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.

domino theory
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!

Monikacard copy
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 – :

riki

 

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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Pinterest — inspirational art tool and self-defining style guide

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Inspiration concept

Do you have a Pinterest board? If you do, keep reading to remind yourself how helpful it can be in your personal art practice. If you don’t keep, reading about why you really should have one!

I use Pinterest both for

  • new ideas, and for
  • getting unstuck on work in progress.

For example, this morning I was debating on how to proceed with an encaustic piece, so I went to my Pinterest “Stealboard” where I collect ideas (you’re welcome to look at my collection.)

I found this work by Grace Carol Bomer that I had “pinned” a while ago. Even though I’m not working in cold wax, even though her piece is not photographic, there was something about this that gave me the inspiration to put a digital photo behind a layer of wax. It was the spark I needed.

My finished piece will look nothing like this, but it got me unstuck quickly because it was in my Pinterest stash of works that I liked for one reason or another.

Grace Carol Bomer -Ancient Mercy 2012 coldwax and oil on panel 8″ x 8″ $225

Another Pinterest feature useful to one’s art practice is finding other artists who are working in your own areas of interest. I discovered Dorothy Caldwell’s work through a friend’s Pinboard – wow! It ties in beautifully with the work I did with Caryl Gaubatz recently.

And I am so inspired by Dorothy Caldwell’s statement about her work – “ I am drawn to cloth that has been repaired, and reconstructed and in that ongoing process encodes time and the richness of lives lived.”

Finding other artists like this helps me define my own direction. It can help you, too.

Dorothy Caldwell – A Red Hill, A Green Hill, ink wash, earth ochre on cotton with stitching and applique, 9’4″ x 9’8″ 2012

Finally, you can showcase your own work on Pinterest. You can start a board about what (and why) you create and upload photos of your work for everyone to see and perhaps share. I have one called From My Studio. It’s also a good way to archive your work. Hey, I used quail eggs in this piece – I had forgotten that – gonna do that again!

Lyn Belisle – New HeartShard assemblage titled SongSon – 14″ – mica, metal, wood, clay, fiber, quail eggs

Setting up a Pinterest account and then collecting images and ideas is easy. WikiHow has a great guide to the process. Here’s the link.

Oh yeah, and Pinterest should come with a BIG FAT WARNING – using this site can be addictive.

Don’t say you weren’t warned, and have a great weekend pinning and playing. Thanks, as always, for subscribing to SHARDS.

Composition Campers win merit badges for bravery in collage!

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The Composition Camp workshop yesterday was very, very cool – every single participant found a “right answer” to the assignment, and each answer was both unique and excellent.

First, we reviewed a slide show of composition examples like the one below based on my AB3 system  – the AB3s are Alignment, Breathing room , and Threes or thirds.:

"Three" Lyn Belisle, mixed media collage

“Three” Lyn Belisle, mixed media collage

pear

 

Then, the first assignment started with a pear – everyone got a 5×7″ substrate of watercolor paper  and a printed inkjet photograph of a green pear.

Instructions were to demonstrate great composition while building  a collage that started with identical images  – and they did!

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For their second assignment, students were encouraged to choose their own images from a National Geographic magazine, and that went just as well as the first challenge.

Both projects started with water media and images and ended with layers of textured beeswax.

Everyone shared ideas and inspired each other, but no two finished works were remotely the same. Some went completely toward abstraction and some retained the imagery. Take a look at the video – what amazing surface design and variety!

This session of Composition Camp was a huge success – yay!

Oh, and before I say goodbye for now, we have TWO Friday Freebie winners of the two Paper Pocket Purses – one winner is Quinn Jennings of Washington DC and the other  is d.price@satx.rr.com ! Y’all email me your mailing addresses, and your freebies will be on their way to you!

Thanks to everyone for subscribing to SHARDS.

Calligraphy Guild, a project for YOU, and a Friday Freebie – or two . . .

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10Last night, I visited the San Antonio Calligraphy Guild to show them how to make a pretty paper pocket purse/pendant project (say that three times fast) and a folding votive screen card. Calligraphers are nice people! I can’t wait to see how they take these projects and adapt them to their own many talents.

Here are some photos – there were 30+ participants, all cutting and gluing and having fun and following the directions (mostly!)

ppppI thought that YOU might like to have the directions for the pretty paper pocket purse, so as the first Friday Freebie, I’m giving you a link to the downloadable Pocket Pattern handout that I gave the calligraphers last night. All you need is 9×12″ construction paper and 8.5×11″ decorative paper, plus some ribbon and such. Easy!

And to sweeten the deal (after all, it’s getting close to Valentine’s Day), I’ll give away TWO Friday Freebies, the little purses pictured below, one to each of two lucky SHARDS subscribers. Just be a subscriber by Sunday at midnight – winners announced Monday morning. Good luck, and happy weekend!!

Dragonfly

Dragonfly

Gaisha

geisha

Working with Caryl Gaubatz

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Caryl Gaubatz: Allein auf der Welt 2015 Deconstructed silk screen printing on hand woven linen (Linen woven by Käthe Weber in der Nähe von Bremen Germany, 1947)

What a pleasure and honor it was to be invited to Caryl Gaubatz’s studio yesterday to explore new techniques in fiber art and surface design!

I am a huge fan of her work – her newest series of story-garments, A Meditation on Aging and Loss, touches my heart on every level.

I watched Caryl demonstrate a technique called Deconstructed Screen Printing last year at a Fiber Artists of San Antonio meeting. The results were fantastic and mysterious (see the example on the left), but I couldn’t figure out how she did it, even as i watched her demonstrate. So when she offered to teach the process to me and to calligrapher-friend  Bonnie Davis, I jumped at the chance. And as a bonus, we also got to practice some indigo/shibori techniques!

Caryl is a master. You can see some of our explorations in the photos below . .  .

Deconstructed Screen Printing is fun to do but hard to explain – Caryl learned from Kerr Grabowski. Here are some of my my results from yesterday – as Caryl said, it’s unpredictable! 

If you want to learn more about how it works (and it can work on paper as well as fabric), watch Kerr Grabowski’s video below. Many thanks to Caryl for all of this wonderful information, for her time and patience, and for a fantastic lunch – visiting her is a delight!

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!

Composition Camp commences with collages

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compcampcoldemo

My demo collage created during Sunday’s Composition Camp workshop – 8×10″, mixed media, titled “Again?”

First workshop of the year taught by ME (yay!- I love teaching workshops) was Part One of Composition Camp. So what is Composition Camp?? It’s an intensive three-hour workshop directed toward planning and starting your artwork with strong composition bones, no matter in what medium. And it’s super easy.

I’ve developed a composition system called the AB3’s, which stands for

  • Alignment
  • Breathing Room
  • Threes and Thirds

It’s kind of like a simple kick-start for your artwork because it lets you know in advance where your main elements will be most effective. The students in yesterday’s Composition Camp: Collage workshop were given a folder with photos of a random person and a random cat along with some scraps of paper – they had to make a narrative collage using only those elements.  Everyone  took the challenge and ran with it. Take a look!

Before we began our work yesterday, we talked about painterly influences on collage imagery, particularly the works of Larry Rivers and Robert Rauschenberg, two of my favorite artists ever. Rauschenberg said that he works “in the gap between art and life,”  that he wanted to question the distinction between everyday objects and art objects. I like that!

Robert Rauschenberg, Buffalo II, 1964

Larry Rivers, French Money, 1962

It’s always good to go to the Masters for inspiration! There are two more sessions of Composition Camp to come, and there will be more in the summer and fall.

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:

fodder

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.

Rosemary toni

 

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.

fodder

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!