an embarrassment of riches

Studio mate Joey brought me a great album of old photos a few months ago that touched off an all out photo buying free-for-all at the Grushovenko household. Over the course of a week or so I 'won' around a dozen ebay auctions for large lots of old pictures. Boxes of hundreds of new images began arriving at our house. For the first few days this was almost unbearably exciting, followed by days of mild excitement, followed by a few days of 'eh', followed by a feeling of mild nausea as if I had eaten too much sugar. I became so overwhelmed by the sheer number of possibilities that I basically had to hide them all from myself and turn back to some tried-and-true references for a while.

It's been long enough now that my image indigestion has abated and I have begun pulling out my new babies and working them into our repertoire. Here is a newbie, "Three Boating".


30" x 40" oil on linen, $1800

And here is "Four Layered Lounge"...my new favorite.


36" x 36" oil on linen, $2200


Many of our new purchases didn't make the cut for use in our work, and some of those have gone into a 'wallpaper' type project at the gallery:


Paintings in this photo are by our good friend Melinda Clair.

Greenville Open Studios

Hi all! This weekend is our very first 'Greenville Open Studios' weekend. We are incredibly excited to be a part of this fantastic event. Our visit here for the 2010 show was the clincher in our decision to make the move to the upstate. Over 100 artists are opening their studios and homes this weekend for the public to come in and see their work and their process.

Here are a few pictures of our space, featuring 30 new pieces from myself and Genna, new paintings by Steve Frenkel and Melinda Clair, and fabric art by our Nastiya.













Hoping to see everyone!

1203 Pendleton Street, Greenville SC 29611
Saturday 10-6
Sunday 12-6

grushovenko gallery pics

Hi everybody! We're two weeks open at Grushovenko Gallery and I finally got around to taking a few photos. They start from the outside and proceed more or less from the font to the back. Genna built the wall just inside the front door facing out that has the bathing girls painting on it. It's on casters so it can be moved around the room and also provides storage for our extra pieces (Genna is a genius). The last few pics are of our neighbor Joey and his studio. Our spaces connect through the west wall.

Pics are clickable.

Grushovenko Gallery is open every Friday and Saturday from 10-5 and every first Friday of the month from 6-9. We're at 1203 Pendelton Street, Greenville.

tapeworm

The opening of our new gallery has progressed in my mind from 'place to park our inventory while we're not traveling' to 'all I can think about'. Don't tell Genna, he thinks I still have everything in it's proper perspective.

Thursday we moved in furniture. This morning I started bringing in all of what I like to call 'the giblets' (my nonsensical term for accessories). I drug in a full car load of pots, quilts, art books, and rugs and then met with my gallery neighbor Joey Bradley to work out the design for our new signage.

We'll have a vertical 'art gallery' banner hanging above the front door and window vinyl with 'Grushovenko Gallery, fine art and craft' on the window. I picked out this font:



which I thought was really au courant. Joey informed me that OCR A Extended is embarrassingly 2009 and totally gauche (my words, his sentiment). He basically told me that he could not be associated with such a loser, so in the end we settled on the font that Ed Ruscha uses in his paintings:



It's called 'tapeworm'



and Mr. Ruscha refers to it as:



and that's exactly what I was going for, so...perfect. Hopefully it will still be in vogue by the time the signage goes up next week. (I kid Joey. He was very sweet and helpful and I always appreciate his excellent advice.)

I had no idea that designers had such strong feelings about fonts. I did, however, know that most people have grown to hate comic sans with a white hot passion. My good friend Kathrine Allen-Coleman had a fantastic, foul mouthed little movie about the poor fellow on her facebook feed today. Enjoy! (Unless you're not a big fan of cursing, then please ignore.)

I'm Comic Sans, Asshole from joehollier on Vimeo.

triple crown!

Genna and I are back home after nearly a month on the road. This was our longest trip yet...3500 total miles driven. We'd like to say a huge thank you to all of our friends and clients in DesMoines, Omaha, Denver, and Madison that made this our best tour yet.

Here we are at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha:



Same place, Genna with a giant hypno head:



Same place, me riding a pencil:



Genna running from a T-rex on his birthday (I wish I had video of this as right after this moment his funny face turned to a fearful face as he went running out of control down the hill, eating it at the bottom. He wasn't hurt.):



and us in the Rocky Mountains:



I'm also delighted to report that we won an award at all three of our festivals! Genna's calling it the 'triple crown'. Best of show in DesMoines, Juror's Award in Denver, and an Invitational award in Madison. The best thing about this is that we're now jury exempt for those shows next year. All of my festival friends out there will know how much this means. The jury process for these shows is so competitive that it's not at all unusual to have a great show in a city one year and then wait several years to get back in. So, yay!

Our other big news is that while we were away, a full studio opened up at the Flat Iron Studios building here in Greenville. Our good friend and artist Kent Ambler had graciously offered to split his space there with us so we already had plans to join the Flat Iron family, but we're even more excited that we'll now have a full gallery/studio space to play around with. We'll start our move in process tomorrow so I'll have lots more soon about our new partners, future plans, and the before/after of our new place.

Engine # 6

Every once in a blue moon, we make something that I step back and see and say "that's exactly what I had hoped to do". I finished a piece this week that was one of those. She's called 'Steam Engine' (oil on linen, 36" x 48"). Mine and Genna's layers married just right here and I think additionally I broke some new ground with my treatment of the foliage in the upper right quadrant. It's also a lot of intricate work that I think reads as easy and whole. Yay!

I just looked up how often a blue moon is and it says approximately once in 3 1/2 years. So, maybe I make something that really tickles me two or three times in a blue moon!

Here's the last piece that made me really happy:


'New Truck', oil on linen, 36" x 36"

I made it about a year ago and have it hoarded up hanging in my living room.

"Memento" at Wynn Bone

Big thanks to gallerist Wynn Bone who is hosting our solo show "Memento" through the end of this month. Wynn's gallery is a lovely, light-filled, second floor space on Main Street in downtown Annapolis. If you're in the area and looking for the show, you'll find it above the fine jewelry shop 'Casa Nova'.

Wynn did a beautiful job installing the show, giving each piece plenty of room to breathe. My favorite part of the show was the treatment of the small works. Due to the tiny amount of real estate we're used to having at festivals, I'm used to seeing my little babies in clusters of as many as 15 at a time. Wynn hung only 3 of the 6 or 7 small pieces we brought, giving each one plenty of elbow room. I loved the effect of this...making each little piece seem like a jewel.

We've been working with Wynn for over a year but this was our first time at the gallery. I was really taken with the stable of artists he has put together. Each artist seemed entirely different on first glance, yet there was a strong connection amongst them. It's hard to say exactly how to name this connection, but I think it has to do with technique and surface quality. Each artist (figurative, abstract, landscape) had a unique process for layering a lush, deep surface that hooks you into long-time-looking.

Building a strong 'artist family' at a gallery has to be in the top 3 most important jobs of a gallerist. Several clients at the show mentioned to us that they collect from almost all of Wynn's artists and that they trust Wynn to bring the goods every show. Check out his artist catalog online at www.wynnbonegallery.com.

Kudos, Wynn.

P.S. I loved his dog.