Studio Time!

After an intense four weeks of teaching summer school (Art Appreciation) I am so ready to get back in the studio! Not that I ever really left, but I didn't have any big blocks of time to spend painting so my forays to the studio were more spririt-refreshing than actually productive.

I've eased back in the past few days, and while I don't have any momentous masterpieces in progress, I thought I'd give you some glimpses of my studio. Then in a few weeks I'll show you some works in progress, or maybe even complete.

When we bought our property my studio was a run-down two-car garage being used as a place to work on engines. Everything was covered with grease and spiderwebs; with only two small windows it was a dark creepy place with insects scuttling about, not to mention the rodents, and the snakes in pursuit of the rodents. Transforming this building into a space that feels so right to me has been a source of great happiness.

The sculpture I see right outside my French doors is by Tedd Pettibon, formerly of Huntsville. It's three red bowling bowls on rebar and I love it!

This is the front door, with Minerva the sentinel standing guard. I went to Frazier's (You haven't been? Omigod -- you have to go!) looking for some kind of statue. I liked Minerva right away, but she's the goddess of war, and I'm SO not into war. I kept trying to find something else, and I kept coming back to her. So, OK, she's a little warlike. To me she's a strong female.

I'm a semi-organized person, overlaid with a veneer of sloppiness. I'll admit -- sometimes, and in some places, that veneer can get pretty thick! I subscribe to the theory that if the studio is totally organized, not much creativity is going on. There's probably no truth to that at all, but it makes me feel a little better about the array of stuff.

I do have quite an array, some of it having nothing to do with artmaking, but things I just like to have around. Actually every single thing is meaningful to me in some way. Before I had my dog Sparky, I had a Westie for fourteen years, my sainted Dinah. That black blob on the right is the sweater she's wearing in the little picture.

My apologies for the poor quality of this photo. I just got a new camera -- a Nikon Coolpix SX70, and I think I love it! All these pictures were taken on the auto-for-dummies setting, and after I get the basics worked out, learning how to deal with different light situations should follow. Above are shown some of my bluebirds, a bit of mosaic backsplash, and my wonderful paulaart vase. (You can see MUCH better photos of her work by clicking on the link!)

Below shows the window on the opposite wall, with a few treasured objects.

The little painting was done by my best bud Ann Marie. It's from a photo of us taken, oh, about a hundred years ago. Actually it was the early 80's that she painted this for me.

Here's a glimpse of another artwork where I am the subject/model, this time by good friend Susie Harrison of Fort Worth, who does amazing work, usually with charcoal, but this one is colored pencil. Not quite as old...from the 90's.

My maiden name is Kraft, and I have quite the collection of anything Kraft! I bet you didn't know there was a Kraft Barbie! Most of this stuff I bought at least ten years ago on ebay.

So, no art to share -- yet! I have images in my head, and a few starts on paper, or I could show you a bunch of old stuff! In five days I'm leaving for a ten day jaunt to West Texas with Ann Marie -- Fort Davis, Marfa, and Alpine, with layovers in Wimberly and San Angelo. Our friend Peggy Nino is teaching in San Angelo, and currently in a show there, so I'm looking forward to catching up with her and seeing new work. I've got this week to work in the studio, and then won't be artmaking while I'm gone (other than taking many photos), but I'm looking forward to being pumped up with West Texas inspiration when I get back!

My Studio: Before and After

So I haven't been creating much art in the last few months for several reasons. One is that I've been concentrating on the marketing aspect -- something that's been neglected for most of my art career. So lately I've been on the computer making an Etsy shop, starting this blog, reading the blogs of other artists, creating business cards. etc. etc. Another reason is that other stuff always gets in the way -- my teaching, Master Gardener activities, yoga, my dog, and let's even go back to Christmas and blame that too. But probably the main reason is that my studio has descended into a godawful mess where I can't find anything I'm looking for, and there are not clean surfaces to work on. See exhibit A above.

So when I'd think about going out to my studio, then I'd remember that first I would have to clean up before I could ever get anything creative going. I would tell myself to just clean a little area, and then everytime I'm out there, just do a little more. I used to like to go out there even if I wasn't going to paint or make a collage -- I'd just sit out there in my comfy pink-striped chair and read a good book or some art magazines, or listen to music, or whatever -- and just enjoy my beautiful space. But I started noticing that I just didn't want to go out there at all, and that is NOT a good thing. I'm not sure how this happens...how the mess gets so out of hand. But it's certainly not the first time! I was about to leave for Slaton, and I didn't want to go out there and hopefully get pumped up about making art, and then come home and lose all my motivation because I couldn't work in my space.
This called for drastic measures!

So I hired my friend Paula to help me. She came the day after I got back from Slaton so there would be no time to get unmotivated. She was the perfect person for the job. She was actually looking for little cleaning/organizing jobs so I wasn't asking her to do something she didn't want to do. She's an artist so she understands my frustration and she has respect for my materials and my stuff. She's pretty ruthless and helped me get rid of stuff that was taking up space that had little meaning or relevance to my art. She was great about asking questions like "What would you think about moving that piece of furniture over to the other side of the room?" or "How useful is this to you where you have it?" or "How long have you had this anyway?" without being TOO pushy.

That box of exotic wood veneers from around the world that I've had since 1973 and have never used for anything? Chucked it. The sketchbooks from my Art Appreciation class from two semesters ago? Bye bye! The huge bag of lace that I was maybe going to use someday to apply textures to paintings? Taking it to Bluebonnet to sell for next to nothing.

This is one of my problems -- my studio is a multi-use space. I not only use it for creating art, but it's also a holding area for stuff i.e. antiques, collectibles, and junque that I'm going to take to Bluebonnet Square Antiques, an antique mall in Huntsville where I sell this stuff. Well, I sell some of it. My booth there is sometimes fondly referred to as "my museum" where the public is welcome to come and admire my very cool stuff. So all of that stuff has been moved to one area, and the last week of April is my target for getting as much as possible inventoried and into the shop. Here you can see two pictures of the same area -- before and after -- that really illustrate the magic worked by Paula.

We didn't get totally finished on that Monday but ran out of time. But a huge amount was accomplished! I still have boxes of stuff to sort through and purge and/or organize, but I can do that in my own time and that stuff is no longer in the way preventing me from working. It's slightly pathetic that I need to involve another person in cleaning up my mess, but we had fun and now it's done and I have no regrets! THANK YOU PAULA!!!

Gridded Images

I've played around with gridded images for several years, both in my own art and in assignments for students. In my Design class at Lone Star College for several semesters my students did portraits in pen and ink using a grid, where each square had a design of some kind. The designs had to be carefully planned to match the values of the photograph for there to be any kind of resemblance. I thought this was pretty much fun and did a few self-portraits of my own, at first using simple designs -- closely packed curved lines, geometric shapes, shapes that were organic but nonrepresentational. Then I wondered if it would work to use designs with representational images -- animals, plants, seashells, etc -- and yes, it did. Ink was used for some of the portraits, but the image shown here, Facescape, (34" x 26") is in watercolor. The images are a little subtle to be seen at this size. This piece was shown in 2007 at the Watercolor Art Society of Houston Membership Show.

In 2009 I was asked to design a tee shirt for The Woodlands Earth Day Festival. Their theme was "it's all connected," and they wanted an image of the earth. In brainstorming ideas for the design I got excited about doing a gridded image of the earth, made up of little drawings representing life on earth -- animals, plants, trees, insects, flowers, water, and other symbols. The small images all working together to create the overall picture of the earth seemed a fine way to illustrate the theme of connectedness. The size of the image was 14" x 14", with 196 one-inch squares, each with a unique image. The medium used was black ink. The result was quite effective, and not only tee shirts were made, but also 250 limited edition prints. The sad conclusion of the story is that Earth Day 2009 was rained out! Some of the tee shirts and prints were sold at later events, and the remainder will be sold at Earth Day 2010.



The image above is my design for Earth Day 2010 in The Woodlands. The black and white version for 2009 turned out so well that I wanted to see how something similar would look in watercolor. This one, Fragile Planet, has the same number of squares but they are 2" x 2" so the overall size of the image is 28" x 28". Some of my favorite images from the smaller version are repeated, but about two thirds of the images are new. I kept a list while I worked, mainly to make sure equal billing was given to mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, fish and other sea creatures, trees, flowers, plants, and symbols representing water, sky, and humans. This endeavor took about six months to complete. (Years ago I narrowed my focus to watercolor as my medium so I could see quick results, but it seems patience comes with age!)

It's my intention to celebrate the diversity of life on earth, and emphasize that our planet is indeed fragile. The dying out of the frogs or the bees or the polar bears affects all life on earth -- it really is all connected.

In March I will be one of three featured artists at the Linda Watson Gallery in Conroe, Texas for the show titled "Go Green." My friend Paula is also featured, with her fabulous sculptures and clocks made of found materials. I will be showing watercolors of nature including Fragile Planet. Prints will be available for sale at the show, as well as at The Woodlands Earth Day Festival on April 10, and also on my Etsy page.