I am Gregory, one of the artists for the Phone Book Mash-Up project, created by Working Artists Online. I have only been in Portland for just over a month, and am excited to already be a part of a community arts project such as this! My girlfriend and I moved here for a career opportunity for her, so at the moment I am searching for a job of my own. I used to complain that I never had enough time to work on my own art, and now I have nothing but time, so this project is lighting the fire under me!

SOOOO, first blog about the Phone Book Mash-Up and my part of it?… a brief synopsis of my idea, which I presented at the opening party, is creating a quilting- inspired canvas piece, created out of the pages of the phone book… I have an affinity for the art of quilting, mostly because my mom is an avid quilter, and also because I have a bachelor’s degree in fashion design, and have been sewing for 13 years myself (but no quilts that I’ve sewn to date)… I am currently working on other quilt- inspired artworks in different mediums, so when this phone book project presented itself to me, I thought it would translate well to create a piece with phone book pages… I am an ardent fan of minimalists and repetitive art pieces (think Agnes Martin, Sol LeWitt), and I found traditional quilt patterns to be a natural source for inspiration- something that everyone can relate to and recognize, and hopefully enjoy…

I created a small, 12″ by 12″ piece for the party to show the other artists, and I think it was well received… I created a single quilt “block”, which is one square piece with a definable pattern, consisting of smaller squares and triangles… my final piece is still in the planning stages, but it will likely consist of 4 different “blocks”, repeated 4 times each, for a total of 16 of these quilt “block” patterns… each of the blocks is made up of 64 “spaces”, occupying 1 1/16″ by 1 1/16″, and each space is occupied by either 1 square or 2 triangles… so when all is said and done, I will be cutting out hundreds of little squares and triangles from those thin, delicate phone book pages, gluing them to the canvas, and trying not to get my newsprint- stained fingers all over the piece… that is so far the first challenge that has presented itself…

each of the 4 different “block” patterns will be created from a phone book for the cities that I have spent a significant amount of time in… I have emailed friends and family that still live in these places to send me phone books, and so far they are on board to help me… I grew up in upstate New York, so my parents and my best childhood friend and his wife are sending them along to me… I spent almost 2 years in Rochester, NY for college, so my one remaining friend there is solely responsible for getting me those phone books!… the last 11 years of my life were spent in Philadelphia, where I went to college and worked my “career” jobs, while also honing my artistic visions, and also where I met my soul mate Sarah… luckily I still have a lot of old friends and co-workers there, so the phone books should be easy to get for that city… and then of course Portland, which I now call home and so far really adore- although for my small test piece, I destroyed my one and only phone book… but don’t we all just look things up on the web now anyway?…

so I am excited to get started on the final piece… I think the end result will be an amazing visual piece, one that people will remember seeing… so for those interested, I will be writing in this blog on occasion to describe how the project is coming along… I’m not usually one for blogging at all, but I am finding it to be a cathartic way to work through the technical problems that arise as I work… it seems that if I write them down, I am more apt to think them through and come to a conclusion… like most of my artwork so far, the idea for a piece is not the problem, and often just pops into my head.. but the actual execution of the work and the technical issues drag on for the duration of the piece!… so maybe some of you will find it interesting, I hope…

for now, I have to start slicing up phone books and deciding on the size of the final piece… until next time, thanks for reading, Greg