Art and Healing: Part Two

Lately, I've been so busy doing things that there hasn't been a whole lot of time to blog about them - or time to absorb what's happened. *

It's been a wonderful whirlwind, and now I'm ready for a little reflection and a little quiet artmaking time. Sometimes things don't make sense until we write them down or until we share them - either through words or through our artwork or both.

And a good place to start reflecting is the amazing women I had the opportunity to work with at the Quest Center for Integrative Health's Healing Empowerment Project. The Project, led by Jo Brody, provides an expressive outlet for those living with breast cancer and its consequences. With a different art class led by a different art teacher each month, the women have the opportunity to create, explore, and take an active role in their own healing process.

The participants, diving in!

Opportunities to teach in an environment like this are few and far between, and I was honored to be invited to teach an all-day shrine making class earlier this year. As is often the case, it seemed like all I did was unload materials from the truck, offer a little bit of information about structure and adhesives, and then get out of the way.

The women were fearless. They took risks, told personal stories, and were absolutely willing to work intuitively. It was a joyous and inspiring thing to witness. And there is such a lesson there. Perhaps once you have faced your own mortality, the blank canvas just doesn't seem as scary as it used to.

Starting with Egyptian deities . . .

and completing with feather and sea.

Dress patterns, Botticelli, and Mother Mary . . .

United by spirals.

A collecting of materials . . .

and a lid of riotous color.

This piece, assembled by a particpant, features an image of singers originally created by Deborah Koff-Chapin.

And this is what art is about - at least for me. Expressing and exploring, and maybe getting lucky enough to tap into something utterly beyond ourselves.


* If you were curious . . . In the last four months, I've attended workshops at ArtFest in Port Townsend, taught several workshops here in Portland, joined Sister Diane on a marvelous Mexican cruise with the Crafty Chica, had a feature show at 100th Monkey Studios Gallery, participated in a few charity art auctions, taken on the role of Treasurer for Portland Open Studios, celebrated my 40th birthday with friends, visited family in Texas, and now, I'm in Beverly, MA, for the Encaustic Conference at Montserrat College of Art and will then be heading off to present at the Summit of Awesome in my hometown of Portland, OR. I have a serious back-log of eye candy and insights to share, so get ready!

ArtMaking as Playful Prayer: Icons

My ArtMaking as Playful Prayer class officially ended today - we're going to get together one more time, but our official classes are over. It was really a pleasure spending six weeks making art with Maggie, Diane, and Robyn, and I'm wanting to share some of what my awesome students made . . . starting with these wonderful icon shadowbox shrines.


We started with iconic divine imagery, and then made it our own with gesso, sharpie markers, and paint. The one featuring the delightful juxtaposition of Aphrodite and the Virgin Mary above is Maggie's. Maggie's the one who got me hooked on Jacquard Lumiere paints, and she does a great job of using their Hi-Lite interferance paints here, though the photo doesn't do it justice.

This lovely sewing saint is Diane's - the tiny spools of thread are such a lovely touch, and she did a great job using the scrapbooking paper to define the space inside the box.

This contemplative beaded Buddha is Robyn's, and I love the way the beads create a veil while emphasizing the depth of the box and layers of the Buddha's halo. It really makes you want to look in, doesn't it?

I'll share some more of the projects we worked on later this week . . .

Abuzz About Assemblage . . .

Jen Worden wrote last month about how assemblage tends to come together in waves . . . you'll go weeks without any new assemblage work to show because you're tweaking this, adding that, waiting for the glue or the paint to dry and then - voila! - suddenly you have a bunch of pieces done. Today is "that day" for me.

Remember the bee piece I started back at Artfest in April? Here it is, all installed in its cigar box . . . the surface of the box had been flocked, so it felt like velvet. Don't ever let anyone tell you painting on velvet is easy. Or collaging on velvet either, for that matter.



And here's another piece that I've been working on for awhile. The picture on the left is one of me with my mom, taken by my dad over 30 years ago. Through the keyhole, you can see another picture, this one of my mom and dad while they were dating in college.



I call it "Wishes." My dad died a little over five years ago, and my mom and I both wish he was still with us. I'm working on another version of the photo on the left for my mom as a *belated* birthday gift. She doesn't drop by the blog very often, so I'll scan a photo of it and post it before I mail it off to her . . . I really enjoy reworking the same images in different ways.

Shadowbox: Trophy Wife in Progress

At a second-hand shop, I found this image of a young woman in a white dress, holding a piece of paper. It looked to me like a woman in a wedding dress, displaying her marriage certificate. There's no way to verify this story I made up about the image, but I decided to just use it as launchpad for this piece . . .


Here's the piece in process - with "Trophy Wife" as the working title. The old trophy part just seemed to fit . . . and the layers of possible meaning began to build.

And here it is closer to being done. I'm still adding more milagros and charms along the sides . . . and I'm thinking the title is closer to "Negotiation."

Artfest! Day Two

I've been home from Artfest for about a week now, and I'm still integrating all that happened there . . . it was truly a wonderful event! And integrating has taken long enough that I haven't been blogging . . . though I have been spending time in the studio, and even working in the yard! Yummy . . . I had forgotten that yardwork really can be enjoyable, especially with mild sunshine and a double-dosing of effective non-drowsy allergy medication!

My class the second day was with yet another teacher that I had never heard of but came to love, Melissa Manley. She is a jeweler and sculptor, and our class was called Paper Ruins. It combined something I am familiar with - shrines - with something that was a stretch - working small - and a new skill - casting Paperclay. Perfect! We created our own molds, molded our Paperclay, and constructed our tiny shrines using matchboxes as a focus. (I kept thinking about Dayna and her upcoming Matchbox Shrine class!) Here are two that I worked on as they appeared at the end of class:


And, on the way back to the hotel that night, one of the wings broke off of the shrine on the right . . . Realizing how tough it would be to reattach it convincingly, I improvised:

It was a great problem-solving exercise: how do I take an accident and make it work in my favor? I ended up adding the orange elements, including the funny plastic chicken feet, and I think the whole piece actually ended up being more interesting.

I also ended up making a few minor changes to the other one:

At home this past week, I've been working on a cigar box to hold the second one - it's encrusted with little bees and honeycomb . . . This coming week, I've got to get back to work on a pay-the-bills kind of project, and it's going to be tough to get my head back into it.

Artfest! Day One (and a half)

Wednesday morning I woke up with a luxurious feeling . . . I was going to have my morning coffee, throw a few things the car, and then drive up to Port Townsend, Washington for my very first ArtFest ever . . . Four Hours Later, I started panicking: the car wasn't loaded. Not even close. Even though I was driving - meaning I had my entire truck available to me to fill with stuff - I was having a very hard time deciding what to take. It's like any trip - you can really get by with little more than a clean pair of unders and a toothbrush, but there's a compulsion to fill at least one suitcase with stuff, just in case . . . I ended up leaving later than planned and with more than I needed, but that means more to share, right?

Let me just say that ArtFest feels different from other multi-teacher mixed-media art retreats I've attended. I arrived just in time for the evening orientation and almost immediately, I felt really welcomed and I felt a real sense of community . . . even though I still haven't been able to touch bases with some of the blogger artists I had hoped to meet live and in person (Hi, Leah! Hi, Jen! Hi, Judy!) I have met a host of other wonderful people. Even though there are a LOT of people, the Secret Introvert feels very safe here.

Maybe it's the proximity to the ocean. Or maybe it's just Teesha and Tracy Moore's laid-back, friendly attitude. Either way, I freakin' love it!

My very first class was with Bee Shay - Shadow Boxing. I love making niches and shadow boxes, and I felt like the minimalist aesthetic of the class would be a good stretch for me. What I didn't count on was what an amazing and delightful teacher Bee was. She kept an easy, positive atmosphere in the room while sharing a lot of wonderful techniques. Here she is demonstrating:


And I definitely gave the whole minimalist thing a shot - here are three pieces that I finished today:
I used stuff from Hannah Grey's online shop in each of these: beetle wings, dried starfish, weasel bones . . .


And this one, I ended up giving to Bee because she really worked with me quite a bit on the design of it, and she loved the weasel skull so much!! And I know I'll be using this niche technique in the future . . .


I'm not staying at Fort Worden (though the food and accomodations are MUCH nicer than the last time I was here a dozen years ago). I'm staying in at a lovely little B&B called The James House. Much of the wood and hardware in the house is original - check out this doorknob and faceplate on the door to my bathroom . . . and I'm in the cheapest room! And there was a poached pear for breakfast. Yum.


I wonder what they're making for breakfast tomorrow? Did I mention that I love traveling?

The Mad/50 Shrine: Progress Notes

I got quite a bit done on the Mad/50 shadowbox shrine project . . . I made a few sketches to capture some of the ideas that had been racing around in my head.
Normally, I don't do a lot of sketching - but I've been wanting to record my creative process and understand more about how my ideas develop. So, I attempted to capture some of the ideas that were floating around as the project marinated. Naturally, as soon as I attempted to get them down on paper, they changed. Even the medium - simple pencil on paper - dictated changes in the designs.
Then, I got into the studio and started playing around with objects and materials inside the freshly gessoed box. I found some things I'd forgotten about, like this mylar map of somewhere "outside" in Washington state.



I also took a little birdhouse and covered it with parts of an architectural drawing I had outlining plans for a heating system. The map of Portland added some color, which I liked. It seemed appropriate to have a little color given that the installation will happen on the Spring Equinox.

I certainly don't have the layout finalized - I doubt very much that the finished project will end up looking like either the sketches or the sample layouts I did. In fact, as often happens, the objects I found during my experimentation have already spawned two new and different shadowboxes - items that didn't work for the Mad/50 project but cried out to be used and still related to the "home" theme. I completed one of these "spawn projects" today (it utilizes an x-ray I got at SCRAP a few days ago, a Monopoly house, and some hand-printed fabric) and the other is well underway. I'll have pictures of those for you in a few days . . .

As for the Mad/50 project, I committed to using the map, painting over parts of it and extending some of the lines to make it feel more like an integral part of the box. I'm considering actually building a nest, because I don't think the birdhouse is quite right . . . and there's another shadowbox that seems to need it!



And here it is in context - the studio!

Mad/50: Shadowbox Shrine in Process

I'm diving head first into a big project this weekend - a drawer-sized shadowbox shrine for installation at Mad/50, the groovy outdoor community art space at the corner of Madison and SE 50th in Portland. Here's the space, which I photographed this fall at the opening of the Day of the Dead installation.

It's protected from the elements, and the installation space for the shadowbox shrine is about 20" x 26". I'm working with a drawer, this drawer in fact, as the base.


The drawer is about 15" x 19", giving me a little bit of wiggle room if I want the shrine to extend outside the confines of the box. Which I probably will. So far, I have the box gessoed, and have been playing with some imagery and elements.

The theme is "home." It's a theme I've been working with a lot lately. Reconciling my desire for a home with a desire for freedom, trying to figure out what really makes up a sense of home, of being at home, of feeling at home. At home in your body, in a place, in a family or community. Needless to say, there are very few places or people with whom I feel at home. Hence the exploration.

This is the week!

Halloween. Dia de los Muertos. The true deep dive into fall. I don't have any big plans for Halloween - I may put on the Bumblebee Costume and go dancing. I may stay home and make some art. I may actually give candy to trick-or-treaters, as there may actually be some in my neighborhood this year. But no matter what the week holds in the way of celebrations, I gotta say that this time of year is invigorating in that go-deep-within, bake-and-snooze-in-front-of-the-fire, make-shadow-art, do-tarot-card-readings, layer-up-with-sweaters-and-scarves way.

Here is one of my seasonal touch drawings - Mr. Skelly - done a week ago, and feeling very timely . . .

Last week, I went to the opening of Mad/50's latest outdoor shadowbox installation - this one, a Dia de los Muertos shrine to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. For those of you unfamiliar with Mad/50, it's another one of those cool Portland things - two artists (one full time, one part time) who share a house and a life at the corner of SE Madison and 50th have created a yard full of art and neighborhood involvement. Four artists a year create shadowbox installations for the outdoor art display - and it looks like I'll get to do one next Spring! Right now, though, the featured artist is Malaina Guzman, and the piece is wonderful.







Here, you can see the shrine in context - complete with Marigolds - as well as a marvelous detail of some of the handmade figures. The shrine is up through December 10th, so definitely come by if you can! (PS - couldn't find a website for Mad/50 or the current artist - don't think they have one, but if they do, let me know what it is!)

The most exciting thing this week though is two openings on Friday, November 2nd - One: the Dia de los Muertos show at the Linn-Benton Community College in Albany, OR and the other: the Celebration of Souls show at Sixth Street Gallery in Vancouver, WA. Both shows feature some of my encaustic work and promise to be very fun shows for those of you interested in the traditions of the Day of the Dead . . . to find out more about both shows, check out my website here. There's even a few links to more info about Day of the Dead, if you're curious . . .

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!

The inspiration for this . . .

I've been thinking about doing this for a very long time. I love the idea of sharing what's going on in the world of my artmaking and creative life, and connecting to a whole community of other making-type people. But sometimes things just have to incubate. Stay warm in the shell before they break out. Now, I've finished grad school, and I'm moved into my new studio, and I've had a month off to start really making things again, and it's just time to come out my shell.

I went with a friend last night to watch the Vaux's swifts gather at sunset at the Chapman School chimney here in Portland. There were these wonderful gentle pulses - thousands of birds swooping in towards the chimney (where they all nest), then dispersing, then swooping in, a few spiraling funneling into the chimney, the rest dispersing out . . . So cool, and it went on for 45 minutes, like the chimney was gently breathing the swifts in and out, sucking a few more in with each breath. I've been doing so many things with images of birds lately that it really resonated with me . . . birds are all about freedom and home . . . lovely contradictions. I made this shrine, which I call "Stirred," from an actual barn swallow nest that a friend saved for me . . . I love how the little bird has two mugs of coffee (hard to tell they're mugs in the picture, and they could be tea, but let's say for the sake of argument that they're Stumptown coffee). It says so much to me about what I want home to be. And then I start thinking that I really don't want to analyze it that much! Anyway - if you want to see it in person, it'll be on display at the 100th Monkey Studio here in Portland as part of their October "Transitions" show. It's my first show in a very long time - I love that feeling of momentum.