Busy December

The Frame Maker has kept me so busy since my last post that Christmas blew by and 2009 is the day after tomorrow.

The upside is my wife Heather made a beautiful Christmas holiday for all of us at home. We had beautiful wonderful food on the 24th, 25th and 26th including my favorite german chocolate cake, the first time Heather's ever made it at home. (It was awesome and didn't last 24 hours!)

Anyway, here's some end of the year follow up and detailing before 2009 is underway. First, it was fun to see this picture of my Ocean Abstract piece at the San Diego Coastkeeper Ocean Gala in a recent copy of 944 San Diego.


Photo: Brian Terry from 944.com/san diego.

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Ocean Abstract #3 for SD Coastkeeper

Here's a pic of the finished piece in its custom frame at The Frame Maker shop yesterday.



The final layers of varnish, plaster and wax mute the bright colors I started with on the recycled wood lengths (see last post), but still allow them to glow through the more opaque bits of glaze. I'm glad I made enough "raw materials" for more of these so i can work out a few things that occurred to me since its completion earlier this week.

New Ocean Abstract for SD Coastkeeper

If you've looked at the fine art pages of my online portfolio, you may recall this piece, "Ocean Abstract #1".



Created from plasters, wax and other materials from arsenal as a faux finish artist. I've developed a few other paintings out of this ideas of industrial, textural materials and the endless horizon-line division and interplay between ocean and sky.

One of these pieces was inspired by a fit of shop cleaning and recycling of unused materials at The Frame Maker, San Diego's premier custom framer, where I am now the general manager. Faced with a bin full of old rippings and cutoffs from our custom molding and construction endeavors, I began to consider all the different surfaces, grains and sizes of maple, ash, pine and basswood assembled there, and how differently they would take color, varnish and polish.

The long strips spoke "horizon" to me, and the piece was under way, utilizing only waste materials from The Frame Maker, and leftover paints, varnishes and wax from my shop.

This seemed a logical choice to donate to the annual gala and fundraiser for the San Diego Coastkeeper chapter this weekend, given their mission of removal of manmade debris and repair of manmade damage to our beaches and coasts.

Here are some progress pix of "Ocean Abstract#3".

Trompe L'oeil Chalk Painting: Little Italy Festa 2008

Here's two views of the finished chalk painting of Saint Domenic I did over the weekend for the "Gesso Italiano" part of the annual Little Italy Festa here in San Diego.





Hunter came down to chalk with me again on Sunday:

Chalk Painting photos from Little Italy Festa

Johm Hiemstra, Scenic Artist, originally uploaded by photoman1552.

Check out this gorgeous photo of me chalking yesterday-- I am eternally grateful to Robert of Rancho Santa Fe Photography for posting taking the time to get this shot of me laying down the picture frame pattern in chalk from an original pounce pattern.

Little Italy chalk 2008: Saturday pix

Here's the first pictures from Gesso Italiana 2008, the annual chalk street painting festival, happening this weekend in Little Italy, San Diego.


renderings in the studio


first things


developing background


face of Saint Domenic


working with my assistant, Hunter


end of day Saturday


Raul

Chalk Painting in Little Italy this weekend

I've been so busy I forgot to post here until now that, yes, I am doing chalk painting again this year in Little Italy as part of the annual Little Italy Festa here in San Diego.

Starting today (sorry for late notice)around ten am, the street painting starts and finishes tomorrow, Sunday, as part of the Festa, which draws over 100,000 people to the neighborhood.



Because we moved since last year's starry night painting (above), I can walk down to paint from my house, which well suits both my urban and green design aesthetics, especially when you consider that Little Italy has been both mine and Heather's favorite neighborhood in San Diego since we moved here in 1999.

Here's a pic of one of my favorite chalk pieces, Michelangelo from 2003:

If you are wondering what happened to my 2006 chalk installation piece, check back in a few weeks for long story and series of pix.

If you're looking for the next posts on Currant or Lucky D's, I'll be back at them next week, along with pix of this weekend.

Currant in San Diego Home and Garden

When I titled my last post "back to the restaurants" plural, I wasn't just talking about this summer's faux finishing work @ Lucky D's near the ballpark in San Diego's "East Village".

San Diego Home & Garden magazine just ran a feature in their September issue about San Diego's "growing sophistication" in restaurant & nightclub design and one of their stellar examples is Currant, the restaurant in downtown San Diego I worked on last summer-- here is my previous post about Currant from last September.

Here's the article cover and page featuring Currant from the actual magazine.





I will post clearer pictures of actual project in next post.

Back to the restaurants.....

September was a busy month for me and The Frame Maker, too, with much to report on many fronts.

Not only did I finally finish the trompe l'oeil children's circus mural that has dominated these posts all summer, my new friend Dave Egan finally opened the doors at his new bar Lucky D's, my other faux and trompe l'oeil painting project this summer here in San Diego.

I have a lot of good pictures of the progress of this job I will put up here, and I will start by expanding on my earlier posts on Lucky D's.

First here is an "in-between" shot of the faux painted brick corner.



You can also see some of the steps in the stencil work we used to create the painted wall paper effect, even clearer in the next two shots of the main part of the wall.





These pictures also reveal my secret weapon on this particular project, one of my new students, Coral, who worked on the stencil application of this painted finish. I met Coral and fellow painter Heather Diemand this spring-- Lucky D's was our first training project together.

Here's a shot of these two working on this finish with me this summer.



This last pic and the next one of yours truly were taken by very talented friend Mike Brown, who has documented a few of my projects for me now.



While Mike has also created magnificent digital images of my fine art painting for giclee printing purposes, his real work with the camera reaches far beyond that. Look for Mike's work in the San Diego edition of 944 and on his website at www.mikebrownportfolio.com.