Category Archives: Inspiration

Home as Collage

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Casa Belisle

Casa Belisle

Knock knock. Who’s there. Oh, it’s YOU!

C’mon in! I was just rearranging stuff in the chaotic collage that’s the house I live in. Calling all of this a “collection” dignifies it with more organization than it deserves. But I do like to find little objects that enhance the art from friends which graces my home. As artists (and really, we all are) we notice and respond to our surroundings. I love the concept of home as collage – ever-changing and shifting, always a new composition to inspire us..

Recently I brought home a beautiful armoire that had been at the Studio. It belonged to my stepmother, and I cherish it, but the construction on the wall next door (right behind it) made me nervous. I found a perfect place for it here at home, and that inspired me to mix up other things, old stuff new configuration.

Since you’re here, look around at some of my motley assortment. I love folk art, friends art, funky art. It’s definitely not about price tags, but it is about curated choices. (If you can’t see the photos, click on the title of this post).

Some of my tips on arranging small collages throughout your environment are based on the AB3s of Composition that I developed and teach;

  • A=Alignment – have objects face each other within a group. For example if you have a wall-hanging with a crescent moon on it that you’re hanging next to a portrait, have the crescent and the face looking at each other. Makes sense? Then add a smaller object underneath that faces out.
  • B=Breathing Room – yeah, I know. When you look at my stuff, there’s not much of that. But there are spaces between groupings so that you concentrate on one group at a time. And there are lots of clear, uncluttered surfaces. You can put up as much stuff as you want, but keep some breathing room, however small, between groups of stuff. Mirrors help, because they provide an illusion of depth and space.
  • #3s = Three and Thirds – Groups of threes are so wonderful – if you add a fourth object, it ceases to be a group and looks like four separate things next to each other. But three object create a dialog. Try it. Here’s a link to a post that expands that idea.

I just got a fantastic book called STYLED by Emily Henderson that has a ton of examples on how to build groupings in your “home collage.”  It’s a treat to look at the photos. Not everything is going to be your style, but I did enjoy the book. It’s a guide to another kind of collage – the kind we live in. Happy weekend rearranging stuff!

Words as art – it’s National Poetry Month

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Are you a poet?If you think like an artist, you probably are – art has always inspired poetry, and poetry has always inspired art. I saw Express-News poetry editor Jim LaVilla Havelin  at the Voices de la Luna gala on Sunday, and I can testify from hearing his crazy schedule for National Poetry Month that poetry is alive and well in San Antonio.

Jim and his wife, Lucia (a fantastic fiber artist), are long-time arts advocates. Jim was the Master of Ceremonies for the Sunday event which honored Bryce Milligan of Wings Press and the Writers in Communities program at Gemini Ink. These people share a passion and commitment to the power of poetry and writing as tools of personal freedom through self-expression.

If you are a poet but don’t know it (remember that old poem –your feet show it, they’re Longfellows? Sorry!),  you might want to come by the Studio on the second Wednesday of every month to hear some of the city’s best poets gather to share their work. Our own Studio Poet Laureate, Harold Rodinsky, is usually there – and the guest poet at tomorrow’s meeting is Paul Pineda, whose work is gentle and powerful, always eloquent. . Here’s the info:

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And if you need inspiration for your art through poetry (or vice-versa), I highly recommend the J. Paul Getty Museum Connecting Art and Poetry site – it’s written for little kids, but it’s a fun exploration of  writing from art – I mean, if a giant bug with a pin stuck in it doesn’t inspire you to verse, what will? Get out there and write a poem – it’s National Poetry Month, for heaven’s sake.

 

 

Jane Davies workshop, Day Three

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Driving to Gloucester from Salem on Sunday morning

Driving to Gloucester from Salem on Sunday morning

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow could stop these two intrepid artists from heading off to the final day of Jane’s workshop. It really was something of a shock to be in the middle of a snowstorm in April!

Our assignment for the day was to incorporate the techniques we had learned into new layers on previous work and to begin a new piece (or two) from scratch.

It still amazes me that all of us were able to complete at least six or seven paintings during Jane’s workshop. Of course, the goal was not to produce finished works, but to explore the process-directed techniques. To quote Jane. “You can’t like it all the way through the piece,” and “You can’t plan more than one step ahead.” Sorta like driving through the snow and fog.

Here are some of the photos from our last day – you can see how pieces have changed and evolved. (By the way, if you are reading this as an email and can’t see the images, just click on the title of this post to take you to the blog site.)

Thanks beyond words to Jane Davies for a wonderful workshop – if you ever have the chance to work with her, do it. Thanks to my co-pilot, Gloria Hill, for her intrepid navigation along the Massachusetts roads.. We’ll be home soon to Texas!

Jane Davies workshop, Day Two

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Today’s workshop was as intense and enjoyable as yesterday’s, and we all worked just as hard. Jane had us build on yesterday’s foundation paintings, adding more shapes, lines, veils and pattern. She focused on contrasts of scale, value and hue. It was tough to paint over our previous hard work, but it resulted in growth and options – and a bit of good-natured grumbling.

Jane strongly suggests beginning with a list of elements to explore and use that to get into the piece until the process itself takes over. She has many techniques to help move the painting forward, and a lot of those can be found right here on her website, but working with her in person is amazing. She also plays a mean ukulele – we painted to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

Take a look at some of today’s photos to see how we are progressing. As to where we’ll end up . . .it’s a mystery – but tomorrow is our last day! Stay tuned, y’all.

 

Jane Davies workshop, Day One

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Jane Davies

Gloria Hill and i are on an art adventure north of Boston taking a three day painting workshop with Jane Davies, whose work we both admire. She’s a fine teacher, sensible, inspiring, funny and approachable. She also works us like you wouldn’t believe!

The workshop studio is as big as a basketball court. There are fifteen of us from all over the place, including Ireland. It’s a great group. I’ll try to share some of the photos as we go along – we started with black and white line and “visual weight” studies this morning,  then moved on the color and layers in the afternoon. We did one-minute paintings that were a huge challenge, and experimented with shapes and process this afternoon as we added veils of color.  It’s back to the workshop early tomorrow – I’ll keep you posted!

If you’d like to know more about Jane’s work and her teaching, just Google Jane Davies and then take a look at her You Tube channel. Shes incredibly generous with her techniques and very encouraging to everyone in this weekend’s workshop. More tomorrow if my painting hand isn’t too tired to type – this is intense!

 

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Easter Sunday stroll on the Greenway Trail

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Easter Sunday was our chance to explore a new greenway trail in the neighborhood. I had watched its construction on my daily commute to Trinity University last year. It parallels Devine Road, a winding tree-lined route through the Olmos Basin Park. 

The 3/4 mile trail starts in the Park  and ends at the Alamo Quarry Market mall. In fact, I saw a woman walking back along the trail carrying a Chico’s bag – nice combo of shopping and hiking! The weather was beautiful, and the park was filled with families celebrating Easter Sunday with barbecues and egg hunts. Here’s a little video of some of the greenway sights.

The brainchild of former Mayor Howard W. Peak, the ultimate vision is to encircle the entire City of San Antonio with a complete ring of trails. When the full system is completed, the connected network of trails along tributaries, neighborhood connections and the San Antonio River will total more than 130 miles.

It was fun to get out of the Studio and onto the trail – after all, French painter Pierre Bonnard said, “Art will never be able to exist without nature.” And it’s particularly nice when the trail ends at Chico’s and Starbucks.

 

Artful Gathering, Artful Abstraction

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180 wingsAs you might guess, I’m excited to be teaching at Artful Gathering Online Art Retreats 2016, June 6 – July 17 and July 16 – August 26. The preseason kick-off includes the Artful Gathering annual Hop Contest.  I’m one of the featured  instructors this week! Just follow this link

These are the two uber-nifty classes I’m teaching for Artful Gathering – both designed by yours truly –
A Story Within a Story: Narrative Collage Covers for your Personal Technology & Journals and The Mystical Cat Shaman. Be very afraid of that cat one – Meow!

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What’s in it for you, you ask?  When you join the class for just $85 each session, you get almost three hours of video instruction right from my studio, plus “live” feedback in our online classroom. And these workshops are never “sold out.”

This is my third year with Artful Gathering, and I wasn’t sure how it all worked when I first started. But it’s very cool! And you can come to class in your PJs! Registration opens on May 1st. Hope to see you at Artful Gathering!

smNow – –  on to ARTFUL ABSTRACTION.

Wednesday’s workshop, Abstract Acrylic Exploration, was hard work – just ask any of the participants! Painting from an abstract perspective is like walking a tightrope without a net – there are no representational objects to look at. You are on your own, trusting the process and making decisions every moment while trying not to over-think. It’s tough.

I am so proud of their results! Each of the students had the same guidelines (layers, textures, limited palette with just two colors on a 12×12″ canvas) but individuality ruled! Take a look at these amazing abstracts – intricate, passionate, personal – nice work, everyone!

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Indigo Blue, Take Two

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The magic of indigo never gets old, even to novice fiber artists like me. Sunday’s workshop was flat-out fun – many thanks go to Mary Ann Johnson, whose expertise in shibori and dyeing greatly enhanced our experience. The weather was perfect – our fabric dried quickly in the breeze and the sunshine on our makeshift clothesline.

Here are the basics of how we did it:
The fabric is tied, clamped, rusted stitched, crumpled – any or all. Then it is submerged slowly into the indigo vat for about a minute. The bound fabric is gently removed from the dye bath, avoiding  splashing or dripping into the vat, as this introduces oxygen back into the dye. The fabric looks green when you first take it out of the bucket. This is when the magic happens (or to be more precise, chemistry). Indigo develops its color when it is exposed to oxygen. Once the fabric is in contact with the air, it starts changing color and turns from green to blue. You can see some of this happening in the video, below.

If you are new to this process, I highly recommend that you start with the Jacquard Indigo Kit. It has everything you need to make true indigo plant-based dye. The video below, from Jacquard, shows how to do it.

Things to watch out for – holes in rubber gloves!  The biggest danger, though, is addiction to indigo dyeing, particularly when you realize it can also dye paper and yarn.

I can’t wait to cover some journals with my indigo fabric, and perhaps combine indigo-dyed paper with encaustic. It’s true blue indigo love!

 

 

Sunday’s workshop rocked

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GET IT? It was a Pebble Mosaic workshop! Well, the pun may be bad, but the workshop was great – David Chidgey, Master Mosaicist, did a splendid job of teaching us how to turn pebbles into art. We learned new terms, such as “Interstice” (pronounced inter-STEE-cee) and “scratch coat.” We delighted in picking through bins of tiny multi-colored pebbles looking for just the right one to fit our designs. There wasn’t (much) rock throwing. Honest.

Free free to admire our results in the video (below). Not bad for beginners – high fives to everyone, especially David!

I was afraid for a while that I’d never make it home in time for the workshop. My plane out of Boston was delayed and I missed a connection in Minneapolis and had to stay there overnight. Unfortunately, that caused me to miss the opening of the HotWax/Cold Wax show in Kerrville. Bummer. But I’ll get there soon.

One good thing the trip delay provided was extra time to play with some iPad art. I’m trying to learn ProCreate, a really cool digital art program that I had mentioned in an earlier blog post. The experimental work below is a photo of my water bottle in the seat-back pocket on the plane, combined with a selfie and some other stuff, including some filters and special effects. (You can see a warning about keeping your seat-belt fastened while seated if you look closely.)

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So, see – you can make art anywhere, even on a plane (especially if you have an iPad), and out of anything, even plain old pebbles (especially if you have David Chidgey). Artists are never at a loss for fodder.

Hope you all have a great week – it sure is nice to be back in Texas.

PS – Registration for most of the summer workshops at the Studio is now open at this link – yay!

Composition Camp – transferring ideas

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In yesterday’s workshop at the Studio, we explored composition through a mixed-media collage process using Ebony pencils, watercolor pencils, stencils, graphite transfer paper, white tempera paint, TAP heat transfers and digitally altered images. This non-traditional combination of tools led to some pretty spectacular results!

Image transfer, whether done with graphite sheets, TAP paper, gel mediums or any other method is simply another way of selectively inputting and arranging images on a substrate. It’s neither “cheating” or “tracing.” Even if drawing is not your forte, you can use graphite media to produce striking lights and darks in a classic drafting  style. Look at some of the work by iconic painter Larry Rivers to see how a master uses this technique.

We had some poets and prose writers in yesterday’s group – always a good sign for cross-genre inspiration! And our post-workshop critique was one of the best I can remember. There were lots of dream images and personal insights floating around. Fascinating stuff! Here are a few photos from a very rich and productive afternoon! Thanks, All!

I’m headed to Boston tomorrow for a few days so I can see the family and come home with a renewed appreciation of South Texas temperatures (it’s supposed to be 17F while I’m there – yikes). Now, y’all go outside, smell the Mountain Laurel, and bask in this lovely weather!

Texas Mountain Laurel - scratch and sniff :)

Texas Mountain Laurel – scratch and sniff 🙂