installation week

Exhibition: "just turn your head a little"

by Frances Vettergreen and Verna Vogel 

March 2 - April 13, 2019

Work in progress:
my installation artworks with Frances' paintings.

Frances and I brought her paintings last weekend, and then I spent the week at the Leighton Art Centre, conceiving, creating and installing most of my work on location.

In the main gallery:
my hanging drawings move with the slightest change in air currents, 
such as those made by the movement of people in the gallery.

All my pieces, by concept and by materials, relate to the LAC in some way.

The hanging drawings of trees intertwined with circles were created by dipping twigs and branches in ink, and hung from a branch at the top.  This reflects the beautifully treed environment around the house, and the cycles of nature.

First wall piece: tea-dyed paper

The circle on the far wall was created with tea-dyed office paper.  This reflects the fact that the late Barbara Leighton liked to offer her guests tea, and also the current work of administrative staff at the Art Centre.

Second wall piece: strings and stones.

A circle created with strings and stones reflects the the simultaneously energized and peaceful feeling that pervades the property and house.

Third wall piece, in the hallway.

A multi-circular piece reflects the undulating landscape and mountains, as well as a light sense of playfulness, which I believe would resonate with Barbara Leighton as evidenced in her own artwork.

There is a fourth wall piece which uses sections of tree roots.  No photo yet, but it is reminiscent of music, and the tree roots indicate that what lies underneath the surface is very important for understanding the history of a place.

Reflections: the hanging drawings in action.

Conceiving and creating these pieces inside the gallery has been very fulfilling for me.  It's been like a mini artist residency.

Warm thanks to the very fine folks at the LAC (including the "spirit of Barbara Leighton") for allowing me to take over the house this week!

just turn your head a little

Things are feeling a bit hectic right now, as I prepare to install my part of the exhibition at the Leighton Art Centre.  I have prepared ahead some ink drawings, and will balance them with string drawings throughout the gallery, which are unplanned and will be created on the spot.

As you can see, I have opted for tree imagery incorporated with circles.  :)

above: studies, approx. 12x24"

below: finished drawings, 24x40"

These drawings have been made with twigs dipped in ink, on various types of surfaces.  I do love the slightly uncontrolled quality of the line work with this technique.

Here is a link to my latest newsletter, with information about the exhibition and a couple of other things.

Thanks as always for your interest, dear Reader!

turn, turn, turn

I've been able to spend a lot of time painting in the last month.

Several projects on the go, with deadlines coming up soon...

work in progress: based on the Mawson plan

for exhibition with Art Calgary

at Calgary's new Central Public Library

another exploration of Mawson plan

work in progress: Kama oil sticks on Arches oil paper

work in progress: Kama oil sticks on stretched canvas

under and on top of oil paint layers

_________________________________

And now my studio is turned over to "intallation mode"

Artist Frances Vettergreen and I are collaborating

for upcoming exhibition at the Leighton Art Center

preliminary explorations: ink drawings on paper

The thing with creating installation artworks, for me, is to allow the work to respond to the space.  I don't want to just impose my thing, you know?  The Leighton Art Centre is located in the foothills of Alberta.  Rolling landscape with copses of poplar trees and more densely wooded areas, and also open vistas and wetlands.  Thus, my plan for this exhibition is to create tree-feeling things and river-feeling things.  

I also want to use materials found in those areas, such as twigs dipped in ink to make drawings, as above.  Which by the way will NOT be displayed on the walls.  Curious?  Come out and see!  (or wait for the blog post with photos of finished installation)  :)

I will find ways to also incorporate my circles throughout the work, because circular imagery is so important to me, and relates very much to the landscape in balance.

walking above the river near my home in the evening

daylight hours increasing rapidly

And later this week I'll be doing some workshops 

for the Calgary City Teachers Convention at the Arts Commons.

Life feels very busy and very fun right now.

and so a new year begins

It's been a long time, hasn't it.  Well, apart from the previous post which I put together in November, but only just posted a few minutes ago.  

Our sole computer kaputzed in mid-December.  Rather than hastily buy a new one we decided to get the old one fixed, and then we had to wait for a part, because it's hard to source parts for older computers.  Our wonderful tech person eventually found the necessary part and was able to fix our computer for a fraction of the cost of a new machine.  How lucky is that?  Very grateful we are.

Overall we were without a computer for about 3 weeks.  No screen, relying on our creative minds to keep occupied sans the go-to of the interwebs... it was bliss!!  But really only because it was during xmas, with the pace of life (and work) slowed down.  Now we are very happy to have everything back up and running, and I am finally making another blog post.  (However also thinking that taking a week offline here and there might be a good practice to develop.)

So...  a few studio shots, shall we?

First thing this year I pulled everything off my painting rack, all those half-finished paintings, some of which have languished there many moons.  Time to put the poor old things out of their misery, yes?  And I did.

Because I am that kind of nostalgic, I photographed the backs of some before destroying them.  Believe me, this drawing on the back is far more interesting than what was happening on the front.

New canvases on the old stretcher frames: grounds built, drawings begun.

Excitement!

That was January 2nd.

This week, a few finished, perhaps...

finished for now. :)

Future Exhibition:

In March/April 2019, my friend Frances Vettergreen and I will show our work together at the Leighton Art Centre.  I'll be making another string drawing installation, with a few further elements to be developed.  More excitement!

Tension : No Tension at Artpoint Upstairs Gallery, 2018

I have proposed a 5-hour workshop day in conjunction with the exhibition.  It is to be an exploration of sensory perceptions together with some fun art-making processes.  I've never done a full-day workshop before and am very eager to try it, hoping enough people sign up that it can run.

I will be making a newsletter about this exhibition/workshop and other things, in the next few weeks.  Stay tuned!

And thank you, as always, for reading my blog.  :)

The balance of November:

November 2018 I was engaged with quite a lot of teaching.

Here are a few of the projects...

3D Abstract Art

Grade 5

In a nutshell, one way to create abstract artwork: 

Begin with a simple shape, then respond to that shape, trying various angles and approaches to add (or remove!) the next bit.  Repeat, until you have something you like.  Your body's innate sense of balance will help you to know when it's right.

For this project, we made a unifying factor: each student's work had to have some sort of face somewhere on it.

Day 1: use cardboard to build forms

Day 2: apply papier-mache

Day 3: paint

Day 4: create exhibition

Hanging and lighting the pieces transformed them!

Our art gallery space was about 18x18 feet, contained on two sides with heavy black stage curtains, and a shadow screen at the front.

The white back wall was left exposed, to reflect the coloured lighting we used.

The class came up with a fun title for their exhibition

and they wrote about their work

it seems some students really got the "think through your hands" idea  :)

Collage + Drawing

Grade 2

I taught this several times with various parameters

here, to create mostly-2D images

with a focus on prairie imagery

 Crankie Project

Grade 4

Here, collage + drawing to create a scrolling image for a crankie box.  Before taking on this project I did not know what a crankie was.  But then I learned, and built two crankies out of two old dresser drawers, a few pieces of dowelling and a bit of simple hardware.

Here is the larger crankie box in action, with the not-quite-finished image scroll.

A few kinks to work out, as you can see from that awkward bit in the middle.  Turned out the collage was very thick and bulky in that spot, but I was able to pare it back some, and in the end the crankie functioned quite smoothly.

The full image scroll was 15" x 12 yards.

The Bottle Project

Grade 4

...of which I have no images except this one:

2L pop bottles being washed in my tub the day before the class.

This was an interesting project, to create art with detritus that goes well beyond the "pile of garbage as installation artwork" one still sometimes sees in galleries.  

I encouraged the students to really explore the aesthetic possibilities of cutting the bottles, drawing on them and inside them, filling them with various things, gluing them together, creating hanging chains of bottles, etc.

Another aim of this project was to address the reality of street bottle pickers who use this same detritus to earn income, to acknowledge that they are human beings who perform a vital function in their work.

The students' work was eventually installed outdoors as a temporary public art piece.

I also taught several Grade 3 printmaking and mask-making classes in November.  It's a pity I did not take photos, because I got the students to push these projects beyond what I usually do with them, and of course they surpassed their own (and my) expectations in doing so.  Sometimes I get so involved in the class that I forget about taking pictures!  C'est la vie, next time I will remember.  :)

...................

I've been enjoying being back to work in my studio this month, and will write more about it in my next post here.

Thank you as always for reading!

staying sane

One way to stay sane

when I can't get into my studio

is to work in a sketchbook

at the kitchen table

this book measures 5x7"

50 pages, almost filled

working like mad

I have been working like mad in my studio these last few weeks.

A spate of teaching looms ahead, which will monopolize my focus for the next three weeks.

  Being a person of slow shifts, I have never quite got the hang of teaching one day, painting the next, then back to teaching, etc.

It'll be great fun to work with the kids again, and afterwards I will return to my studio with a renewed energy.

Until next time, dear Reader  :)

piece-a-crap kind of day

Tried a new-to-me technique today on an old piece-a-crap oil painting.

Mix a black...

... well it's supposed to be black but I'm out of ultramarine blue so I used prussian blue instead and it went quite green, but OK no problem.

Old ugly painting gets obliterated, ahhhh...  *grin*

Rub most of it off with a rag (this was the new-to-me part).

Draw through residue a little bit with finger in same rag.

Those loose shapes over the precise geometry, hmmm. 

Kinda liking that.

End of day, glued some stuff to an old piece-a-crap acrylic painting.

It was a very satisfying piece-a-crap kind of day in the studio.

:)