Silver Clay is Cool!

 I spent this past weekend selling my jewelry and prints at the Buckman Art Show and Sell, a fabulous annual fundraiser for the only Arts Elementary Magnet School in Portland. My silver jewelry was of great interest to my customers, because the details and textures you can get in a small, intimate scale are almost like little prints and tiny things always charm people! I love the metal clay work for this reason--it is akin to printmaking, a discipline I am in love with and am continuing to learn about in my 2-year Fine Art Certificate Program at Pacific Northwest College of Art, here in Portland, Oregon. Currently I am taking an etching class, learning about the techniques the old masters used to make intimate and intricate artworks that we still admire and emulate today.  

When I form a lump of Metal Clay into a piece of silver jewelry, I start by rolling out the clay to make a flat ground, much like a prepared substrate for the printing press. Onto this surface I push textured material from diverse sources, including rubber stamps, polymer or fiber. In this sense, I am working the surface into an intaglio print, with the indented surfaces being able to take a darkening agent, or patina, so that the image or texture comes into sharper focus. The result is a miniature etching, a small piece of unique art, because each image is printed individually and is one of a kind. Each time I press my texture into the clay, a different result happens.   The piece pictured in this blog post is a thistle, one of my favorite flowers. The thistle is the symbol of Scotland, where I spent a semester in college. The thistle and other wildflowers feature in my artwork regularly. I was happy when I found I had an old rubber stamp with the image of a Celtic tree, including thistles, a bird of paradise and other flora & fauna (I love using that phrase!). I use this texture plate frequently since there are so many little areas from which I can grab a texture. Do you see which thistle I used?

Portrait Night at Drawing 101

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It wasn't just me that was sweating this evening after all! I got to the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) on a rainy night and found that nearly all of the 10 or so adult students taking Kurt Holloman's Beginning Drawing Perceptions class were rather dreading the evening with our first live model. It's one thing to attempt to draw a vase or a lamp. Those objects, when drawn using some of the left brain's devilishly rote ideas about the subject, can simply look a bit "off". But in drawing a portrait or, more difficult, the whole figure, the lapse in careful observation becomes very obvious. We know what a human should look like, we are observing them everyday all day in close quarters and have been looking at faces and their expressions since we were babies. My efforts to draw the face previously have been somewhat successful and I have been encouraged during the first 5 classes of this course to continue my pursuit of drawing. I am contemplating following this effort into the world of painting.    

One thing I have noticed during the brief time that I have made looking and seeing and drawing a priority is the way I look at the faces and figures around me. I am looking for a sense of mass and shape, line and expression. I effort to slow down and observe the details and individuality of what I am looking at, really seeing someone or something and not simply drawing what my automatic or "left brain" sees based on habit, judgement or simple inattention. This new emphasis on attention and reportage of details infuses everything I do with a sense of the artistic beauty that exists within the human form and in the human spirit.   In the depth of winter, there is still presence and power of line and shadow all around. This elemental beauty in a time of darkness reminds me of the utter beauty that flowed from the tortured soul of Vincent Van Gogh and how he sold one solitary painting during his lifetime but felt compelled to paint and draw the beautiful world and ordinary people around him. And oh what paintings he did!I will keep drawing and painting until I am old because I want to see the world as it really is and honor it with my attention.  

Drawing 101

Kurt Hollomon's poms-in-december

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I started a Beginning Drawing Perception Skills this week at Pacific Northwest College of Art and wow, am I worked up! I have drawn here and there before, and have even taken a weekend drawing class but somehow I feel more ready this time. Taking a class at the local art college feels like I am making a commitment to myself to practice and to learn from someone in person whose work I admire--a mentor. Something about my teacher, Kurt Hollomon, and his passion for the quiet pursuit of drawing really reaches me.    The above illustration is my instructor's ball jar drawing and below is mine from earlier this summer, pre-drawing class.   I have always had a terrible lack of confidence when it came to drawing, not having been one of those "naturally talented ones" early on who get a lot of praise and then gather more confidence and go on to practice more. I am a creative person and very visually observant, but I simply haven't had the goal of practicing my drawing on a regular basis. During the past 10 years I have spent more time nurturing my visual perception abilities and have watched my mother-in-law, Peggy, grow from an absolute beginner in her early 50's to a talented portraiture artist.     Her example has taught me that it's never too late to learn a skill that will bring a lifetime of enjoyment. With practice and some encouragement, anyone can learn the tricks and techniques necessary to depict an object or person more or less realistically.   Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, a classic book by Betty Edwards is a great place to start for simple exercises. Some of my other influences in terms of opening my eyes to the elegant beauty of drawing have been Paul Klee, Danny Gregory, who is a wonderful instructor through his books on sketching and creativity, and Egon Schiele, an Austrian artist whose expressive drawings and paintings pretty much reach the apex of human sensitivity. Even Vincent Van Gogh, an artist who nobody doubts had control over his pencil, questioned his own ability to draw. He got over that fear to produce some pretty nice work.   I made another drawing today and I hope to do a new drawing three or four times a week. You can't get good at anything unless you do it at least that much, or so I have heard. I am pretty sure I won't write when I am having a hard time of it, as Kurt has promised will absolutely happen. Look for reports on my successes!