Juxtaposition--Solo Shows

This has been a bonanza year for me. Two solo shows. The first one in June was at the Huron Valley Council for the Arts in Highland, MI. The second one just opened in upstate New York at the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts in Blue Mountain Lake.

Pursuing these great opportunities has been a hard push, and only now am I able to take a breath and think about what this has meant. My goals have been modest from the beginning:

• expose my work to a broader audience
• continue to explore the medium of encaustic and develop my own vocabulary
• sell (and make room for new pieces)

These goals have been met. But along the way I now realize some cool things are happening:

• my willingness to take risks with a solo show has increased. Breaking out of the local area is a big step.
• my push for new work is improving the quality of my work and my work habits—more time at the studio, more focused time painting and creating.
• I’ve had a catalog printed of works from the first venue, and it is a great piece to use in marketing. A surprise has been how many people want to buy a copy.
• more of my work on view has increased the number of people visiting my website.
• a number of people are now asking about my teaching a workshop in encaustic.
• a piece from this body is now in the permanent collection of the Encaustic Art Institute in New Mexico.

This is opening doors as I look ahead to 2014. Now comes the hard part, which is thinking about where my work is to go from here and how I would like to shape the future. I am sorry more artists I know don’t do this for themselves. Click on the book cover for a preview.

Book Signing Event

It has been just over a week ago that we opened our studio and had as a special guest a fellow artist turned writer! Our friend, Dee Trainor, has just published her first book, a charming collection of autobiographical stories, called “A Charmed Life”. We were pleased to have her come in on a Friday evening to hold a book signing and do readings from a couple of her chapters. Even for a snowy day in late February, there was a steady stream of folks that came through to listen, buy copies and congratulate her. I think she was pleased with how it all turned out.

The photograph included here shows Dee reading aloud to the audience, next to a wedding dress on a mannequin. That is her own wedding dress, also worn years later by two of her daughters. To do the story justice, you need to read the chapter. I can recommend it. "A Charmed Life” can be bought from Lulu.com, and also soon from Amazon.com.

This has encouraged us to think about other ways we might be able to use our studio space. Not just hold an Open House, or a workshop, but broaden and combine with other events. A nice way to start the year.

In Memorium—Susan Kell

I was saddened to read in Sunday’s paper the obituary for a woman I used to know and respected.

Susan Kell was a watercolor instructor at Paint Creek Art Center in Rochester when we first met. I had just made the decision to pursue my own fine art instead of a career in architectural illustration and I studied with her for a few years. We continued to make contact periodically at local art galleries and exhibitions.

Not only did Susan teach a lot about this difficult medium, she passed on so much more to me as an emerging artist. As I think about her, these are just a few of the things she encouraged in all her students:

• A quest for knowledge beyond just my current medium. Pursuing watercolor did not preclude working to hone my drawing skills, trying different forms of printmaking, or exploring mixed media. Everything works together to feed our art.
• Not to be afraid to try new things or new approaches. Paint from a still life, or from memory. Make up something, tell a narrative. Work in a series.
• There is not a right or wrong type of art or artist. But there are levels, or strata, which are only descriptive. Someone might be in one level only, or might move between levels. It is all good and deserves respect.
• Be as professional as possible—in presenting myself as an artist and my artwork within the arts community.
• Keep working and pushing myself, to grow and evolve.

While she was a wonderful artist and teacher, she was also a strong woman with family values and a sustaining faith. She will be greatly missed.

An Afternoon's Work

I’ve been lugging around a panel with encaustic on it for literally 3 or 4 years that I simply can’t stand. So I’ve finally decided to draw my line in the sand and deal with it.

We’ve been having an obnoxiously hot summer, but how nice to take advantage of the heat. I left this panel out in the sun for maybe ½ hour which heated the wax to the point it was beginning to liquefy. The board was almost too hot to handle as I rushed it inside.

Then how gratifying to take my handy putty knife (and other scrapper thingys) and spend the rest of my afternoon removing layers of wax, getting back down to the original wood. This was a piece I tried to do when I was first learning about encaustic and it was almost like an archeological dig. There were top layers of green, orange, red, with a photocopy of a tree embedded, then underneath, blues and reds.

On the underside of this panel I had applied medium so the wood would be totally encased and not warp (but it did anyway). In removing the excess wax medium, I scrapped off enough to prime another half-dozen boards of the same size. What was I thinking?

Success finally, and a relief from this minor irritation. Now I can pursue something that will hopefully come out a masterpiece.

Bad Art?

It seems like a lot of people I hear talking about art are also saying they are tired or fed up with all the bad art out there. Haven’t we all stood in a museum or gallery looking at some Modern work and said “my ____ could do that?” (If you met my cat you would know she could, too.)

What exactly is bad art?

There are different types of art and artists out there. Primitive art, done by people from primitive cultures, is really cool and highly collectable. Children’s art, done by little and big kids who are congratulated, encouraged, and their pieces hung on any vertical wall space. There is art done by Outsiders, or uneducated hobby-ists, or even just unfinished art.

People also strongly contest what constitutes an art form—classical mediums vs photography, computer painting, installation, graffiti, earthworks, body painting, erotic art, photos of or actual use of blood, urine…OK, you get the idea.

Ah, then there is art to which we simply do not respond or like. Which I believe is what many really mean when talking about “bad” art. That says more about us as viewers than I think we would care to have known.

This spring I visited a major exhibit in Detroit and was severely turned off by much of what I saw there. When I was complaining and describing one piece to a friend, which involved shelves and common kitchen tableware, my friend nodded and simply said “Marcel Duchamp”. My perception changed in a heartbeat and gave me whip lash. Of course.

We each have every right to settle for ourselves what we like and what we do not like. But we should understand it is a reaction, and a personal one at that. The more knowledge we have, the more we are exposed to a variety of creativity, the less we will fall into the snap judgment trap.

“We tend to see the world through our beliefs and expectations.”