invoking the spirits of my ancestors

"pods"

New blog Art Auction for "Pods"! a piece i adore which is part of the permanent collection of the University of Southern Maine. don't miss your chance to bid! check it out at www.myspace.com/tangyom or let me know if you'd like me to place a bid for you and i will...email me for details if you are interested.

xo

kent harris' take on Pat D.

Kent this is brilliant!

Pat in motion...

my dad...

I can still remember sitting on the floor of my second grade classroom 27 years ago watching him. My Dad. The most amazing artist in all the world. He stood in front of my little 7 year old peers as a guest speaker whipping out in a few marker strokes whatever the kids called out. Clowns, horses, hot air balloons…whatever their imaginations could think of he would conjure on the big blank pad of paper. I remember my heart swelling with pride as I looked around at the amazement on the other kids faces. I was so lucky…my dad was a sort of magician. And I wanted to be just like him.

Back then Dad ran the art department of an aerospace company in Connecticut. He worked in an office, commuted back and forth on an overcrowded interstate highway every morning and every evening for what probably felt like a thousand years. He supported us, his family with this work. And I was so proud of being able to go to any encyclopedia and open it to find my dad’s art…the Space Shuttles and Space Telescopes in there are all his work. To me he was famous…one of the greats.

Growing up my world was full of stories of all the other artists in our family, many of whom had died before I ever got to know them or perhaps stayed in the “old country” in Italy. Painters, master carpenters, fashion designers, poets, musicians…this was our bloodline. We came from creative stock. But he was certain to tell me of the trials and tribulations these folks all faced as artists. It’s a hard path to follow…hard to make a living at it and even harder to support a family doing it.

He had bookshelves crammed with big fat art books to pour through and lose myself in on rainy days. I was surrounded by the works of amazing artists, from the Wyeths to Diego Rivera to Pablo Picasso to Jackson Pollack to Michelangelo to Monet, to name a few.

Lucky I had so much art around me to emulate because throughout my life I have been the lucky recipient of all of my Dad’s hand-me-down top-of-the line art supplies. Fancy guaches, watercolors, a huge set of markers with every color under the sun in it…colored pencils, tracing paper…you name it. I would use the stuff in my own way trying to mimic him and all of those other great artists I read about.

As the last of his three children prepared to go to college, something amazing happened to my Dad. He decided to dip his toe into a different pond in the art world. He bought himself a canvas and with great care after work in the evenings, he did something he hadn’t done in years and years and years…he made a painting. A painting that did not have to do with spaceships or aerospace technology.

It was a polar bear…an amazing, lifelike polar bear meandering through the terrain of a washy background that felt cold like a blizzard. I remember seeing it evolve and watching drop jawed as he magically made this great beast appear on the once white canvas. The big bear emanated strength and assuredness and the ability to survive the harsh elements…in retrospect, it kind of was like my Dad’s spirit painting of his inner-artist-animal, though I don’t think he’d ever describe it that way. To my poetic self, it signifies his readiness to leave the security of the paycheck a corporate job offers and brave the often times harsh world with his creativity and his pure talent as his guide.

He (lovingly) coerced my mom to pack up and hightail it to Maine, the place we as a family had enjoyed on many a summer vacation. He wanted to paint. He wanted to live more simply. He went from dipping his toe into those waters to diving head first in with no looking back. And thankfully, I think he would say with no regrets, either.

Today, my Dad, Pat DeSantis, is a successful artist. He works in a studio and has his own gallery in the gorgeous carriage house attached to the home he and my Mom, Margaret, share. The P. DeSantis Studio and Gallery is located at 77 North Street in Kennebunkport…across from Patten’s Berry Farm. The chair at his big desk where he paints looks out over a beautiful yard into the Maine woods, a lot different than that office chair he used to sit in at work. His first of many paintings, that magical, mystical Polar Bear, is hung with a certain sublime pride over the mantel above the fireplace in my Dad’s gallery today. I think that bear feels more at home surrounded by the woods and the elements…and so does my father.

Today he makes his own art for a living and not surprising to anyone hearing our story, so do I. It strikes me as poignant, when I think back to my days in college, when after making an attempt to be a writer I switched my degree to art and my Dad responded with sunken shoulders and a big frown. He tried to convince me that having a trade, a more marketable skill would be much more sensible. He tried to dissuade me with talks of the reality of the starving artist. And I sat and I politely listened, but then turned around and did what he had been inspiring me to do my whole entire life…I flexed my creativity, just like he had and I became an artist. And art permeates everything I do.

And so I would like to say, to my Dad, “Thanks.” Thanks for believing in the importance of art. Thanks for being so brave and making the jump into your real self…the painter, and continuing to let that painter evolve showing me that there is no need for stagnancy in life. Thanks for realizing that I am as bullheaded as you and that you couldn’t stop me, and thus encouraging me and cheering me through my personal trials as an artist. And thank you, Dad, for inspiring me.

valentine monsters...

my sons and i made monsters instead of heart-laden trinkets today...

another blog ART AUCTION!

since the last one was so much fun...i'm having another.

www.myspace.com/tangyom

rusty cage...up for auction! come and join the fun!

My First Online Blog Art Auction!

i am attempting an online art auction on my myspace blog! it has proven to be pretty fun...a bit exciting even. don't know how profitable it will actually turn out to be, but it certainly is something to keep these winter days exciting!

if you are interested in the auction, you can find it on my myspace blog
http://www.myspace.com/pjtach
friend request me with a message about the auction if we aren't already myspace friends so you can see it...the print i am auctioning off is "persimmon" seen below. i'll write about how it turns out

digital imaging...

winter '08...but better

winter '08

OM...

inner peace with a bit o' rust.

getting my hands dirty...

i had the opportunity to get my hands nice and inked this past weekend. it had been so long. my studio has been torn down and i have no place to work until the new one is built, which could be a long long time given the current economic state. it is as though jay and i are stuck in limbo...our old little barn gone, but not ready to begin building the new glorious one until we know the economy is stable.
but i have to say, i am bustling with creative energy, and really would love a space and some time to create. it is long overdue.

p

RJM for danielle

that ink layer...

before

for tammy...

Oh!

and so you all can plan for it and make sure to be there...the fair i am in is sunday december 7th at consolidated school on school st in kennebunkport...it runs from 9-2.

it is a great consumerist weekend up here in kennebunkport, christmas prelude is. lots of seriously gorgeous, locally made stuff in our quaint little village, with Whoville like caroling and all kinds of cheer. great places to eat and stay, too...could be a little much needed vacation and it's much less expensive than fkying to the north pole with gas prices the way they are!!!!!

hope to see your face there!

xo

a strategy...

a strategy. yup a strategy. that's what a need. a theme. a sales pitch and color coordination.

i just signed myself up for a craft fair on christmas prelude weekend. it was an inexpensive craft fair venture...only 25 bucks. i figure i can't go wrong. but i want to make the most out of it...for reducing inventory's sake as well as making some much needed money for christmas! four kids' stockings to fill this year! eeee! too much fun!

christmas prelude is this festival held in the kennebunks. it basically turns our rocky-beached world into Whoville at the beginning of december and capitalizes on the consumerism of the holidays. it is one of the biggest tourist weekends of the year in a tourist dependent town.

i am hoping this fair gets a lot of traffic. or at least some traffic. and i am on a mission to make my little booth attractive enough to sell some of my accumulated work. i have had work in four galleries over the past couple of months...big shows. and unfortunately the art world is really slow right now. in this economy, art is way down the list of necessities. thus, i have a lot of work that has returned home from shows, or is still hanging without many people seeing it because no one is out browsing in galleries.

so, i am taking some of that work down to bring to the fair and using what i've got here...and i am going to price it ridiculously on the low side. i don't have any storage here because my new studio is in a long process of being built...it won't be ready until the late spring...so getting the work into good loving homes is a goal of mine.

i am trying to design a tidy and gorgeous little booth...i am envisioning it being natural, but dark like my work. black velvet and some other black material i have yet to find, with wood tones on all of the baskets, chairs and racks...some gold, antiquey gold thrown amuck here and there. here's what i'm thinking...

i will have some larger framed works on the walls, i may build black covered "walls" to go behind the table, or i may just lean the work against a black drapeon the wall...maybe ten or twelve pieces...depending on how i arrange them. i don't have too much $$$ or time to sonk into this so if it proves too difficult to build something, i may just lean the babies. all of that large framed work, which usually costs between 150 and 250 will be on sale for 90 to 190 ish. i will also have the framed prints available unframed in dark wood toned baskets to look through...sizes ranging from 5x7 to 8x10 on the table, costs ranging from 20-35...and 12 x12 to 11x14 in a basket on the floor, costs ranging from 40-60...

i will have a myriad of my smaller framed prints available...a whole slew to choose from hanging from ribbons from the gorgeous hardwood A-frame display rack jay made me for the fair i did with brooke a couple summers back. these are as low as i can go on them already price wise...pricing ranging from 25-30 bucks. cute little wee framed prints that hang from ribbons...maybe i'll do a buy two get one 1/2 off or something...

i will also have a long table with a black table cloth on it...on the table will be random little one of a kind framed pieces i have made, ranging in price from 30-60, a black velvet covered board displaying a dozen or so pieces of my print inspired pieces of jewelry with a back-up of each ranging in price from 25-45 bucks (i tend to sell a lot of these) and boxes of cards...i have yet to make cards, but i think they are a good idea for around holiday time...a box of ten cards for 19 bucks or something like that...or four cards for 10...

i feel like i need to have enough relatively inexpensive items for people to browse through and look at. i know it is a tight ecomony, so i want people to be able to afford my work...and have it displayed gorgeously enough so that it looks much more expensive than i have it priced at! i think i will bring gnarled twigs and stuff to decorate for the holidays in a very earthy way...a little gold sprinkled around never hurts either...

let me know your ideas, oh brilliant and creative friends. i need to fine tune this strategy and i love you all and your minds!

xo
p

ps...baby django is doing soooooo well. he is an angel. simply perfect. i haven't wanted to rip my face off of his to write...so i'm sorry about not keeping my blogs up to date...i'll take some new pics of his chubby loveliness later today and perhaps post them!

muah!

on the current political crisis...

Subject: Gloria Steinem responds to Sarah Palin
Gloria Steinem is an author, feminist organizer and co-founder of the Women's Media Center. She supported Hillary Clinton and is now supporting Barack Obama.


Summary - Palin: wrong woman, wrong message
Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.
-Steinem
By Gloria Steinem
September 4, 2008

Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president.
We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote.

We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the 'white-male-only' sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.

But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about
baking a new pie.

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home,
divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does.

To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, 'Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs.'

This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience.

Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, 'I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?' When asked about Iraq, she said, 'I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq.'

She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax.

Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on 'God, guns and
gays' ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine.

McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. Shebelieves that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves 'abstinence-only' programs, which increase unwanted
births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.

So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, 'women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership,' so he may be voting for Palin's husband.

Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.

Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was
the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.

And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.

This could be huge.

friday august 1st...first friday art walk.

the bird study

summer 2008

i told myself i would take the summer off from art to act pregnant. ha! i have been offered a spot in several amazing shows that i simply could not turn down.

first of all, this friday July 11th "super Nova" opens at the Kymara Gallery in the north dam mill in Biddeford, Maine...it is a show featuring some super amazing artists of andy warhol notoriety, ultra violet, billy name and bibbe hansen and even some performance art...i am lucky to be one of the two local artists featured in that show! the gallery is supposedly covered in tinfoil! it should be a blast this friday...come check it out. it is going to be over the top!

in august i am lucky to be half of a two person show at the amazing Sanctuary Gallery in Portland, Maine. a lot of my photo-lithographic work will be featured in that show...stuff i don't normally show! i am so excited for it. the show opens on the First Friday Artwalk...the 1st of August. would love to see you there.

and last but not least, a couple weeks before the new baby is born in the biddeford mills again, the etsy maineteam is having a giant craft fair. i am hoping to make it to this, but with my track record of cookin' my buns rather quickly, i may have a newborn by then! i will be there as a consumer at least if not as a vendor! it is going to be a fair not to be missed. etsy is just the best...and i love supporting local artisans...

hope everyone is having a great summer and that you and everyone you know come to say hi at one of my shows!!!!!

julie and keira's invitation...

lovely heidileigh

some portrait work i've done recently...

show!

the opening for the latest show that i have work in is this coming friday...the 22nd from 5-7 pm. love to see your face there...

fruit

please join me...

for lisa coley...

the lost button

the first print to be pulled off of my new wee baby press.

for the love of pods i ii & iii

funny...

i always assume no one reads this blog...i put my work up here so that i have my images hosted. it is a place i come to view my work as an outsider...and then all of a sudden i'll speak to someone, or get a comment from someone who has read or viewed my blog...funny. i appreciate anyone taking the time to read my garble or look at my work.

thanks.

i have another show booked for 2008. a month long solo exhibition at the white heart...a very cool lounge/bar in portland. it is the reason i have begun to pump out work. well, that and the inspiration of my subject matter. i am loving it. but i feel like i have prematurely stopped working on some of the images i have recently posted simply for some girth in the size of my body of work. i feel the pieces are kind of incomplete and plan on going back to work on them before the show. but really, there isn't much time left before january...and i want all new work up.

so...i would appreciate comments. even if it feels like a negative one, or critical. i want to hear it. i have more work to do on this stuff. i know that. why don't you let me know what you think would make it all come together batter. and in the meantime i am going to keep posting myunfinished work.

ciao, bellos.

driver 8...oh how i love you.

two new pieces in the works...

to be printed on recycled brown paper with a coat of golden ink aid to make them glow!!!!! once i get my rinter working i'll scan the output...but for now the images in the works...

scissoring

still more to come...

me...

her instrument of choice

the beginning...the very beginning...of some new work. come on now and be critical, but remember that it is the group of things that go together that make the statement.

creation

i have a big show in april 2008. not for a while, but for me, huge. the wheels have begun to spin about new work. new work. such a novel idea.

i cannot waste time creating anything that doesn't speak. the venue i have set up is very conservative...the library in kennebunk. the space my work will be in is shared by cildren, thus i have to curb my usual vulgarity. but by how much? i want to make a statement politically, but without insinuating violnce, nudity or any obscenity, how i am to do that?

my draw, or interests lie in print-ized portraits. i have established this. this is the genre for me right now. i want to focus on the working class and somehow establish in my work an elitism about having humility...i have a particular interest in this because recently i began a green (non-toxic, eco-friendly cleaning business to support my family. there is much to be learned about life before one cleans other peoples' grime for a living. let me tell you.) i struggle finding ways of justifying being a cleaner even though i have a degree and can do many many things...fact is...i think that cleaning a person's home in a safe noon-toxic way is a sort of holitstic health practice. preventative meds in a very basic way. organization, cleanliness...there is something very noble about what i am doing and what others like me do...

i think my style of portraiture can capture an arrogance in the sweat-collar class well. it is, i believe, what i shall attempt to do...that or some paper plate lithos of utensils with illustrious names...hmmmm.

my itsy bitsy etsy

my greatest teacher is my life...from someone's daily om.

Life

Your Perfect Teacher

Many of us long to find a spiritual teacher or guru. We may feel unsure of how to practice our spirituality without one, or we may long for someone who has attained a higher level of insight to lead the way for us. Some of us have been looking for years to no avail and feel frustrated and even lost. The good news is that the greatest teacher you could ever want is always with you-that is your life.

The people and situations we encounter every day have much to teach us when we are open to receiving their wisdom. Often we don't recognize our teachers because they may not look or act like our idea of a guru, yet they may embody great wisdom. In addition, some people teach us by showing us what we don't want to do. All the situations in our lives, from the insignificant to the major, conspire to teach us exactly what we need to be learning at any given time. Patience, compassion, perseverance, honesty, letting go-all these are covered in the classroom of the teacher that is your life.

We can help ourselves to remember this perfect teacher each day with a few simple words. Each morning we might find a moment to say, "I acknowledge and honor the teacher that is my life. May I be wise enough to recognize the teachers and lessons that I encounter today, and may I be open to receiving their wisdom." We might also take some time each day to consider what our lives are trying to teach us at this time. A difficult phase in your relationship with your child may be teaching you to let go. The homeless person you see every day may be showing you the boundaries of your compassion and generosity. A spate of lost items may be asking you to be more present to physical reality. Trust your intuition on the nature of the lesson at hand, work at your own pace, and ask as many questions as you want. Your life has all the answers.

*sigh*

remember this?

dad.

phase one of dad's portrait...more on this to come.

what is beyond that fence, ronin?

some mother's son...