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Diving into summer ... and the sketchbook

8/6/2015

Before attending a studio class this summer, we are required to complete various exercises in our sketchbook. This is my second round, I did this last summer as well. And last summer, it was not a pleasurable experience. Why? Well, there is something that happens when you get back to a cheap gel pen and a piece of paper. Maybe it's like putting on a bikini - there's just no place to hide. You will be exposed. You will be forced to come to terms with the fact that you are ... not very good. Maybe not even a real artist.

At least that's how I saw it last summer. This summer, it feels like something entirely different. That fear is gone. So what if it isn't any good, it's just a cheap pen and a piece of paper after all! It feels like fun again. Breaking the blank white page up into these smaller frames as we are asked to do, tackling a tiny composition at a time, is ingenious. The process of filling a square becomes meditative, a moment of focus. I hope to continue this practice on a daily basis. I follow children's book illustrators on Instagram - they are doing sketches on napkins in between bites and while they are sitting in the carpool line. For fun. Fearless ... on paper. I'm ready to dive in.

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Pleasure in the process

7/5/2015

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I had the good fortune of being in the studio when the artist was working on this piece. I heard the reasoning behind the color choices. I watched as he layered the paint on the canvas. As I observed the artist work the brush, with concentration and somehow also inhibition, I thought about the desire we have to create something. To design, to build, to make. The pleasure in the process. I think this piece is quite beautiful. The orange tones are the sunset, the green the grass, the studio is my kitchen, and the artist, my own little sunshine, my 4 year-old. It inspires me to enjoy the process, and makes me want to dip a brush in some paint and see what happens today.

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The new dimension of printing

11/3/2015

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3D Printing. Yes. It’s coming to a desktop near you. It’s soon to redefine the manufacturing industries. And everything else. Scientists at Cornell University successfully printed a human ear last year. The implications of 3D printing are difficult to comprehend for most of us.

As artists, designers and art educators, we need to be thinking ahead. This new has amazing potential for us. It’s time to embrace it. Here is a video to inspire you.

Shapeways, a 3D printing business which allows you to design through various free software and apps found on their site, will print in a variety of plastics and metal for you. I am sure there are many other services like this. Now, go play in 3D!

Start doing a little research for yourself, see why this technology is considered a major disruptor:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2014/08/09/roundup-of-3d-printing-market-forecasts-and-estimates-2014/

http://www.canalys.com/newsroom/3d-printing-market-grow-us162-billion-2018

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Google Earth and Art

21/9/2014

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I've always been fascinated with the views from the airplane. The way that man cuts into the landscape and transforms it. And also the way that some formations of the earth trump anything that man could achieve. For my current class "Digital Mapping" we were challenged to create some sort of collage using Google Earth. I knew I wanted to explore these aerial views, but I was also astounded at the ability to see some of these beautiful, dilapidated structures that I have only caught a glimpse of before ...

After doing some extensive exploring of Google Earth, I began to think about a few personal pilgrimages I have made in my life. One pilgrimage I have made yearly since the age of five is to Pawley’s Island, SC. I wanted to find a little shed I always look for on the way. I had to follow the road a bit, remember some landmarks, but I found it. As a little girl I wondered the story behind this building. I still love to think of it.

Another pilgrimage I will always remember: I saw the house my grandfather grew up in Frisco City, AL for the first and only time a few years ago. As I followed the road to the place I thought it might be and clicked on “street view,” my heart fluttered. There it was, on my screen. How beautiful this century old shack is to me.

I thought about another drive we used to make. I loved driving through the cornfields of Illinois to visit my husband’s grandfather while he was still alive. This terrain was so foreign to me, so flat. I found it utterly beautiful in its simplicity and patterns. Artistically, this has left a lasting mark on my aesthetic choices.

Lastly, I chose the Alabama sky. Nothing is as blue and clear. As simple and soulful. How I long to be under that sky.

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Summer Studio: Screenprinting

16/9/2014

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As an artist, graphic designer and writer, I am a constant editor: subtracting, simplifying and simply
deleting. My paintings are based on the idea that this is how we see our modern day landscape – mostly a simplified blur framed by our car window. Occasionally we pass an old house or clapboard church and we wonder who lives there or about the people associated with it. We don’t remember much detail, yet it makes an impression and capitivates us for a moment. These are images I have lived with, questioned and created on canvas.

Transforming these images through screenprinting has become fascinating to me. I loved the idea of spot color, deconstructing them into something flat and simplistic. I was able to do this with two of my paintings, and overall I don’t necessarily view them as successful but merely experimental. I want to keep playing to see if I can find whatever it is that I vaguely believe I can label as “success.”

Printing in four color process to produced interesting images as well. Seeing these images transformed into something different by CMYK screen printing was exciting. New life given through a new format. My peers felt that it made my paintings look as though they were photographs. I intend to do much more of this. I think it is also a great way of making art more accessible to buyers.

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Summer studio

7/8/2014

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Being an artist or art educator can be a lonely endeavor in that you don't typically go to a building filled with other artists and art educators every day. You rarely get to work side by side. You don't get to ask a peer standing right next to you their opinion on your next color choice as you consider your next move. So when you have an opportunity as I did, to spend 14 hours a day for 6 days straight, working with 16 other like-minded souls making art together you know it is going to be - for lack of a better word - awesome. And it was.

I will share more with you about my personal art and how I hope to develop what I have learned from this printmaking class by Charlie Cummings in my studio practice in the next post. But for now, I just wanted to share with you how inspiring it can be for artists to have opportunities to work side by side. I hope I will remember this and always seek workshops and studio spaces that will enable me to connect and share processes with other artists.

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