Virtual Steinbeck Country Global Festival accepted my abstract image, Northeast,Day 13, for their annual festival. During the pandemic although things are mixed and many changes abound the Steinbeck Museum held their show virtually. The exhibit is housed in the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California. The virtual aspect allows for people all over the world to attend and be influenced by the words and life of author John Steinbeck. The photographic image the the show reminds me of the opening line Of Mice and Men, “A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hill-side bank and runs deep and green.”

The Exhibition is virtual

Making a virtue of necessity, officials at the National Steinbeck Center have announced that the August 1-2, 2020 Steinbeck Country Global Festival will move online, motivated by COVID-19 and the need to think globally while acting locally to support the arts in John Steinbeck’s home town of Salinas, California. An annual event for more than a quarter of a century, the festival has experimented with dates, formats, and marketing strategies in the past, all in an effort to engage two contrasting constituencies—the multicultural community of Cannery Row and California’s Central Coast; fans of Steinbeck’s fiction from other states and countries—in honoring the famous local author who attracted the latter during his life by celebrating the former in his work. To visit the please click this link.

About John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck was a Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and the author of Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden. Steinbeck dropped out of college and worked as a manual laborer before achieving success as a writer. His works often dealt with social and economic issues. His 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath, about the migration of a family from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to California, won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. Steinbeck served as a war correspondent during World War II, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. Read more about hime here.

How to purchase the work

The work above is available for sale. Living with this photograph will inspire your thoughts to wander and drift into a meditative relaxation. How do you put a price tag on this type of daily connection? To purchase please send me a note through the contact form.

Update: Permanent Collection

This work is in the permanent collection of the Steinbeck Center.

Floorr Magazine artist directory is a fun place to gather my thoughts, view and read about other artists’ work, and contemplate my art practice. Click here to view my listing. 

I went through a selection process the first year I submitted to Floorr. The independent publisher accepted my work and it felt important to get my new abstract photographs out and into the international community.

Pandemic discovery

I’m reserved when it comes to writing about myself and the work I create. During the pandemic I’ve found it helps to relax my mind. Writing affords me the opportunity to approach new work with a set of rules and theories for discovery. The writing process, now standard in my practice, is an easier way to discover and bring light to creation. I sit for long hours quietly thinking about light, color and shadows, watching nature and the power of her resounding resilience. It comes through in my written artistic approach to creating work on the Floorr directory. 

Process discusion

I work best in silence. I never thought I would be typing this statement but being alone in thought with no distraction or external sound is best. Blasting music is always fun and it gets me sketching and rolling through ideas and seeing shapes stacked up but the real work, my best work, is done alone in silence. 

I retain what I see and read best in this silent space. What I enjoy the most about silence is the pace time chooses to fabricate. Time stops for me when it’s quiet. I watch shadows move across stones in my yard or pieces of sunlight wander along a wooden wall. Their journey the only marker that time is running and spinning. 

A fun 5 minute challenge

Visit the Floorr Magazine artist directory page and find one artwork. It doesn’t have to be mine, and sit and look at it for five minutes. Click here to contact me about your experience. If you wish title the email “5 minutes.” I’ll add you to the mailing list and we can chat. I’ll be giving away smaller artworks toward the end of the year and quarterly throughout 2021.  

Stay safe and have fun viewing the artwork. 

https://www.floorrmagazine.com/directory#!biz/id/5b614d02afd691dc7a34cb94 

Reconstruct PrideART Berlin exhibition to benefit all living things accepted three pieces of work and one self-portrait this year. One of them, North East Day, 35 is featured here. 

About the Expo 

This expo is organized by the pride art founder Lars Deike and the pride Art team Richard Schemmerer and Aaron Holloway, they agreed the show is a big success.

I wish I could have been there in person, but due to travel restrictions with the Covid-19 pandemic, I could not travel to Berlin.

The journey for my family and me is a long and, at times, painful and joyous process. Arriving at understanding that we are all complex and unique, no matter your gender or sexual orientation is vital, and to approach others different than you with kindness and not hate, the world can be harmonious.

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“The artist in this exhibit try to set an example of how too manifest a new mission and change the worlds order to benefit all living things to a greater degree. We are not our behavior nor our identity, and we all learned in a hurry how to adjust to the new circumstances. As Queer folks we have an opportunity to show the world how essential we are to the creative reformation of our daily interactions as many of us are in the artistic fields. We live in emotional times and we cant survive on our own, that much we have been shown. RECONSTRUCT as a call to start within and implement what’s learned in our surroundings.”

Richard Schemmerer

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Reconstruct Exhibition PRIDE Berlin is a call to creatively implement what we have learned in our environment. 

This event is a PRIDE ART team exhibition organized by pride art founder Lars Deike and his pride art team members Richard Schemmerer, Aaron D. Holloway, curated by Richard Schemmerer. (Text R.Schemmerer)

Vernissage July 11, 3 p.m. – 11 p.m. (according to the current legal requirements of the current C guidelines) and Sunday 3 p.m. – 9 p.m.
The exhibition can also be visited afterwards with a personal appointment.

RECONSTRUCT Reconstruction

Update July 7, 2020
Invitation to the group exhibition RECONSTRUCT Reconstruction on Saturday July 11th 6-11pm and Sunday the 12th from 3pm to 9pm. The exhibition takes place outdoors and in the gallery. 5-meter high giant iron gates and overseas containers are transformed into a large open-air gallery. But there also wants to be a lot of art to be seen in the studio. Through the open-air gallery we can better deal with the distance guidelines.

IN LOVE WE TRUST

a virtual and real time progressive art exhibit: ART in the age of re-examination.

As we reimagining the world after an epic interruption and the new Normal has been declared we take inventory of our personal world our dreams and our needs to realign with the planet to make this a more equal world. Art has always been a tool used to lead the way and with its various styles is a great way to express what motivates us and inspires us. RECONSTRUCT uses collage and assemblage to build something new out of the old pieces and to show that every vision can be an inspiration if followed by the right actions.

Reconstruct Exhibition PRIDE Berlin is a call to mobilize our collective resources and ideas to rebuild. Many of us experienced loss over the last few months and have been socially isolating themselves, now it is time toy reinvent ourselves into a kinder society. The future is unwritten and if we don’t write it somebody else will.

Following Artists shows their Work:

Analia Adorni
Elisabeth Ajtay
Farzana Akhtar
Jonathan Armor
Catalina Aranguren
Regina Basaran
Joyce Camilleri
Crystel
Lars Deike
Electrosexual
Giorgia Favaretto
Bianca Fox
Caspar de Gelmini
Jessie Georges
Jérémy Griffaud
Theo Große-Venhaus
Tyler Hallett
Sam Heydt
A. David Holloway
Callum Leo Hugh
Tomaz Jelenc
Irma Joanne
Karisma
Ron Kibble
Maria Krasyuk
Marta Lodola
Ianni Luna
Subhash Maskura
Eva Mueller
okay4me (Frank Losensky)
Marianna Panagiotoudi
Irena Paskali
Michael Rädel
Farzana Rahman
Bill Roberts
Renato Rodrigo
Nicola Rubinstein
Richard Schemmerer
Sid Simpatico
Luciano Siqueira
Bev Stroganov
Thomas Swims
Alisa Teletovic
Todor Andreevski
Alina Tofan
Doug Winter
Igor Zeiger

Exhibition dates and hours

Opening July 11th 6 – 11pm
Expo 12th July 3-9pm
Expo July 13th – August 11th only by appointment

https://flipboard.com/@dwnews/germany-lh3g74u8z/-/a-thtdaFmaTNGn-vgn_hpLrg%3Aa%3A752470588-%2F0

The Baram House Magazine featured my work in the “A Strange Summer” issue this month. The interview was fun, and their questions are both curious and thought-provoking. The conversation allowed for deep thought about my past, present, and future. 

The more I write and sit quietly with the work I’m creating, the more freely it is to generate abstracts of esthetic accuracy to the artist statement set of rules I outlined to complete the project. 

This project published here, “Father to Son,” is retitled “Optics and Acoustics,” which will be more easily apparent when viewed as an entire body of images. 

The titles of the images are in flux now and in consideration to make full-length sentences. The titles will allow the viewer to find a sense of character in the person reflected in the abstract images. 

The staff at the Baram House magazine are helpful, kind, and thoughtful. Please read and subscribe, the magazine is beautiful and a useful way to escape in these uncertain times.

Please enjoy, click on this link to read the full feature.