art: oil pastels for breakwater inn

I had the great honor of being asked to create art to spice up the white bare walls of the Breakwater Inn restaurant last weekend, so I spent this last week creating a series of oil pastel drawings. I took the opportunity to practice large (18"x24" - large for me!) compositions. I intend to keep up the practice of drawing large with the intention of painting large. Here is some of what I created this week:

education: penland

A few weeks ago I got a letter stating I have been awarded a full work study scholarship to attend a figurative sculpture workshop at Penland this August. I am so thrilled! I will be studying with Seattle artist Tip Toland. I have been practicing bringing some of my 2-D work to the third dimension - first with some miniature sculpey creations and now (with the help of our fabulous Joyce Payne) paper clay.

Sculpture by Tip Toland

Sculpey Figures

Unfinished first clay sculpture

art: herald the heron (and harriet too)

Below is my submission to the Alaska Hummingbird Festival Juried Art Show for April 2010 (poorly scanned in). It measures something like 5.25 x 9 inches and is acrylic on heavy watercolor paper. I re-painted the background about 5 times before letting it go. :P I mounted it in an all-glass frame with a dark red wood border. Unlike two years ago, I actually took a picture of the piece I created (I am still disappointed about the fact that I have no photo-record of "Snow Goose Gilbert" though the money he brought in remains a pleasing consolation).

process: oil (portrait) painting

Tonight I completed my first ever portrait painting (in oil, too)! We had about 2 hours to paint from a model & I took pictures during the breaks. I look forward to 2 more sessions later this month... I have a loooong way to go. :)

process: oil painting

Hooray for oils! I have been painting with acrylics for the last forever, and after watching some Bob Ross courtesy of Josh Carter, I have felt inspired to try oils. I don't like Bob's paintings all that much, but I am in love with the way he uses his tools and how the paint blends when applied wet on wet. I bought some supplies and have been at it for hours! Unlike Bob, I think my paintings will take days. In the past I have had trouble working big, but I am finding that working from sketches instead of from my head has proved a great help, and my compositions and color choices are coming out great!

Below are some pictures of the first stages of my painting. More coming soon :D

sketches: Jan/Feb 2010

I am excited to report that I have recently felt a surge of creativity and have been experimenting with new mediums, exhibit ideas, and thoughts about my future. Over the holiday it became clear to me that my next step in education should be an MFA. This year I will work on preparing my portfolio so that I can have a solid shot at some good scholarships. I plan to apply to several schools (yet to be determined) and whichever school offers me the most money is where I'll go. I am still undecided on low-residency vs. full time. I am leaning towards full time, so that I can really soak up my learning experience, build a strong network, remain more focused than I might otherwise, etc.

Part of building my portfolio this year will include applying for a Penland scholarship so that I can attend one of their fabulous workshops sometime this year (I think I have a solid shot at it). I will send in my application on Tuesday. I am also applying for a Rasmussen Grant in the hopes that I can experience exhibiting my work in some place other than Juneau.

Below are some sketches I've been having fun with:

inspiration: jennifer maestre

What can I say? I love it. I want to know how she got it all to stick together and look so clean. More at : http://www.jennifermaestre.com/

reflection: exhibition

For those of you who have Facebook accounts and are interested in viewing photos from the "Call and Response" Exhibit, Rick has posted a series of pics. Thank you, Rick!

reflection: exhibition

The Call and Response exhibit at the Canvas is a great success. I don't think I (or anyone else at the Canvas) has seen so many people come through on a first Friday - the crowd never died down the entire evening and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive (no one tried to convince me I am secretly a lesbian this time around either!). It sounded like a lot of people were inspired by the project, and there were a lot of sales. Rick and I ended up with 71 joint pieces (about 80 pieces of art for me), so our expectations (as far as production for the show went) were met and all of the walls are filled to the brim (I'll post pictures as soon as I get around to emptying out my camera's memory card).

Aside from the exhibit coming out a success in the end, there were some glitches in final preparations. For one thing, preparing 150 individual frames for hanging can be a lot of work when most of the frames are not equipped with proper brackets for hanging. I wasn't prepared for the amount of time and expense that went into preparing them all. Also, measuring each piece to ensure it would line up to the proper wall height took forever and a half (having to subtract the distance of the hanger from the total height of the exhibit to ensure a straight line across the tops of all the frames took soooooo long). And then nailing in the 150 nails... oh how my arms hurt! I also think Rick didn't anticipate that writing his pieces out by hand would take so much time either; we ended up having to print out about a third of the writing pieces. But it was all worth it, and by the time 4:30pm hit for the opening, we were ready.

The large "call and response" abstract people I painted (with arrows following from one to the other) were possibly my favorite part of the entire exhibit; I liked how it evened out the wall coverage and provided relief for the eyes (the exhibit otherwise, I think, is a little overwhelming with all its small pieces).

Well, onto the next great adventure. Public Market. While not fine art oriented, the Public Market is a creative venue nonetheless. I plan to showcase some of my mad crazy sewing machine and book-making skillz. YEAH. I also want to sell bows and magnet sets: all my items for sale will all be made from recycled materials.

art: exhibition

art: drawings for october exhibit

I have been meaning to post more pictures for the exhibit, but never got around to it until now! So, here's another sampling of the art to soon be on exhibit at the Canvas:

art: drawings for october exhibit

More samples of art for the exhibit.

inspiration: da-ka-xeen mehner

A Fairbanks artist who is exhibiting at the Alaska State Museum: http://www.da-ka-xeen.com/

art: drawings for october exhibit

As promised, here below are some of the pieces that will be a part of the October 2009 exhibit. So far I have resolved that, with some rare exceptions, all pieces will be under 4x6 inches and all will all be pencil drawings. There will be over a hundred of these babies; enjoy a sampling of the first batch.

inspiration: arts project australia

Just today one of our new floor staff at the Canvas, Sarah (up from Australia), introduced me to a website for a similar organization near her hometown she just found out about: Arts Project Australia. http://www.artsproject.org.au/

art, travels and inspiration

I wanted this blog posting to feature some of the new art that I have been working on for the upcoming October exhibit (which will feature Rick’s writing and my drawings), but I have misplaced my camera, so I will need to scan in the art later this week and post it all sometime during the weekend. Though I have not posted a blog entry in some time, I have been busy creating and also out adventuring on vacation. I had a marvelous, inspiring holiday down south visiting family and friends, playing in the outdoors, sunning myself, working on art, and visiting new art galleries and museums.

Artistically speaking, the highlight of my trip south on holiday was my visit to the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, BC. I saw my first Picasso and Matisse art pieces up close and in person (among many other famous artists and ancient relics), a myriad of exquisite native masks, and even a re-created late 19th century town. When I arrived back in Bellingham WA, I found out I had about 50 lbs. of plaster cast I had ordered eons ago ready for me to take back to Juneau, so I mailed it up to myself and have intentions of working on some sculpture projects after the October exhibit is hung.

But perhaps before the plaster projects, I ought to give some thought to the Juneau Public Market at Centennial Hall! Olga, Josh, Rick and I are applying for a booth in November to sell our creative goods (books, soaps, cards, knitted things, etc etc). Rick and I will be creating books from the art and writings generated for the October exhibit, which I know will launch me into a book making frenzy around the end of September. v. exciting. More to come soon!

art: photo collage

Even better than the Silverbow, Rick and I have secured the Canvas for exhibition in October of this year! Very exciting! Already I have several sketches of scenes for our around the clock comic adventure and Rick has already started writing. I am thinking that a fun way to unite the disparate sections of the gallery space would be to use red tape from floor to ceiling that divides the space into 24 hour segments. This would also help move the viewer around the room with less confusion. I also envision the comic “strip” segments as individually and uniquely framed and maybe 4 or 5 of them to go with each hour-segment. This would leave a lot of white wall space above and below the pictures... maybe the words to the comic could be giant-lettered and take up several feet of wall space, as seen in large exhibits (ex. the bodies). Any thoughts?

In other news, and as briefly mentioned in my previous post, I have been working on more art photo album pages as a way to reduce the copious piles of photographs, personal mementos, and magazine clippings that I can’t bring myself to throw away. As might be expected, the theme has revolved around Danel and the annihilation of our life together. I like to think the process is therapeutic (but I can also recognize that sometimes its hard to see the full picture when your so close up to and in the middle of things). The pictures in this post are just a sampling; I realize some are largely egocentric and perhaps angry also, but I hope you can enjoy nonetheless.

process: theme

Rick and I have been plotting madly at a prospective art/writing exhibit at the Silverbow (or elsewhere) for this fall. We are thinking comic strips (that could also stand alone as art segments) about a person (or a couple) going about their daily (maybe yearly) business in Juneau Alaska. And we would like to turn it into a small book also. Maybe the best could be made into playing cards?

I have been fascinated lately with miniature frames (probably due to the fact that I have been trying to fit my most precious belongings into the small space of 6 flat rate boxes), and I love the idea of fitting the comic art sections into eclectic frames I find around town. Now I have a great excuse to find and buy more! As many already know, my work tends to be small anyway, and I have been more interested in drawing than painting recently. I have even been thinking about doing a comic series for the day habilitation art class I teach and Rick has been thinking about creating a web comic for a long time now. The ideas are all fitting nicely, if a bit scattered at times!

Making the theme something that applies to Juneau life and something a little less emotional than my October “Evensong” exhibit will likely appeal to a larger audience and will be a relieving break for me. As I will likely post later this weekend, most of my artistic endeavors of late have been creating collages involving more personal photographs (the last 2 years or so), an emotional process for me to be sure.

Stay tuned as the evolution of the exhibit progresses. More thoughts and details soon to come.

sketch: sermon notes

inspiration: constance b. hartle

Constance's work (alongside Barbara Craver) is currently exhibiting at the Canvas for the month of April. I had great admiration for her exhibit of landscapes in Nov. 2007 (also at the Canvas), but this time around she is exhibiting more portraiture, which I find infinitely more captivating. Part of what I love so much about Constance's work are the red undertones that she often lets appear through her layers, particularly as a lining between objects in her paintings. In this exhibit, she primarily paints with acrylics, which can be very hard to do when blending layers and she does it masterfully. In her Nov. 2007 exhibit it was almost impossible to tell the oil paintings from the acrylic paintings. http://www.constancebhartle.typepad.com/