Playing with Acrylics and Stencils and Gelli Plates and Rice Paper and... and... and...!

One of the joys of being a teacher is that I get to learn so much from my students...

For the last couple of years I've been working with a group of five women who asked me to teach them how to do Zentangles.  We worked with Zentangles extensively for about a year then I began to feel I might have reached the limit of what I could teach them about Zentangles and started trying to bring in some other concepts and exercises.  They got right on board and began bringing me things they wanted to learn.  In this way, we have ranged all over the place from book making to drawing to paint pouring, etc.  We have traveled to the beach for a week and Wintergreen for the weekend, becoming dear friends along the way. I feel utterly blessed to have them in my life. We are a goofy group of very unique women who somehow manage to get along - probably because we accept each others' eccentricities with an indulgent smile, knowing they will accept ours too without judgment.  It's quite extraordinary!

But I digress...

A few months ago at Wintergreen, Barbara told us about an artist named Elizabeth St. Hilaire whose work Barbara is bananas about. We talked about having Elizabeth come up here to teach a workshop and I contacted her to see how difficult that would be to arrange. Elizabeth was lovely, but the cost was going to be a bit high and the logistics more than I wanted to take on. Barbara showed us a video she'd bought and a book Elizabeth wrote. After watching the video and reading the book, I decided that perhaps I could offer the group enough instruction that they might get what they're looking for without the effort of bringing Elizabeth here.  Fast forward to warm weather...

We set up 8 tables in my wavy back yard - one per person plus two for supplies: fluid acrylics, stencils, sponges, mark makers, rice paper, tiles - anything and everything you could imagine to get marks onto paper.  The idea is to create interesting textures and colors on paper. Then we will tear up that paper and collage it onto a board to create an image - our goal is to create a beautiful apple!  I am hoping we will create other images as well since we have thus far spent about 6 weeks on this project, but we'll see how that goes!

For four weeks, and counting, we set up in the backyard and painted and splashed and splattered and made very interesting paper.  Last week we stayed in the studio creating our own stencils and printing plates out of foam core and other interesting objects to use to create more textures on the paper. We even made our own Gelli Plates out of gelatin and glycerin - I sure hope they work!  This week we will finish that up then go back outside to create more paper the next two weeks.

Then, finally, after 8 weeks of prep!, we will return to the studio where we will create a collaged apple out of torn paper.  I sure hope we have the right color papers!

After our last class, I found myself making some more stencils in my studio after class, then I wanted to play with them, so I got out a canvas and began creating a painting using the stencils and fluid acrylics.  I'd been wanting to paint the image for a while and woke up knowing this was the right way to do it.  I wasn't collaging the paper onto the canvas. Instead, I used the paint through the stencils directly on the canvas.  Here's the result:

It is so utterly different from anything I've ever done before! I really like how it turned out.  I'd gotten up at 6 AM to have time in the studio before I had to start my day and ended up feeling totally energized by 9 when I had to start the rest of my day.

The next day I finished the first piece all the way then began on a second.  It was going to be another representational piece, but I ended up having so much fun with the patterns and stencils, I left it as is. 

The hosed-down version.

I then began a third piece which isn't finished yet.  It's based on a photograph I took in Iceland of a rusty old door (piece of a boat??) beside the lake in Laugarvatn.  I piled on the paint, then realized it was way too heavy so I took it outside and hosed it down before it dried all the way. 

The Rusty Wheel
Acrylic on canvas
24"x 18"

 For the more final version, I left most of the stenciled part washed away, but glazed it with bright color.  I couldn't manage to get the wheel the color I wanted so I collaged paper on it - after all, I'd made reams of paper for just that purpose!  It was fun figuring out how to apply it and make that work.  For the left hand side, I created a few templates with irregular circles on it and used those to create the stones.  This piece is almost, but not quite finished.  Looking at it again today after a week of not seeing it helps me see some places I'd like to work on.

When I left for the workshop Friday, I was so excited about what I was doing with these canvases, I couldn't quite imagine focusing on pastels again. Now that I'm all excited about pastels, it's hard to know what to do with all the acrylics and canvases I just bought!

Am I fickle or what??!  So much fun to be had in the world!  I am one lucky woman!

#37, #38, #39, #40 of 100 Creations in 100 Days: Visual Journal entries, memorial to Lisa Fisher Johnson

Feb 7, 2019 was all about teaching and playing in my visual journal.  There are times when I don't have the energy to stand and work at the easel and I don't have any big ideas. That's when I pull out my journal and let myself riff on ideas that have been rolling around in my head for a while.  It's easeful and relaxing and generally satisfying.  It's about process, not product.  It's so good for me to move away from a product orientation because I generally don't let myself play and try new things enough.

Before I got into the studio, I taught my "Zentangle Ladies". They're a group of women to whom I was initially teaching Zentangles, but the group has morphed into a lovely amalgam of friends who do art together.  Right now I'm teaching them the Fundamentals of Drawing.  The first lesson I always teach is Blind Contour Drawing.  One of the more advanced lessons with Blind Contour is having them draw the person sitting across from them.  This drawing is by one of my students, Barbara.  I posted it because I absolutely love it!  It's funky and fun and weird and wacky and wonderful!  And it even captures the essence of the woman it's of.  It excites me when my students make such fun work!

Once my wonderful students left, I went out to the studio to play.  I worked with circles and Citrasolv and photos and whatever else was on my table. When we were in Wintergreen a few weeks ago, I began the picture on the left with all the intersecting circles.  It's based on fabric created by Knoll. 

I had the idea to take a page from a National Geographic magazine which I had doused in Citrasolv (it makes fascinating textures as you can see on the right hand piece) and cut circles out of it in the pattern of the piece on the left, then to glue it around the circles drawn there.  That didn't work well because I simply wasn't precise enough, but it did give me a lot of cool circles - and another idea!  The piece on the right was the result of those experiments. (The software for Blogger is again making me crazy!  I can't get the B&W ink drawing to stay next to the Citrasolv Circles, so the layout looks shabby.  Apologies!)

#38 Citrasolv Circles

#37 ink drawing based on fabric
design by Knoll

#39 Collage, photographs, calligraphy, citrasolv page

#39 I've been working with images of my husband Chris for a while.  I took a series of pictures of him to use in a David Hockney-type portrait collage.  I didn't end up creating that, but I have used the pictures to weave with, and, on this day, I used them to illustrate the quote "Art should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed."

January 26th, my esteemed colleague and dear friend Lisa Fisher Johnson passed away. She had had a brain tumor. She was an amazing artist and one of the kindest, friendliest people I've ever known.  She was a marvelous person and a good friend.  I will miss her terribly.  I attended her memorial service and the reception afterwards where I was hoping to talk to people and to share my memories and grief, but I ended up feeling a bit too shy to approach people to talk.  I left early and came home and created my own memorial to Lisa, these pages, where I wrote about my feelings and thought about how dear she was to me.  Art can be so healing.

#40 Memorial to Lisa Fisher Johnson

A Typical Day in the Life of This Artist + #11

Today was full of art, but I had to climb back out of bed tonight in order to finish a piece for the day!

#11 Chris

To give you a sense of my fairly typical day...

• Up at 7:15 and into the studio where, instead of creating, I loaded pictures onto my blog - something which hadn't worked yesterday no matter what I tried.
• 8:15 - met with the men who are building our deck to let them in the house where they were planning to put a hole in the wall for our sliding glass door.
• 8:30 took off for a walk with a friend
• 10:00 - at the VMFA, I met with a group of women I teach.  Their exercise for the day was to look for patterns in the artwork and draw the patterns in their sketchbooks for use at a latter date and to raise awareness of patterns as a component in artworks. 

I have done this exercise for myself before because I have always loved patterns but felt it wasn't OK to include them in artwork - that they were somehow "less than".  I realized I needed to go to the museum to test my belief.  Once there, I saw that virtually all the pieces I examined contained patterns!  It was crazy for me to think they weren't valid!  I immediately began to include them into my work.

Today I chose to look at my favorite section first: Kasai Hasui's Japanese Wood Block Prints. Those pieces always make me feel so calm and serene. My favorite patterns this time were his trees and the shadow of a tree on steps.  I love the layering of trees as they recede into the distance and the simplicity of the stairs.

I wanted to go look at the Asian Indian art because I'd delighted in the patterns I found there before, but instead I decided to go into the room with Greek and Roman art - decidedly NOT my favorite art.  I thought I should see what was there since I'd been too prejudiced to go in there before.  It's a good practice for me to test my prejudices!  I found so many interesting and beautiful patterns, some that felt so modern! I look forward to incorporating them into my artwork soon.  I especially liked the pattern on the top of the page on the right.  It looks like something I might have done on my own with all the spirals.

•  1:15 I met a 99-year-old friend of mine for lunch and had a wonderful wide-ranging conversation that touched on art, dance, Iceland, illness, and death.  Frances is a role model for me, someone I'd like to emulate as I age because she lives life fully. She is performing in a ballet this weekend - yes, at age 99!  She is not as spry as she used to be, but she still dances twice a week and even still teaches.  When we talked about death today, I felt like I was touching on a forbidden topic (even though she brought it up), but she said she's ready to die - she's lived a terrific life - it doesn't worry her or make her feel afraid.  It's nice talking to someone who is closer to death than I am (probably) about death.  It takes the taboo out of it.

• 4 Home to work in the studio for a few hours.  I made more Citrusolv pages because I'm going to Wintergreen next week with some friends to create art, and I want to have lots of pages to play with.  I got some wonderful ones today!  I don't know what I'll do with them, but I'm imagining weaving with them and making layered abstractions and perhaps even trying to create landscapes.  I look forward to having all day to explore and play.
  
  
   I worked on my painting of the boat some more, hoping to finish it, but when I got to this point, I could see, finally, that my drawing is off substantially.  I think the bow of the boat is too far to the left.  It's going to take quite a lot of effort to fix that, so I stopped work on it til I feel fresher.

• Chris got home at 8 so I went into the house then to have dinner with him and spend time with my sweetie. We went to bed at 10, but I just wasn't tired enough to sleep, so, in my pj's, I came back out to the studio to examine the Citrusolv pieces more.  Then I felt compelled to get a finished product for the day so I did a weaving based on a lesson Helen Hiebert shared.  I used pictures of Chris which I'd taken to do a David Hockney-type portrait, but haven't done yet. I am enjoying the juxtaposition of the parts of his head/face which don't quite fit together but which clearly belong together and the funky weaving.  The piece makes me giggle!

• So...  long day. Good day. Creative day.  I am blessed to live a life that is typically full of creativity and delight and curiosity and fun.  Having the goal of 100 Creations in 100 Days is making me even more aware of what I'm doing in the studio and is making me do even more.  I'm glad I made this decision.  And now I'm tired enough to go to bed!