Snow Pond
Oil on panel 3" x 6", $40 (click image to enlarge).
This is just one of the 200+ Bargain Bin offerings.


NEWS / FEATURES ARCHIVES:
2009 Boston, China, Rome
2008 IAP Tour & Today Show
2007 IAP New England Tour




On Location with my Shadow, Rochester, NY

View Toward City from Atlantic Ave.
Oil on panel 6" x 9". Click to see larger image.
(photo taken in same location, opposite direction).

Updated December 2010

DEC. 2010 FEATURES:

• The Bargain Bin Holiday Sale
• Itinerant Artist Project Goes Local
• Southern States
• Shoe Factory Art Co-op
• Featured painting

COMING UP IN 2011:

Find Great Gifts in the Bargain Bin:

If you live near Rochester, NY, come by to check out my Bargain Bin. The Bin has dozens of small paintings - like the snowy pond scene shown at left: all oil on panel, on sale for low prices. Stop by my home, or arrange to have me bring it to your home or office for a private showing (or a unique holiday event)! Learn more about it here .


Being an Itinerant Artist in my Home Town:

After 10 years of Itinerant Artist Project tours -"art for hospitality around the USA" - I decided to try it at home. After all, it's the quality of relationship between art, artist, place and public (or viewer) that most interests me, not driving all over the country. And shouldn't that relationship be most resonant in one's own community?

Actually, it's exciting to connect through art and hospitality with strangers whose homes and lives are hundreds of miles away. And, in some sense, my hosts from around the country become a sort of ideal, art-supporting community. However, being a visiting artist in some previously unknown home 5 or 10 miles from my own turns out to be just as strange, just as interesting, and equally rewarding.

My local "tour" is a set of disconnected 3-day painting stops - about one per month - which I call the Rochester Community Artist in Residence Tour (or ROC-ART, named mainly for the acronym, which I thought would look good on a t-shirt).

The emphasis is on exploring my surroundings and my community through this series of mini art residencies. So far I have made nine stops, in settings that range from rolling farmland to inner city neighborhoods. I've done 5-10 paintings at each location (plus a few between stops, such as the one shown here). And I've gotten to know some very nice people. Hosts at each stop receive a painting from the visit.

It's amazing how many places around town I'd never been. Going night sketching around the downtown High Falls district when all the visitors and office workers were gone was one of my favorite new experiences.

The project, which began early in 2010 and continues through 2011, is explained and documented further on the ROC-ART blog: www.jimmott.blogspot.com.


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Southern States:

The photo at left shows a bunch of notes and sketches that somehow failed to escape the pocket they were in before going through the washer and dryer at the end of my recent trip to South Carolina. Some precious scrawlings got lost, but the resulting mini-sculptural assemblage was probably just as interesting.

In early November I had the privilege of staying in Murrell's Inlet, SC, for a few days. It was my first IAP stop in that state, and I was interested enough to use hard-earned frequent flier miles to get there. I'll hope to document the visit on this website at a later date.

For now I'll just say there was a 4-hour delay at the Atlanta airport. After an hour or so of being annoyed, I found a quiet corner with a view, got out my paints and attempted my first airport painting. A boy of about 7 or 8 wandered over now and then to check out my progress. I was embarrassed, since I figure most 7-year olds can draw a plane better than I can. But he liked my attempt and liked connecting with a grown-up artist. His father was a soldier in camouflage, his mother looked tense, and the boy looked back and waved a couple of times when they boarded their plane.

(Artists note: airport security let me through with oil paints in my carry-on luggage, all in half-used tubes and secured in a ziploc bag).

The goal of the IAP was never to visit all the states. Still, when it became apparent that I'd missed most of the southeastern states, that struck me as an omission I needed to remedy. With my wife (author of the remarkable memoir, Ghostbread) currently teaching at the University of Memphis, a SE tour is likely. Meanwhile, I've now done stops in Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee...

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Shoe Factory Art Co-op:

When the new art co-op in town had its first show, the theme - because of the building's history as a shoe factory -was "Boots and Shoes." Technically, I'm a founding member of the co-op, but since I'm never around to help out I've earned the name "Ghost in the Machine." The others have tolerated me so far, so I tolerated the Boots and Shoes theme. It was hard to think of anything to do with footwear that I'd want to paint, but in the last week I came up with four paintings: one of the building at night; one of modern-day shoe factory workers doing tedious work at their sewing machines; one of my itinerant artist boots; and the whimsical Wagtail in Wellies, shown here.

Very indirectly this was inspired by an Ainu creation myth which features a wagtail in the role of God's delegate - ordered to fly down to a sea of slush and shape a world out of chaos.

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