Megan Caldwell Chandler

This summer has been and will continue to be quite a whirlwind for me.  I spent almost an entire week at Bonnaroo, and today I’m heading off to Nashville.  My mom is going on this trip with me, and she has never been to Nashville, so I’m excited to show her around!  (More accurately, I’m excited for my good friends who live in Nashville to point us in the right direction!)  Hopefully we can make time to visit the Frist Center for the Visual Arts and the Ryman Auditorium.

Despite my busyness, I’m happy to report that I have been able complete some new work…finally!  I have one finished piece as well as several in progress.  The “Holes” theme is still bouncing around in my mind, and I plan on following this idea until it’s exhausted. 

I really like my new piece, #12.  There’s just something about the black background that pops for me.  I’m thinking about trying the black background on a much larger panel…we’ll see.

This work in progress is exciting for me because it is the largest painting I have yet attempted.  This birch panel is 24”x30”.  Mentally, it’s tough for me to work on large pieces, because the larger panels are expensive.  It’s one thing to have a major screw up on a piece of paper that costs a few bucks, but to fumble with a panel that costs over $30 might just give me a full blown panic attack.  Nevertheless, I’m pleased with this new work so far, and hopefully I will have it completed sometime within the next week.

To help organize my thoughts during this Holes series, I’ve also started an altered book to experiment with new ideas.  For those who don’t know, an altered book is any book (old, new, recycled) that is painted, glued, cut, pierced, drawn, drilled, collaged, etc., to change  (aka alter) its original form.  This book will serve as an alternative sketchbook, and hopefully it will help alleviate some of my anxiety with the larger paintings.  With any luck, when this book is finished it will also be a stand-alone work of art.   (Big thanks to my mom, who spotted this book in the discard pile at the high school library where she works!  She has an eye for what I like, and she’s always bringing me discarded goodies.)