Intrepid Murmurings

Dr. Marvel's Traveling Trunk Show

Holy beeswax!  I'm having an art sale!  Or, more like it, participating in one put on by folks far more hip, organized and motivated than myself.  But it is definitely something, given I have done Extremely Little in terms of art in the past 15 months. 

In true form I have procrastinated quite a bit, but I think I will have at least 5 new pieces done by then, and will bring a lot of my older stuff that is decent, as well.   Sometime in the next 48 or so hours I will need to print up business postcard things, make a makeshift art stand out of an old ladder (ha), print up care instructions and titles for all the pieces I am going to show, as well as finishing the edges and making sure said pieces have some sort of hanging hardware on them.  And photograph the newer ones, in case they actually sell.  Eh, not my favorite part of the biz.  But it will be fun once I'm there!  If you are in Seattle, please stop by!  

  

Many Colors
Holy mackerel, I finally got to work on some art yesterday! It has been about 11 months since I last worked on anything, as this blog post indicates. It was for a show in Portland last spring, before Emma was born.
So Lonnie took Emma and tried to get her to nap yesterday afternoon, while I worked, but instead she wailed for me for a couple hours, on and off. When is this kid going to chill out about this!? She does fine when I actually leave the house so next time I am going to say goodbye and walk out the front door, and come around the back and into my studio. We are going to try to do it every Sunday, and I am NOT going to let myself do chores or internet surfing instead. In the hour and a half that I spent in my studio, I was able to clean up about 10 months worth of clutter that had piled on my workstation and started a new piece:

It is made up off all my scrapings from other encaustics over the past few years. Kind of like the old crayon shaving/wax paper/iron trick, only I used encaustic scrapings and a propane torch instead. It was fun to see all the colors melt and blend. Its not done yet, not sure what I will do next with it.

New Art & Upcoming Show

Anahata (heart) 12x24, encaustic
Just finished this piece yesterday, which is going in a show being hosted by our high school in Portland. It is the first time in a long while I've worked with adding images and words to a painting; most of my other work is non-representational and focused on texture and color.

Below is more info about the show cut from a recent newsletter. We'll be going down next weekend for a visit with the parents, a baby shower, and to go to the opening. Looking forward to it!
"Matthew Lyon's death last June has moved those who knew him and worked with him to honor his memory and his life by organizing an art exhibit that celebrates the theme of Seeking Spirit, a guiding force in Matt's life and art. Artists who knew Matt were invited to contribute original artwork inspired by his work, friendship and influence. Proceeds from any sales will be donated to the Matt Lyon Memorial Scholarship Fund. Over 30 artists, 12 of them alumni, will be participating. Everyone is welcome to attend the opening reception from 2 to 5 p.m. on Sunday, April 9, in the new Gallery at Oregon Episcopal School."

The Artist's Work
Lest you think all I ever do is think and obsess about pregnancy, here's a post about something ELSE that I'm actually doing. I have been getting back to some art work in the past few months, after a bit of a break where I was totally uninspired and uninterested in doing anything. Currently, and for the past few years, I have not been working outside the home. Before that, I was a 1st grade and then kindergarten teacher and pretty much felt like I was working or thinking about work ALL THE TIME, every day, and stressing about it profusely. I was sick all the time as well, which was the final straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. I felt very lucky to have the choice to quit teaching and not have to look for another job immediately. At first I did lots of projects around the house and yard, and then started doing more art in my home studio and volunteering at a few places. It has been an interesting process, learning how to work as an artist without the pressure of a boss or other such workplace structures. Unfortunately, I tend to (at least in the past) do my best work under extreme pressure and have huge motivation/procrastination issues if I do not have looming deadlines set by forces outside of myself. This is exacerbated by all the distractions my house provides to me just steps from my studio. Though I know the importance of setting a "work" schedule, actually sticking to it has not been a strong point for me. Not at all. It has also been a challenge for me to recognize and acknowledge all the other aspects of work an artist must do, besides just the "creating art" side of it. Things like researching new ideas or techniques, working on resumes and portfolios, shopping for and learning to use supplies, and pricing, marketing, and selling or showing ones work. These are things that eat up huge amounts of time and energy, and really are critical aspects of being a successful working artist. But it has been hard for me not to think of these things as somehow separate, time spent frittering away the day away and not really "working" in the sense that I've always seen it in my minds eye. In the past few months, some things happened to help me make a little progress on all this. I was lucky enough to have someone interested in buying some of my art and photographs, so I finally had to dig in and do the technical work that had to be done. I figured out the details on editing and printing my digital images, and researched and made decisions on pricing, framing and shipping options. Some of these tasks took way more time than I expected, but others were much easier, too. I was also inspired to get my website in better order, with photos and pricing, both of which were long overdue! Most recently, I just finished two commissioned mosaic pieces and now have to get started on an encaustic piece I've committed to entering in a memorial art show for a high school teacher of ours. I realize I need to continue to line up things like this, things with deadlines and intentions expressed to other people, since that keeps me on track so much more than those I just set for myself. Hopefully I'll get better with that, too, over time. Of course, there is another deadline looming for us come May, and I have a feeling all bets are off for working on art for awhile after that! Hopefully I will be able to get back to things after a bit, though? Am I kidding myself? Hope not, but we'll see...

Art Update
We have finally updated my art website! Now with pictures of my current encaustic art pieces (like the one above), and pricing for both encaustics and photography prints! For those of you in Seattle, I will also have one or two encaustics in the Customer Art Show at the Fremont Coffee Company for the month of February. The opening coincides with the Fremont First Friday Art Walk, which runs from 6-9 this Friday, Feb. 3. See you there!

Getting My Art Fix
Yesterday I went to the Ballard Art Walk. I have been meaning to go for about 6 months, and finally made it! I went with my art friend T, because its just not my husbands type of event. Hard for me to imagine, but I guess I would feel similarly going to a diagnostics software convention....? Still. How can you not enjoy seeing all types of art, artist studios and galleries combined with free wine and cheese and salami and hummus, cookies and snacks and fruit and dips? And walking down the street with the sun setting, streetlamps flickering on, shops and bars and restaurants glowing with light and colors and people wandering in and out, laughing, kids, hipsters, funny folks commenting on all the art? We could only make it to a few places, because there are so so many and only 3 hours to squeeze it all in. We started at the Sev Shoon Arts Center & Ballard Works, where we got to tour the galleries and chat with artists in their studios. Particularly fascinating for me was being able to wander through a few encaustic artist studios, as I like to see their set-up, their tools, the spaces in which they work (and of course, their actual work, too). I have decided I definitely need to trade in my heat gun for a propane torch. There is so much you can do with this medium! We then walked to the complete other end of the art walk, a fair jaunt in fact, to visit three shops that had to do with paper/fiber/book arts. The first was Thread Shop, a great little gallery featuring art in the vein of "everyday objects". I had an inkling that that an old friend of mine had some things in the current show, and indeed, I was right! There was a collection of her lovely handmade books and a couple of hung pieces on the wall as well. Yay, Julia! Then we went down a few blocks to Art Books Press, a wonderful little place that has a huge collection of new and used art books for sale, an incredible show this month on handmade/altered books, and a studio, press, and workshop space. I loved that their display cases were sitting amongst the bookshelves, very neat. I will definitely need to go back there to spend some time looking at the books. One of the last places we stopped at, relating to this fiber arts theme, was Earthues, a company that makes a line of natural, non-toxic dyes for artists and those in the textile industry around the globe. They also have a shop with tons of textile products and art, including rugs and quilts. We ogled at the beautiful dye sample kits that were out of our price range but beautiful nonetheless. This was my first Ballard Art Walk and I will definitely try to make this a regular event. It is low-key but very well attended, lots of access to the artists themselves, and feels HUGE! Still haven't made it to the downtown one, which I hear is a bit snotty, but also good, or the one in Capital Hill. Woohoo for arts in Seattle!

Need a t-shirt?
So a few friends of mine have started a little T-shirt biz. Each shirt is a unique, hand-screened original (which means, of course, you will never find yourself in a room with someone wearing the same thing!). They are labeled on the inside with a number, and you can see each one on the website (it appears not quite all of them are up yet, though I bet they will be soon). Click on the man on the bottom left to see the shirts. I particularly enjoy numbers 23, 25, 35 and 37. This weekend they were selling them at the Capital Hill Block Party here in Seattle. They have also been known to hawk their wares at the Fremont Sunday Market on occasion. You can email them if you want to buy one over the web. Do it! Buy a shirt, wear some art! www.cockbloc.com

in the studio...
today's work cooking up some medium thinking about mixing my own paints yikes! shall I breathe in cadmium or cobalt?

Yesterday's Work
Here are my two newest pieces. Sorry about the reflections, wax really doesn't photograph well, I'm afraid! And now, the damn eternal question....are they really finished? Still such a hard issue for me. I was never one of those teachers who could snatch the kindergarteners art away and say "you're done!" -- preserving a masterpiece. I just couldn't do it! Even though I wish there was someone to do it for me...

(Horsetail, Bainbridge Island, 2004)

Photoetching Workshop
This weekend I took a photoetching workshop with a friend of mine. It was a two-day workshop at the Sev Shoon Arts Center in Ballard. It is a great studio offering classes as well as full studio access to artists for only $100 bucks a month (that seems like a good deal to me, though I am no expert on this). Our instructor was Amanda Knowles, an artist who works here in Seattle and at Sev Shoon. In any case, it was quite an introduction to printmaking for me! I probably ought to have taken something a little less technical for my first venture into printmaking. Photoetching involves transferring an image from a transparency to another surface (usually metal) using a light-sensitive polymer film, an exposure machine, and some generally nontoxic chemicals. I actually used plexiglass, which I don't think can actually be considered true "etching", but that is more detail than I can comprehend right now. Once your plate is developed, you ink it and run it through the press. There were a LOT of steps to keep track of and skills to learn, definitely more than anyone can master in a weekend. But, I had fun and now I know a lot more about it. I think I would enjoy taking a few more classes at some point, too! Here are a few of my prints:

String Theory
Last week, my friend Katie dragged me into a yarn store in Queen Anne. Not dragged, actually, I did go willingly. I don't knit, but I like yarn. There are so many colors. And textures. I like the "specialty yarns" that cost more than everything else. I bought a couple of them, to use in my paintings. At first I was just going to embed them, but I didn't like how that looked. You couldn't see the details of the yarn, when it was covered in wax. I pulled it out, and ta da, much better. Now I do my background, then set on the yarn. I put more wax on top and then I pull it off. The yarn has lots of little threads coming off it, so it makes a good imprint. I rub more oil stick into the cracks left behind by the yarn. Here is one of them. As you can see I am still learning how to take photos of my work. I knew it would not be an easy task. I am a click and shoot kind of gal, for the most part. I need to find someone willing to give me some tips, or (even better?) who can do it for me (yes, I'm that lazy). I am sure there are classes for such things, as well. In the meantime, you will have to deal with a few reflections and not quite straight edges....