PS – If the Composition Video won’t play on your iPhone or other device, here’s the direct Vimeo link.

Want to give your feedback on some potential new branding for the San Antonio Art League & Museum? Now’s your chance – even if you don’t live in San Antonio and even if you are not an artist.

Our Art League is 112 years old and has gone through many changes during that time. You can read more about that on our website, saalm.org. When I first became President back in 2017, this was our logo:

It was hard to read and reproduce. I played around with some new ideas in 2018 (below), but ultimately we decided to use the one that you see at the top of the post, a simple SAALM. Kinda blah, but readable

However, in a recent stroke of very good luck, our current Art Patrons for 2024 are Lionel and Kathy Sosa, and Lionel just happens to be a world-renowned graphic designer, former owner of the largest Hispanic agency in the country.

Lionel, who is generous with his time and talent, did some pro bono work for us and suggested we brand ourselves as simply “The Art League . . .more than a museum.” It’s true – we are more than a museum because we give workshops, showcase student art, off public lectures, and collaborate with other arts organizations in our community.

Here are some samples of the new ideas:

What are your thoughts?

• Do we need “San Antonio” on our logo?
• Can we just be known as The Art League for short?
• Do you like the Texas Peach as the accent color?

Help us with our new marketing ideas! You can send your comments to me on the Art League website.

Thanks!!!

Lyn

I just had the best weekend teaching at the UTSA Southwest Art Studios – twelve students and I explored materials and invented processes during the two-day Scroll and Surface fiber art workshop.

One of my favorite student comments  came from Susan, who said as we were reviewing our work, “I’ve lost my fear of fiber!!”

Sometimes we think that an unfamiliar medium can’t be used to express our unique message. If you work in watercolor, you can’t imagine yourself telling the same story or celebrating the same subject in clay or fiber. But this weekend’s workshop concentrated on fusing all kinds of media media into individual narratives – paper, fiber, photography, paint, even clay. Here was our working description:

This mixed-media fiber art workshop includes components such as re-purposed studio drop cloth (torn), hydrosoluable fiber, walnut ink, paper twine, surface design, found objects, fiber, wire, image transfers and paper clay to explore how surface design can symbolize the precious belongings that we carry with us on our life’s journey.

The students came from diverse background and places in Texas – a military veteran who worked as a language translator, an elementary school STEM teacher, a naturalist, a minister, several professional artists, a college student just starting his art journey. Our personalities came together like a beautifully composed collage!

One of the strengths in creative diversity is that every message matters. A successful art workshop results in many right answers to the same question – what story can you tell that makes us all nod our heads in understanding, recognition, and empathy?

My students were just brilliant in expressing their narratives. Here is a video that tells all of the stories that were written in fiber this weekend.

I’m in the middle of filming lessons for this workshop so it can be available as an online class, and it should be ready in a week or two. I’ll share some of the mixed-media secrets we discovered this weekend – toilet bowl cleaner was a big hit as was sticky cheesecloth. 🙂

Thanks for reading SHARDS! And don’t be afraid of fiber – it is your friend!!

Lyn

AI, AI, oh!

There’s a new exhibit opening at the San Antonio Art League & Museum next week called Lone Star Horizons: Texas Landscapes Past, Present Future. I have two pieces in it – one that was juried in, and one that I created for a special section about artists who use Artificial Intelligence tools in various ways in their work. There are nine other artists in this section – stay tuned and I’ll show them to you once the show opens.

Images generated with AI tools fascinate me, not because it want to find an easy way to make a picture, but because the tool itself has so many possibilities — and limits. For example, I created a series of coordinated collage mages in my Sisters workshop that are designed to teach combinations and composition without making students worry about copyright images from commercial sources. To me, that’s a help

It’s also fun to test the way that AI applications like DALL-E monitor themselves regarding content. As an experiment, I asked DALL-E, which is an image generator that make pictures from scratch, to create this:

Oops – it seems that “in the style of Georgia O’Keeffe” is not allowed. This makes me feel good because it shows level of protection for that artist. You’ll notice that DALL-E changed its “mind” before could generate the image.

Look what happens when I change the prompt and leave out the painter’s name:

Now it produces an image, one that is completely new and not copyright. Interesting!

But when I tried another prompt and asked simply for the “style of southwestern painters” it would not generate it.

When I removed the “style” part, look what happened:

It’s good to know that there are some limits. So how does this help with the creative process?

AI is a visualization tool for me. Let’s say I am starting on a new series of Spirit Dolls. I can use AI to generate a concept or design that gives me ideas on directions to follow even before I get out the fiber and clay. Here’s an example:

Obviously, none of these generated images goes with my signature styles, but I can try out the idea with Photoshop, using one of my Earthshard faces.

It’s a nice graphic, and while I like some of it, I can eliminate most of it as a possibility (like too much silver) without having to actually build it than take it apart again.

By the way, here is the AI-aided piece that will be in the Texas Landscape show. It is an encaustic collage with parts generated by the AI tool called MidJourney, and some parts from other sources, including some real pressed and dried flowers. It’s covered with layers of encaustic medium. And no Georgia O’Keeffe paintings were swiped in the production of this piece! 🙂

To me, a piece like this represents a fusion of old and new tools – an experiment that plays with new frontiers that we can chose to use or not. We follow out hearts and can go back and forth between comfort and experimentation.

No matter what the situation, remind yourself, “I Have A Choice.” -Deepak Chopra

Thanks for reading!

PS If you wold like copies of any of the images that were generated in the examples, just let me know and I will make them available for download. They are not copyrighted and you can use them in any way you wish as long as you don’t say that you painted them! LOL.

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working on the back-end of the upcoming Lone Star Horizons show, an exhibit of Texas landscapes in every media imaginable that opens at the San Antonio Art League & Museum on January 6th. Our Juror, Harold Joiner of Houston, had a tough job choosing 50 pieces from the 200 submitted.

Setting up a Call for Entry like this one is kind of complicated, but once it’s up and running, as the admin you get to see all of the entries come in via digital photos before the Juror sees them and makes his selections. So I’ve been viewing landscapes in all forms and media for the last two weeks and thinking about how we create them as artists.

Landscapes, as I have said before, are the most popular subject for paintings because they suggest a sense of homeland, a place just over the hill or down the road where we truly belong and will be happy at last.

All of those thoughts reminded me of one of my early online workshops called SMALL WORLDS: Creating Fantasy Landscapes with Altered Paper. This course was first presented over ten years ago as part of the summer program at Artful Gathering and quickly became one of the most popular in-person workshops at my Studio.You can still see many of these collaged landscapes in galleries around town with torn CitraSolv paper and other altered collage materials.

Tying this all these landscape thoughts together with this season of homecoming and sheltering seemed natural (I’m writing this on the night of the Winter Solstice) I figured  that this oldie-but-goodie workshop might be just the perfect thing to offer you as a holiday gift for a limited time. There are a zillion techniques for altered papers in this workshop and lots of composition tips. You’ll have fun with it.

You’ll need to go to my Teachable Studio page first, then find the Small Worlds workshop – here’s the link.

Go ahead and register for the course (it normally costs $29) and when you check out, use the coupon code FREEDEC31. That means the course is free for you until December 31st. Go ahead a check out and you will see from the screen shots below that you will be charged zero dollars! Free is good.

When you submit you payment, you will see that your total becomes $0.00.

Giving credit where credit is due, my friend Eva Macie was one of the first artists to discover the possibilities of CitraSolv on magazine pages. She’s even on the CitraSolv website! Thanks, Eva!

So enjoy creating landscapes, and thinking about homecomings and the promise of good things to come down the road and over the hill into the New Year. Thanks, as always, for reading SHARDS.

Lyn

As artists, no matter what medium we employ, our job is to make the right decision.

Does yellow look best as a highlight on that purple grape? Will adding gold leaf to this acrylic medium enhance it or make a mess? How will this nylon thread react to the encaustic medium?

There is always more than one right answer, but there is usually just one answer that gives you the “eureka shivers“ that it’s the best one. And to get to that, you have to try some different solutions.

Take arms, for example. I am constructing some of my beloved Wanderer figures for an exhibition at Jane Bishop’s Mockingbird Handprints in December. Here’s one in progress – I already love the layered fiber wrapping:

So I have the head ready – but does it need arms? (Decision=Yes) If so, what kind?

First idea – how about plaster wings??

This might work if I sprayed it with terra cotta walnut ink – or rust paste, and added another one on the left side…but the shape and weight just aren’t quite right.

How about something really different?? Shannon Weber gave me these great old vintage faucet taps–

They are cool, but they almost need their own sculpture to be a part of, one that shows them off more. These “arms” compete with the layered and wrapped body.

How about sticks?? Like the ones on the head?

Close, but no cigar – too matchy-matchy.

How about just one curvy stick??

Up? Down?

Not quite there – too spindly in relation to the body. But I got an idea from this experiment – since the body is wrapped in fiber, why not wrap some stick arms in the same way?

This is the result, and it gave me the “eureka shivers“. Just right!

Sorry to say that you won’t see the finished Wanderer yet – I sewed her arms on last night (they look great) and I’m still adding her special touches, but you will see her soon.

Here’s the take-away – when you see  finished artwork that resonates with you, whether it’s a painting or a sculpture or a piece of jewelry, remember that what you see is a process of informed and personal decision making that is hard work and takes a lot of time, love, and experience. The artist thought and experimented and perhaps failed and tried again to get the piece just right for you to see and appreciate.

Try to imagine the back story – put yourself in the artist’s place and see where complex decisions were made to find the “eureka shivers” moment in every step.

Thanks for reading!!

My artwork typically deals with combining, curating, collecting, and composing different elements for collage and assemblage. To make all of that work together requires a bit of engineering trial and error .

I’ve been posting a few photographs of experimental transfer processes that I’m trying with various combinations of beeswax, solvent, paper, and fiber just to see what works, what sticks, what is worth further experimentation to get the look I am striving for. The idea is not to make pieces of finished art just yet. It’s to put in some time and thought on combinations that might eventually suggest a way to express a meaningful concept in a different way.

For the first series of experiments, I’ve used a toner print on plain paper with four different substrates as image transfer receivers. I used the same image on all of them – here she is!

The first step is to transform the image to black and white and print it on a laser (toner) printer – mine is a very old Brother L2320D B&W laser printer, cheap, about $100.

Here are the initial transfer results on four different surfaces – muslin, canvas, rice paper, and mulberry paper. Notice how the toner ink works differently on each surface.

I liked the one on the upper right – it’s smooth cotton muslin. Here it is, below, next to another version on rough canvas drop cloth that used to live on my studio floor.

Both have a coat of beeswax added, then the beeswax is fused into the fabric with a heat gun.

The beeswax acts as a bonding agent between the muslin and the rice paper backing that it’s fused to. The transfer solvent doesn’t seem to affect the beeswax. That was one of my questions and concerns, but it all seems to work together the way I had hoped.

After everything was fused, I wanted to see how it would stitch with waxed linen. This is another way of ensuring the layers are completely bonded together. It worked great.

The picture below looks strange, but it is actually the backside of the layered paper and muslin piece. It’s interesting to see how the image has come through the back because the beeswax has made it translucent. So much to discover!

So far, this effect below is what I have been working toward – an image transfer on fabric that is compatible with beeswax and remains supple without cracking. Most importantly, I wanted a mysterious translucency. The fine white wax spatters add another layer of illusion.

We shall see where all of this goes! Hands-on research is always fun.

What have you been doing in YOUR studio lab lately?? Do it safely!

Last night I sent out a notice to all the people who have signed up for workshop updates on my website telling them about this new class. Perhaps you got it – if so, thanks for being on the list.

As a teacher, when I put something out there as an art lesson, I want it to be perfect. But Perfect is the enemy of Done, so here it is, a new finished workshop, warts and all. It’s kind of like what most of us do in our studio practice – start with an idea of perfection, then listen to our intuition as we work and realize that perfect would actually be kind of boring. At least that’s what I tell myself!

Actually there are two new workshops, one is a mini-free-one. Both use images from a series of illustrations I’m developing for mixed-media artists called The Composed Collage Collection. It’s amazing to me how illustration has changed since I worked as an illustrator in the 80’s for our newspaper. More fun, less drudgery, thanks to technology! I thank my lucky stars that fate took me to the Computer Science Department at Trinity University in 2004 where I got to teach and learn all about this newfangled stuff.

Anyway, these ramblings are just for SHARDS readers who know me, warts and all. Onward!

New Workshop: The Composed Collage – SISTERS

This workshop teaches composition through collage with curated content. You’ll create collages in two ways – one, starting from scratch building great bones for your work, and the other, more random way, by making a “content map” and finding the best compositions on that map. As a bonus, you’ll also learn now to create a fabric banner collage.

New Free Mini-Workshop: Connected Collage – An Art Journal Page

This little freebie takes you through a 30-minute collage on a journal page – it’s a great way to start your day in the studio.

New Image Collection for composed Collages:

SISTERS

SAVANNAH

CHILD FRIDA

CHEYENNE

These are truly gorgeous collections, if I do say so myself. They are designed to be components that you tear, glue, rearrange, combine and otherwise claim for your own. Each set is just $14 and you can print them out on almost any surface that will go through your printer – Lutrador, tissue, transfer film, or my favorite, plain old printer paper. The sets come with a free composition how-to booklet.

Here is a video that tells you about all three of these new adventures and how they are interrelated:

This video shows each of the collections for the Composed Collages – all are available on my website for just $14 a set and each collection includes a booklet on the AB3sof composition.

That’s it for today – I hope you have a safe end-of-summer holiday!

Thanks for reading SHARDS!

♥Lyn