a bit blurry, but I just wanted to see how the shadow looked freed from the object that cast it.

I did this one in the dining room during dinner. Blue painters tape, chicken with kale and white beans.

Blanket Magazine

Blanket Magazine is an online art and design magazine based in Australia. They interviewed me for this months issue. Click on Release 2 to download the pdf. (issue 6- Good vs Evil)

Swarm Blog

Svea in front of Swarm's room. There are more images from the Art Affair on the Swarm Gallery blog.

Art Affair installation for Swarm Gallery

This is the installation I did for Swam Gallery in Oakland. It rained the day I went down to install, so I had to wait until night and use a flood light to creat any sort of shadow at all. Jared and I taped all the way down behind the plastic, that is part of the blue glow you see. People kept trying to throw the cup away.

Portland Art Affair at the Jupiter Hotel

See if you can spot the shadow on the last one

Rock- Vancouver, BC

blue painters tape on sidewalk

Leak

Sink

Eagle & Western, Seattle 1:25

Robson St, Vancouver BC- 3:30

Olympia 1:00

Olympia 1:00

Olympia 12:20

Alec Clayton from the Weekly Volcano

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Visual Edge: Joe Penrod's "Painted Shadows"

Painted shadows
with his back against the sun joe penrod creates unique visuals / by alec clayton

Joe Penrod's "painted shadows" are a kind of working class public art with a short "shelf life."
You probably noticed the quotation marks. That's because there are no actual names for the things Penrod does - at least not names that are commonly accepted. He documents spatial relationships between objects and time of day by "tracing" or "coloring in" the shapes of cast shadows with common painter's blue masking tape. The objects whose shadows he traces are common objects such as bottles, ladders, fire hydrants and stop signs found in public spaces, and his art is left in the places in which they are created. Understandably, they may not always last very long. But he documents at least some of them with photographs.
Penrod is showing a number of these works at Black Front Gallery in Olympia. The show includes a soft drink cup in the window with its shadow, a child's chair with its shadow, a ladder with its shadow, a plant with its shadow, and the shadow of an electrician with his electrical chord. Like Elvis, the electrician has long since left the building, but his shadow remains.
In addition to these found objects and their shadows, there are small photographs of many of his installations in other places and a group of eight gouache paintings of shadows cast by electrical wires. Some of the actual objects are intriguing to look at while others look somewhat tawdry. Overall, I believe the photographs look better than the actual objects for the simple reason that the edges where pieces of tape overlap do not show in the photographs. The shadows look more solid, and color modulation along their edges create a halo effect where cast shadows and tape-painted shadows overlap. This overlapping effect is especially important because the actual shadows change with lighting conditions, but the taped shadows never change.
A small paper cup sitting in the window seems almost as if left there by accident with its nice blue shadow crawling up the wall.
Near the back of the gallery is a ladder with a shadow almost twice as tall as the ladder itself. This combination creates an intriguing play of line between the real and the imagined. Across from it, a man's shadow overlaps the edges of a strange little doorway in the wall - a door that is no taller than five-foot-four.
The least effective piece is a flower pot sitting on the floor with a heavy blue tape shadow. More than any of the other pieces, the overlapping pieces of tape are clumsy and heavy looking.
On the back wall is a group of eight small gouache paintings that look like purely abstract forms in a semi-transparent blue on white paper. The forms are sensuous and well designed. But they are not abstract; they are traced shadows from electrical wires.
Overall, this is a very nice show based on a unique visual concept.
The show runs through February. The gallery, at 106 Fourth Ave. in Olympia, has expanded its hours of operation. It is now open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

some images from the show

Up next in the gallery is Joe Penrod, an Olympia artist who's "tape" painting will certainly be something new for us. Using ordinary blue painters tape to copy cast shadows from everyday icons of the urban landscape - stop signs, trash bins, door handles. As the sun arcs in the sky and the shadow continues to crawl across the surface, Penrod photographs the moment in almost surreal simplicity. The result are images of a single object casting dual shadows, images of two true moments in time, vivid blue contrasting the dull grey concrete and shadow. Although visually and conceptually very simple, this is truly something you have to see to understand. Coincidentally, the show opens on Friday, February 2nd, Groundhog's day.

more drawings

I can't seem to get these to scan right. The paper is actually white and smooth.
These are all pretty small, somewhere around 4"x4" or so. Unfortunately, I did these before I found the frames I am going to use, so I have to do 8 new ones that are 3"x5". These are actually not abstractions, they are shadows from wires as they fell on the page.

I'm working on a bunch of these little (4"x4") gouaches for my show. This is a shadow of a small electrical chord.

This is an old self-portrait