I've been a big fan of Charlotte-based artist Sharon Dowell for some time now. Her paintings are like memories layered upon each other and stacked high in your mind. Whether it's one of her dazzling cityscapes or a ghostlike figurative painting, Sharon's work is exciting, pushing you to look a little deeper and longer.

I always want to know more about how people create: what inspires them, how they motivate themselves, etc. So I asked Sharon some questions about her work and inspiration.

Armando Bellmas: What moves you to begin a new painting?

Sharon Dowell: The satisfaction from completing a painting inevitably wanes and I begin to think about new ways to explore ideas, imagery, layers, etc. It's akin to being in a bustling city; that wonderful overwhelming feeling that there are so many things to do and see that the possibilities are never ending.

Sometimes inspiration hits with a feverish pitch and I cannot wait to get into the studio. Other times I glimpse something that I file away to explore at a later date, such as tangled power lines in a quiet alley or the beautiful geometry and order of farmland when fly across the country.

Armando: Do your ideas rely on actual snapshots of places and things or are you working from the memory of what you've glimpsed?

Sharon: A little of both. I try to capture the energy of place in my work. I usually have a camera on hand wherever I travel and my imagery is based upon my actual photos. When I am painting in the studio, the memory of that moment is incorporated into the work in the underpainting, color, and texture.

Armando: I love that layering of tangible and intangible. So in a painting like 'Pier', for instance, there's a memory in there, almost a reflection in the water and on the wood, tangible and intangible. Tell me about it.

Sharon: Most of my paintings begin with either patterns or an aerial view of a city--rooftops and streets, etc. It is my attempt to express that intangible energy one experiences in different environments--be it on a loud and bustling street corner or under a pier on a breezy day. The architectural imagery then creates a nice tension between the two layers. I allow the underpainting and texture to show through in certain areas. Visually, the transparency of the layers feels ghostlike, referencing who or what may have occupied that space in times past.

Armando: Would your work be different if you lived someplace else? How does living in Charlotte affect your ideas?

Sharon: I'm not sure if my work would be different, but I do feel that the one year I lived in New York City influenced my subject matter heavily. I had a difficult time painting there--so much wonderful distraction! But when I came back to Charlotte, I was able to have a studio, a sanctuary where I could focus solely on my work, and that made a huge difference.

I have painted scenes of Charlotte, but a lot of my subject matter tends to be of other places--Helena, MT, Asheville, Iceland, San Francisco, NYC, you name it. As mentioned, when I travel, I have my camera on hand and thus build up a large database of images to cull from. Because I am exploring (and romanticizing) these new places, I think they are sometimes a little more exciting to paint when I get into the studio.

[Check out more of Sharon Dowell's work.]

Calvin Tomkins' Lives of the Artists profiles ten major contemporary artists: Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman, Julian Schnabel, Richard Serra, James Turrell, Matthew Barney, Maurizio Cattelan, Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, and John Currin. (Each profile was originally published in The New Yorker during the last decade, compiled, and, if necessary, updated here.) Each of these ten has made a significant impact on the art world in the last 40 years, some not even by way of the art they've created.

Tomkins, from the preface:

[Contemporary] art, it seemed, could be whatever artists decided it was, and there were no restrictions on the new methods and materials -- from video and verbal constructs to raw nature and urban detritus -- that they could use. The limitless freedom of the modern artist has been an unending burden. If art can be anything, where do you begin?

Where to begin, indeed. This collection features many different starting points, both in the artist's place in the world and in the artwork itself. However, it's by no means a ten best or meant to be representative of art today. Tomkins doesn't imply that and neither do I. "Common denominators are notably absent," he writes.

Lives of the Artists, though, is a good intro to the lives beyond the work of some artists I didn't know much about (Turrell, Currin, Barney, Hirst) and a refresher of sorts to some I did know quite a bit about (Sherman, Schnabel, Johns, Koons). And in Cattelan's instance, it made me like him less while giving me a greater appreciation of his work. Go figure.

I visited Chad Cartwright, aka CHD:WCK!, in his studio recently to check out his work, make some photos, shoot the shit, and listen to the new Erykah Badu record.

Check out Chad's work: CHD:WCK!.

(And, by the way, the new Badu record is pretty damn good.)

Gabriel Orozco:

People forget that I want to disappoint. I use that word deliberately. I want to disappoint the expectations of the one who waits to be amazed.

I think that's the main thing that draws me into Orozco's work.

For the record, I don't like everything Orozco does. Yet with each and every piece he forces me to put aside my assumptions and expectations of what it is I'm looking at or experiencing, whether it's bicycles, cars, yogurt caps, a shoebox, a ping pong (or ping pond) table, or a photograph.

I'm moved by art that challenges me, that forces me to look deeper, longer. Orozco does it to me every time. And I, in turn, am inspired to do the same.

While working in Atlanta recently I made a point to check out some art. I hit Jackson, Sandler Hudson, Get This!, and SALTWORKS and documented it here. I also made it out to the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center after a busy day of meetings. Perfect.

I'll start by saying that visiting The Contemporary (as the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center is affectionately referred to in the ATL) was one of the most enjoyable art-going experiences I've ever had. The exhibit, Substitute Teacher, was fabulous (more on that below). The staff was friendly and informative. The resource library was chock full of art ephemera, books, and serendipitous periodicals (read: way back issues of Atlanta's Art Papers!). Even the gift shop was itself a small gallery, full of chap books and J&L tomes that themselves were works of art.

Okay, enough gushing.

The Substitute Teacher exhibit was a media-varied and well-curated collection of alternative ways of learning and experiencing our lives. From video to sculpture to textiles to audio installations and more, it was a real treat to take it all in and figure out how it all jived together.

And a couple from the bulletin board in the resources room (and 'cause I loves me some Shepard Fairey and Jules De Balincourt):

The Contemporary is now a must-visit whenever I'm in Atlanta. Can't wait to see what they do next.

[Read more about the Substitute Teacher exhibit here, in Art Forum, and from the venerable Michael David Murphy.]

I was working in Atlanta recently and made the time to check out the local art scene. Atlanta has quite the burgeoning art community and while I came away very satiated I feel like I barely scratched the surface.

Jackson Fine Art
A titan of the art community, especially when it comes to fine art photography, is Jackson Fine Art. I was impressed by the huge Andrew Moore prints on exhibit during my visit. More by the size than the subject matter, though.

More interesting to me were the Tierney Gearon, Sally Mann, Elliott Erwitt, and Harry Callahan prints just laying around in the side room.

What an archive they have at Jackson!

Sandler Hudson Gallery
I stopped into Sandler Hudson to check out the work of an artist I knew when I lived in Asheville, Kenn Kotara. (He and his wife ran a design firm that did some work for WNCW while I worked there.)

Kenn's work is somewhat decorative and I love how the lines explode into shapes, patterns, and paths throughout the canvas.

The work I love most of his are the screen sculptures. This one, while not on exhibit at Sandler Hudson, is one of my faves. Kotara is definitely pushing it with this body of work.

On the street
From the gallery to the street, these stickers were on a light post right outside of Sandler Hudson. They're the work of Dubleyoo, mixed media artist extraordinaire.

Get This! Gallery
Over at Get This! Gallery was an exhibit of drawings by Dawn Black. The super-impressive piece in this exhibit was a collection of drawings of "found" people, "culled from the Internet and various periodicals."

The drawings were all postcard size, intricately drawn, and methodically arranged.

SALTWORKS Gallery
Right next door to Get This! is SALTWORKS. On exhibit were new works on paper by Conor McGrady.

The works that made the most impact were the large drawings of what appear to be very powerful men, almost mob-like, plotting and carrying out exploits in suspect circumstances.

About McGrady's work from the SALTWORKS website:

Conor McGrady’s recent body of work continues his long-term examination of the role of authority in contemporary society. His large-scale drawings and smaller works on paper investigate how power manifests itself in symbols, iconography, architecture and the social construction of individual and collective identity.

Not only do the images themselves, tenuous with their heavy dark gouache, invoke a little fear in the viewer but the sheer size of these works -- 90" x about 160" or so -- also lends to their ominousness.

From this outsider's perspective, Atlanta has a great art community. The galleries are showing some brave contemporary work in a variety of media, as shown above. A perfect example of that variety will come in Part 2 and will feature an exhibition from the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. Stay tuned.

Nick with a lollipop in front of a painting by Charles Walker at Center of the Earth Gallery in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Patti Smith, from the book Just Kids, after having visited the Museum of Art in Philadelphia for the first time at the age of 12:

I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revelation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not.

Just Kids is the story of Patti Smith, one of the greatest performers in music, and Robert Mapplethorpe, one of the most significant and controversial photographers of our time.

This book, however, chronicles their lives before the fame and recognition. Patti and Robert are two fledgling kids living in New York City and full of a longing to live a creative life full of unconditional love and support.

   I was particularly moved by the drawing he had done on Memorial Day. I had never seen anything like it. What also struck me was the date: Joan of Arc's feast day. The same day I had promised to make something of myself before her statue.
   I told him this, and he responded that the drawing was symbolic of his own commitment to art, made on the same day. He gave it to me with out hesitation and I understood in this small space of time we had mutually surrended our loneliness and replaced it with trust.

My friend and author Jami Attenberg wrote a wonderful novel called The Melting Season and asked if I would read it and create something inspired by it.

Here's what I came up with.

I love these images.

Thanks for the inspiration, Jami.

Joanne, Betsy & Olivia, Bayside, New York (1998) © Catherine Opie

From a feature on Catherine Opie in Art in America magazine’s December 2008 issue:

[For her] “Domestic” series (1995-98), [Catherine Opie] traveled the country photographing lesbian couples and families in their homes — her own version of the great American road trip embarked on by such photographers as Stephen Shore or Robert Frank.

[There's] the intimate, unkempt interior shown in Joanne, Betsy & Olivia, Bayside, New York (1998) (above). On the table are the remains of breakfast — coffee cups and half-eaten bagels — and toys litter the floor in the home, where two white women live with their adopted Asian daughter. Opie describes this work as a “conversation” with Tina Barney, whose photographs portraying conventional, wealthy families (below) were being widely exhibited at the time. But of course it was more an argument than a conversation, a challenge to the idea that a family must be defined within a heterosexual framework.

The Daughters #246 (2002) © Tina Barney