey y'all. This is a busy season for me as far as group shows go. I will have new work in the following spectacular shows across the country: ROBERT LANGE STUDIOS, Charleston, SC - "Fortunate" November 4 through Thanksgiving weekend
{ Put all your unhappiness aside, life is beautiful, be happy 36" x 24" oil on belgian linen }
---------------
WATERHOUSE GALLERY, Santa Barbara, CA - "Great American Figurative Show" opens November 19
{ Be Still 30" x 24" oil on belgian linen }
---------------
JEREMY LIPKING OPEN STUDIO, Agoura Hills, CA - "Exhibition of paintings by Jeremy Lipking and Friends" opens December 3 and lasts for a week
{ Unveiling Grace 24" x 28" oil on belgian linen }
---------------
I promise that all of these shows are worth checking out. Lots of fantastic work by some amazing artists!
I don't know what I did to be a part of something so spectacular, but the children's book I had the honor of painting images for was just featured on TIME.com! TIME magazine, ladies and gents. That's right. And the co-creator of Marcel the Shell, Jenny Slate, actually mentions MY NAME! This is all a bit surreal... Watch the video above for a good glimpse inside the pages of the book, and then follow this link to read the article that accompanied the above video in the TIME feature.
Some screen shots of the article headline and video on TIME.com:
I love the "Sold!" section in the back of American Art Collector magazine where they tell a handful of fun stories about paintings that have sold straight from the pages of their magazine! I was lucky enough to experience this and have the story appear in their October issue. I'm often cooped up in my studio and not fully aware of the interactions between my collectors and gallery. So hearing stories like this about how someone fell in love with my work is so fulfilling! Thanks to Lyle Sarnevitz for sharing your story (and of course for adding my painting to your fabulous collection of work!). And the story goes...
Amy Lind's painting of a show girl titled "Star" appeared in November's American Art Collector as part of a group show Robert Lange Studios hosted called "Women Painting Women." Lyle Sarnevitz, a Charlotte collector, fell in love with the piece but when he visited the gallery website discovered it was over five feet tall and four feet wide. His large collection of over 80 contemporary realists meant he had little wall space left. Even though the piece would not fit in his collection, he tore out the image from the magazine and kept it. The next month Lind's paintings were again in the magazine and one of the works even graced the cover.
"I couldn't stop thinking about the piece," says Sarnevitz, who six months later had to see the painting in person so he drove down to the Charleston, South Carolina-based gallery. "The second I walked in the gallery I knew she would be coming home with me, even if I had to rearrange my entire house to make space."
In addition to this, the October issue of American Art Collector also highlighted my wonderful gallery, Robert Lange Studios, where I have been showing my work at for five years in a new feature called "Gallery Watch." Congrats to the fabulous gallery owners Rob and Megan Lange and gallery director Carri Scwabb for growing such a gem of a gallery! I'm so lucky to work with y'all and call you good friends! (If you look closely at the photo below, you'll see two of my paintings on the left).
A few blog posts back, I mentioned that I had the pleasure of painting images for the upcoming Penguin Children's Book "Marcel the Shell With Shoes On: Things About Me." The book doesn't come out until November 1, but just to butter you up they have pre-released five spreads from the book alongside an interview with the co-authors and creator of Marcel. Check out the link to the exclusive by Whitney Jefferson on Jezebel.com, and see the content below as well. I couldn't help but highlight the parts about me in red. : )
First Look: Marcel The Shell's First Children's Book
Marcel The Shell is making the leap from overnight viral sensation to the subject of a new children's book, Marcel The Shell With Shoes On: Things About Me (on sale November 1). We spoke to Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer-Camp, authors of the book and creators of Marcel, and found out that there as so many more things we've yet to learn about the little shell. And we've also got ten lovely pages from the book.
Jezebel: Marcel The Shell's debut was an extremely successful viral video, racking up over 11 million hits on YouTube. What made you decide that the character would make for a good book?
Dean Fleischer-Camp: Well, Jenny and I both have a real love for children's literature; we actually read a lot of kids books. We always wanted to do something with children's literature. We did not make Marcel specifically for kids, but once it sort of got popular with young people it seemed like it would be a nice next step.
Jenny: I think although Marcel originated in film, the character can be put out there in many different forms of art. When it was suggested that some people were interested in it being a picture book, it was an immediate yes just because it's a world we wanted to be involved in, and also we read a lot of picture books. Like ones that we liked as kids and new ones, they're really refreshing and a like a peaceful, playful thing to read kids books as an adult.
Jezebel: So you read a lot of children's books as adults — what are some of your favorites?
Dean: I always loved anything by Roald Dahl, and I really loved Shel Silverstein. Oh! Harold and the Purple Crayon is like one of my all-time favorites.
Jenny: I really liked books like the Ox-Cart Man and Miss Rumphius, which are Barbara Cooney books. But then I also books that were more like me as a kid, like kids that had problems. There was one book called like I'm Telling You Now that was this beautiful watercolor book about this boy who did all these things that he wasn't supposed to do … but he was only curious, I love those. I loved the Courduroy books! There are so many.
Jezebel: One of the things that really stands out in the book is the artwork, by Amy Lind. Did your publisher hook you up with her or were you familiar with her work beforehand?
Dean: Our publisher set us up with a bunch of different ideas for artists and [Amy] just had a really great sense of light. We really wanted that photo realist oil painting style and that's not really a style that's practiced as much as it used to be.
Jenny: It's also really the only way we felt comfortable with making the art for the book. We didn't want it to be photographed because we felt that would just accentuate that it wasn't a film … We just thought, if we wanted to take it further and still make it Marcel, how would we do that? It's sort of honorable when someone has an oil painting of them. There's an oil painting of my grandfather in his Marine uniform hung in my grandparent's house and he was so handsome, and such a rich, beautiful painting of a time where he was really proud of himself. We thought it would be a really nice way to honor Marcel.
Dean: I thought it was really funny. Because oil paintings are such a proper way to honor someone with a rich history it's so funny to take this little scrappy guy who's a shell with one eye and sort of pay tribute to him [that way]. It's kind of like that oil painting of kramer.
Jenny: I think that's a media quote that you'll regret saying. It'll be all over the internet that our book is like a big, hardcover oil painting of Kramer? Who wants to read that?
Dean: That's the reason it's funny to me!
Jenny: Yeah, it's true. I think Amy did a great job on the paintings. They're based off of photographs that Dean took with our friend Dave Erickson and I feel like he doesn't say it, but he did a beautiful job on the photo shoot and actually lit it so that you can see the day transitioning to the night. What it came down to is that he's compulsive and Amy is so talented...she just did such a good job adding a richness to something that was already so special.
Jezebel: When I read the book, I have to admit that I read it in Marcel's voice, a credit to you. Was his distinctive voice part of why you decided to include it in the audiobook?
Jenny: Sure; especially [since] there are so many kids books have an audio component, we should. Plus I always wanted to read an audiobook.
Jezebel: I can already tell kids are gonna love Marcel; by now you must have been approached to turn him into a TV show.
Jenny: There's definitely more Marcel coming and yes, we are in the development process of a TV show. The future's open for him. I think we'll do as much with him as we can until either he changes for us or there isn't anything more to say. But for now, there's so much more to say. There's so much more about Marcel that we haven't even told you yet. I don't even know if I can say it! Marcel has some pretty amazing talents that he's really proud of and there will be a lot more.
Jezebel: Does he have friends? What are these talents?
Jenny: Marcel is really a good singer, but he doesn't think he's a good singer. He he knows that he's good for his shell but he doesn't think that he's good for, like, a person. He makes up a ton of songs.
Dean: He's enrolled at the academy with kids and he's the best in his class. So, he goes to school, he's being classically trained.
Jenny: And he has kind of like an opera voice but he does covers of Seal and No Doubt. He loves Seal. He gets so excited when he sings "Kiss From A Rose" that he can't even remember the words.
Jezebel: Do you think we'll ever get to see a live version of Marcel The Shell? Perhaps around Halloween at a Big Terrific show, singing "Kiss From A Rose"?
Jenny: (laughs) I don't know! I'm not opposed to it. My dream is to go on [NPR's] Terry Gross and be interviewed as Marcel, and be the voice so you wouldn't have to see me doing it. I'm kind of afraid that if people see me that they won't see Marcel anymore and they'll just be like "That Jenny Slate makes a weird face when she does that voice!"
Jezebel: Oh, never. Anything else we should know about the book before going out to buy it?
Dean: There's another one coming!
Jenny: If you look in the book, there are pictures of me as a little girl sort of hidden within the painting. The movie [in the book] has got Marcel and his Grandmother, whose name is Nana Connie. [She] will have a big part in the television show and in is in the second book, hopefully.
Dean: We shot it in our apartment in Brooklyn so there are lots of props that are from our real-life apartment
Jenny: Yeah, it is nice that it's our house. In the first picture you can't even really see Marcel, it's from afar, and that's looking into our bedroom. Also, Dean lettered the entire book. It's not a font, he physically lettered all of the inside pages!
See link on BuzzFeed.com for larger images.
Surprisingly to some, I do not display any examples of my commissioned portraiture on my website. I prefer to show solely my personal gallery work on my site. However, I thought it would be nice to share one of my latest commissions of my wedding photographer's daughter, Alexa. Enjoy!
oil on belgian linen, 16" x 24"
Study of Amy 11" x 10" oil on belgian linen
Just came across this snapshot of the painting I did in November 2009 during the Charleston Fine Art Dealer's Association annual Painting in the Park event. Artists from CFDA galleries gathered in Washington square and painted for a few hours. All of the paintings were donated to be auctioned off that evening to raise money for Charleston school's art programs. Thanks to American Art Collector's Amy Elliot for posing so eloquently for me.
My computer's hard drive decided to die on me. I have replaced it so my computer is running again, but I was unsuccessful at retrieving any of the files off my old drive. I have out-of-date back-ups of some important files, but unfortunately my email and contacts are not recent.
IF YOU WERE EVER ON MY MAILING LIST OR WOULD LIKE TO BE FOR THE FIRST TIME, PLEASE send me an email with your email address (and physical address if you'd like to receive postcards for my shows). I would love to put the pieces back together and say that I am whole again...
amy@amylind.com
Why do we depend on computers so much? You'd think as a fine artist I wouldn't. But ahh, quite the contrary. Luckily, I do have back-ups of the digital documentation of my paintings as well as my website files. Losing some personal photos of my friends and family is hard to take, though....but as my husband optimistically put it, "We don't have any good photos of us anyway. We have our wedding photos and that's all we need." I guess we did have too many unimportant photos of us...maybe this was God's way of doing some 'Spring cleaning' on my computer. I know we have a whole life ahead of us that will present us with many a more photo op..
Here's to Spring cleaning!
