I’ve taken art classes since I was… grasshopper.

Some were drawing classes. Some were painting classes. Some were ceramic and/or sculpture classes. I don’t remember being taught in ANY of them, how, when, or where to sign a three-dimensional piece. In fact, when I was in design school learning to create things for people to buy and use – “products,” I was taught to think of myself as anonymous hands connected to a mind’s eye; the manufacturer could brand, but I daren’t attach my name.

Now that I practice as a sculptor, mostly of figurative work, I’ve noticed (in retrospect) that at no time, in any class, was mentioned my signing and numbering. In painting classes, yes; in sculpting classes, never. I remember an anecdotal story of Michelangelo, I think, sneaking into a Papal chapel to sign a sculpture to assert its provenance.

I wonder:
What ARE the customs, the expectations, the “correct” procedures and content for today’s sculptors. Who teaches these? When? Where?

I am one of the featured artists in the 2010 Unclad Exhibition in Stanwood WA.

I’m so excited that I’ve been over-investing myself in mold compounds for days!
The website has all the works of the 108 artists represented this year from all over the USA, but my entry is on this page: http://www.uncladart.com/nggallery/page-7/page-4/

The figure, Mwindo, respresents my first in a series of characters from the Clyde Ford book, Hero With An African Face, whose father, Shemwindo has decreed that no child of his many wives is to be a son. Mwindo is therefore an abomination and a miracle.

The show opens March 13 and runs till March 28, 2010

Here’s the map:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=8700+271st+St+NW+Stanwood+WA+98292&ie=UTF8&om=1&hq=&hnear=8700+271st+St+NW,+Stanwood,+Snohomish,+Washington+98292&ll=48.244568,-122.351389&spn=0.063447,0.118446&z=13

I haven’t typed here in months. I am NOT a big blogger… big on blogging… whatever. and I have enough trouble lately trying to explain to myself what I’m doing, plan to be doing, WANT to be doing.
Patience, please. I’ll get better; I always have

I have the kernel of a PLAN for this year. We’ll see.

More, Later…

I’m not sure when we’ll do a show again.

It was quite an experience. I can say that the show itself, The Kirkland Art Studio Tour (KAST), was a great experience! I want to publicly thank my friend Nicki Smith for inviting me to show with her at her studio site. What a hostess!

We had fun, and met many many, really nice people (and I had so many chances to laugh and talk). Many friends came out to say hello too! Great!

We were so ‘wore out’ afterwards I couldn’t even cry.
We left the parking lot later and even forgot my car until we got home. Setup, Show, Take-down.

The most important thing, since we didn’t really sell much, was testing the market and listening to would-be customers/patrons. I’ll keep you posted on what changes and what works.

Jocelyn and I are, still at 2AM, preparing things for the Kirkland Art Studio Tour.  

It has been a hectic three weeks of preparation, and I don’t think I like it. I like doing the work. I should work at this pace much of the time, but I don’t. What I have trouble with, what drives me to scream with anger and frustration is the iterative conformation – doing over and over again the interrupting chores required for successful selling – how much, how many, how to show, how to describe, how to/when to/where to promote, and cetera, and cetera.

Of course I don’t know yet whether it will BE successful selling or merely hopeful marketing. The same, or at least a similar uncertainty surrounds the creation of the art itself, but I seldom chafe at the artistic uncertainty whereas I rave against the nuisances of the mercenary. 

Poor Jocelyn. 

All the work has brought inspiration to new projects – a couple paintings, a sculpture or two, and

More, later… 

I promised to post more, regularly. I will.

Thanks to Sharon for prodding me into another post.I draw all the time. I think about painting… all the time. I think I agree with Jocelyn, that it’s an experienced ’skill’ thing. When I draw there is seldom much difference between what I meant to ’say/show’ and what is evident from the work. My paintings don’t yet measure up to that standard as often as I’d like. Therefore I do fewer paintings because they ‘worry’ me with their lack of congruency.

Anyone who, as an adult, has studied a new language should recognize the experience. In the beginning, pronunciation is so poor and vocabulary so small that you don’t talk much – there’s all that ‘judgement’ out there (and all that ego in here). However, when our children are learning language, we think their mistakes are cute. We laugh or smile, and so do they.

When we, as adults, can only string simple words together, often incorrectly, our egos are wounded by the laughter even when we survive the scrutiny. I think we encounter some of the same hurdles as we develop art skills.

The trick, I’m beginning to understand, is to come from behind the ego and blurt out all those sincere mispronunciations and misunderstandings we commit to canvas and board, and enjoy the attention while we absorb the corrections.

Well, here it is February 2008, and I really am going to post regularly. This entry, though short, is already my second post this year.

Several plants from my garden of artists (that’s a retro-interpretation of “cohorts”) have become successful participants in this year’s Unclad Exhibition: Ellen Borison, Joe Mac Kechnie, Dan Riley, Lisa Seminoff, Lee Berry, Linda Demtre, Lyla Jacobsen, Diana Shyne, Barbara Fugate, and prolly a few others I haven’t mentioned only because I don’t vex them as regularly as I do these.

Congratulations All! 

I’m back to the ’stones’ project as well as a new wax figure (I’ve also still got the ‘old’ project waiting for completion) using Heather as model, even though I haven’t completed the earlier figure.

I took a successful workshop from Diana Shyne last month, and because of it I have three acrylic backgrounds started for new pastels I’ve planned.

More, later…

I’m still working on the ’stones’ project, but I’m also working two wax figures I want to cast in glass. I am, of course, behind. I will paint tonight and sculpt tomorrow, then blog later in the week. Promise. This blog thing is not easy and I’m still learning how to produce steadily.

When I used to write a newsletter, I ended each installment as I’ll end this blog entry, with the phrase, “More, later…”

I’m still working on the same project – glass ’stones’ – but for the next 2-3 days I’m installing, with a few friends, an art exhibit at The Gardens in Bellevue. I’ll update at least at the end of the week with, maybe, some photos. 

I’m also a sculptor.
…
Well, I want to be. I’ve been creating small projects, not many, for a few years now as I also try to learn more about drawing and painting.I’m trying to finish a project, creating glass pocket pieces, that was instigated by Kelly at Fusions Gallery in Ocean Shores. It is much more captivating and time-consuming than the drawings I had been working on. I like the complex problem-solving involved in creating and using molds and the kiln to form glass into art.

The experience:

Sunday
I created several pieces in wax, then started what I hoped would be the simple task of creating efficient molds to use in my studio kiln to produce the pieces. The first attempt was… too ambitious. The second failed miserably, the third…

Well, you get the picture.

I lost blood (carving and drilling tools are sharp!) and sleep. Inspiration almost never comes before the middle of a firing or the middle of a nightmare – whichever (sometimes both) you’re engaged in at the oddest time of day/night. I didn’t draw on ‘the exercises’ project at all, though I thought about it often and kept a couple of the drawings on my easel as goads.

I’m using wax for the models; plaster and wood, and paper, and plastic for the molds.
The first mold was made in C-asta-lot but I soon broke it trying to get it to work (I never got it hot enough).
I finally called Olympic Color Rods to get advice and they told me “Make it hotter.” Duh! ☺
I decided to make molds of plaster till I get it right (plaster is a whole lot cheaper than C-asta-lot) so now I’ve created about four different (2- and 3-part) molds, made copious illustrated notes in my notebook, and taken dozens of photos. I’m ready. Now. To make glass… in a couple days?

But I don’t have any drawings ready for Monday’s critiquing session, so I’ll take some pages of photos to show what I’ve been doing for the last week.

The Lesson:

It’s good to go!

Drawing and painting are the same thing if you believe them to be so… maybe.

We talked briefly about my photos.
We talked at length about Isabel’s, Pat’s and Ellen’s paintings. I discovered that I don’t know very much about painting. It was a good day!

Some time ago I decided, after some thinking about my past artistic and design experiences, and about what I liked doing, that sculpting was #1, drawing was #2, and that painting in pastels was close enough to drawing that I’d enjoy it most of any painting I might do. I draw all the time. I use more charcoal than anybody I know. Some weeks I use more than a single newsprint pad of paper. I carry several dozens of pastels to drawing sessions every week.

Today, I realized that for me the activity called ‘painting’ is different than it is for others. I really think of drawing and painting as somehow separate activities and not everyone does that. Though I know that I could paint with charcoal, I never think to do so. Even when I fill a page with charcoal as tone, it’s in support of line work.

I suppose that I think of the meaning of ‘drawing’ as very close to its use as ‘extracting from’ or ‘pull’ or even ‘derive’. Perhaps to draw is to extract from a source an impression of its likeness and to express that as a graphic image. Likewise, I think of ‘painting’ as very close to its use as ‘covering with color’ – so ‘cover’ a space with a colored expression of a source. I may not have good definitions of either. I do know that I think of the activities differently and that I am less free with paint tools and media than I am with drawing equipment. But I also have less apprenticery (not mastery) of painting than I feel I have of drawing.

I wondered, “what does a real painter think? How?”

What I said was that I think that the internalizing of principals and practices was important so that, effectively, those things – composition, balance, asymmetry, value, color, accuracy, etc. ad nauseum – become thoughtless results of practice. A real painter doesn’t THINK about those things in any direct sense until after(!) the painting is done. The reason for practice, practice, practice for the painter is the same as it is for the musician – to hone the tools to an edge with which they always perform as desired in the hands of the artist, to project the emotions, the will, that drives the image forth. We continue to practice those things so that absence of mastery is never an issue (oh yeah?).

The outcome will be as individual as a voice and as powerful or sweet as a canon shot or an aria (oh yeah).

Then do Picasso and Rockwell both produce… music (oh)? If so, how so?(yeah)