Category Archives: art

Fiber Art Reconsidered

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At least half a dozen friends have sent me the eye-opening article from the New York Times called “ A Tangled Web“ and its premise that Fiber Art is finally, again, being reconsidered as a true art form.Julia Halperin, the author, writes, “. . . . in an age when we spend much of our time touching the flat surfaces of screens, this tactile art form feels newly seductive to makers and viewers alike as both a contrast with and a culmination of modern sensory experience.”

I hope you will read the article and discover the same reverence that I did for artists like Sheila Hicks and Lenore Tawney, innovators in fiber art.

For a look a an eclectic survey of contemporary fiber art closer to home (for San Antonians), visit TEXtiles: A Celebration of Texas Fiber Art, the annual juried Fiber Artists of San Antonio Art Exhibition will be held September 10 through October 20, 2023, at the Kelso Art Center, University of Incarnate Word, San Antonio, TX.

Kim Paxon, Name Your Fear, 1st Place, FASA TEXtiles exhibit

 

The theme of the exhibition showcases the innovation and diversity of Texas artists who create and communicate with fiber. Through art quilts, framed fiber art, sculptural pieces, vessels/basketry, paper art forms, art-to-wear garments or accessories, art dolls, woven textiles, mixed media work, jewelry and adornment, and conceptual work that defies categorization, Texas fiber artists are bringing textiles and fibers of every definition into new contexts and exploring social and conceptual implications of their usage.

My piece called Ghost Factory, won the Third Place award, which surprised me because I don’t consider myself in same category of fiber excellence as many of the others in the show, but I worked the fiber like a collage, which is my natural approach to almost any medium. This piece is based on photos taken by Lewis Hine in the 1920’s of child laborers in the textile industry.

You can see a video of the works in the exhibit by visiting the FASA Website.

If you have not used fiber and fabric as a collage medium, it may surprise you! Just collect fabric and ribbon scraps and tear, cur, and arrange them as you might with paper. If you use a glue stick, you can iron over your finished piece to fuse the whole thing together (put some parchment paper over the top first). then add stitching!!

My new workshop called The Composed Collage: Sisters shows and example of that technique, but you don’t need to get the workshop to give it a try.

Have fun with it – fiber is good for you!

Ephemera/Ephemeral

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I am thrilled to have had three works accepted for this exhibition — Ephemeral/Ephemera: A special exhibition of small encaustic and cold wax works on paper at Mulranny Arts in Mulranny, Ireland. October 10- November 15, 2023

Mulranny is where I taught this summer and it is such a special place. This is how the Call for Entries described the theme:

Ephemerality is a state that is deeply integral to the human experience. Moments, objects, and beings; all exist for a brief time and then disappear or transition to another state. We consider that which is ephemeral to be particularly fleeting, and a poignancy resides there. Closely related, ephemera are the bits and pieces of our lives (typically paper items) that were not intended to be preserved yet become the memorabilia that we keep to memorialize those meaningful but passing moments.

This is my first piece (above) and its description:

“This small work comes from a lifelong ephemeral dream of seeing my mother walking ahead of me in the fog when we lived in London when I was a child trying to catch up with her. I’m not sure where this dream came from because my mother was kind and caring and would never have walked away from me, but the dream persists.”

More about the Ephemeral Exhibition: Ephemeral/Ephemera will showcase works on paper that illuminate the concept of the ephemeral from an artist’s perspective, using wax as a primary medium. We invite national and international artists to consider how we experience ephemerality. Dreams, memories, chance encounters, nature, time, seasons, and even the nature of wax and paper itself are potential areas of exploration. What do we wish to hold on to, and what do we wish to let go of?

Here is my second piece, called “Wednesday’s Child” which is based on the photographs that Lewis Hine took of child labors in the US in the 1920’s. His photos ultimately changed the laws about allowing young children to work in fields and factories. I have been fascinated with these images for over a decade and return to them again and again.

More about Ephemeral Art: It is a transient form of artistic expression that exists briefly, often changing or disappearing over time. It encompasses various mediums, including street art, sand sculptures, and performance art. Ephemeral artists embrace impermanence, challenging traditional notions of art’s durability, and provoking viewers to appreciate the beauty and significance of the fleeting moment.

This third piece is called “Caged Memories,” and it expresses how difficult it is to hold onto the ephemeral beauty of lost moments, even if we try to bind them to our hearts.

All of this has me thinking about the whole idea of ephemeral impermanence and its influence on me and so many other artists. It is a first cousin to the idea of Wabi Sabi, which as you know is the Japanese aesthetic emphasizing beauty in imperfection, transience, and simplicity, finding elegance in natural flaws and the passage of time.

I suspect as we get older we both identify with and grapple with the idea of impermanence. Seeing the beauty in it is one way to come to terms and be a peace with it, to “find elegance in the passage of time.”

Here’s a good quote related to the complex idea of ephemerality and impermanence:

“If we don’t insist on defining impermanence as unsatisfactory, then it’s natural to celebrate. Just a moment’s pause to consider the passing of the seasons is enough to convince anyone that not only is impermanence the source of all possible joy in this life but it’s the movement of life itself.” ― Lin Jensen, Bad Dog!: A Memoir of Love, Beauty, and Redemption in Dark Places

It’s is a good topic for this Monday – a day of loss and memories. And this week will be gone before we know it! Quick, make some ephemeral art – it won’t last forever but it will shine in its moment!

Thanks, as always, for reading SHARDS.

Thanks, Jude Hill

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With so many artists teaching online these days (including me) and so many techniques to learn, it’s inevitable that a student’s work is influenced by an instructor’s.

That’s kinds of the point – if you admire someone’s work, you want to know how it’s done. But the rest of the story is about what happens when you know how it’s done and what you do with the information.

In the last newsletter from the GAGA group of women artists, this question was posed:

I have spent the last two years working hard on my painting style so that I can become as recognized as other artist of note in this community. I have paid a lot of money to teachers for classes and workshops, incorporating their techniques to help me improve and sell my art. Now that I am getting ready to enter a national juried exhibition (with substantial prize money), this pops up in the Prospectus: “Works that have been completed under instruction or in direct association with a class or workshop are not eligible.”  So why have I spent so much of my money on these classes and workshops if I can’t use the art techniques from my teachers? 

See what you think about the answer:

Most worthwhile juried shows include this phrase to protect both professional artists who teach and students who so admire the work of the instructor that they do their best to copy an instructor’s style and end up looking rather foolish and unoriginal. Good exhibition guidelines discourage direct copying of another artist’s style, which can be like trying to find a lazy shortcut to success without all the work it took the original artist to get organically to that point. It can also be illegal – an artist has the right to prohibit others from making truly derivative works.

Technique is only one part of the equation of being an artist. And a lot of work done under instruction has both the professor’s hand as well as intellectual creative “solve” in it! So, student work is not artist work. It’s a stepping-stone to one’s finally developed voice!! You can and should learn technique, but after that it is your creative vision, internal dialogue, life experience and expression that cannot be duplicated. It is up to everyone to find this for themselves. Technique is not art, lessons are training wheels, copying is not creating, paintings are not recipes and sales are not always the goal.

If you do not yet recognize this and are upset by this very common phrase in a Call for Entries, perhaps you should spend a bit more time on your journey of development. When you learn how to experiment and play in your own way with what you learn, you will develop your own voice. Quit imitating and honor the techniques you learn from your teachers by translating them into your own language. Being slavishly derivative does not become any of us and does not earn us recognition in exhibitions.

“Influence” and “emulation” and “incorporation” are all words we use that describe our use of the signature techniques that other artists share with us. “Copying” has a different connotation altogether.

And you certainly don’t have to be a teacher to experience the realization that another artist is “heavily influenced” by your work. It’s a complicated subject.

Jude Hill is a beloved fiber artist whose blog and practice are followed by thousands of people. She is sensitive, low-key, and very authentic. She addresses this complicated issue in a video – it’s really brilliant. It’s so relaxing to watch her stitch and listen to her soothing voice.

Video Link

So what do you think? It’s certainly not a black-and-white situation, and there is, as I always say, “more than one right answer.”

To help give you some perspective, read Inspiration vs. Imitation by Christine Nishiyama, illustrator, author, and artist. You’ll enjoy it.

Lyn

Art and Climate

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For the last five years, The Encaustic Art Institute, based in Santa Fe, has been hosting a juried national exhibition called Global Warming is Real.

Here is this year’s overview. Artists were invited to interpret the theme in their encaustic work.:

THEME: Global Warming is REAL. As nations and economies shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, pollution levels and human patterns change in ways that were detectable by satellites. As all types of social, economic, industrial and urban activity suddenly shut off, nature took advantage and showed improvement in the quality of air, rivers, less noise pollution, and undisturbed and calm wildlife. COVID-19 may have temporarily lessened our carbon footprint, giving us a view in to what our individual affect on Global Warming constitutes. At the same time, Climate Change is becoming more visible and tangible through increased fires, glacier melting, and warming oceans.

I found out this morning that my entry, below, was accepted. Yay! This encaustic/mixed media work called River of No Return.

Lyn Belisle, River of No Return 2021

This was my accompanying statement:

This work, called River of No Return, suggests extreme negative impacts – droughts, floods,  famine – on populations whose vulnerability to Global Warming put them at extreme risk. The looming climate change is catastrophic for third-world countries that rely more directly on rivers, rain, and oceans for their agriculture and survival. The colors of ash, bone and rust in the work serve as metaphors for the decline and corrosion that will affect every lifeform on our planet,not just people in industrialized countries.

I am really curious to see how the theme will be interpreted by the others in the exhibition, which opens virtually on July 10.

In the meantime, here’s a link to a thoughtful, sometimes disturbing, online exhibition called Resilience in the Age of Climate Change.

https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/resilience-in-the-age-of-climate-change

In this exhibit by Art Works for Change, thirteen visionary artists and architects consider the consequences of climate change, including excess heat, drought, flooding, extreme weather events, food insecurity, displacement, and the loss of biodiversity. Through their work, we can visualize the challenges of a warming planet, and discover opportunities to overcome them through innovation and resilience.

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We’ll have plenty of time to ponder resilience during the days of heat and drought – hope all of you are well and finding time to create safe space for yourselves.

Serenity through bamboo – for you?

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My latest online class for everyone is called, “Sumi-e Painting: Serenity and Simplicity.” It’s absolutely free, and it’s designed to de-stress your mind and to celebrate the coming of spring – yay!

In this class, you’ll learn to paint a variation of the ancient Asian art form called Sumi-e in a simple way that anyone can do. It’s fun and relaxing, even if your bamboo leaves end up looking like bananas. 🙂

Here’s the class link.

The class opened on Monday, and right now there are 90 people signed up, painting graceful bamboo stalks and wild orchid grass. I’m getting lots of favorable responses!

There is a joy in providing a no-cost chance to be creative that money can’t begin to buy – honest!

One of my favorite responses came from a participant who wrote:

“My friend was asking me about some painting tutorials and where to get started.  I told her about (your) lotus book tutorial and how much fun it was. Your free painting video arrived today in my email has been a great way to show her what you are doing.

We had great progress and successfully completed the tutorial this afternoon.”

bamboo

“The first photo shows (my friend’s) work from start to finish and you can see the progression after we practiced and how quickly we got some good results with your excellent instruction.” – – – (Wow, thanks!!)

I told her how much I loved their work – and how nice (especially these days) to get to paint together with a friend.

She wrote back:

“I did two little cards on some scrap watercolor paper. We were using the same watercolor paper as you demonstrated with.  I even found a little stamp that we dipped in red watercolor for chop mark.

I actually had a stone chop made when I was in Taiwan in 1978 but I really couldn’t put my hands on it this afternoon. It has my name in Chinese carved into it with an ox figure on top. I am year of the ox!

Before we went I had pored over a book my Dad had brought back from his travels of Chinese watercolor painting . I was fortunate enough to get the watercolors and brushes ( the brushes  we used today) and paint and paper while I was in Taiwan. . . Funny how things come full circle!”

(Special thanks to Marti Bledsoe for sharing this painting adventure.)

So, try this project if you haven’t – you don’t’ need any fancy materials – just some inexpensive watercolors and some paper. And maybe some nice wind chime music in the background. You, too, can bamboo!

If you like this technique, I also have a new in-depth workshop called Sunsets and Serapes which, strangely enough,uses this Sumi-e technique to make Southwestern striped paintings for mixed media artists!

Serape Mother and Child

This particular painting workshop is not free (a mere $39) but it has four hours of videos on painting with strong East/West influences. Here’s that link.

Finally, here’s a challenge/idea – how about making Lotus Books (another free workshop) and doing the covers with Sumi-e paintings? That would be beautiful!!

Wishing you a serene and stress-free day! ~~~ Lyn

Cats and Possibilities

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When times are turbulent, I keep telling myself, “Trust the Process.” This doesn’t mean doing nothing and just watching it all happen, but rather doing what we do best – creating with compassion and imagination in the certainly that adding beauty to the world fuels thoughtfulness and optimism.

Seeing what others are doing in this turbulent time brings me that sense of optimism – particularly when their art stems from our Teachable workshop community. And particularly when the subject is cats!

Willma Sliger’s Cat Shaman pieces are a perfect example of taking a basic idea (from my Cat Shaman online workshop) and just flying with it.

Wilma writes, As promised here are the Cat Shamans I have joyfully created. . . .Some have very old ticking . An evil eye brought back from Turkey by a friend. A replica of a coin given to men in old time saloons/bawdy houses. And lots more.
You are my antidote for covid. Seriously. Stay safe and well.
Love, Wilma the Desert Dweller

Wilma lives in Moab, Utah where she creates fabric & mixed media collages, incorporating photos and found objects with fabric to produce unique wall hangings. I told her I was stealing her idea of using a mesh screen on the Heart Box of her Shaman – it’s symbolic and mysterious.

Here is another one of those great Heart Boxes filled with charms and found objects. I like the tied desert wood pieces as well.

This Evil Eye fellow may be my favorite, all twisty and dance-y, with the lion-like head and butterfly wings.

I am so grateful to Wilma for sending these pictures – her work is artfully folk-like but complex, with a real sense of purpose in every assemblage.

So what do YOU do when you know you should be creating something for the good of you heart and soul, but you can’t get started because you don’t have an idea??

That’s an easy one – just get started, Grasshopper, and the Idea will come. Here’s an example.

Two days ago, I desperately needed to make some art so I could (at least briefly) focus on the creative rather than the political. Nothing inspiring struck. That’s rare. But I know if I did SOMETHING, I’d feel better, more optimistic.

So . . . I found a block of wood, and marked some holes. Two holes seemed like a good number. Maybe.

I got out my trusty cordless drill (every artist should have one of these) and drilled two holes.

Then I cut some super-strong but slender bamboo sticks to about 18″ tall and stuck them in the holes.

Voila! It ain’t much yet, but it will be SOMETHING! Who knows what?? When I posted it to Instagram, my friends suggested it could be a two-legged table or a REALLY tall spirit doll.

I’m thinking it might be a sculpture with a body that’s shaped like a kimono with beeswax-coated pages that open and close. Maybe so, maybe not . . .but the whole process got me thinking in a new creative direction –

So the point is, you can’t “Trust the Process” if there isn’t a process to trust yet. Start something. Wrap some string around a stick. Pour the last of your morning coffee on a piece of watercolor paper. Unravel a worn-out sweater.

In the background, I can hear Wilma’s Cat Shamans saying, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, Grasshopper.” Pounce. Munch.

 

A Walk-in-the-Woods Workshop?

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2020 was surely The Plague Year (and we’re still being extra-cautious), but it did get a lot of us outside, walking and exploring nature. That’s a good thing. Decades ago I discovered that walking worked well for me as meditative thinking time – plus I find lots of cool stuff along the way. And sometimes it seemed that the cool stuff was left there especially for me to find.

You may remember the wonderful photo collection of composed found objects that artist friends contributed to my website in 2019. Here’s that link, and here’s one of my favorite compositions (this one is by Marilyn Jones)

Marilyn Jones, Found Objects

This kind of collecting is nothing new for me. One of my signature techniques is embedding sticks and other natural objects into my assemblages – there’s just something mythical about material found outdoors “by accident”.

Sometimes, I even construct pieces almost totally from found objects and natural material, such as this piece called Bone Tea.

Lyn Belisle, “Bone Tea”

It was influenced by my friend Shannon Weber, whose work with natural materials makes me swoon.

Shannon Weber

So all of this leads up to a new workshop that I’ve just posted on my Teachable Studio site. It’s called Sacred Serendipity:Nature Shrines and Assemblages.

Collecting things from nature and assembling them as art is a long and honorable practice.

If you’ve ever read Ann Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea, you know how she describes different seashells as stages in a woman’s life – the oyster shell, covered bumps and lumps but still smooth and beautiful on the inside.

This is a workshop for anyone who has ever found a pine cone, a smooth rock, or a red and gold leaf and brought it home in gratitude and wonder.

There are several free preview videos, including one of me being very goofy in the woods across the street from my house, pretending to “find” objects. But I think the real beauty of this workshop lies in the techniques about arranging and attaching natural objects to a small canvas. This gives you so much leeway to create your own small Shrine to Nature.

I also show you step-by-step how to make a mold from a natural object and then cast it with paper clay – you can do faces this way, as well. The class fee is a mere $29, and you can start and stop whenever you like. The lessons are yours forever – or at least as long as the Internet lasts. Think of this as the cost of a bag of groceries but with more lasting results!

Workshop Preview Link

So here’s to a walk on the wild side – and the natural treasures that we “accidentally” find there. 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

Why doesn’t my art sell better?

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Most of us ask ourselves this at one time or another if our intent (or part of it) is to create work that other people want to buy.

Of course, the art market has been affected drastically by the COVID-19 virus, and those artists who depend on gallery sales are hurting, as are their galleries. We hope for better times very soon.

anggun-tan

photo by anggun tan

But selling art is always an interesting topic, and these days we have some extra time to speculate about why people buy art, what sells, and how we feel about it. (I’m not talking about the international art auctions where work goes for millions to collectors, just local and regional artists and their art practice).

Let me turn the question around and ask, “Why do YOU buy art?” Here are some possible reasons:

  • A friend painted it and I want to support her/him.
  • It matched the décor in my guest bathroom
  • It was cheap
  • When my friends see it, they will be envious
  • It reminds me of my own work
  • I bought it so I could figure out how the artist did it
  • Looking at it makes me happy
  • It’s a “conversation piece” that will intrigue guests
  • If I didn’t buy it, I’d always regret it
  • It is incredibly detailed must have taken hours and hours to complete

When you buy art, where do you usually buy it?

  • Gallery openings
  • Walk-in visits to galleries
  • Craft fairs
  • Online

Do you tend to buy on impulse, or do you spend several days or weeks thinking about the purchase?

Here’s another question. If someone gave you $10,000 and you had to spend it on art, which one of these (below) would you buy? Each cost $10,000, and you have to choose one of them:

  • A small signed and numbered etching done by a famous artist whose paintings have sold for several million dollars, as an investment?
  • A museum-quality 15” tall sculptural figurative artifact from Africa that is purported to be 4000 years old that is being offered by a collector’s estate?
  • A large abstract painting that you really like by a relatively unknown regional artist whose work seems to have great promise?
  • A series of ten small still life oil paintings that are startlingly photorealistic in their depiction of fruit and cost $1000 apiece.
  • A self-portrait of your favorite celebrity

Remember, you have to choose one – and justify why you chose it 🙂

Most people have limited budget and limited space. Have you ever made a list of why  someone should buy YOUR art for their personal space over someone else’s? It’s an interesting exercise. I can come up with a few reasons why people should buy MY art, but most of them are not that different from anyone’s reasons – “it’s original, it has a story . . .”

What are your thoughts on selling your art? I’ll write a follow-up to this next week.

Take good care, and go make some art – Lyn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abstraction/Non-Objective: the emancipation of the mind ?

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I had the great pleasure of working with five friends, all whom create artwork that I admire, in an abstract painting workshop at my Studio last Friday.

From left: Pamela Ferguson, Bibi Saidi, Carolyn Royall, Robin Gara – not pictured: Nancy Vandenburg

Part of the fun was sharing thoughts about abstraction and non-objective painting. Here’s one of my favorite quotes written by Arshile Gorky:

“Abstraction allows man to see with his mind
what he cannot physically see with his eyes…
Abstract art enables the artist to perceive beyond the tangible,
to extract the infinite out of the finite.
It is the emancipation of the mind.
It is an explosion into unknown areas.” 

Emancipating one’s mind is a tough assignment. It’s human nature to try to direct the outcome of our work, and it’s difficult to let go of that control. We followed a “map” of steps to an unknown outcome. You can download the workshop outline here to see how we painted our abstract studies.

I try to develop a slightly different plan of attack for each painting workshop. Individual students react in different ways to techniques that get them to break the ice on a blank canvas. But we almost always start with mark-making, usually asemic writing.

It’s super-important to agree at the beginning that we will not create a masterpiece in three hours, but we might learn some new approaches to making meaningful paintings. Here are some of the first stages or our warmup:

And here are some in the second stage:

When you watch the video, you can see what some of our results were – all interesting! Several of the artists said that they were out of their comfort zone, but pleased with the final outcome, which may be the whole point!

Video Link

For further study, you can read a good explanation of Abstraction in Art from the Tate Museum.

Thanks for reading SHARDS – and remember, if you and a group of four or five friends  would like to organize a workshop at my studio, just send me an email!