Kali Tal’s fine art and photography weblog
Posted in How I do things... on Feb 25th, 2010
I’ve been working on a fine art beading project, creating a new art doll each month. February’s doll is finished, and I’m happy with the results. I’ve made a clean break from my usual color palette and am venturing into new territory, as well as trying my hand at some new techniques, such as bead [...]
Posted in How I do things... on Sep 2nd, 2008
In August, 2008 I asked photographer Stephen Gerlich to shoot a series of my recent work titled “Short Circuit Stories.” The canvas for each work in this collection is a discarded piece of computer hardware — a circuit board — a map of reality-driven, mathematically-based thinking that is already compromised by anthropomorphism. (“My computer doesn’t [...]
Posted in How I do things... on Aug 24th, 2008
Photographer Steven Gerlich and his assistant Jessica Gellweiler took photos of my most recent collage work. You can see the new images in my Short Circuits gallery. Here’s one of them:
Posted in How I do things... on Apr 15th, 2008
I just finished teaching a course on American Literature of the 1930s at the Freie Universität in Berlin. This painting, based on a public domain photo taken by a Works Project Administration photographer, attempts to capture the grinding poverty and quiet despair of a significant proportion of the population in that era. (Digital painting based [...]
Posted in How I do things... on Nov 22nd, 2007
Here’s a new piece from my Berlin Stair Series — it’s one of nine. I’ve been exploring the city and it’s been showing in my work. I will be opening a new studio space in Berlin in December, at Grüntalerstr 7, in Wedding. I’ll be sharing the space with another American artist, Paula Ross. It’s [...]
Posted in How I do things..., New Artwork on May 3rd, 2007
Some nights I’m unable to sleep because I get caught up imagining what it must be like to live in a city under siege. In any given war, most inhabitants are not part of any kind of armed struggle, and only want to live in peace. When I do fall asleep, in my nightmares Bagdad [...]
Posted in How I do things... on Apr 30th, 2007
Ferris wheels at night always remind me of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes.” They’re full of foreboding, promise and the whirl of delirium.
Posted in How I do things... on Apr 7th, 2007
A friend of mine has been urging me, for years, to do some work based on WPA photographs of the 1930s-1940s. Franklin Roosevelt built up the WPA to keep Americans employed during the Depression, and he was committed to keeping artists, photographers and writers at work along with as many others as possible (with focus, [...]
Posted in How I do things... on Apr 2nd, 2007
When I was a child learning to draw, my mother — also an artist — explained that almost all the lines we naively draw into human faces (noses, lips, eyes) exist only in our imagination, and that what we think we see is not really what we do see. In my experience as an artist, [...]
Posted in How I do things... on Apr 2nd, 2007
Olga commissioned me to do a couple of portraits based on photos of her husband, taken in the 1950s. They are the only photos he possesses from that period and the images are precious to both of them. A month or so ago, I blogged about restoring the photos; now I’m going to show you [...]
