Jeffrey Simmons Studio

studio ephemera

Long exposure photograph, taken when the artist was fourteen years old, depicting some sort of firework going off outdoors at night. Streams of hot white light shoot upwards, framed by shadowy trees and smoke. The image looks remarkably similar to a pair of paintings from 2010, Arrival and Transmission.
c. 1982
Gouache drawing made over a found, black and white reproduction from an old art history text. The art historical image appears to show an angel bearing a limp figure in his arms; the gouache addition is an X-shaped series of stripes, as if delineating a three dimensional, walled form partially covering the original image.
c. 1993.
An open sketchbook, showing facing-page images of looping, calligraphic lines in black ink and opaque red gouache forms. Some of the gouache color and ink had transferred from the right page to the left, so a second drawing was made, producing a semi-symmetrical paring, anticipating later paintings and sketchbook work by approximately thirty years.
c. 1993.
A photograph showing a small portion of the wall of an art studio, actually a pantry off of the kitchen of the artist's first rental house. An audio speaker and a clamp light are at the top; a small portion of an encaustic painting is at lower left, and a window, draped with a paint rag, is at right. The power cord and speaker wire hang down from the top in a V-shape.
149 N.W. 82nd St., Seattle, 1994.
One page from a Seattle telephone book showing multiple impressions of a blue, abstract daisy flower. The page was used to blot freshly applied paint on a panel.
1995.
A sticker advertising the exhibition "Jeffrey Simmons: Paintings," which took place at Linda Cannon Gallery in Seattle from October 18 through November 19, 1995. The sticker was printed by Mike Olson at Genesis Graphics, Incorporated, in Escanaba, Michigan.
October 1995.
An image showing a wall-mounted, rotating easel with an in-progress painting mounted on it. The painting (Eulalia, 1998) is captured while in motion, blurry at the edges but sharp in the center. Tubes of paint, a tin of brushes, and a glass palette are seen in the foreground, as is a folded canvas, part of a telephone book, a stand, and an arm rest used while applying paint.
1405 Elliott Avenue West, Seattle, 1998.
A Polaroid photograph depicting the next step in the development of the rotary easel. This wall-mounted device is composed of two motors, a series of belts and sheaves, a swinging arm with a counterweight, and a rotating mount for a painting.
1405 Elliott Avenue West, Seattle, 1999.
A Polaroid photograph of a painting mounted on a machine designed to move the canvas in an orbit around a fixed point, while spinning at the same time. The resulting image--a circular pattern of a continuously looping line, familiar to users of the Spirograph drawing toy--is shown in white against a dark blue ground.
1405 Elliott Avenue West, Seattle, 1999.
A photograph of a painting studio interior, w its a chair, work table covered in bottles and jars, a wooden stand, and a painting mounted onto a rotating easel. The painting is mounted offset on the easel, placing the image--a series of concentric rings in various colors--closer to one of the corners of the canvas, rather than in the center.
429 Boren Avenue North, Seattle, 2000.
A carefully ruled graphite perspective drawing on layers of transparent tracing paper, showing six diamond shapes alligned on the same central axis, in various stages of rotation from diamond to diamond. Traces of the flat plane horizontally bisecting each diamond can be seen, as can red numbers at the edge of both sides of each of the planes.
c. 2001.
A photograph of a silver 1979 Datsun 810 station wagon, parked in an urban alley, with a twelve foot long roll of canvas, wrapped in plastic, heavily taped, and securely tied down, attached to the car's homemade roof rack. That car had a straight six and could really move. One of the tires picked up a screw on the way to deliver the painting to the venue in Oregon, but, fortunately, it got fixed before trouble happened.
429 Boren Avenue North, Seattle, 2001.
A blurry, heavily edited digital photograph of the artist, his face looking unnaturally symmetrical.
2001.
The cluttered interior of an art studio. Three paintings-in-progress hang on the wall, gridded abstractions; one is larger than the other two. There are shelves laden with bottles of paint and medium, two tables with more of the same (including another in-progress painting), rulers and t-squares, buckets, two trash cans, various older canvases leaning against the walls, and a bicycle frame on top of one of the shelves. A green office chair sits in the middle of the room.
4735 East Marginal Way South, Seattle, 2008.
A realistic color pencil drawing of a tulip, in the manner of a detailed botanical illustration. The tulip is of the "broken" variety, with red and white in the petals, and the stem and single leaf are green. The paper is a buff color, almost brown.
April 29, 2009.
Second painting studio in the same building, but completely empty now. The walls are marked with drips and the outline of canvas shapes. The floor is covered in spattered paint and other materials. A wooden lighting rig can be seen at the top of the picture, as can the plastic sheeting that was installed to keep ambient industrial dust from falling onto work in progress. This space started out as Claire's studio, and I was next door, but we switched when she needed more space.
4735 East Marginal Way South, Seattle, December, 2009.
A flash photograph of an interior space with a series of awkwardly connected counterweights--painted iron, concrete, possibly other metals--attached by heavy cables and chains to one another and two various pulleys, with two cables extending horizontally out of sight near the top. The wall behind is painted white and stained yellow and brown with drips and evidence of moisture penetration.
New West Editions, Seattle, October 8, 2010.
A pillow in a blue slipcase, on a brown carpeted floor, against a mirror. The picture is taken from such an angle as to produce an almost symmetrical image, with the pillow's reflection showing in the angled mirror.
Wenatchee, Washington, May 13, 2012.
A black and white photograph of a carefully ruled guide drawing for a complex watercolor painting. The drawing is composed of three sheets of paper, taped down to the surface of a drafting table and seen from above. The drawing depicts groupings of circles, drawn in black ink, with the position of each circle's center point marked by horizontal and vertical lines extending all the way to the edge of each page. The drafting table's pencil tray is also visible, on the right side of the picture; it contains various mechanical pencils, at least three rulers, a fountain pen, some markers, and a screw driver.
2013.
A long-exposure photograph showing a symmetrical, red, linear pattern drawn using a laser pointer and a mirror. The area behind the red image is black, with a narrow strip of light at bottom showing the reflection of part of a framed picture on the far wall, upside down.
2013.
An extremely long exposure photograph showing traces of the sun's path in the sky over the course of four months. Shadows of leaves on the trees are visible. The image is primarily blue and black, with whitish yellow for the sun's streaks, which are broken and inconsistent depending on the amount of cloud cover on any particular day, at any particular hour.
Pinhole camera solargraph, July 29-November 15, 2013.
A realistic graphite drawing, in the manner of botanical illustration, depicting a new mushroom. The cap is just starting to open, and remnants of the white veil dot the top of the cap and hang from the underside. The entire fruiting body is shown, including the volva at the base of the stipe, along with traces of soil. The mushroom is in the center of the warm, off-white sheet of paper, and there is a lot of white space surrounding it.
Amanita muscaria var. formosa, October 28, 2013.
A photograph depicting the surface of a drafting table, entirely covered with pen-and-ink guide drawings of circles as well as multiple small watercolor studies showing rings of transparent colors overlapping to create interesting mixtures. Some of the watercolor rings have hard edges, and some have soft, fuzzy edges.
2013.
A very old engraved image of the painter Diego Velázquez (Spanish, 1599-1660). The paper is yellowed with age. The engraving is based on the artist's c. 1630 self portrait, which resides in the Capitoline Museums, Rome.
n.d.
An animated GIF depicting shadows moving across a bedroom art studio wall. Two images on paper--printouts of scanned watercolors pasted into drawings of frames--are taped to the wall and dominate the image. The moving shadows occasionally show glimpses of the artist at work.
June 9, 2015.
A photograph showing three drawings taped to a wood paneled wall. The drawings are actually printouts of scanned abstract watercolor paintings, pasted into drawings of frames. Each of the drawings shows the life-size watercolor printout inside a different frame: the one on the left has a narrow space between painting and frame, the one in the center has a three inch mat, and the one on the right has a three and a half inch mat with a visibly deeper space at the bottom.
May 29, 2015.
A closeup photograph of the surface of a painting, never finished. In raking light, the texture of the paint is visible. The surface is marked by dimensional dots of painting medium, applied in a symmetrical pattern. The surface of the painting is blue, with areas of white indicating the texture of the underlying canvas.
2018.
A hand painted sign photographed on Aurora Avenue North in Seattle. The sign is mounted on a red painted steel gate; it is white, not quite square, and has the words "KEEP OUT," in all caps, spray painted in orange. The letters appear to have been reverse stenciled--painter's tape was applied, the orange spray paint was put down, and the tape was removed, leaving white letters with an orange spray paint outline and drips.
December 23, 2018.
A snapshot of a middle-aged man with long gray hair and white beard, wearing silver glasses, a denim shirt, and black vest. The picture is taken outdoors, next to a silver station wagon, with a brick apartment building in the distance and a wooden fence to the left.
2025.