Art Everywhere

Another Spiderman.  Susan really likes these little pieces, which are only about 4" high.  I just can't get excited about them although I love the magic of how the glaze changes.

Everywhere you look you can find art, even on the walls of buildings.

Sometimes, when I'm not paying attention, Susan finds time to make her own art.

Unfortunately, she doesn't find enough time - the newspapers, books, KenKen, other blogs, my blog - all get in the way. She finds it very hard to understand why anyone would want to keep on working instead of retiring with whole days to waste delightfully while doing nothing productive.  As we put it, we get up in the morning and have nothing to do. When we go to bed at night we've only done half of it.

One Potato, Two Potato

More little Potato Head guys. I like the way the screws and nails get a beat-up look from the kiln firing. We took 3 days off and went to Houston for the International Quilt Festival. Some really great quilts and interesting vendors but overall (as Susan summed it up) "underwhelming".

The heavy rains that blasted through Central Texas last week managed to slide far enough to the east to avoid raising the level of any of our lakes. The main impact is that the rice farmers to the southeast need the lake water for their crops so it becomes a tug-of-war between the farmers and the people upstream who want the water for their lawns, farms .... and drinking. Although everything looks pretty now that it's been watered, it's too late for a lot of trees with long-term drought damage. As if we thought we could bargain with Mother Nature!

Just for the record, it's not always about me. Susan also makes art:

I Art

I went to ArtUnraveled. I took classes and not a one of them had anything to do with clay. I had a great time. I got out of my comfort zone and did different things. It was comforting to be (sometimes) the only guy in a class. When you are the only guy in the class you seldom lack for positive reinforcement from your classmates.

One of my favorite instructors is Mary Beth Shaw.  I made these two paintings in one of her classes. I'm probably going to do something different with the doodads that stick out - the photo makes them look more dominant than they really are - but they aren't speaking to me anymore. (obviously they spoke to me in class).

Susan also makes art. She relishes the challenge of taking the paints that no one else uses/wants and works with them. When the instructor says "Come up and get some paint I've brought" she just sits back until the feeding frenzy is over. She did this piece in a different class with Mary Beth. It's on plain copier paper but since it's acrylic paint it stiffens the paper.

Susan speaks: If you notice odd happenings on this blog .... There is no reason why Blogger will sometimes delete the Profile photo or refuse to resize images or put random multipe blank lines in the middle of text or just plain misbehave.  Oh yeah, there is a reason: Because they can.

It's Not Always About Me

Sometimes it's about Susan's art.

Catching Up

I'm not the only artist here. This is from Susan's sketchbook.  She is the one who taught me how to make maps.

We made our annual winter trek to New York City's museums last month. The week before the big storm. The week that was very, very cold.  We like to go in January because the cold weather keeps the amateurs away.

What else in our lives? I finished reading Gone Girl and gave it a 5-star rating. I'm now halfway into The Dinner and it will be getting a 5-star rating also.  I wish it was possible to give more than 5 stars to the movie Beasts of the Southern Wild. That's a must-see.

Yes, She Does

Yes, Susan does make art. That is, when she isn't wasting her time trying to keep me in line.

Go here for Mary Beth Shaw, her immensely talented and geneous teacher. More from me coming soon because Susan liked Mary Beth so much she talked me into taking a painting class from Mary Beth. Me - a painter! Well, sort of.  If you go to Mary Beth's ArtUnraveled video on her blog you can see me at about 1:21 into the video. Susan is at about :25 and (another class) at about 1:14, the talented Marcy is at :39 and Carol is at 1:08. There are many more artistic people in my posse but that's all I can identify and remember now.

Spring Has Sprung

Susan speaks:
This little guy was taking a sunbath today on the edge of my spraypaint table out on our deck. It's continuing to be in the 70s and sunny every afternoon so lizards/chameleons/geckos are showing up everywhere. The gunk on the table is overspray from the online stencil class I took over a year ago.

The first project was to make a portfolio for your work. I used some old corrugated cardboard, sprayed the living daylights out of my stuff and then duct taped the front and back together along one side. If I had been energetic I would have made some sort of tie for it but I do have my limits. Photos below show the front, back and insides.

Both Petya and Inessa were given the same spraypaint stencil treatment.

Today Don comes back from 5 days of jewelry-making classes at AdornMe in Houston. Most of his classes are Process oriented, not Product, but he should have some pictures of some stuff to post soon ("soon" depends on me, of course).

What did I do while he was gone? Well, I got up in the morning and had nothing to do and by the time I went to bed I had done half of it.

Black-n-Red Book

Susan speaks:

This book was made in a class taught by Albie Smith. In the morning we made paste papers, in the afternoon we put the book together.  I like making paste papers and I like even better combining the technique with sgrafitto (scratch marks) and some printing. I also used both white, black and cream papers as a base. As usual, my stuff had lots of black and dark colors, which makes me happy.  The two pictures below show the front and back end pieces with the first and last page of the first and last signature. Got that?

The book has 4 signatures of 5 folded papers, the first/last page of each signature is slightly larger and is also paste paper. I made a few random blops on some of the other signature pages.

 I definitely liked Albie's design of having each signature "read" as a separate entity with the added benefit of more pages to display your art on. Pictures below show first/last pages of the other signatures.

One thing I've learned over the years is that you should not choose to deviate from the instructor's handout during the classtime. If you do, you wind up having the instructor think you don't understand it and then you waste time trying to explain what you are doing and that you do know what you are doing and that you'd rather do it your way, even though you paid to learn it their way.  And you confuse the hell out of the people at your worktable who might be looking at your work.

In this class I deviated from the handout when I did the spine stitching. Even though I am not big on matchy-matchy stuff I do like the stitching to be balanced on the inside of the signatures. I figured out a way to make this happen so I finished up the stitching of the book back in my room.  That's why my book isn't in the pictures of the class books. One of my partners in crime, Diane, made a really beautiful book -- in the class picture it's the one with the pale blue spine and diamond pattern.  Diane spent 20 years in the Air Force as a navigator so she and Don have a special bond.

Into The Age of Darkness

For the record, it's not always about me.

Susan speaks:

I took a class from Jill Berry called "Into The Age of Darkness".  I love dark colors so this class was a match made in heaven for me.

The focus was to experiment with many different paints and tools on black paper, specifically Arches Text Wove. She brought a lot of supplies so we could test all sorts of stuff and do plenty of what-if with everything.

When we were finished we made a continuous four-part pamphlet book of our papers, with painted Tyvek for each part's signature cover.

A bonus was using one of our papers for a slipcase for our book.

Fade to Black

Susan speaks:
At Art and Soul I took a Journal Spilling class from Diana Trout. She provided very good product information and had lots of stuff for us to sample. One of my favorites was pens that provide a very strong resist so you can put watercolor or washes over them yet they still shine through.

She spent some time talking about being sure you banish your "Inner Critic" from your art environment. This was pretty much contrary to what I do. My Inner Critic stands right behind me and she talks to me constantly, telling me I can do better, or that I should try something different, or that something sucks and it's time to throw it away ("The horse is dead. Get off."). She often tells me "Damn, that's really good!", although by the next day she'll often say What was I thinking?" My Inner Critic is the one force that keeps me from thinking that I'm finished, that I've successfully conquered Art, and now I can move on to other things. I really like my Inner Critic.

If you've seen some of my other work (here and here) you'll know that I like to use dark colors. No, I don't have a dark side to my personality, I just happen to think black and raw umber and navy blue are really great colors. And don't forget dark grey and Payne's grey. Some of the class supply lists this time said to bring some of your favorite paint colors so I thought this would be a good opportunity to get outside of my "comfort zone" and try some paler colors and "lighten up" my art work.

The picture above is an example of what I was doing in my pages for this Journal Spilling class. The object of the class was to experiment with all sorts of media and try different methods of applying acrylic paint, watercolors, markers and ink to make a background page to later do journaling on. The theory seems to be that if your page has background stuff on it you won't be as reluctant to mark or write on it.

I thought I was doing pretty good with pale (for me) colors. Not happy with them but trying to use them. Diana came by, took one look, and said, "Oh, no! You need to get out of your comfort zone. Use more intense colors!".

Yes!!! Little did she know, I was out of my comfort zone. But who am I to argue with an instructor who just gave me a break? I dumped those wimpy colors and went straight for my favorite black:

For the record, I don't journal. If I write something that is journal-like you can be sure it is 100% fiction.

Countdown

This is the time of year when many people have Advent calendars as a countdown of days.

Susan had a different idea. It is hanging in a very prominent place. I am not amused.

Looking Ahead

In these troubled times we must learn to do our own navigating.

Not My Art (for a change)

Susan's art. She has learned how to cut her own stencils. She is the Blog Wrangler and won't bother talking about herself. Sorry about that.

P.S. It's not always about me.

Susan And The Doctor's Office (and Updates)

Susan speaks: It's been 16 months. I couldn't stall it any longer so I went. (Final score: Passed.) Doctor: "Slide down, please." ??? Excuse me, I'm paying -- you slide up.

Is this related in any way whatsoever to art? Yes. If I hadn't been so busy sketching I would have unrolled some of the exam table paper. Good paper. Free paper! What could they do if they found out I'd unrolled a lot of paper? Tell me to put it back? Next year, while I'm sitting there in that too-small paper dress. . . .

Update #1: The first and third pictures (front and back) of the Renner Books post are of Don's book (darker spine).

Update #2: Thanks for all the camera tips, both in Comments and in email. Unfortunately, most advice applied to SLR cameras and this is just a basic point-and-shoot camera, with a number of options just not possible -- for example, there are only two f-stops, both pre-set and unchangeable. The sensor is relatively small.

The distortion is called "barrel" effect or "pincushion" and it is fixable in Photoshop Elements 2.0 by using the Spherize and/or Pinch filter, which is how I tweaked the Renner book photos. Distort/Skew/Perspective actually can distort too much if you aren't careful. But none of the options do a perfect job and I hate to have to tweak every picture. The advice that seems to be working is this: Stand way back, as far as possible, from the object and zoom in to take the picture. A tripod is recommended. So instead of putting objects on a table and standing over them to take pictures, I'll be putting them on the floor. We'll see.

I have to keep reminding myself we bought the little point-and-shoot because I wanted just that: a little camera to snap quick pictures, no need to worry about a lens or any settings (although it does have a number of Scene options and ISO settings). And it was the best fit in my clumsy hands.

Disintegration Finale, Part One

Seth started it with his Disintegration Collaboration and we all put our bundles and whatever out into the environment. My diploma, which gave me the right to add a 4th set of initials after my name (don't get excited, they don't include PhD), remained pretty resistant to the elements which included only about 3 days of rain over 6 months. I had actually hoped it would burst into flames in our summer heat.

Once Susan took it out of the sculpture (bottom photo) it had been sitting in for 6 months and started picking at it, we discovered why it wouldn't disintegrate. The diploma was printed on a heavy paper which was fused to a plastic film and then fused onto a backing sheet. It seemed like just one thick piece of paper but the plastic film in the middle kept it from any serious damage. She ripped and peeled and got it all apart and the backing sheet is being cut into strips to make "hair" for one of my outdoor ShovelHead people (will be shown in Part Two).

The front was transformed into the piece you see, with detail photos. I had nothing to do with it other than to say "Needs more... something" as she worked on it. The miscellaneous painted pieces collaged on are papers we worked on together in the past. The whole piece is stitched, wired, and glued onto black canvas. I like it. (As opposed to hating the job that required the damned thing.)


Grateful thanks to Seth from The Altered Page for an interesting Collaboration.

Original attempt at disintegration, Feb 12 - July 26, 2009.