I think that these paintings are just as relevant now as they were fifteen plus years ago.
Patriotic Painting, 2006
mixed media on canvas
40”x30”
S.O.L. (Shit Out of Luck), 2002
spray paint & oil paintstick on paper
20”x16”
One Day We Could Point at What Did Not Used to Be There /
Why packing paper? It provides an interesting texture that is totally in sync with some of the gridded imagery I have been working with.
One Day We Could Point at What Did Not Used to Be There, 2020
Art Communicates Message & Inspires Hope /
Today has been a great morning for me. The Torrez-Miner family gifted Sheila and I three powerful prints for our personal art collection. These prints arrived by mail. I was flooded by the love and generosity of the gesture, the gifts, the communication, the connection. We are all connected. The prints are three of Dylan’s most recent works. I love the intimacy of works on paper. We welcome these gifts. Much love to you, Estrella Torrez and Dylan Miner and fam.
Today, I am fine. The struggle is real. It can affect my family members. Therefore, it can affect me. If it can affect me, then it can affect you. We are all connected. Whites need to support and lift up the struggles of BIPOC. Black Lives Matter!
Mass Gap /
How can we explain that scientists and astronomers have not been able (until maybe very recently) to detect any objects in our known universe that are greater than 2.5 times and less than 5.0 times the mass of our sun? This is known as the mass gap. Certainly there must be entities in space with masses within this gap.
I have enjoyed working small lately. Here is a new painting for The Sublime series.
Beyond Yet, 2020
house paint, oil paintstick & crayon on packing paper
10”x10”
When in the Studio /
I’ve been feeling a real urge to work with basic abstracted shapes in tandem with my current iconography versus my usual approach of layering visual elements. I decided that starting small was a good idea. I have never really tried to make a “landscape” per se. I’m very satisfied with this piece which will take its place in The Sublime gallery, as well as the shop.
There, 2020
house paint, oil paintstick & crayon on packing paper
10”x10”
Guest Article for City Pulse /
FAVORITE THINGS
Tim Lane and his art collection
Lansing City Pulse, June 16, 2020
Posted Tuesday, June 16, 2020 2:02 pm
Rich Tupica
Tim Lane is an athletic specialist for the City of East Lansing and the assistant coordinator of the East Lansing Art Festival. He is a husband and father. Aside from that, Lane is also an artist, writer and poet—and his favorite thing fully reflects that creative passion.
My wife and I have lived on the East Side of Lansing for 25 years. We rented for a couple of years before buying a house. Once the house was bought, we began collecting artwork.
In the summer of 2017, the sink in our upstairs bathroom malfunctioned. Over the course of an unsuspecting night, water filled the upstairs and began to work its way to the ground floor and basement through the ducts, outlets, stairs and ceiling. The place was a water park, and we were ultimately displaced for six months.
Miraculously, very little of the artwork hanging on our walls was damaged. A few pieces were. Several pieces had to go. Over the years, our personal art collection has become one of my favorite things.
Our collection began with a couple of pieces I had inherited from my aunt who was a graphic artist. One year, early on, we spent our income tax return on a series of collages our good friend, Detroit artist Teresa Petersen, had made. We established a relationship with Patrick Turner and began to collect his work, as well, around this time. Turner was an artist from Milwaukee who had won awards at the East Lansing Art Festival.
Sometimes artists trade work. As an artist, myself, I have traded work with artists who have become some of my good friends. We have a Travis Black in our dining room, an Aaron Curtner in our living room — both local, homegrown artists. I have a beautiful allegorical painting of a winter woods in my work office that was painted by Mike Clark of Silver Spring, Maryland.
One of our largest paintings is a painting by Jayme Theis. Jayme and I had a two-person show at Otherwise Art Gallery in Old Town back in 2003. When the show ended, Jayme and I traded. The trade commemorates my first exhibition of paintings. Prior to that, my first show had been an exhibition of collages at Todd Mack’s, where I befriended Alison Alfredson, another exceptional local artist.
One day, a large package arrived. It turned out to be a portrait of me that our friend, Mike Clark, had painted from a photo. I had no idea he had been working on it. I was speechless.
Our most recent acquisitions are two prints by Pete Martens, a local printmaker. I bought them for my wife on our 25th wedding anniversary. One print echoes our love of Lake Michigan — the other depicts the Michigan State University Chapel, where we were married.
When our house flooded, we had to pack quickly. There was no time for a ton of organization. Boxes were stuffed in various safe places. For the past three years, we have been searching for the box where we stored a sculptural piece by local artist Ingrid Blixt. We finally found it just last week. It was in the attic. Once on the upright piano in the living room, it is now on the Art Deco chifforobe in our dining room.
(Favorite Things was edited by Rich Tupica)
Year One /
There are a couple of new paintings in the shop at yoursilentface. The latest is a smaller piece on watercolor paper. This one merges a meditation of First Contact with a better future. Just as it is unacceptable to think that our world cannot be any better, it is arrogant to assume that we are the only life forms in the universe.
Scroll for a look at the new painting, a link to its gallery and a link to the shop.
There's a Protest in Lansing Today but... /
I cannot go.
I delved into my journal this morning to see if I could pinpoint what I had been thinking while I was making paintings in 2015/2016. I think Michael Brown’s death and Ferguson were still on my mind. I was also dealing with sending my (multiracial, brown-skinned) son out into the world for college, far from home, and worried about that. How could I protect him while he was 800 miles away? The answer of course is that the community needs to protect him. There’s only so much a parent can do.
I can’t go to the protest today. The system needs to change. Change is hard but necessary. We can do this. #BLM. I support change. I’m leaving a link here to my BLM series. You can check the paints out. I hope they take you some place—toward some thought or idea or feeling.
Your Silent Face (A Thought that Never Changes Remains a Stupid Lie), 2013