Category Archives: Other Artists

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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Dale Jenssen Workshop at the Studio

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Contemporary mirror by Dale Jenssen, 2015 – owned by me! Yay!

Dale Jenssen is a multi-talented artist whose work I love. I have one of her iconic mirrors and several pieces of her jewelry. Whenever I wear the earrings she created, other artist friends always admire them and say, “Dale, right?”

Exciting news – Dale is coming to Lyn Belisle Studio in June for a one-time afternoon workshop to show you how to create these wonderful earrings from metal, beads and small found objects. You will NOT want to miss this. You can find the details here.

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I met Dale several years ago through the Fiber Artists of San Antonio – yep, she’s an amazing fiber artist as well as metals sculptor. Check out two of her creations for FASA, below, and don’t miss the chance to work with Dale at my Studio on June 12th. I’m so excited!! Thanks, Dale, and TGIF, Y’all.

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!

HandEye: the mother lode of inspirational eye-candy

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Wow. Just wow. I can’t believe I’ve lived this long without knowing about HAND/EYE online magazine (it comes in a print edition, too).  I’ve just created an account (free) and am browsing through gallery after gallery of textiles, artifacts, fine crafts, indigenous processes, and so much more.

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Maria Constanza Cardenas – Plumage choker, Orinoco collection. This piece portrays the power of the colors, textures, shapes and movement of the tropics.

The online site is divided into sections and the emphasis is on celebrating cultural creativity and sustainability.

HAND/EYE also features events such as England’s Woolfest as well as unusual products from small commercial designers such as 502 Home’s huipil-inspired ceramics.

A personal favorite is an article written by India Flint in 2010 called  Desert Country: Contemporary Aboriginal Artists Take on the Land.

One of the most wonderful features of the HAND/EYE site is the treasure-trove of archived articles and galleries like that one written by India Flint with beautiful photographs – and they are organized beautifully to allow maximum accessibility.

From the article Desert Country in HandEye Magazine, 2010

They also have a Facebook page if you just want a sneak preview!

I commend this publication for its vision. HAND/EYE Magazine bridges the worlds of art, design, craft, philanthropy, retailing, and socio-environmental sustainability.

That’s my Show and Tell for the week!

Don’t forget that there will be an in-person Show and Tell at the Studio this Saturday from 2-4. I just cleaned up my fiber art room and it looks great, so show up and don’t make me do this clean-up for nothin’ – :). Check it out (below) – it may be the last time you ever see it this organized.

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I screen, you screen . . .

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Lisa Stamper Meyer, “Mysterious Miasmas” Acrylic on Paper

What a treat to have the multi-talented Lisa Stamper Meyer at my Studio yesterday teaching a workshop on Silk Screening for Mixed Media Artists! Lisa is amazing – You can see her work at The Gallery at Gruene Lake Village. She’s a patient teacher, generous in her expertise.

I have to admit that I wasn’t ready to add one more thing to my repertoire, but – wrong! This process has so many possibilities. Everyone who participated said the same thing. The inspirations for using this idea on fiber, on handmade paper, with encaustic are unllimited – I’m sold!

Take a look at the video, and then do some exploring on the EZscreen process with the links I’ve listed at the end of this post – many thanks to Lisa for an amazing afternoon.

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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!

I can’t tell you what I did this weekend —

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c5f4e638-93da-49ef-85f1-daae2cc99001–but it was fun!! Actually, here’s a hint from Artful Gathering:

“We are currently in video production for our 2016 online art event. This is an exciting time when our instructors are devoting themselves to creating a very special class to share with you this summer.”

So if you came by the Studio and saw a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door, you’ll know why you couldn’t come in. I absolutely love developing and designing classes for Artful Gathering, and I spend several days each January and February filming and editing my AG classes.

Yesterday, hard at work filming an Artful Gathering class about . . . . .

Yesterday, hard at work filming an Artful Gathering class about . . . . .

The classes are kept a secret until March first (which is why I can’t tell you about them yet), but you can get involved with Artful Gathering right now and win prizes from Jerry’s ArtaRama. Starting today you can join the AG Hop called “Bring Your Wings” and play along each week, while meeting our 2016 instructors, including me in an upcoming newsletter.

It’s simple – just read the featured instructor’s profile, find the secret word (each one has wings by it – easy) and collect them. I’m doing this myself because i get to see everybody’s portfolios and steal – er, get inspired by – their ideas! Here’s a piece by my pal Riki Schumacher, a featured artist in today’s Hop – I can definitely see a face shard somewhere in some work inspired by this lovely piece – :

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To register for Artful Gathering, pay up just five bucks and you’ll get a whole bunch of stuff before and after the classes are announced. But you can play the Hop for free, so hop to it.

And if you can’t wait for May, just fork over a few more bucks for my Artful Gathering DVD’s – more in production, thanks to a long weekend of mystery filming. End of commercial, have a lovely day!

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