Dennis Hollingsworth

Wood Butcher

Finally finished building the crates. This is a first for me. The idea is to trade transparencies for crates with CM. After moving to Dallas, I didn't want to find a photograoher anew. I'd rather transisiton to digital cameras sometime in the near future, once the technology can deliver around ten megapixels for less than a thousand dollars. That should be sooner than later, but in the meantime, I'll still need transparencies. By building out the crates, I can provide a crate per painting, to protect it where ever it goes. a nice idea, but it was a brutal job: lots of wood, sawdust everywhere, seemingly endlesss process. But once I have the equipment out for panel building, why not go for it?

Building the panels are different. At least I can anticipate the painting to come. I make plans for the painting as I am asembling the panels. But the crates are monotonous.

Now, it's time to seal them with mat resin. I'm taking a departure from the Belgian linen that is commercially available in the art stores. My mother, who imports antique fabrics from Europe to the States, has given me a quantity of antique linen, about a hundred years old, hand made. They are blond, not the dark brown of the Belgian variety. I've wanted to shake this up, shift to canvas perhaps.... this is better, qualities of each. Plus, I like the human hand in them.

A long day into night. More fun tomorrow.

Fresh start for tomorrow. Sealing, three coats. Hook straps screwed tot he back. And work on paper in the meantime.

They have monograms. That reminds me of my first work out of grad school where I would paint "sandwich paintings": a bottom image was walkabout and an upper image was a letterform struck over to end the piece (which I imagined to be a Rusche operation in reverse)... so the reappearance of letters is an old friend for me. We'll see if we can see them later.

the linen covered panel corner in closeup