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!

Creepy Lighthouse DIY

The weather was amazing at the beach last weekend - and end-of-the-season summery sun means walks on the beach! We wandered by the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse, its light first lit in 1871.

The lighthouse was only used for three years - then, they built another taller lighthouse with a more powerful light at Yaquina Head. Both lighthouses have tons of ghost stories associated with them, but this delightfully creepy DIY project on display at Yaquina Bay is better than all of those stories put together:


In this frame is a cross, covered with delicately braided decorations . . .


Decorations made of human hair! And maybe even horse hair. It was popular during the Victorian era to make decorative keepsakes and even wearable mementos and jewelry from the hair of the dearly departed . . . as well as the alive and beloved. You can learn more about it here or here.

I also picked up this cool postcard, circa 1915, of early surfer girls (and guys)! Maybe their great-grandmothers made hair jewelry. And who knows, maybe one of their great-great-granddaughters will offer a class in it at the next Oregon Art & Soul art retreat!


I'll have more to share with you about this year's Art & Soul over the next few days . . . stay tuned!

At the Beach

Last weekend, Darren (aka, the Sweetie) and I went to the beach . . . we went specifically to see this:
It was an exhibit entirely of weird sea life at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Darren and I walked from our B & B across this bridge . . .

And arrived here!

Sadly, none of my pictures of the weird fish came out very well . . . like lionfish and horned cowfish. The exhibit was awesome! But I got a few cool pictures of other sea critters . . . like these two wolf eels hiding in a little crevice together . . .

Or the lovely jellyfish . . .

or these funny little shrimpie/prawnie guys . . .

Or the starfish and the anemones in the tidepool together . . .

I love the colors and the shapes and how even normal sea creatures look kind of "weird."

An Experiment

I can't remember where I found the link to this great rolling pin fabric printing tutorial on Craft Chi, but I finally got around to trying it a few weeks ago! I cut craft foam into a pattern and glued it to a rolling pin . . .


Then I inked it up with thinned fabric paint, and rolled the pattern onto the fabric, once in each direction . . . Amazingly, it really looks like coral! It will be a nifty background for something ocean-inspired.

A quick "hello" and some philosophical questions . . .

First, a little distracting eye candy to get us in a warm, summery mood:


Ok, so things have been a bit crazy here, and I've got six or seven posts in my head that I haven't gotten out yet, and I've even been resorting to a little post-dating on some of my blog entries to try and keep them close to the dates when they "should've" been posted (like this one dated September 25th and actually published sometime er, later) . . .

But there's just no getting around this one. Back in August, while it was still summer, the marvelous Sister Diane of DIY Alert, your local Portland guide to all things arty and crafty and do-it-yourself-like, interviewed me for the DIY Alert blog's PDX Profiles. It was a lot of fun, and I've been meaning to do a thank you shout-out to Diane - and then she sent me the link to that great pickle recipe in the comment section of this post, leaving me even more indebted. The interview got me thinking about serious questions like the difference between art and craft . . .

For me, the line between art and craft is pretty blurry . . . they’re both verbs in my book. Craft is the method and quality of the making; the art is in the meaning it holds and conveys.

So, here are the two big philosophical questions for today's (not post-dated) post:

Is post-dating blog posts morally suspect?
What do you see as the difference between art and craft?

Feel free to comment on one or both, or simply to ponder in lurking silence . . . (we'll address the issue of lurking on another day . . .).

Until then, I'm going to bribe you with a little more eye candy from this summer's trip to Whidbey Island: