Learning by Immersion

I signed up for a seminar on Color that began five weeks ago, and I have learned a lot about color and remembered a lot about color that I knew and had forgotten about.  

Most surprising of all, I found that studying and absorbing all of the material and getting the homework done is a lot harder than it was when I was in my 20s, even in a subject matter that I really care about.

Coincidentally, at the end of January the local museum announced that there would be an exhibit of original works by Monet, Degas and Pissaro as well as some lithographs each of them did in collaboration with George William Thornley.  I was really excited by the idea of getting to see some art in person after months of confinement (and having missed the big Monet exhibit at the Denver Museum of Art that was in place this time last year).

Yesterday my daughter and I donned our masks and went in at our assigned time to see the exhibit. 

 At first impression I have only two words:  Oh, WOW!!!!

This piece, titled "River and Mill Near Giverny" was painted by Claude Monet in 1885.  It has  the same soft atmospheric colors that many of his paintings from that year that were painted in Giverny have.  It almost feels like there was fog from the river that made him actually see the colors this way.

This piece is a pastel by Edgar Degas from 1896, titled "Seated Dancer".  I had seen several oil paintings of dancers done by Degas, but this was the first time I became aware that he had done so many pieces in pastels or charcoals.  The color is a bit different from his oils -- almost more intense, especially the backgrounds.

 

"The House in the Woods", painted by Camille Pissaro in 1872.  I had never seen one of his pieces other than as a photograph.  His colors are very realistic, like a slightly blurry photograph, but without the soft "foggy" look of Monet's pieces.  I also noticed that each of Pissaro's landscapes also includes figures, almost as if the human beings had to be part of the story of each piece, while Monet's pieces were all about the landscape.

 

Of course I had heard of all three of these Impressionist artists, and before this exhibit had previously see some original pieces by Monet and Degas, but just who was George William Thornley, and why would three painters agree to work with someone doing lithographs?

The closest equivalent I can think of would be silk screens or block prints, but each of this approaches creates a different "look" than the original painting or pastel, just as the lithograph is different.

 Turns out that George William Thornley was an awarded painter at the Salon on his own, and my guess is that the idea of working in a different media was intellectually interesting.  Artists are a continually curious bunch, after all.

The result of the collaborative efforts were successful enough that each of the artists involved signed the lithographs along with Thornley.

"Sheltered by the Haystack" is the work of Pissarro with Thornley.  It has the soft sepia tones of an old photograph, but still all the great detail of Pissarro's paintings and the boy asleep making the human being the focal point.

 

 

One of the collaborations with Degas produced this piece titled "Dancers".  I was again reminded of a photographic technique as the color reminds me of a cyanotype , but it is without a doubt instantly recognizable as Degas' style and subject matter.

 

 "The Wild Coast" was my favorite of the lithographic collaborations in the exhibit.  Not only is it unmistakably Monet's minimalist landscape style, the choice of a blue paper with the black ink just feels like the wild, rocky and stormy coast line.

While Monet had not previously had any interest in making prints (unlike Dega and Pissarro who had worked with copper plates themselves), this collaboration was very successful.

 

After spending an hour and a half in the museum, my "art brain" was just buzzing and energized with new excitement to make more art!

A couple of weeks ago, my daughter brought me a large glass vase of tulip bulbs that were just beginning to have buds.  This picture shows what they looked like yesterday as they have all bloomed and are beginning to get a bit blowsy.

At some point in the last five weeks in the color seminar there has been some discussion about color derived from natural substances, and I remembered a project my very first art mentor had done a number of years ago with flower pounding.

I thought it might be a fun project to do, just to see what might happen, having no preconceived notion of what the results might be.  (Having done some natural dying of wool yarn about 40 years ago, I'm well aware of the fact that what you see can definitely NOT be what you get.)

So I pulled out a stack of old newspapers, a piece of cardboard from the back of a drawing tablet, some parchment paper, painters tape and a small hammer that I normally use to put nails in the wall to hang pictures.  I had some white fabric pieces that seemed like just the thing to use for this experiment, and so I set to work.

Let me say that the dog was unimpressed by the "banging", and immediately asked to go outside to hang out in the sun on the deck.

 

This is the result of my efforts.  I used only two leaves, and I bent one of them because I wanted a bit of variety in the placement in the finished piece.  And this is one tulip.  I removed the stem and the base where the petals were attached because I thought it was too thick to make a tidy pounding.  There were six petals, so I divided them into two groups of three so it looks like two flowers.

The color of the leaves was not a surprise -- very much the chlorophyll green I thought it would be.  The petals, however, were the expected surprise.  Although on the plant they look orange, the pounding is pinker, with some very purple tones in some places -- pretty exciting.  The really dark long oval shapes in the pounding are where the anthers of the bloom fell onto the fabric and I decided to leave them there just to see what would happen.

I plan to do a considerable amount of stitching to add detail to this and probably mount it on either a canvas or a cradle board.

 Now I'll be on the look out for anything that's blooming, just to do a few more of these to see what happens.

I'm feeling good about this weekend's art projects, and I'm ready to get back to work in class and in the studio.
 

vanished like a puff of smoke?

nope -- I'm still here

survived the nearly week long "smoke out" when the prevailing winds carried smoke from hundreds of wild fires into our area

this photo is full sun over the mountains from our house one of those afternoons

those kind of days we just stay inside with the air conditioning which does a pretty good job of filtering the air

we've had other excitement in the skies here recently too

like the day a strange noise had Mr Benson running from back door to front door alerting us to strange doings over head

the balloon came down in the little park right up the street from us --- pretty exciting

there has been indoor excitement as well

for a couple of days Mr Cute's before school caregiver was not available, so gramma got to fill those shoes --- we did some arts and crafts (these are international signal flags) and created something to hang on his wall at home before I took him to school

work in the studio continues

when I started this piece I thought I would be cutting it down to a 12" x 12" square to donate to next year's SAQA auction

when I got it finished, I wasn't willing to cut 2 inches off it in each direction, so it is 14" x 14", and I have mounted it on a canvas for hanging, and I have already submitted it for a local show in an art gallery -- hope it gets in!

this piece is now finished as well

I created it specifically for a show that has an entry deadline in mid-November, that I have no promise (as with all shows) that it will get in to

so I decided to go ahead and enter it in a local gallery call for entries --- if it doesn't get in to that local gallery I will know before the deadline on that first show

we'll see how that goes

I had finished all but the stitching on this piece before I started stitching the river scene, so now I'm back to working on this

so far I have stitched the ground and the shadows, so I still have to do the mailboxes and the sky

coming along!

the ice cream maker is ready now for me to create the back ground

I've decided on a pieced design that looks like subway tile at the top and an old table cloth at the bottom which makes a pretty good setting for this

the pieces of the garden are slowly coming together

I have to say about now I'm really tired of looking at various shades of green!

and this morning, I was notified that this piece will be included in a show titled Metamorphosis sponsored by the Women's Caucus for Art, Colorado Chapter

I'm delighted!!  it was one of 41 pieces selected from 400 entries

WHOOOO HOOOOO!!!

starting next Monday, the 12" x 12" study of the city that is shown here will be part of the SAQA benefit auction

this is one of the ways I support an organization that has helped me develop my art in the past few years

there has been some utilitarian sewing here in the studio in the last week or so

my daughter got the t-shirt, which she loves, but it was too snug for comfort at the bottom edge even though the shoulders and the top fit great (who designs these things?!)

mom to the rescue --- I used the still good piece of another shirt to put orange "V" shaped panels in each side to make it work for her

and right now I'm working on the beginning of the annual Halloween costume for Mr Cute -- he's going to be the Hulk this year, so I'm making him a green muscle suit

we've reached the point in the gardening season that I need to pick nearly every day

while the zucchini's have been a big disappointment, I've already put a number of bags of green beans in the freezer plus all we've been able to eat, and tomatoes in some form are a daily menu item in addition to the ones that have been made into pasta sauce

I was able to get my hands on some strawberries to put up into jam for the winter too

meantime, out in the garage workshop, the DH is busy making some new figures for our wood nativity set (it won't be long before we're putting this up -- time is flying!!)

he has cut out the second sheep, the donkey and the cow as well as a shepherd boy

so far I have painted the animals (we're refreshing the paint on the older pieces too), and I've started on the shepherd

this has to be done step by step to let each color of paint dry before I start the next one

and of course no post is complete without an update on Mr Benson

he has been the hero of the garden watch the last couple of weeks as he has discovered that grasshoppers are fun to chase -- and with one well place swat, he can squash one with his foot

yeah Mr Benson!!  give that dog a treat --- and ignore the occasional picking of green beans from outside the fence -- seems like a good reward to me

getting ready for Holidays

for the first time in many years, we will not be traveling for Thanksgiving

in the past, when we lived in Colorado Springs and our daughter's family lived 2 hours away, we would pack up food and projects and head off to her house for this week because our son-in-law's job needed him to be at work the day before and the day after Thanksgiving

this year could be titled "the year everything changed" -- for one thing, his job changed, so they have had this whole week off together (Yeah!!)

and then there was that whole thing where we moved -- cool!

so I spent some time over the weekend NOT packing us up

instead, we butchered this 25 pound (!!!!!) pumpkin that grew in my daughter's garden this summer

it has been neatly reduced to 8 bags of pumpkin puree that will become pies in the next few months - yummy

and I finished these

when I first started working on them they looked too big, so I took them down a size

now that they are finished, they look too small -- hmmmm, is it an illusion because of the little Ninja face mask?

I'll find out soon -- and it may mean I'm knitting two more pair if they are too small

I've been doing a little stone and bead doodling

the large aqua colored stone is one that I picked up at the gem show, and it was not the piece I originally thought I'd be working with first, but then I found all these other pieces that went so well with it, and well -- it just seemed to be calling me

unlike other pieces I've done, there is no master plan for this one -- usually I glue down all of the stones first and then work the beading

instead, I started by gluing down the big stone, working around it then adding another piece of stone, etc.

it is a whole different approach, and I like it -- at least for this piece which is made up of all these differently shaped and sized pieces of stone

I'm making progress on the background of the next piece of quilt art --

much of my sewing this week has been split between trying to get 3 pair of pants finished for the DH and doing the hand quilting on the queen sized bed quilt I'm working on for my daughter --- not much to see here!

we had out first measurable snow this week

the evergreen tree in the yard behind us made for a pretty picture against the sunset oranges and pinks

and in preparation for the coming Christmas season, we've been setting up trees inside the house

we've not had all the trees up in the house for about 7 years -- it will be interesting to see where things fit in this house

time to get to it!

Ready for spinning

as I mentioned yesterday, our local fiber arts shop (Table Rock Llamas) has drum carders that they rent out by the hour (the whole session cost me only $10 -- a real bargain!)

I went yesterday morning and spent 2 hours cranking (and I expected my arm to be a bit sore, but it isn't - a pleasant surprise)

this fleece was from a Jacob sheep -- I got it a couple of years ago and had used part of it to do needle felting -- but there was still so much of it that it just seemed like a good idea to go ahead and spin some of it into yarn

in two hours I was able to card about half of the first fleece (when we paid for this fleece the lady we talked to tossed in a second fleece for free!), so I'll be setting up future carding sessions later

I tried to sort the light from the dark when I did the carding -- my plan is to spin them separately then run one light strand and one dark strand together when I ply them for a sort of tweedy yarn

work continues on the baby dinosaur quilt

good progress being made on this block -- both wings all stitched down, so now it's on to the arms and legs

yesterday I got an ad flyer from one of the local fabric stores that has quilt bats on sale for 50% off, so I'll be picking up one for this quilt in the next couple of days

nice timing!

the art corner, the new toy and some work

well, it only took me 7 months to make it happen but yesterday I finally got the picture my son in law painted hung

this little corner of the room is all original art work -- and I love it

(the DH, however, thinks those two pictures are too close together -- so there's a chance here that one of them will get moved slightly, just so it doesn't make him crazy!)


and sitting right in front of the bookcase that you can see the top of in the first picture is this new toy

a gift from my sister after her DH bought her a new wheel that will actually travel well in the front seat of her VW bug

it needs some oil and a new spring for the brake (being old enough that it originally just used a rubber band!)

this also means I have to remember all the little ins and outs of using it (it's been over 25 years since I actually used one -- hope it's like a bicycle!)

guess there was a reason I hadn't been successful in finding someone to spin that Jacob's Sheep fleece I have -- I'm supposed to do it myself!

since my sister was here to visit yesterday I didn't work as much on projects

I'm okay with that

I did work on this beading a bit though, and it is moving along

looking good

success and chugging along

NOW it's ready

yesterday afternoon I finished stitching the last of the beads into the pattern and coated the back of the piece with fray check

I use that stuff by the pints when I'm doing a lot of bead embroidery, but I think of it as an inexpensive insurance policy to stabilize the back of the work with all those many, many stitches that hold all the beads in place

today I will start stitching the bead work and the upholstery velvet together with that metal cuff sandwiched inside
way back last fall I was working on this hat

even though it had been through the washer for felting several times it still didn't seem quite right and I was feeling a little discouraged about it

fast forward to March -- I decided that the water heater just wasn't getting the water hot enough -- there comes a time when the small saving on the gas it would take to heat the water a bit hotter is more than offset by the cost of the water being wasted in the upstairs bathroom waiting for the water to get hot enough to shower (or wash dishes!)

over the weekend I ran across the hat again -- wait -- what if it just needed a hotter wash to improve that felting?

this morning I unpinned all of the flowers and vines and leaves -- I'm going to run this thing through the washer again with the new, hotter water -- we'll see if I'm right

the border on the Hawaii piece is being stitched on

I have the top edge and the left hand side all stitched on -- they are narrow pieces (about 2 inches wide)

the bottom edge and the right hand side are wider and my plan is to applique the trunk of a palm tree silhouette in the bottom right corner and have it curve over into the "ocean" and to add all of the fronds as thread painting -- sort of like I did with the feathers on the hats

we'll see how that goes


as predicted the petals of the cone flower on the top layer are taking a considerably longer time to stitch -- I got one and a half stitched yesterday

more work today on that

this is the newest toy that I got for the DH -- consider it a sort of Father's Day/Anniversary gift

he has one of these tables already, and he has used it to build a lot of furniture as well as work on a lot of other projects

recently our daughter asked him to build her a table for her printer to fit in a specific place

he wrote down all the measurements and drew the rough sketch

and he mentioned that it would be helpful to have a second one of these tables to do the construction of that table

then the local Ace Hardware had it on sale

ok, 'nuf said!

I'm expecting great projects (who knows, maybe I'll come up with some new ideas too)

this morning it's like we're back in April again -- it's been raining off and on all night and it's cool -- the high today will only be in the 60s -- so no outdoor work today

just laundry and lots of studio time

I'm okay with that

vicunas, decking and Mr Cute

we took a little mini vacation over the weekend

packed up the dog and took off for our daughter's house early Friday morning

on Saturday we headed off to Estes Park for Wool Market

we had heard that there would be all kinds of animals as well as the actual fiber vendors on hand

on the way, Mr Cute was entertaining himself my making faces at that kid in the mirror

last fall we had gone to the Alpaca Round Up at our end of the state, which was a pretty low key event (you can read about that trip here
one of the things we learned during that trip is that there are two kinds of alpacas --

the huacayas which look very much like big, long necked poodles because their fleece is fluffy (in fact at the Round Up there were some that had not had their heads shorn and their heads looked like big tootsie pops on top of their slender necks)


the other variety is a Suri

and their fleece looks like a corded poodle -- or dread locks

this little beauty is the first on of those I had ever seen -- adorable!

and notice these animals are not just in stalls on the dirt

that's a pretty nice looking rug this little Suri is laying on!


the barn over there were more traditional animal pens

and a number of goats

but not just any kind of goats

these are all Cashmire goats -- they have really interesting hair -- an incredibly soft downy undercoat and a coarser guard hair -- when the fiber gets spun you have to pick out those guard hairs first


and then there were these lovelies

these are paco-vicunas

like the llama and the alpaca they are camilids -- in fact they look very much like small alpacas (the one with the rust colored rump and the white head was born on March 30 of this year)

and if you think alpaca is soft and light, vicuna is even more so -- just a step or two short of qiviut


I exercised pretty good restraint when we went into the fiber vendor tent

two skeins of alpaca yarn -- from two different vendors

and I have plans for each of those skeins -- and I'm looking forward to working on those soon




Sunday afternoon's project was a little more like work

now that there is a little guy who will be walking soon in the house there was a need for that deck with it's 3 to 4 foot drop to the ground below to be enclosed

so the DH and the son-in-law took our van off to the hardware store and got the necessary materials to get that enclosure started







they did such a good job that by the end of the afternoon the entire deck was enclosed

and a very nice looking enclosure it is too




and while they were working just outside the kitchen door, my daughter and I were working on scrapbook projects at the kitchen table

my daughter has a cool machine that cuts shapes and letters out of paper or card stock

and I'm working on something that will be a Christmas present

as with all projects there was lots of clutter (both ours and out on the deck) before the project work was done, but the results are awesome

Mr Cute is starting to eat solids now

(although the pureed veggies hardly look "solid")

over the weekend he was trying out peas

he ate them, but not with nearly as much enthusiasm as he had for sweet potatoes or pears

he's just so adorable

and such a happy little guy that when he does fuss you know there is something definitely needing attention in his world

he'll be six months old tomorrow -- WOW, time really flies!




one of the other things that my daughter and I worked on over the weekend was tying a comforter for one of her friends that is having a baby in August

the tying part was all finished by Sunday evening

and yesterday afternoon I finished stitching the binding (which was done by rolling the backing around to the front)

we're about ready to put this in the mail







and of course, since I was in the car another charity afghan square is all complete

so today it's back to the usual household chores before work in the studio

laundry and groceries today (I've already watered the lawn)

time to get moving!