Category Archives: art

Hot Wax/Cold Wax opens this weekend in Kerrville

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Undoubtedly, you’ve heard me talk a lot about “encaustic” lately and you might wonder why I’m so excited about this medium and its possibilities. This weekend, you’ll have a chance to see a showcase of those possibilities presented by some of the region’s best artists. The exhibition is called Hot Wax/Cold Wax and it’s hosted by the Kerr Arts & Cultural Center just north of San Antonio in Kerrville.

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It was nice of them to use an image of my work (above) on the announcement! I just received some photos of the installation from Lynn Luukinen – the space is spectacular – take a look. Debbie Minns, Director KACC, did an outstanding job of staging the show.

I’ll be home from Boston just in time to hit the road for Kerrville on Saturday to see this exhibit in person. The reception is from 2-4 on Saturday – hope to see you there, but if you can’t make it then, don’t miss the show. It’s on display during the month of March, and will be well worth a visit. Woohoo for wax!!

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The week that was and the weekend that will be . . .

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It takes a village to make a Studio – and that’s what it felt like this week – all kinds of creative people graced the place – yay!

On Monday, our 3M Writers Group met at the studio for the monthly pot luck. Poets and novelists are also great cooks! And the conversation is always inspired. Special congrats to Bryce Milligan (below, center) whose Wings Press just celebrated its 40th Anniversary – a huge accomplishment for this multicultural, environmentally-aware company. Wings is indeed The Corazón of American Small Press Publishing.

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From left: Anne Alexander, Mary Milligan, Harold Rodinsky, Mike Belisle, Bryce Milligan, Jimmy Adair

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From left: Lou Taylor, Leslie Provence, Craig Donegan, Jay Brandon, Jasmina Wellinghoff

Next came a Wednesday Workshop – this time, it was Encaustic Exploration. We worked with wax and images in a larger format than usual.  The workshop critique was outstanding – thanks to all who waxed and shared!

I found some time on Thursday to play with a large painting called “Domino Theory.” Rosemary Uchniat sent me a heads-up about artist Nancy Reyner’s book on gold leaf and acrylic painting – lord knows, I have plenty of gold leaf around the Studio, This piece still needs glazing, but it’s fun to watch where it’s going. The process may turn into a new workshop – more soon.

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Today, I’ll be clearing the decks for Monika Astara’s trunk show that goes on from 11-3:30 tomorrow – don’t miss it!

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Lisa Stamper Meyer‘s Silk Screen workshop is Sunday, and in between all this, I’m going to get over to the Fred Road Studio Tour. 

I hope your week was great, and that your weekend is fun-filled and art-filled and joy-filled – spring is definitely in the air!

Saturday catch-up: collages, challenges and show&tell

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It’s been a busy week – I taught a beeswax workshop with the San Antonio Art Education Association at a workshop on Tuesday, and then spent Thursday at the Studio with Gloria Hill and Lisa Stamper Meyer.Here are our collages from that art playdate – can you believe that three artists with the same challenge could come up with such different results? Fascinating.

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And speaking of collages and challenges, congrats to Rosemary Uchniat who won the random stuff challenge with this powerful collage. I saw her “before” pile of stuff and am in awe of the way she pulled it together – it belongs in a gallery!

Rosemary, your prize is an Artist Sampler of Three Face Shards to use as you like. What will you come up with this time? It’s always interesting.

toni copyToni Curtis from LA also sent in her wonderful collage which morphed into a journal cover – nice, Toni!  Check out Toni’s Heart of the Gypsy Facebook page. It’s fun to challenge yourself to an out-of-the box diversion – try it.

And finally, today is the first Show and Tell of 2016 – my favorite Studio event!

In the lineup today are painters, poets, authors, card makers, fiber artists – and Chef Mikey himself, who will share the Studio’s signature dessert recipe of Sopaipilla Cheesecake. Hope to see you there from 2-4!

Challenge update

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This is what I ended up doing with the objects I collected for the spontaneous “Studio Stuff” challenge. I like it! It’ s called HeART of Time, and it’s about how time flies – wings? eggs? clock pieces? Makes sense to me!

HeART of Time: mixed media assemblage by Lyn Belisle

HeART of Time: mixed media assemblage by Lyn Belisle

And here’s the studio stuff I started with:

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Now I’m wondering if it’s cheating to add a couple of extra things to pull the project together. I added some cloth wings that I’d had for years and also a small box with compartments to put everything in. Nah, that’s not cheating – you can add a few things, too, if you like. I’m kind of making up our rules as I go!

Below are two submissions of studio stuff from brave artist friends – let’s see what they do with it! Names have been concealed to protect the innocent. Stay tuned.

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Assignment: refocus through a creative challenge

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After week of extremes – extreme dismay – the fire near the Studio that caused so much damage to others – and extreme joy – fantastic time with Clare O’Neill, more pics to come – I’m ready to get back to some new artwork. But it always takes me a while to re-focus. Does that ever happen to you?

So here’s what I did this morning – I collected some random stuff from my work table and arranged it like a collage. Easy. I photographed it, then gave myself a challenge – make something out of (or inspired by) this pile o’ stuff.

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Here what I have to work with:

  • watch parts
  • copper wire
  • A very cool stained paint rag
  • a face shard (or course)
  • a bird wing
  • a paper scrap
  • glass beads
  • a wooden egg

My assignment – MAKE SOMETHING. First thought – print and mount the photo for an encaustic piece – easy. Harder would be to make an assemblage sculpture, or a huge acrylic abstract painting based on the colors and textures — so what would YOU do?

Your assignment – Email me a pic of some of your small random studio stuff, no more than ten items, It shouldn’t be contrived or exotic – a tuna can, a twig, some lace, whatever – and then tell us what you’re thinking about doing with it. I’ll post the pics of the “ingredients” first. Then, in a week or so, I’ll ask for a pic of what you have done with them, sort of like an online Show and Tell There will be a prize involved!

PS Speaking of Show and Tell, don’t miss the next one at Lyn Belisle Studio on Saturday, January 30th from 2-4!

 

Encaustic excitement and fiber – Maggie Ayers’ mixed media work

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Maggie Ayers – Cocoon, 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clare O’Neill’s visit to my studio is just days away, and I’ve been immersed in encaustic excitement! I just can’t wait to work with her since many mixed-media artists like me are incorporating the seductiveness of beeswax into their work, and Clare’s expertise is impressive – we are so lucky to have her here.

Maggie Ayers, Flourish (detail) 2009

Maggie Ayers, Flourish (detail) 2009

Coincidentally, I just discovered this morning that one of my fiber artist heroes, Maggie Ayers, has also turned to encaustic, and wow! What she’s doing with wax and silk is gorgeous! Maggie Ayers’ work prompted my interest in fiber art about ten years ago – her work is unique and organic.

She’s brought those qualities to wax – you’ll love the new work that she demonstrates in the video below.

Maggie writes, “Central to all my work is the notion of mark making. Whether it is a trailed line of ink from a delightfully scratchy bamboo nib, a rusted metal print on paper or torn reclaimed cloth, or quickly cut scalpel lines on a beeswax and resin ground, these are my working beginnings.” Beautiful.

Maggie Ayers, Small encaustic panel, 2015

The big lesson for me is not just about wax or silk or collage or any particular medium, but about expressing one’s own ideas in many ways. Not everyone who comes to Clare’s workshop this weekend will become a photoencaustic artist, but each of us will experience a new method of communicating through our art as Clare instructs us, and as Maggie Ayers has done. I love it!

Maggie Ayers, small panel, 2015

If you’re a mixed-media artist, and you’re new to encaustics, here’s a great list of resources compiled by Rhonda Raulston that will introduce you to the seductiveness of wax – but be careful – it’s contagious.

Faces of Art – and a Friday Free-bee

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Ramin Samandari is an extraordinary artist and  photographer whose work is in the permanent collections at the San Antonio Museum of Art and the University of Texas at San Antonio, along with numerous private collections. He has embarked on a remarkable project to photograph San Antonio artists. Here’s what he writes:

“I started this project about a year ago with two objectives in mind: To make photographs that show a glimpse into the artist’s emotions and psyche, and to make an important archive of the San Antonio’s visual art community, which did not exist.

I decided not to photograph the artists in the usual way, with their work in their studios. Instead I wanted to make portraits where the viewer has to encounter the artist’s face with no other distraction.”

I visited Ramin on Tuesday, and he just sent me this photograph from my session at his studio – I love it – many thanks, Ramin, for your talent and vision (and your mastery of Photoshop!). Plus, now I have a head shot that doesn’t involve cats or a messy studio in the background! Yay!

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Lyn Belisle, photographed by Ramin Samandari

You can see an Interview with Ramin as he photographs my good friend, Anne Alexander. And you can get more information on funding the project here at Ramin’s website.

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Ready for the Friday Free-bee? Yep, it’s a B Beautiful bee dish! One lucky SHARDS subscriber will win one of these little guys to keep or give. A portion of the sales of these hand-built pieces goes to support the Honeybee Conservancy. Drawing will be held Sunday night – good luck! And thanks for bee-ing a subscriber!

PS – I sold all of these at the last studio event, but I have several dozen more back in stock – they are coming out of the kiln today (just in case you don’t win the Friday Free-bee and still want one :))

 

Tortoise-shelter architecture by a brilliant contractor

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You know Dudley, right? Our 90 pound Sulcada tortoise who was the size of a chalupa just five years ago?

Dudley's baby picture with Chico the kitten

Dudley’s baby picture with Chico the kitten

She spent the winter last year on the deck, but she’s just too darn big now and needed a backyard shelter to keep her warm when temperatures drop below 50F. She is, after all, a desert tortoise.

I suppose we cold have just spread thirty or forty sleeping bags over her 4×6′ crate, but that seemed kind of tacky, so we called our long-time friend and contractor, Kurt Wahrmund, to see what he could come up with. After all, he built her first condo. The brilliant result? A cedar-clad shelter that matches the architecture of the house. It has three wall panels that can be stored in the summer, and it features a plexiglass roof and a plenum system that directs the heat from a space heater down into Dud’s straw-lined crate. Check this out!

I am so grateful to Kurt for figuring out a beautiful solution that works aesthetically and practically for human and tortoise both – if you ever need a contractor/designer with a great solution to a building dilemma, call Kurt Wahrmund!

Miro at the McNay – prepare to be astonished

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The Miro exhibit, currently on view at the McNay Art Museum until January 10, 2016, is full of surprises. We went yesterday with our friends, artist Pablo Solomon and his wife, Beverly (their cat is named Miro, so you know they are huge fans of the Spanish painter).

The first surprise was the astonishing scale of the paintings. These things are huge! Pablo and I both said that we expected “normal sized” painting from the photos we had seen in catalogs, but these works were six, eight, ten feet tall, some in gigantic frames with glass as big as skyscraper windows. Miro’s colorful shape-figures of birds and women dance around within these huge canvases like playful giants. It’s so much fun!

The second surprise, at least for me, were the delightful sculptures, each with a rich industrial-like patina on bronze, and all constructed from sand-cast assortments of goofy objects that worked to form creatures with vast appeal. I felt like applauding!

The final surprise was realizing that all of the 50+ works in the show were created in Miro’s later years, the last 20 years of his life. It seems to be a journey back to the celebration and simplicity of a personal artistic language. The catalog says, “In his quest to transcend the idea of easel painting, the pictorial space is enlarged across expanded canvas fields, on which calligraphic signs reach maximum intensity through minimum resources, reflecting the artist’s attempt to reach a square one of painting. . .” I dare you not to get a little teary when you walk into the room with the last three paintings, huge white canvases with a very few spots of color, a star, a dotted line – all seeming to be exiting the playing field. Beautiful.

Good friends Beverly and Pablo Solomon pay homage to the mater, Miro - what an exhibit!

Good friends Beverly and Pablo Solomon pay homage to the master, Miro – what an exhibit!

So do what I tell ya – go have a nice lunch at Twin Sisters with some good friends, and then get yourself over to the McNay just down the block. Pay the special exhibit ticket price – it’s worth every dollar – and prepare to be astonished.

PS The whole city is celebrating Miro – here’s a list of special Miro-inspired treats, from jewelry to decadent chocolate cake that will be on hand during the run of the exhibit.