slightly puckered seckle pear

on the day you were born

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!