Claiborne Colombo is an artist, Creative and Design Director based on Lopez Island, WA.NOTES
Making art and designing things where the land meets the sea. A digital journal and visual record of Claiborne’s art, life, design, and inspiration among all other things…
Open Ground: Shedding Skin
Progression of work
It's a daunting feeling when you know you need to evolve your work, but you don't know-how. I had been sitting with this for some time, and there are many points of view on how to get after it. Sometimes you need to work through it. Sometimes you need to think it through. Sometimes it's a mixture of both.
My sense of place and time has flattened. Meaning, boundaries between work/life/art/design/mother/friend/partner have been not only blurred but flattened into one plane of existence. With this, I crave simplicity—a reduction of the unnecessary. Peeling back the skin to see the bones and what hold us/me altogether.
Open Ground, 2020
Acrylic and India Ink on cotton paper
I am continuing to figure out the relationships between shapes, color, and lines as I explore this body of work on paper and wood panel. I feel the creative momentum and am excited to work through it all in my new studio.
Transitioning to wood panel
A little art, a little sunshine
Wapato – 36” x 48”
Love it when friends make your art look beautiful in homes.
Staged by the talented Copeland + Co. Interiors
E C H O : A Two-Person Show
I will be showing my work alongside Carolyn Hazel Drake in WOMXN HOUSE’s inaugural show August 15 - September 8.
Through repetition and materials, we both recreate and translate echoes of what once was. Carolyn’s work focuses on the legacy of people and I the legacy of place.
OPENING RECEPTION
Thursday, August 15, 2019 from 7-9 PM
3636 N Mississippi Ave,
Portland, OR
If you are unable to attend, you can request an online preview.
All art is for sale.
“This exhibition features the artwork of Claiborne Colombo and Carolyn Hazel Drake. Both artists are recreating an echo of something that once was - not a direct representation, but a translation. This echo morphs and changes shape as it moves through space and time. The artwork of both artists has a repetitive nature but one that is not perfect nor machine, rather human and imperfect. Both artists incorporate the ideas of deconstruction, the demarcation of time, and repetition as meditation.
Carolyn Hazel Drake’s work is rooted in nostalgia, seen through the lens of the conceptual underpinnings that are grounded in being a woman. Her work acts as a record of words not said — making space for meaning. Claiborne Colombo’s work takes the viewer on a journey full of fluctuations, pauses, crossroads, and moments of discovery. Her dashes, much like Carolyn’s stitches, act as a marking of time. Her pieces are about movement and creating energy through the travel of her created spaces.
“Be what you are, of the earth, but a dreamer too”
– Mary Oliver”
ArtWorks Northwest: Group Show
Marquam, 2018
I am excited to announce that one of my paintings, Marquam, has been selected for the Artworks Northwest Exhibit. This annual juried show is organized by the Umpqua Valley Arts Association.
ARTWORKS NW OPENING
Friday May 17 from 5-7PM
The Hallie Brown Ford Gallery
Rosenburg, OR
This year’s juror, Danielle Knapp (curator at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art), has chosen work from over 600 submissions they received from Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Northern California, and Oregon. This year they have accepted work from 56 artists.
Incubation
Winter is usually a time of retreat and reflection. This year more than others, I craved solitude. Time to myself away from the studio to replenish my creativity. At first, I was wondering why I was avoiding the studio. I realized it was because I didn't know what to do next.
I knew my work needed to evolve, but how? I should work through it, right? I should make a bunch of ugly work and learn through the process of doing. I should redirect my attention to a completely new project so I can get reenergized from working in a different way. I should... but I didn't and I'm not. Not right now at least.
I listened to a podcast and two episodes resonated and reframed how I considered my experience*. I transitioned from thinking I was in a dead/dry spell to realize I am in an incubation phase. Yes, I am replenishing my creative energies but I am doing more than that. Under the surface, I am sorting out what I want to do next. I'm mentally trying to evolve my work and practice. Eventually, I will need to work it out on the canvas/paper/whatever but for now, I am okay with absorbing, conceptualizing, and thinking about new themes I'd like to explore.
*The Messy Studio put out these two episodes that really spoke to me...
Keeping It Going: Maybe it is a reflection of the winter doldrums but blocks and downtimes can happen any time of year. How do you cope with feelings of boredom and frustration that make it hard to keep working?
Changing Directions: The creative journey is never a straight path and all artists go through times of change in their work. These are necessary but can also be frustrating and painful as you head into the unknown. Today we’re going to talk about times of change in your work and some of the challenges that artists face.
Art Baby: Interview
As is the case with many of the artists I find to profile on Art Baby, I first connected with Claiborne Colombo's work as I was scrolling through Instagram. There's an intensity here: the rich colors look like they're seeping through the paper or canvas, while splatters of paint and meandering lines fill out an abstract landscape pulsing with a deep and welcome energy that's apparent in all of her art. I was so happy to find out we live in the same city and recently met for coffee (matcha for her!) at the Stumptown Coffee in the Ace Hotel in Downtown Portland. Claiborne is energetic and charming, full of life and ideas, and passionate about cultivating opportunities for creative connection.
Where did you grow up and where you do live now?
I lived in various places in the South until I was 25. I grew up in Richmond, Virginia and went to school in Tennessee. Before I moved, I had no idea the Pacific Northwest was a thing. It’s so beautiful out here. Lush, green - all the plants are bigger. It’s crazy. Currently, I live in St. Johns neighborhood in Portland, Oregon. It has a really nice old-school vibe mixed with industry and nature.
How would you describe your art? What’s your medium?
I’m an abstract mixed-media artist. Working on both canvas and paper, I use transparent layers of acrylic, graphite, charcoal, and pastels. The layers intersect and combine without compromising the raw nature of each material.
I like to use colors that flow, vibrate and bounce off one another. They act as a compass, helping the eye navigate through the layered terrain.
In play with the swaths of color are more detailed marks. With my marks, I try to capture movement, subtle shifts, and drastic divides. Throughout my work, lines and shapes are repeated and transformed, flowing across the expanse.
Is Beautiful Bad?
Wapato, 2018
Your work is “beautiful”…
This is a common response that I get about my work. Is saying art is beautiful a (backhanded) compliment? Does it flatten the work? Make it have less depth? Is beauty a bad thing?
In thinking about beauty I also started thinking about ugliness and if that gives work more depth. In searching I found this article Ugliness Is Underrated: In Defense of Ugly Paintings by Katy Kelleher.
“Even though the word ugly is now primarily used to describe the unaesthetic aspect of things rather than their deep moral fiber, it retains elements of its original meaning. Using it can shift a well-meaning aesthetic critique into the realm of moral judgment. This is unfortunate for those of us who genuinely enjoy, and celebrate, ugly things. If you, too, want to appreciate ugliness, the first thing you have to do is stop assuming that it is the inverse of beauty. We tend to talk about aesthetics as though the categories are locked in a battle: good versus evil, light versus dark. But opposites are a crutch. Beauty and ugliness do not negate each other. ”
I found it extremely interesting that our neurological response to ugly and beauty lights up the same parts of our brains.
“Beauty does not occupy a different area of the brain than ugliness. Both are part of a continuum representing the values the brain attributes to them.” Although we experience them differently, beauty and ugliness both tap into our emotional center, an area deeply involved in analyzing other’s motives and actions and generating both sympathy and empathy.
Tedious but freeing
Less than a month away from the show and I've been lucky enough to be spending my time fully dedicated to my practice.
There is an ebb and flow to feeling inspired and depleted. I have learned the process is full of various phases.
Terrified. Blank paper, mixing paints, and making choices for a vision not seen. Fuck it. Let the paint hit the white and then the colors take it from there. Freeing. I move the paint around on the paper, scraping and pushing the pigment around. I let my hands work faster than my mind. Colors are revealed from not fully mixed paint. Patience. I wait for it to dry and approach it with a new mindset once the colors are set. Tedious. I start with the pencil marks. They are small dashes. It takes me hours to make the forms. I've burned through lots of Netflix documentaries and shows making mark after mark. When my mind wants to explode or the side of my finger is burning from the grip I stop. Invigorating. Time for the big bold marks. Blocks of contrasting colors, long shakey lines and bulky chunks of charcoal. With these forms the art comes alive. I get excited and reinvigorated to start another.
And so the cycle continues.
Artist I've been watching.
In honor of International Women's Day, I thought I would give some love to some artist crushes I've had for the past year or so. Here is a little taste of women who are killing it and having fun documenting their process. Mad respect to all of them.
Beth Winterburn • • • @EBW_Artwork
Watercolor and mixed media artist based in Memphis, TN. Love her mark making and fluid compositions.
Heathery Day • • • @HeatherDayArt
Abstract mad woman based in Oakland, CA. Amazing documentation of process. Artist crushing hard for her.
Bianca Bello • • • @_Wildhumm
Boston-based artist who mixes mark making with watercolor. She makes my heart throb. I love her use of repetition and variety in form.
Latest works.
hustling in the new year with the start of some new work. #art #abstract #watercolor
the base of new work. watercolor on now its time to do some mixed-media magic.
Nailed It.
"Barbara Kruger famously began her professional career as a designer for Mademoiselle and other magazines before defecting from the mass-media overculture to join the conceptual-art resistance. And she didn’t join the cause empty-handed. In her work, Kruger hacked the magazine world’s finely turned tools of cultural communication to begin conveying slogans that went in direct contrast to social conventions (particularly when it came to women): “gender is irrelevant,” for instance, or “your body is a battleground.” Many works declare positions that seem anthemic but then become more and more ambivalent with time, and, in this piece, “Culture Vulture” is both a mark of pride for its owner and an occasions for reflection on the more predatory sides of the arts industry." – ARTSPACE
Work by Katie Batten.
Loving these energetic still life's that mix pop-culture with a folk art feel. It brings a refreshing lift to the conventional form. Great interview on little paper planes with artist (read here).