Category Archives: Other Artists

A crazy-quilt week(end) of good things

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makingfacesAll sorts of things have been going on in the Studio and around town – and in the virtual creative cyber-village. My first online art class opened on Monday at Roses and is going great – 26 students so far, and lively forum discussions on making shard faces with air-dry clay. It will be open until December with ongoing tips and examples if you can’t make the October 13th workshop at the “real” Studio.

ww8Tomorrow’s Wax and Wings workshop is full – how great is that? Very. My friend Victoria is here from DC and will be one of the participants – yay! Michelle Belto, my partner in collaboration, just got back from teaching a sold-out encaustic seminar in Canada – can’t wait to hear about her adventures during the workshop tomorrow. We’re already thinking about planning our next collaboration – stay tuned.

paulbookSpeaking of friends, my new email pal, Paul Wank from Eureka Springs, Arkansas, emailed me a photo of himself with one of his marvelous Book Dolls. The doll’s body is a blank book. How metaphoric! Paul is a craftsman and handmade book specialist. He’s also involved in the thriving Eureka Springs art and gallery scene. I’m luck enough to have one of his amazing miniature book necklaces. Paul is a great source of info about the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. I hope to go there this coming spring or summer. Have any of you guys seen it yet?

raichlainAnd speaking of galleries . . .tonight there’s a book signing at La Vida Gallery – owner Matt Weissler has snagged Steven Raichlain is the TV host of Primal Grill and a multi award winning author of the cookbook series Barbecue Bible.  He is touted as the man who reinvented barbecue. He is also an Iron Chef winner, having defeated Rokusaburo Michiba in a “Battle of the Barbecue Gods” on Japanese television  AND He has a degree in French literature and trained at Le Cordon Bleu and La Varenne cooking schools in Paris. Not your average barbecue bubba. I’ll be there, hope to see you at the coolest gallery in Southtown.

hadesOn a family note, my son Rick starts his House of Hades book tour next week – now that he’s living in Boston, I don’t get immediate feedback from those events, but I know it will be great. And, yes, I still worry about him being safe and eating right, and no, the title of the book doesn’t refer to his growing up at our house (I hope!). You can see him reading from the book at this link – unless I have worn it out from watching.

riverHave a wonderful weekend, everyone – don’t forget that the last section of the San Antonio River Reach opens tomorrow – it should be a great day for a stroll or walk or paddle along the beautiful riverbanks.

 

Tonight’s opening and a poem

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It’s  Fotoseptiembre  – and I’m especially delighted that my friend Ramesh arrives today for the opening of his photography show, TERROIR. His Oregon wines arrived before he did, and are waiting to be opened and shared with tonight’s guests. I’ve already purchased one of his spectacular orchid photographs. This one – wow.

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Each photo is printed on stretched canvas and other forms of prints will be available by special order. I love Ramesh’s work (and I hear those Oregon wines of his are pretty good, too!). Please come to the opening.

Anyone who creates anything know that it takes work, imagination and most of all, tenacity and optimism – so here’s a Friday poem to remind us all of that.

Optimism

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs — all this resinous, unretractable earth.

 ~ Jane Hirshfield ~

Thanks to Joe Riley and Panhala for sending this along today. Hooray for figs and turtles and friends and art!

 

 

Gulp – it’s Art Show Eve

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I hit the ground running when I got home Monday night – my fellow artist and co-showee, Gloria, was smart enough to get everything done in advance for our Friday (tomorrow!!) exhibit, but – oh no – not meeeeee. I shared onewas still painting this morning at the Studio. Gulp, for sure. This afternoon, though, we started hanging paintings, and by golly, it’s gonna work! Here’s a sneak preview (see pics) – we need more tags and a list of works, but it’s almost ready.  sharedtwoI know I’ve said this, but it’s amazing how two people working at the same time with the same stuff can end up with such different results. I think you’ll like them 🙂

The exhibit, Shared Spaces, will be up through Labor Day, but if you come to the opening, you can get to tell us what you think! And you might even take home a piece of interesting,original art. The food on the menu looks good, too – so come, relax,  and escape the heat of the Dog Days of summer.

By the way . . . .do you know why the Dog Days are called that? The term dates back to the ancient Romans and is celestial in origin.The brightest star in Canis Major (and in the night sky), is Sirius which is also called the “dog star.” During late July, Sirius rises and sets in conjunction with the sun, and the ancients believed that the heat of Sirius added to the heat of the sun, creating a stretch of hot and sultry weather. My cat, Max, copes by just chilling out – he thinks we should call them the Cat Days of summer. Come chill out at the Studio tomorrow evening from 6-9!

maxnap copy

Altar Update: The Guardian of the Golden Bough

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Done and delivered to Celebration Circle! Here is the finished altar for their silent auction during the month of September, and now I know why I needed to use the moss. The figure represents The King of the Wood from Sir James Frazer’s book, The Golden Bough (pub. 1890), which seeks to explain the roots of human religion, science and magic. Being an eccentric spiritual eclectic, it made sense to me to reflect my own private musings through this guy, The Guardian of the Golden Bough.

The completed piece

The completed piece

I had fun constructing him, and when I took him down to the collection place in Blue Star Art Complex, I got to see some of the other altars. They’ll all be photographed soon, so you can see them, too. Hope you can come to the fundraising event on Sept. 30th! Here are some other photos of Mr. Guardian (or maybe it’s Ms. Guardian?) And here’s a tip – if you have a Kindle and want to read The Golden Bough, it’s on Amazon for a free download!

 

Meanwhile, back at the altar . . .

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When last we saw our altar box for Celebration Circle’s Silent Auction, it had a not-too-happy Spirit Doll lying in it, and it looked pretty creepy. Sigh. But I *knew* the moss was the right thing – so I kept thinking and working, and then I remembered a graduation gift I made for my grandson. It was a wall sculpture of the Celtic god, Cernunnos. I liked him because he was kind of a mystery, open to possibilities (actually, that goes for my grandson, too :)). Using Cernunnos as an inspiration, I am working on my Altar gift to Celebration Circle. It’s not quite finished, but here he is – The Guardian of the Sacred Grove with his little bird buddy, still a work in progress.

grove

If you want to see it finished, come to the Bijou Theatre Gallery between Sept.1 and Sept 30th and view all 50 of these wonderful Altars. The closing reception and Silent Auction is on September 30th at 6:00. With any luck, you can take home the Guardian of the Sacred Grove or another cool altar to grace your own place of creative belonging!

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Gloria and Lyn (and the golden rooster)

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The Friday Freebie golden rooster pendant goes to blog subscriber Sherrill Kahn! That’s really funny – Sherrill, you can pick it up when you come to visit in August, and I can’t wait for your workshops.

And speaking of August, (nice segue) please please save the date (August 16th) for Shared Spaces, an exhibit of paintings by Gloria Hill and me at my Studio. We’ve been painting together on most Wednesdays since the early spring, and you will see how two weird artistic brains can take the same media (and sometimes the same subject) and end up with totally different results. There will be the usual libations and munchies – here’s you OFFICIAL invitation.

invitation copy

 

The empty altar

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Last week, I received this really nice letter from a group that I admire tremendously – Celebration Circle.

Dear Lyn: At the recommendation of many mutual friends, we are writing to invite you to create a hand-made altar for the Celebration Circle’s annual art exhibit, One People, Many Paths: The Sacred Art of Altars and our tenth year of presenting this exhibit and silent auction at the Bijou Theater September 1 – 30. You will be one of 50 artists to receive a handcrafted wooden box to use as the basis for creating a small “altar” focused on whatever matters to you – personally, artistically and/or spiritually – employing whatever media and/or embellishments your vision requires. The completed piece is due no later than Sunday, August 11th. 

the empty altar box

the empty altar box

What could I say, but “of course!” Now comes the challenge. I looked at the empty altar box for a while and remembered that I had some sheets of weathered moss that came off a wall planter.

. . . .lined with moss

. . . .lined with moss

On they went to line the altar – glue, glue. So far, so good – then I thought “Aha, a Spirit Doll! – I love making those” So I popped one in from the last workshop. Oops – the whole thing instantly turned into a moss lined coffin. Not good. Back to the drawing board – will keep you updated :). All suggestions gracefully accepted!

. . .oh, no! She looks dead! Oops. Bad idea.

. . .oh, no! She looks dead! Oops. Bad idea.

Arts, letters & amber – a studio visit

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Carolyn Eastman Cazares is a Woman of Letters – Hebrew letters. She fell in love with the letterforms over a decade ago and paints them in layered compositions that transcend translation. I visited Carolyn at her Studio on the edge of the Texas Hill Country north of San Antonio, and I was astounded with the diversity and passion in her work. When she falls in love with something – Hebrew letters, chunks of amber, faces that compel her, she is prolific in her explorations. Her amber and copper wire jewelry is lyrical – she says that amber is a combination of “liquid sunshine and ancient wisdom.”

She also makes a great chocolate gluten-free cake (and gave me the recipe). We talked for over an hour about creativity, relationships and art, and what inspires us, and we found a lot of common ground. If you’ve visited my house and my studio, you can see from the photos that Carolyn and I share a lot of the same kinds of “artists’ stuff”! Thanks for the visit, Carolyn – I will be back!

Cheap tricks – tags and labels

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I’m getting some new work ready for my Art Show on July 20th with Lesta, Jan and Alison (hint hint, see invitation at the end) and I made some really cool earthenware beads, if i do say so myself. They are finished with walnut ink and gilder’s paste. They looked pretty good on the string, but when I added a descriptive tag, they looked great! I’d buy ’em for me if I didn’t get ’em free :).

runeshot

Here’s how:

  • Think of a catchy name – I used Rune & Relic because I already had that name on some things in my Etsy shop)
  • Write a very short description or use a quotation or poem line that is applicable – search for stuff like “Everything you can imagine is real.” ― Pablo Picasso
  • Add a photo, or if you don’t know how to do that, find a great stamp and use it on all of your tags – I use a moon face stamp and add a raven stamp on top as my signature on my handmade books.
  • stampwithmoonandraven
  • Design your tags to the dimensions of a business-card (2″x3.5″) Open up a business card printing program – MS Word has one – follow the set-up directions,and just put in plain cardstock instead of business card paper – it’s cheaper by far.  Print and cut apart, punch holes and add string or raffia. Voila!! (which means, “damn, that looks good” in French)

So now you are asking yourself, “Where can I find some of those fantastic Rune and Relic Beads?? Well, here’s your personal invitation for the Christmas in July Art Show and Sale at Lyn Belisle Studio featuring Four Amazing Artists! You’ll shout “Voila!!”

invitation

 

An Artful Weekend with the Solomons

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Things are so quiet here – our house guests, Pablo and Beverly Solomon are safely home, the Studio is back to its usual self, ready for workshops, and I just finished posting the video from the weekend (below). What great memories we’ll all have! These photos are from both evenings, and include some really great shots of guests posing with their original Pablo Solomon drawings, with Pablo and with his pet monster lizard creature, Diablo. Thanks to everyone who came and helped make this an artful and art-filled weekend!