Playing With Color... new

Many of Carveth's banners evolve from real images like sunsets, flowers and animals. Others are of Southwestern symbols like Kokopelli, Mimbres pottery designs, and petroglyphs. We often feel more comfortable with a real image to hold on to as we view an art piece. It seems easier to understand and relate to a Van Gogh scene of a church in France than to a Picasso abstract. What would happen if you let go of the comfort of the familiar?

Learning is a process of taking on something new, digesting it and making it a part of you. It is a stretching of oneself; an expansion. It often involves experimentation and trying something on for size; acting "as if". As artist Chuck Close said, "You do something and that kicks open a door... you look through... Do you want to go there?" I am also a big fan of another thing Chuck said. "Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work." His point is, don't just lay around and hope something or someone from on high will deliver you insights on a silver platter. True inspiration does come, but it arises in the learning journey. You have to start the hike to get anywhere. Start wondering and discover.

"In my venture into stained glass windows I focused more on blocks of colors and their relationship to one another. I decided to stretch myself further and freely play with colors." Carveth...

Floating Bars -- "You'd think this would be easy. You just take a few colored graphic shapes and plop them on a background and you'll have this neat banner. Not! It will just looked like a few graphic shapes plopped on a banner; aesthetic will not be a term that will come to mind. My journey has been down a lot of dead ends but you learn from the unsuccessful, maybe even more. I did a lot of experimenting, both with pencil and pad, and in the computer. Slowly things evolved a fell into place." Carveth...

One of the results were these Floating Bars. Imagine these colored rectangular bars floating one above the other.

4 feet wide on 16 foot poles -- 3 colors $325; 4 colors $375 each

Tumbling S's -- "One day I started playing with the letter S. I stretched it, distorted it and viewed it in different directions. Then I thought what would it look like if I took several and dropped then, one after another, and in slow motion, they free-floated and rotated as they fell?" ...Carveth

That was the beginning of this series. Look what a difference color combinations make. The white on French blue looks totally different than the French blue on the black.

4 feet wide on 16 foot pole (two on the left) -- $325 ; 2 feet foot wide on 16 foot pole (on the right) -- $150

Crystal Reeds. "This resulted from a visit to an art gallery. There was a wonderful three dimensional glass exhibit. I began to think what if I were to do clear crystal images in cloth that you could see through to the back crystal. The color of the front crystal would effect the back crystal where they overlapped. They also brought to mind the image of tall slender reeds, gently flowing in the wind." Carveth

4 feet wide on 16 foot pole -- $375