New Piece- In Circles

In Circles

24" x 24" 

Reclaimed Objects and Tar Paper on Board 

This piece is officially finished now. It has been hanging on my living room wall for the last month waiting to be declared complete. That is a part of my finishing process for my work. I need to live with each piece, see it regularly, in different lights and moods before I can decide if it is done and I am satisfied with it. Sometimes a piece comes down to be tweaked. Sometimes it is taken down and stuffed in a closet or at the bottom of a pile to be ignored so I can take a fresh look later and then, maybe, get completed.

Friday's Art sightseeing

Friday afternoon we headed off for a visit to the Vancouver Art Gallery. There are a couple new shows, it had been awhile since we had gone and I particularly wanted to see the Kimsooja show. Its not their feature exhibit right now, but I found it very much worth going to see. Her work focuses on culture and migration. Her 'Mirror Woman' installation was breathtaking. It was a mirrored room filled with clotheslines hung with traditional Korean colourful bedcoverings. I felt like I had stepped into a new world filled with colour and a light breeze, one that went on and on.

'Construction (Interior)' by Jay Senetchko

We also stopped at the Pendulum Gallery to take a look at what they were showing. They currently have a multi-artist show on called 'Shed'. It was interesting to see how each artist approached the theme, there were some very detailed charcoal drawings, a couple caricature type paintings, a couple realistic ones and a couple oil paintings that focused on the construction. These last two paintings really caught my attention. They were displayed, not on the commercial divider wall, but in a corner of a roughly built shed, complete with shingle roof and plywood floor. I think what really caught my attention was how much the shadows dominate the piece forming very distinct patterns. I kept going back to look at it up close, then stepping back to look at it from another angle.

This Week's Creative Endeavors

 Busy creating stripes

This week's creativity has not been spent on my projects, instead they have been community focussed efforts. Painting in community and for community. Our Christmas set went up mid week and the rest of the week was spent madly painting it. It's always fun to be involved painting the Singing Christmas Tree sets, you get to go big, well, huge actually, and try your hand at something new, plus there is the awesome bonus of meeting and getting to know other artists. (Another perk is that your work is on dispaly for lots of people to see. Who cares if the majority of viewers have no idea who painted it)

Some finished stripes and stencilling

Eastside Culture Crawl

This weekend, Nov 15-17th 2013, is our very own, very awesome Eastside Culture Crawl. I highly recommend everybody to check it out. There are so many studios to go visit! Some are all in one building, such as the 1000 Parker St Studios and the Mergatroid building. Others are scattered throughout the neighborhood and you meander through a backyard or into a living room to see work.

There are so many treasures and surprises tucked away in small warehouse studios, backyard studios and inconspicious homes. In the Parker Street Building there are a number of woodworking shops, ranging from the incredible work of Straight Lines Designs to simple turned bowls and cutting boards. There are fashion, painting, textile artists, ceramics and just about any other studio you could imagine.


This is a functional dresser named 'Brian' by Straight Line Designs.

Some of my favourite pieces this year were from Christina Norberg. She works on shaped supports and combines painting with collage. Many of the collage elements are felted fibre shapes that create fascinating textural contrasts and interest.

There is something close to 445 artist that participate in showing their work during 'the Crawl'. It is virtually impossible to see them all in one year (maybe if you went all three days). We only saw a fraction of them and are thoroughly overwhelmed and inspired. 

I must add, food trucks are a wonderful thing! There were a few in front of one building and other scattered in different locations. Brilliant idea, my tummy was happy as a result. (Did you know we have a mini donut truck?)

Quasi Art project

I'm still playing with wedding stuff. We got our photos, sorted them and have finally printed a few. The next step is to frame them and hang them. That is currently in progress, but in the meantime I was inspired to actually put together our sign-bearer signs to admire on the wall.

 Also, we put up (one of the first pieces of art we hung) our guest board. This is a quick (and blurry) photo of what the finished result looks like. (it's dark by the time I get off work-not a good photo environment)

So, for awhile our living room will be decorated with wedding memorabilia. Ironically, maybe conveniently, we chose to decorate our living room with the same turquoise as our wedding colours!
By the way, the living room colours were chosen before the wedding ones!

Musings on Inspirations

I already know that all sorts of repetitions capture my attention. I tend to like to photograph them, preferably fairly close up, so that the actual objects are abstracted and it is simply the pattern. I have been discovering that often the repetitions I find are very linear as well. Which means that when I do try and photograph them I get too much peripheral info and end up disatisfied with the photo. I was thinking and dreaming about art and what I could do with it and decided that these types of repetitions might be the perfect time to turn them into paintings. With a painting I am not at all constricted by a standard format, I can use whatever shape captures my fancy, especially as I prefer to work on wooden panels, not canvas. So, I could use a long narrow support and I would have the freedom to crop and skew perpective as much as I wish! The possibility is intriguing me.

A Scary Thing

Take a deep breath and just hit send! I am doing one of the scariest things an artist can do: submit to a show. I'm sure it gets easier the more you do it, but maybe it's just me obsessing about getting every little detail just right, wondering if that was exactly what they asked for. I've got a couple days still, I could procrastinate a little longer. . . but I won't. Tonight is the night to hit the irrevocable send button. Wish me luck, I'll let you know if I was succesful.

Note to Self

I was reminded again that I really, really dislike working with pencil crayons. Any pencil crayons. We just do not get along. To me they always seem unresponsive and stingy in their application of colour. Ergo different media for different artists.
Goodbye pencil crayons.

Surroundings

It really is quite amazing how a person's art is influenced by their surroundings. It seems to happen almost subconciously. If you have a large open space to create in your work will undoubtedly be large, if, however, you have a small, cramped space your pieces may have a cramped feel to them or simply be small.
Currently, I am still figuring out how my new era of art will express itself. Just by the very nature of having moved, not far, just being in a different space, will result in a slightly different expression. I am not exactly sure how it will look yet, but as I experiment and play I will figure it out. As of this last week I had not yet moved my art supplies to my new home. Now that we are back into our new normal I have started missing my supplies desperatly. So, finally this weekend I made the trek and dug out some of my favourite things! Now to take over our home, spread them all out and start creating!

Honeymoon Photos part 2

Here are some of the photos from our adventures on Galiano Is. The rock formations of the whole coast were fascinating and I think we saw half a dozen dear every evening! To describe Galiano in a couple words, I would choose Quaint and Rustic.

Honeymoon Photos part 1

I thought I would share a few shots from our honeymoon. I must say that our locations were gorgeous and for being on the 'Wet' Coast we certainly had beautiful weather! These are from our time in Ucluelet

A Sigh

A sigh of relaxation, a sigh of relief, a sigh of completion, a sigh of contentment, a sigh of amazement.
Our wedding has come and gone, our honeymoon has granted us rest, we've returned to our nest, spent some time arranging and settling in. We've even hung a couple pieces of art. Our nest is beginning to look and feel like home. Soon life will return to a new normal and there will be new veins of creativity, but for now there is only a sigh after reaching our goal.

September Art Night

Tonight we had our September Art Night and we had a really good turn out! There was eight people plus myself. (I know that's not huge, but for a fledgling group, I'll call it good) It seemed to be a group that clicked well and was willing to share what they were working on and be inspired by each other. I shared a little bit (5 minutes tops) about my art and journey, how I got to where I am now, as well as some of the big questions that I keep contemplating about art.
I am definitely encouraged by the attendance tonight and the response from the group. I'm also personally, artistically inspired, I came home and immediately started painting!
The more you paint, the more you want to paint and the easier it is to pick up the brushes.
I say that because I spent a good part of last week painting. Yesterday was a huge day for us at work as it was our ministry fair. Every group got a spot to set up a display to showcase what they do. I painted a couple signs, (lettering, very finicky) and a chef. He was about 5 ft tall and 4 ft wide, quite the guy! We cut an opening so people could put their head in and become the chef. He took a good amount of time, so I was on a roll and ready to keep painting tonight.

Today's Creative Endeavour

Today's creative endeavour was also a mental workout. I am doing a World Vision seminar on Community Assessment, so we had to do a lot of brainstorming. This is what one of the brainstorming tasks ended up looking like. I think ours may have been the messiest and most colourful in the room. I guess that what happens when you give a creative person a large piece of paper and a handful of coloured markers! I took advantage of the space!

Landscape Poetry

Here is the long awaited series that I have been working on for the last couple months. I have entitled this series Landscape Poetry because to me they vaguely resemble landscapes, but do not literally describe a location, much is left up to the imagination of the viewer. They are oil paintings because at the time I satrted them I really wanted to work with paint. I did not want to leave out totally the other elements of found objects and repetition that I had been working with. These elements are incorporated into this series of work in a much looser, more organic way than some of my previous work. This first piece has small, square mirrors embedded in it with some of the bare wood grain showing in the upper white area.

 Landscape Poetry in White

16" x 20"

This second one uses black glass pieces mixed with the oil paint. Many of the mixed media elements that I include in paintings have been salvaged and collected as I go about life. These pieces were collected from an accident scene (I was cleaning up) that had involved a police ghost SUV. 

 Landscape Poetry in Black

16" x 20"

This piece with the yellow glass is the most recent one to be completed. For this painting I specifically wanted yellow accents and really wanted them to be glass. In my travels I had not come across anything that would work, so I brainstromed and ended up buying a perfectly good yellow lightbulb to smash. I must say that it was fun and made a most satisfying 'pop' when I bashed it with the hammer.

Landscape Poetry in Yellow

16" x 20"

These are just the current pieces in the series, I am having fun with them, so I think I will continue with this theme for awhile longer. It may take awhile, because at the moment I have plans for at least two more! Only problem is that I am in the middle of trying to pack and get all these wedding decorations done.

August Art Night

Sigh, last nights art night did not go as expected at all. There were a grand total of three of us, including myself and my fiance. So really, only one person showed up. People seem interested and eager to participate, so perhaps it was just that it is summer and the middle of August and nobody is around. Come to think of it, it has been very quiet at work and around town lately, I suppose everyone is going away for their last summer holiday before school starts in September.
It was rather nice to have the time set aside for art, and I did start a new painting. Didn't manage to finish it, but I made a very good start. And, no, I didn't get distracted from wedding prep stuff: this is for the wedding too! It will be a 2 stage finished painting, stage 1 will be my part and stage 2 will be our guests part.
Photos of some of my other recent pieces are coming soon.

Inspiration-William Close and the Earth Harp

This past Friday I saw the work of William Close as he played his Earth Harp that he designed! The words that came to mind were: Profound Beauty. Something struck me deeply as I watched him play, it wasn't just the music, it was so much more. The instruments themselves were beautiful, the lighting was beautiful and the videography shots were beautiful. It was the combined elements that created the experience that said to me, we cherish beauty in every aspect of what we do. I think that is what made it so profound. Each of his instruments that he designs and builds is a musical sculpture, not simply a functional instrument. When he spoke about the Earth Harp, he said that because it anchors into the architecture of the space it is being played in, the building becomes part of the instrument and the audience is actually sitting in it.
To see his work, check out his website http://williamandtheearthharp.com/

Current project

Here is just a taste of what I have been working on lately. For our wedding, instead of doing simple pennant banners I decided it would be cool to string trees up. Trees continued our theme, it would look cool. Well, then I calculated how many trees I would need to run a few banners around the room, approx 250! The thought of hand-cutting that many was daunting, so using one of my favourite phrases of "there's got to be a better way" and I found one! I contracted a family member (what else are they for?) to cut them out on the scroll saw for me. These are just the start of the many trees that will be sprouting in the near future.

Ontario Highlights

I should share some of the highlights from my trip to Ontario not long ago. Besides meeting lots of people I visited some of the iconic sights, Niagara Falls (impressive), Niagara-On-the-Lake (quaint and lovely), the CN Tower (tall), and the Royal Ontario Museum (too much to see).

 Niagara Falls

 

At a park in Niagara Falls 

 

view from the restaurant in Niagara Falls

 Glass floor in the CN Tower many, many feet up

A very memorable spot too

 One of the many B&B's in Niagara-On-The-Lake

Catch Up

Hmm, oops it's been awhile since I have written anything. Somehow life has just plain gotten busy! Creativity is still happening amongst all the business, but in different ways. There has been brainstorming about dresses, accesories and decorations. Currently, the decorations have been taking up the most time and energy. I haven't totally forgotten about my paintbrushes! I have picked it up to do some experinmenting for our guest board painting, as well as applying the roller to many yards of paper to turn it just the right colour before cutting a multitude of trees out. Somewhere in the last couple weeks we had a another Arts Night. This one was a very casual open night for men and women to come and bring their current projjects with them to work on. It was nice to have an excuse to get the paints out and just play around, even if I did use the time to play with wedding stuff. Alright, so there is a quick update of what my artist endeavors have covered in the last while, hopefully the next update will be much more timely.

Ladies Art Night

Our Ladies Art Night has passed. It was a good night. I had no idea what to expect in terms of skill level or familiarity with art. We had a varitey of knowledge and skill levels show up and it worked well. People shared from their experience with those that were not as familiar. I did a quick and basic lesson on the principles of design. That was my solution to dealing with thewide spectrum of interests and levels. We also had put together an art history slideshow (in no way comprehensive or even chronological), just to show a variety of work and styles, which went over really well. My aim for the evening was to inspire everybody, to expose them to new tools, encourage them in their art.

 

 

Prepping for Ladies Art Night

Ok, so it's been awhile, sorry about that. Life has suddenly gotten very busy and so I have not had a chance to post lately. The latest project I am working on is not actually a piece of art, it is about art. Awhile back I agreed (for some reason) to teach an Arts workshop for a group of ladies. So, the challenge began. How do you teach a group of people who are generally interested in art, with a vast range of abilities, art education and specific interests about Art in a couple hours?!
How much info can I pack into a short time? How do you touch on everything? Interest everybody? Oh, and build connections between the participants?
Remind me again, why did I agree to this?
This event is happening in 3 days time! The crunch is on! Am I prepared?
(no, I don't think so)

Visual Arts in Worship

What role do the Visual Arts play in a Worship service?
Does placing an artist on the platform to 'paint as they are moved during worship' a valid way to include the visual arts?
What about painting random lines and shapes, then when it's turned upside down Jesus' face appears?
What about displaying finished works of art, whether they are banners, paintings or quilts in the sanctuary?
I am currently reading a book called For the Beauty of the Church, which is a collection of essays by various authors on different aspects of art in the Church. One essay written by John D. Witvliet, asks whether art displayed for worship should be created in a community, a collaboration?
Where and How do the Visual Arts fit?

Fun with Repetition

 From the single photo of the stripped risers came these two digital images. Seeing as I already liked the repetition going on within the original photo, I decided to rereat the repeats and see what happened. With a bit of rotating they all fit together nicely. I like that they have become abstract works, almost completey removed from what was actually going on.

Latest ideas

At work there has been a lot of activity happening related to building upkeep. All the walls are getting a bright, fresh coat of paint along with a few other upgrades. One room I walked into and discovered this intriguing structure. They were in the process of dismantling raised tiers in this room, converting it back into a multipurpose room. While I thought the existing shapes and repetitions were already interesting, I think that they have potential to be played with and transformed!

Vancouver Art Gallery

We went to see the show Grand Hotel this weekend. It was interesting to learn about the history and developement of what we have come to know as a hotel. There were models of a variety of iconic hotels, as well as a comparative wall of the scales of these hotels. It was also interesting to discover some of the movements that came out of the meetings of different artists and writers that lived or lunched in these hotels.
Also displayed was furniture designed different hotels and purposes. I would recommend going to see this show.

51 Shades of Spring

Going to see the the show 51 Shades of Spring presented by the Burnaby Artists Guild. It is at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, a place you would think I would be familiar with, but I have never actually been to. It should be a good day, educational too.

Keys

24"x24"

Found Objects on Board

I'm still in the evaluating stage with this piece. I may yet add something to it, I'm just not sure exactly what or if it needs it. So I am open to feedback on this one.

Pre-finished stage

I finished a new piece this week, at least it's in the preliminary finished stage. That means that it is hung on a wall in my house being lived with and considered, to be looked at off and on, contemplated and debated. This process can last anywhere from a day to a few weeks before it is determined if the piece is finished. (The shorter time it spends in this process, the less it was finished) So far its been up almost a week, although it has received mixed reviews so far.

Poppy Field

24"x24"

Acrylics and Found Objects

A true assemblage painting, taking many pieces from different contexts to create this pleasing whole (at least I think it is pleasing). Many of the elements are from my current body of work, the painted flowers however, are from a painting I had done a few years ago. I liked elements from it, but not the piece as a whole, so I cut off and discarded what I didn't like aond kept what I did. In the context of my current body of work, this piece is a bit unusual in that the colour is quite bold.

Office Art

I was given an office this year and told to pick a colour for the walls and go ahead and decorate. So many options to choose from! I finally chose a deep aubergine (eggplant purple) for two walls and the other two are white. Then to decorate! What to put on the walls? There are lots of pretty pictures out there, but I am an artist, so why would I go buy a cheap unoriginal print when I can create something original? Also, this way my works gets exposure with the benefit of being decorative. I had taken one piece in and had it hung for a weeks, but it took me awhile to figure out what else my office needed. Having gotten feedback and inspiration from another creative person, I decided how to finish it. Instead of 'hanging' another piece, I went with the idea of painting a silouhette on one of the white walls (with permission first, of course).

 My desk faces this wall, so now I can spend the day looking at my tree. It is about 8 ft tall and 6 ft across at the longest branch.

24"x24"

Found materials on board

This piece changes depending on its context, such as the weather. The little mirror pieces on this work reflect the purple colour from the opposite wall, it also reflects the sun that comes in my windows. I quite enjoy watching it change from day to day.

Afternoon in Stanley Park

A beautiful, sunny, warm spring day was spent in Stanley Park. It started as a walk around the seawall, but ended being a hike through the park due to a good chunk of the seawall being closed for maintenance. Despite the steep inclines required to go up and over the mountain, it was delightful. We enjoyed being in the forest and came across some lovely surprises along the way. First, we spotted two bald eagles sitting at the top of a tall bare tree.

Then, further down the trail we saw a ruby-throated hummingbird sitting in a tree. We stopped and held our breathe! He sat for quite awhile, then took off checking out other bushes, and then surprisingly came back to sit in the tree again. This time I carefully reached for my camera, fully expecting him to take off and not come back, but he stayed!

Afternoon at the Conservatory

A few photos from our Saturday afternoon trying to escape the pouring rain. Turns out we chose the wrong time to make our way up the hill, it had cleared off by the time we came out!

 A baby pineapple, and a couple sculptures from the sculpture show that is currently on at the Conservatory. Some pieces fit so well into the surroundings you had to really look for them, others were alot more obvious. All of the pieces seemed to have taken the space into consideration for their inspiration and/or display methods.