Where these things lead . . .

I posted a while back about the classes I took at Art & Soul here in Portland this year, including one with Katie Kendrick. I did a bunch of little spontaneous paintings, and some of them have turned into other things . . .

LIke these two Bee ATC's for a swap on Swap-Bot. I also did a bunch of ATC's for Portland Open Studios Valentine's day cards, to be delivered to our friends at the press in February of 2010. And I forgot to scan them first.

And I just made a few collages, cutting pieces apart and recombining them. Here, I used a bit of a piece that had involved strategic use of a plastic doily dipped in liquid acrylic as a highlight (hence my search for my own plastic doilies. none at the dollar store, so after repeated trolling on-line, I am victorious! After several tries, I finally won an eBay auction for some this week!).


Here, more plastic doily goodness, and a tiny punched out bird that was in our class goody bag. Apparently, it's a Martha Stewart paper punch. I love the design, did an on-line search, and yes - won another eBay auction!

So - in answer to the implied question in the title, taking art classes leads to buying things on eBay.

Art & Soul 2009: The Eye Candy Edition

I didn't get to teach at Art & Soul in Portland this year, and considering the amazing classes I got to take and the marvelous teachers I met, I think it may have been a blessing in disguise!

Check out this amazing scarf I made under the tutelage of Lorri Scott . . . hand-dyed silk ribbons and other miscellaneous fibers stitched together into a glorious wrapping of yumminess!

I was a little nervous at first about the colors I chose, but then I just went with it, and I love the way the scarf turned out.

I also took a MacGyver Silkscreening Class with Traci Bunkers . . . I won't reveal any of her secrets here . . . but we made some shortcut silkscreen stencils and it was oodles of fun - though I don't think I got my fabric stretched tight enough! I made a few prints of scissors and tape on old book pages . . .

I had so much fun in Katie Kendrick's class . . . her spontaneous painting techniques are very liberating. Here's my painting station . . . it's a wonderful mess, isn't it?

And here are some of the painting starts I made . . .

And here's what they began to turn into. Katie encouraged us to look for images in the spontaneous pools, drips, and squiggles. Here, I saw a pregnant goddess figure:

And a little house on a hill:

And finally, the amazing hippo-dog, Harold:

I also got to take yet another resin molding class, this time with Jane and Tom Wynn. You learn something new with each teacher, and I'm getting a bit better at molding and casting each time. I'm loving the teeth (yup, the originals were mine) and the seashells. The hands are getting better, but still need a little work.

Frenzied!

I leave the country tomorrow, and I have to make one quick trip first: to the post office, to mail my Portland 2009 Art and Soul Teaching Application – oh. And then I have to
pack.

Art and Soul: Day Four

First of all, if you're my Mom, back away from the blog. Go to another place. Why? Christmas spoiler ahead . . . if you're not my Mom (and frankly, this is more likely) please! Come on in!

My last class of Art and Soul was a No-Sew Sudoku Quilt . . . . now, I don't want to give away the whole class here because instructor Martha Sparks went to a lot of work developing this one!! (And besides, Ms. Crafty Manners knows giving away another teacher's class is a no-no). Martha had an amazing array of fabrics and ribbons and other embellishments for us to work with, and did a great job preparing everything. The pattern we used to organize the fabric was a completed sudoku puzzle (a number logic puzzle thingie that leaves me feeling a bit intimidated - thank heavens she gave us correctly completed ones!)


And instead of sewing, we pressed the fabric into dense foam . . . I brought the flowers, and the fabric with the little doggies . . all the other fabrics were hers!


Mom loves dogs, enjoys quilts, and likes happy colors, blues and yellows.


The butterfly fabric kind of brought it together (I think it kind of looks like the dogs are chasing the butterflies and vice versa). So, the plan is to make some 3-D butterflies and scatter them among the flowers! I'll let you know how that turns out . . . Mom really liked the embroidery I did for her birthday (at least, it was hanging in the guest bathroom when I went to visit last month) so I've got high hopes!

Art & Soul: Day Three

I had the chance to take another jewelry-making class, this one working with Precious Metal Clay . . . it's a clay-like binder mixed with fine silver . . . you can shape it, stamp it, texture it, mold it, do all kinds of loveliness with it . . . then fire it and polish it, and you have jewelry that's 99% pure silver. Quite lovely, and more pure than even sterling silver. Our instructor, Lisa M. Call, was delightfully enthusiastic, and you can see some of what's possible with PMC by checking out her website, or by reading the book The Art of Metal Clay by Sherri Haab. If you're local to Portland, you can also pick up PMC and supplies for working with it at Simon Golub and Sons jewelry supply at 2820 SE 8th just north of Powell.

Here are the pieces I made . . . I still need to drill the one on the left so that I can make it a pendant . . .the one on the right I just need to hook into some chain . . .


And speaking of chain . . . this particular class included making Byzantine chain with Scott David Plumlee. Now, making chain is not exactly my cup of tea . . . I find it a bit tea-di-ous. But the class was fun, and I actually succeeded in finishing this bracelet! Scott's even got a full tutorial on making the chain on his website, here.

Shiny!!

Art & Soul: Day Two

I have loved Susan Lenart Kazmer's work for a long time, and I finally got to take a class with her - we were building containers, and it took me back to jewelry making skills I haven't used in years! I had to pull out the jewelry saw and the hammers . . .


And I got a refresher in using the torch . . . Here's Susan drawing a bead on wire. I actually annealed metal again - something I haven't done for close to 20 years. Fortunately, it's kind of like riding a bike . . .

Of course, this also means purchasing a bunch of tools so that I can make things at home (two big boxes arrived yesterday). I don't want to make things exactly like this (we made things that are very much in her style, and I really want to be yammering and hammering with my own voice) - but I do want to make things that use a lot of more traditional metal working techniques. I do like this container pendant I made, though:


There's a little bit of map tucked inside . . . and it hangs quite low. It's not supposed to be an earring, but it was the best way I had of displaying it - considering that I haven't actually constructed any kind of necklace for it!


I also made this little lentil pendant. The game spinner/clock hand/compass hand on the back actually moves and spins! I really need to redo the bail, though - that mangled wire wrap job just doesn't quite cut it! But see the little map inside?!

How cool is that!?

Art & Soul: Day One

I love learning new stuff - and it's one of those things that gets my creativity fired up. (Along with really good coffee!) September felt a little slow art-making wise, but October started with a bang because of Art & Soul Portland and I've been manically making ever since! Very inspiring stuff - The first class I took was a Plaster and Wax class with Stephanie Lee on Wednesday, October 1st . . . we poured plaster, carved it, colored it, and even cast it in molds. I had never realized what a flexible material it is - and once it's cured, it makes a great surface for encaustic painting.

Here's some plaster I poured, carved, and then colored with pastels during class:


It had cured by yesterday, so I layered some wax, and added a tiny hand cast in plaster . . .


The tiny hand was a gift from a fellow classmate (thank you, Beth!) . . . so, after I got home that night, I went out to the Goodwill and scrounged some dolls so that I could make my own tiny hand and arm molds!

At home, I've been doing some casting in PaperClay and layering it under encaustic . . . After taking the class with Stephanie, I've learned that the plaster is great because you can cast it a bit thicker than the PaperClay without worrying about cracking or shrinkage. The PaperClay is great because it's so easy, immediate, and flexible - and you can use the cracking that happens on larger pieces to great effect! I'll be teaching a class next month about casting in PaperClay and using it in acrylic painting . . . along with other texture effects. Here's the start of a piece that uses cast PaperClay under wax - and yes, those are cast from last weeks' scrounged dolls:

Gotta love the Goodwill! And the ideas that happen when you're in a room full of creative people!

On being a Teacher . . .

I turned in my application for Art & Soul yesterday . . . my application to teach at the Portland event in '08.

One of the biggest challenges is coming up truly new techniques, new projects, or new ways of combining techniques and projects in such a way that they are appealing to students - students, who, in many cases are traveling across the country (or even from another country) to attend. As a "beginning" teacher (I've taught off and on since I was in college, but I only dove into it fully in 2004 with the debut of my Artmaking as Playful Prayer classes), I don't have the advantage of a fanatical following who've been seeing my work in magazines and books for years . . . and, frankly, I'm not sure that I want a fanatical following . . . Meaning, at this point, most people have to be willing to take a risk to take a class with me. There has to be something in the work or the sample or the description that inspires them or grabs them by surprise. And I have to convince the judges who select the lineup of classes that I am worth the time. Judges who are described in the application as "a group of menopausal women," women who, for the most part, make their living by being able to determine what people exploring mixed media want to learn.

No pressure.

So, I've been sweating over this application for a month. The class I wanted to offer, the one I thought would be the most unique, had to do with hats. And every sample I tried came out crappy. (Inner voice: "Defer judgment, Bridget. Those hats were learning experiences.") Ah, yes . . . I'm probably not ready to teach that one yet . . . I really need to get the technique down better, refine it. The thing is, I love teaching. Some days I'm tired or I don't do as good a job as other days, but I really like creating an environment where people can play, experiment, be exposed to new ideas and techniques, and gain some confidence with their own artmaking. And, with very few exceptions, I walk away from teaching a class having learned something new.

I also know that I consider a class worth my time if I am able to do at least one of the following:
a) learn even one new technique
b) gain confidence in working with a technique
c) have a personal insight or push a personal edge or grow
d) have an experience that engages me in making something from my heart.
And I design my classes to provide the potential for these kinds of experiences. Note that nowhere in there do I say that I have to complete something, or even make something I like. I try to keep in mind that this is a priority for a lot of people, but it's still a challenge.

And I guess I'm writing this in part because I got so distracted by trying to make "a product" or a "sample" that might inspire students to want to learn from me (or become part of my fanatical following or make work just like mine) that I forgot the whole reason why I teach and even make art in the first place. Nowhere on the application was there space for "teaching philosophy" or "what you do to engage students."

That said, I felt really good about the way this sample came together:


I was totally engaged in making it, it felt completely fun, and I got to pull all kinds of techniques out of my hat - self-taught, learned from others, gleaned from books, and discovered - and mix them up in a very satisfying way that was personally meaningful.

That, of course, leads us into what it is to be an artist. And then what it is to be a teaching artist, which is a different animal altogether. So, you'll just have to come back tomorrow.

Loose Ends . . .

I thought I'd share how a couple of pieces have progressed . . . one was the mandala that I started the first night of Artmaking as Playful Prayer . . . I started working on it, then photographed my own hands, my own lips, and my own vegetables to incorporate into it . . . I also photographed some of my own lipsticks . . . The orange and lemon slices are plastic fruit that I bought and made photocopies of! Anything I can do to build my own library of images . . .


And here's the four-part self-portrait that I started at Traci Bunkers class at Art and Soul . . . I changed up some of the collage, and added a few color washes, and it definitely feels more unified. Can't say I'm crazy about it, but it feels resolved - and I learned a lot from doing it. Incubation is your friend.

And whether a piece is "likable" or not is probably one of the least important things about it.

Wanna Trade?

One of the coolest things about big art retreats like Art & Soul is the chance to trade . . . artist trading cards, handmade beads or charms, inchies, MOO cards . . . whatever little creative detritus and inspirational tidbits we can make and share . . . pictured above are the groovy 2-D trades I wandered away with!

I love trading in part because it says "what you make and what I make are equally cool" and "everyone deserves some original art or at least a cool limited edition." And I love it that I get to share and see what other folks are doing - and it's such a non-threatening, non-precious way to make art! "Oh, I have these little things and I can just make them and give them away and isn't that cool!"

So, I made a few little things to trade, and did a few trades. And it's hard to do trades when you're a secret introvert, like me. I wandered around vendor night with my little box and couldn't approach anyone . . . and I tended to only trade if someone else suggested it! And then my MOO cards came in this week (after Art & Soul, but it's never too late . . . ) and I said to myself, "Well, I can still trade, right?" So, if you'd like to send me some little art trade, I'll happily send you something back! Just send it to:

Bridget Benton
PO Box 4076
Portland, OR 97208-4076

and be sure to give me your name and address! Don't have anything to trade yet?

Time to Incubate . . .

Ok, after four classes at Art & Soul I hit total overwhelm . . . I needed a little time to absorb it all and let it marinate . . . My last class on Sunday was with Traci Bunkers. It was a very cool self-portrait class. We took a photograph of ourselves, cut it into four pieces, blew it up on a copier, and then used it essentially as an underpainting and built up layers of color, collage, and texture on top of it. The idea is to work on each piece of the image separately and then integrate them into a unified piece. I like fragmenting images, and I've used photocopies as underpainting before (I can get really lazy about drawing and love this kind of shorcut!). I used a fun, kind of sexy-sassy picture that my friend Michael Burton took of me (he also did the shot of me on this blog).
And while I like elements of each fragment, I ended up not liking the way the fragments come together . . . . Part of it is that I ended up working very opaque with acrylics and collage materials when I think a little more transparency would have served me well. I also didn't do much to integrate the pieces.



And I can be pretty stubborn - meaning I plan to work the piece until it comes to some kind of resolution.

And part of that for me is setting it down in my studio or somewhere else where I'll walk by it several times a day and keep my subconscious working on it. I may eventually just let it go - decide the piece itself isn't really interesting, and just take the idea and do other things with it. Or it may be like the painting I started ten years ago and still haven't finished. It's sitting there, and yet it's still engaging me. Come to think of it, that painting is also a portrait, and it's fragmented to a certain extent . . . themes.

Gettin' My Art on with the Big Wigs

I took two classes yesterday at Art and Soul - a 3-D polaroid collage construction class with Michael DeMeng and a bird nest jewelry class with Stephanie Lee.

I'm going to admit right here and now that I had never heard of Michael DeMeng before I took this class. About half-way through the class, though, I realized that there were people at this retreat wearing Michael DeMeng aprons and that his color knowledge and paint mixing techniques provoke "wow's" from the students (along with a line of color mixing cards - though he's the first to admit you don't need them if you take good notes). I'm also going to admit right here and now that his stuff was pretty darn cool. I got a lot out of the class: I was reminded of some color theory I'd forgotten, and picked up a few new tricks that I swear I never learned. I also got some great practical tips on how to create texture and 3-D compositions. And I ditched the polaroid concept and the tunnel effect most of the other students went for (and who did some AMAZING things! So bummed I didn't get photos . . .) Here's the piece I worked on - using color photo-copies of a series of photos I did about 10 years ago mixed with lotteria cards - from the side, and from the top.




It was all going well until I learned that he does a critique at the end of the class. My heart rate went up and I got a little queasy. My competitive streak reared it's ugly head. What if people poo-pooed what I did for not being DeMeng enough? Too flat? Not using his palette? Keeping it too visually simple? Not incorporating enough rusty found objects? What if he doesn't like it? What if he does? What if my piece was really the best because it was so different? What if someone else had a piece more different than mine and theirs was really the best? What if I could get my head to shut up and just work on the #@*! piece?

I finally managed the latter. And I shouldn't have worried. He gave the artists a chance to talk about their work, and then he found something unique and valuable and intriguing about every single piece and talked about it. You could see what others had done successfully, and ponder whether or not you might want to incorporate it into your work and how you might adjust your own piece.

And I still don't think I'll be incorporating critiques into any of my classes. Logically, I know that competition can be non-violent, that it can be used in a positive way to inspire and push people beyond their self-imposed boundaries. Yes, I see wonderful beautiful things in every piece of art my students make. And I just hate the way that urge comes up in me - and in some of my students - and tries to turn the artmaking into a hierarchy. "Better than." "Worse than." "More talent." "Less talent." "Right way." "Wrong way." I want each student to listen to their own voice when it comes to their art - not mine. And I want those students to be free from the need to please. To dive into making for the experience, for what they might learn, not what they might earn in the way of praise. Maybe I'm projecting too many of my needs onto my students - maybe I need to find a way to give feedback full of juicy possibilities to those students who want it.

More food for thought.

Art and Soul

I love Portland. I've lived here for 15 years, and it still surprises and delights me. Art and Soul is a cool mixed media arts retreat that's been held in Portland for 5 years now - finally, this year, I got to go! I took a class today from Diane Downs today on how to alter a canvas by adding niches to it - one of those things that I'd read about, but really needed to see hands-on to "get." I had made some paper by arranging and color photocopying recipe cards from a box of old family recipes that my mom gave me - things in my mom's handwriting, my dad's, my grandmother's - even old ones my mom had typed! I used the paper as a cover for the foam core that formed the niche, and for the background of the canvas.


And then somehow the heart just seemed right, along with the white picket fence and the dollhouse window (a gift from Diane - I love it!) Later, I added some matches to one of the niches and have my eye on some etchings of cutlery and my artmaking neighbor from Texas, Ann Webb, gave me some skulls that may need to find a home here . . . there's a strange death and domesticity theme popping up - again.
A friend recently asked me "why shrines"? I think it's largely because I was turned off by modern art and art that was only about deconstructing and challenging the aesthetic ideals of other artists. This happened during art school. I think it happens to a lot of artists. We lose the soul, and get caught up in critiques and techniques and how our work contributes to "the art dialogue." It was around this time that I was really drawn to craft, to outsider art, to process art, to folk art, and to devotional art. Art that was made out of passion, compulsion, prayer or practicality. Art that came out of the need and desire of people to make meaning out of their lives, not just the work of other artists. Devotional art and folk art let me to mandalas, masks, rituals and shrines, as did my own exploration of different spiritual traditions. And I began to look at my precious artmaking objects and my memorabilia and all the evidence of my history and experience of spirit and gather those things together into shrines as a way of both understanding them and honoring them and making art that was meaningful to me. More later, but that's it in a nutshell. Whew!