Archive for the ‘Artists/Other’ Category

Now offering collector-quality glicée prints

Friday, November 10th, 2023

The LITTER-ALLY KENTUCKY collection was conceived and funded as a traveling exhibition. While the original body of work is not currently for sale, all sixteen collage landscape artworks are available as affordable frame-worthy glicée reproductions printed on archival stock.

Despite patrons’ asking for them over the years, offering prints is a first for me — other than at note card size. The high standards I was looking for have been met by Fine Art Editions Gallery & Press of Georgetown, Kentucky. Owner John S Hockensmith, well-known photographic artist who fine-tuned an advanced giclée process for his own exacting requirements, has made his exceptional quality available for my work. I’m gratified to be one of a limited number of Kentucky artists with whom he has chosen to collaborate.

Due to the nature of the ingredients and constraints of working en plein air, my originals are typically small. Without loss of detail, these glicée enlargements capture the dimensionality of my collage technique and reveal subtleties of pasted layers and torn text. You can purchase individual prints at 150% enlargement on standard acid-free vellum stock for $275. The entire LITTER-ALLY KENTUCKY group of artworks can be acquired as a collector set printed on Japanese paper and housed in an archival box for $3500; individual works printed on the same handmade paper are available for $295 each.

Six through ten — blog years (not dog years)

Sunday, January 1st, 2023

 
Unless you favor retrospective musings, I totally understand your wanting to skip this post. Reviewing the second half of what has become a ten-year blogsite is almost too intimidating in scope for me to synthesize with any coherence, so I’ll break the previous five years into a few sections. My early annual recaps offered evidence that I was entertaining some ambitious goals, although I should have discerned at the time that the “blogosphere’ was winding down as a popular online phenomenon. Given the recent head-spinning rate of networking change, it’s a period that seems nearly unrecognizable today. Even my mother had a blog for a spell. And so I shall begin with a salute to her profound influence.

The world without her is still a world full of Mombo.

This past month was dominated by the earthly departure of V E Dixon, my mother. The role she played in my becoming an artist and the approach I bring to my practice cannot, and should not, be understated in this format nor any other. What a debt I owe to her, and to pay it forward will require that I live as long as she! I might’ve started “giving back” much earlier, if it had been my basic nature. I can be a quick study for most things, but it often takes me far too long to learn the rest, especially when it involves stepping beyond my own creative urge. Her life was a lesson in putting others before self. In order to support her parents’ household in a world at war, she turned down a full scholarship to the same University of Cincinnati that I would eventually attend. Decades later, in a nest recently emptied of seven children, and just as she was about to explore her own personal interests, she followed her family to a remote part of a rural Kentucky county. As a widow, she built an ethical foundation for a land-based legacy that is now set to endure for generations. When she faced a grim medical prognosis that would break the spirit of others, she maintained a zest for life, an obvious concern for how it might affect others, and an astonishing diligence to push back against it. The world of my youth had shouted, “Be cynical, or pessimistic, or both,” but she would always be my reliable source of optimism, like a spring which never dries up. I could’ve become a quitter early on, but she helped me to overcome discouragement born of self-doubt and to fulfill commitments. If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. Why not always do your very best? And then you will automatically get better. Along with my siblings, everything was done to provide the care she needed to continue living at home, until it became no longer possible. Those years — what could be mistakenly judged as sacrificial — strengthened our family bond in a way that will last us for the duration. To separate that from my activity as an artist was unnecessary at the time and foolhardy in hindsight. Above and beyond the value of artisanship, she taught me that a creative life without love for others is devoid of meaning. Of all the souls I have intimately known, hers is the most worthy of imitation.

Landscape art tries to elbow aside my other styles of collage.

I’m thinking about a hot day in August and how I found in the distant, knobby horizon a stimulating prompt to create a collage outside. Staying in the sun to dry my glue offered no mercy, so I eventually moved to the shade. I came away with an impression to finish in the studio as part of my evolving landscape series called Litter-ally Kentucky. As I reflect on a now-familiar process, it would be difficult to remember all the unknowns I faced when I first took paper and paste on location, had I not recorded my experiences here in this format over the past five years. As a fine-art painter, I possessed a meager background at best and no knowledge of how to function in the open air. I knew a lot about manipulating paper, however, and was fortunate to have many friends who encouraged me to join group outings and to use a medium that has never been associated with creating representational art out of doors. As I’ve noted before, people often think my collage landscapes are traditional paintings, until they view them up close. I share their sense of wonder myself, and I eventually discovered other artists who were solving the same challenges. We happen to be few and far between. My collage landscapes began to attract some attention. I competed in timed plein-air events, had my first solo landscape exhibition, and received a feature in the UK-based Contemporary Collage Magazine. I was so comfortable with concentrating in this area of collage that I applied for and was awarded funding support from the National Endowment for the Arts through the Kentucky Arts Council. In case you want to follow my journey here, I’ve done my best to tell the story at The Collage Miniaturist. I still have no idea where this adventure will take me, but I invite you to stop back and find out!

Check out my top ten highlights . . .

Are you still with me, reader? If I continue to give my verbosity free reign, this overview will get out of hand. Instead, I’ll offer links to posts that cover some milestone artistic developments since the end of 2017. I could feature my handmade greeting cards, best-in-show award, gift art, or collage purgations, but I can see that much of that is significant only to me. I want to highlight things that might be worth your time, too. (The following sequence is not relevant for chronology or significance.)
 
• Adjudication by the Arts Council as an Kentucky Crafted artist sealed my inertia as a unabashed Merzologist, while I ventured deeper into an investigation of representational collage.
 
• A relationship with the Kentucky Artisan Center culminated in Synthesis, my most ambitious collage to date. I owe that and more to my friend Gwen, who was gone far too soon.
 
• My expanded foray into the genre of figurative collage resulted in a successful still life, praise from Professor Sheldon Tapley, and acceptance to ArtFields in Lake City, South Carolina.
 
• The Kanyer Art Collection provided opportunities for me and a growing worldwide community of collage artists, including a purchase award for one piece in my series of tiny diptychs.
 
• My participation in the Baker’s 1/2-Dozen Collage Exchange of Cecil Touchon’s IMCAC and the Februllage collage-a-day initiative sparked two new series of collage rituals.
 
• I gained greater world exposure when scholar Anna Kłos selected my miniatures for back-to-back international collage exhibitions at Retroavangarda Gallery in Warsaw, Poland.
 
• My footing as a Kentucky artist stabilized with the aid of Kate Savage and Arts Connect, including a solo show, video, podcast, and “Paint the Town” events in 2020, 2021, and 2022.
 
• An imagination as peculiar as mine could not have foreseen that my basement studio would be showcased in THE CUTTING CHAOS from Finland’s Niko Vartiainen. It’s all about the stash!
 
• I’ll never take for granted my valued regional connections with Maker’s Mark Distillery, LexArts, Art Center of the Bluegrass, Connie Beale’s CAMP, or Art Space Versailles.
 
• And finally — important rituals at the heart of being an artist continue to surprise me, whether it’s a 30-day studio explosion or my vital practice of working from nature outside.

Happy New Year!

Saturday, December 31st, 2022

 
Sparkle Someone Else ~ collage miniature by J A Dixon ~ a salute to the 70th birthday of Burton Cummings

Sparkle Someone Else
collage miniature by J A Dixon
7 x 8.25 inches

a salute to the 75th birthday of Burton Cummings

Her Back Door

Wednesday, September 14th, 2022

“Don’t come a-knockin’ around my door
Don’t wanna see your shadow no more
Coloured lights can hypnotize
Sparkle someone else’s eyes.”
B L Cummings
 

Here’s a recent plein air collage of mine that’s on display in the conference center exhibition presented by the Arts Commission of Danville / Boyle County at Constitution Square. I consider this in the category of “miniature house portraits,” which would pose challenges in any medium. Working with paper (particularly when outside) makes for a tricky process of interpreting proper perspective. It’s been suggested that I didn’t nail the vanishing points with this one, even though I completed most of the architectural treatments in the studio.

Harlan Hubbard thought that, “a painting, to be good, must be done with dash and abandonment, even one which has meticulous detail. If one niggles over it, the result is dull and lifeless.” It’s a danger for any artist to “niggle” or “noodle” at the expense of the overall expression. I haven’t convinced myself that it didn’t happen with this one, even though a plein air painter that I admire thinks otherwise. It has something to do with my intentionally introducing a contrast of crisp detail and soft ambiguity — with a debatable degree of success. I guess that the “eye of the beholder” has to take it from here. Without a doubt, I haven’t confronted this difficulty for the last time.

 

Her Back Door
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
7.125 x 9 inches
50:50 site/studio
available for purchase

Eleventh Chapter — Paint old Lex in papers . . .

Saturday, July 2nd, 2022

“If I could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.”
– Edward Hopper
 

Here’s my collage en plein air for this summer’s annual “Paint the Town” challenge (organized by Kate Savage of Lexington’s Arts Connect). Hours never evaporate so alarmingly fast as during this event. It had to be delivered framed and ready for immediate display within the six-hour deadline. The piece looks a bit unfinished to my eye, and probably will until an image wrapped in expectations has faded from my head. My insane trackside rig (located across from the Lawrence Brewer & Son Horse Oats warehouse) drew the attention of a railroad inspector, but, thankfully, I was left uninterrupted.

Do you think I should’ve brought along the kitchen sink, too?

 

Oathouse
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
100% / 0% — site to studio
10 x 10 inches + handcrafted frame
available for purchase at CAMP

Watch my new artist bio by Fine Art Photographics!

Thursday, February 3rd, 2022

   

 

   

Immense thanks to Brett Henson, John Hockensmith, and Kate Savage for bringing this video to fruition! For anyone who wants to discover a bit more about my plein-air approach to making collage landscapes.

Check out my guest appearance on Art Throb!

Tuesday, February 1st, 2022

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Wednesday, January 26th, 2022

CHANGE OF SEEN
collage landscapes by John Andrew Dixon

curated by Kate Savage, Arts Connect
for the John G Irvin Gallery at
Central Bank, Lexington, Kentucky

Below are a pair of small skyscapes that I finished just before hanging “Change of Seen,” my collage exhibition curated by Arts Connect for a two-level bank gallery in downtown Lexington — 31 works total. A couple of studio miniatures seemed a fitting addition to what coalesced as my first all-landscape display and a retrospective of sorts for my five-year journey into representational collage. All during 2021, I couldn’t take my eyes off the changing sky, or stop thinking about how I might interpret it by pasting colored paper, tissue, and reclaimed tea bags. These two pieces are from imagination and memory. I kept layering torn ingredients until I was satisfied with the impression.

Kevin Nance wrote a brief review of the show that was perhaps too flattering. It’s been almost a week since the opening and my feet aren’t fully back on the ground yet. I cannot imagine a more able curator/impresario than the assiduous Kate Savage, a tireless catalyst for all things ART in our Bluegrass region. As just one of the multiple services she’s offering to help spread the word, her non-profit will sponsor a shopping page at the Arts Connect website during the run of my exhibition.

Please check it out!

 

Rose at Daybreak
collage miniature by J A Dixon
6 x 7 inches, framed 11 x 14
available for purchase

 

Summer Sundown
collage miniature by J A Dixon
6 x 7 inches, framed 11 x 14
available for purchase

Still Life with Peony Tulips

Monday, October 11th, 2021

“We think of the things we own and use as defining us in some way, but that can only be true if we first describe the things. Describing is a remarkable human act. It connects our inner and outer experience: as we observe and record the material world, we respond and reflect. We enter the realm where the material world meets the imagination. That’s the fertile ground of art.”
– Sheldon Tapley
 

I created this artwork for The Object Seen: Contemporary Still Life, current exhibition at Art Center of the Bluegrass in Danville. The juror was Sheldon Tapley, masterful painter, draftsman, and Stodghill Professor of Art at Centre College. I received a 2nd-place ribbon and cash prize. The honor came as a surprise, since I don’t consider myself a practitioner or student of still life as an art form. I have, however, looked deeply at artwork made by Sheldon and those who are. The arms-length quality of modern still life has compelled my close scrutiny for many years. Given that influence, I brought to the genre what I’ve discovered by “painting in papers” from direct observation (the long sweep of art history hovering somewhere outside my conscious awareness, with its rich tradition of artists tackling visual cornacopias of objects and edible fare). I decided to interpret a tabletop group of objects from raw material, rather than assemble a conventional collage composition from found images.

Please view a video clip of the juror’s remarks about my artwork.

The peony tulip blossoms were created en plein air in a local flower garden. The small “still life within a still life” was commenced and partially finished from a setup of actual objects. I relied on photo reference for the rest. Ingredients include colored paper (printed and unprinted), wallpaper, ruined book parts, tissue, reclaimed tea bags, string, and a dried leaf, plus minimal use of walnut juice, burnt coffee, tinted paste, and marker-ink edging. Adhesives include wheat paste, acrylic matte medium, and white glue.

 

Still Life with Peony Tulips
collage on salvaged canvas
18 x 23.75 inches

•  Second Place Prize

Ninth Chapter: Taking in a last view from her ridge . . .

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2021

“I always have to watch out for falling into copying what I see accurately, but somehow losing the poetry of expressively applied paint in the process. Accuracy with expressiveness is the key! Remembering this saying from David Leffel… ‘The beauty of the painting always comes first; accuracy always a dismal last.’”
— Bill Fletcher
 

As I prepare for my first solo exhibition of collage landscapes, I reflect on an exceptional season of working outside with the PAACK and how much I appreciate everybody who helped kick off 2021 with a return to Kelley Ridge last April, especially my “big sis.” I have six marvelous siblings, but only my sister Joan arrived before me. She is my oldest friend, confidante, and role model. Joan inherited a wild place and a half-built dwelling through one of the worst tragedies that a woman can experience, but — with faith and perseverance — she endured an unimaginable grief and transformed the shell of a house into a home. It’s a remarkable abode. The previous year I’d created a collage portrait of it when Joan hosted the first Art Out on her ridge. When I learned that she planned to put the farmstead on the market sometime in 2021, I knew I had to turn my attention outward from “Cardinal Haven” and challenge myself to capture one of its spectacular views with torn paper.
 
     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I have fond memories of that event, because I met the affable Roger Snell that day, and we chose a similar viewscape on which to focus. Snell was “freshly retired” as one of the architects of the Kentucky Proud initiative for state economic development, and he was clearly thrilled to be entering his new life as a full time painter.

After a decent start, I worked through the afternoon and came away with a piece that I thought was close to having been finished on location. “Just a few finishing touches to go,” I told myself, but the more I looked at it in the studio, the more I wanted to continue adding contrasting layers for more depth and complexity. Doing that without sacrificing an impression of intuitive choices was not an easy process. I had to stay “in the zone.” By the time I was satisfied, it had became one of those studio-invested pieces that will never be classified as a plein-air artwork. So be it.

I still feel like I’m just scratching the surface with this particular approach to collage landscape. The distinction between direct observation, photographic influence, and pure imagination is becoming blurred. The outside/indoor time ratio is often taking a backseat to my achieving a certain end, with a desirable balance of improvisational spontaneity and pictorial authenticity leading the way.

 

From Her Ridge
collage miniature by J A Dixon
8 x 9 inches
private collection

Friday, July 16th, 2021

Gwen Heffner, master artisan of Kentucky

Gwen Heffner
1 9 5 2 – 2 0 2 1

master artisan of pottery
major force in the Kentucky arts
my pal from our first encounter
R
I
P