Thank You!

I want to thank everyone who came out this past weekend for the 11th annual Western Loudoun Artists Studio Tour. It was an absolutely gorgeous weekend with a lot going on, and I appreciate everyone who took time out of their busy schedules to spend time with me in my studio.

I have always loved connecting to people through my art, and the Studio Tour affords me that opportunity on a large scale. I am so thankful to everyone who came out to support me and the other artists on the tour.

I would say that my monsters were the hit of the weekend in my studio, and many of the polymer clay sculptures found new homes. I'll definitely be making more of them in the near future.

If you couldn't make it because of distance or time, I will be putting some of my artwork for sale on the JFJ website within the next couple of weeks, so that people near and far can take a closer look. So, in the meantime, I thank everyone who has supported my art in anyway. I am very grateful to everyone who I connect to through art! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

Western Loudoun Artists Studio Tour

Mark your calendars!

The 11th annual Western Loudoun Artists Studio Tour is just over a month away. Come out on June 18th and 19th and spend some time checking out over 60 awesome Northern Virginia Artists. I'll once again be on the tour, and I'll have my garage studio open to the public from 10am to 5pm both days. I'm stop number 17 in Purcellville, VA, and I hope to see you there. It's a great way to kick of the summer.

The Child Within

I have been experimenting a lot lately with techniques and images, and I feel like I'm at a very unsettled place with my art. At times, I feel like I'm all over the place with things, and that's perfectly fine with me. It's giving me the opportunity to try out all kinds of things to see what sticks.

I have noticed that my work has been getting more representational - more figurative - from the monsters to the faces that I've been pursuing over the last few months. In a small way I've been trying to move my art back toward the recognizable, but I haven't gone back to the highly accurate renders that enthralled me long ago. I don't seem to have the patience anymore to try to make something "just right" with all the complex shading and detail. I'm more into simplifying my approach, and I'm liking the direction the art is taking.

Over the last couple of weeks, two things have inspired a move into yet another experiment with a style and imagery type. I've been trying to tap into the child within and just let the drawings flow. The first source of inspiration came from reading Gordon MacKenzie's book Orbiting the Giant Hairball. The book is about the things he learned during his 30 years at Hallmark cards, and it is a very inspiring read. But it wasn't so much the words that have inspired my art, it was the illustrations scattered throughout the pages. These simple line drawings are reminiscent of the way little kids draw, and they intrigued me and mesmerized me. I knew that I need to try something like it in my own art.

The second source of inspiration has come from watching several of my students draw. As an elementary art teacher, I teach about 630 students a week, and some of my students amaze me with their confidence when they draw and the whimsy and character of their drawings.  These students have yet to be tainted with the "is this good" bug. They draw and create with such pure joy and spontaneity, and I've been trying to capture some of that with my latest experiments. I'm trying to connect with that simple and joyful quality, and I've been greatly enjoying myself.

So, when you start to see more works like the one above, you'll know why.

Studio Clean Up

Now that my recent bout of traveling is done, I can focus on the next big thing, the Western Loudoun Artists Studio Tour which happens the weekend of June 18 & 19. Though it's a couple months away, I need to get busy making some art, and getting the studio ready for visitors.

The first step is to clean up the studio a bit so that I have some room to work, so I spent some time tonight cleaning and organizing. It's amazing what happens to accumulate in the studio over the months, and I have the habit of simply moving piles around. The studio has become quite cluttered, so I began the preliminary process of sorting and organizing, and hopefully I'll soon have a functioning studio again with space to work.

Making Progress

I spent a couple of hours in the studio on this warm February day working more on pieces. I started earlier in the week. I added a layer or two to several of them, and my favorite so far is the small painting pictured above. This 4x6 inch piece has a certain glow - a certain richness about it, and I am really loving the deep ruby color. I'm not certain what I'll do with these paintings or how far I'll go with them. I may leave them fairly simple and more abstract. But then again I may paint something on top. I just don't know.

Rocking the Cradles

I've been experimenting with a lot of ideas in my journal and with small artworks on paper, but I haven't made any larger work in a while. So, today I spent time in the studio building cradles from masonite and pine boards for future larger work. I built three cradles and had a fourth lying around the studio, so now I have a 24"x24", an 18"x24", a 10"x10", and a 6"x9" cradle ready to go.

I used to work primarily on canvas and most often would stretch my own, but when I got into mixed media, I began working primarily on paper. Needing a way to display the work, I would mount the artwork onto the cradles. Recently, I began simply priming the cradles and creating directly on top. I'm looking forward to getting some new pieces going.

Nonlinear

My journaling process is not linear. I am not one who has to finish one page before I move onto a new page. All pages are fair game at anytime, and when I want to add to something in progress, I flip through those pages that already have something going on. When I need more room, I flip to blank pages to tackle a space that is unfettered and uncluttered.

These two spreads are perfect examples. The spread above was started in early November shortly after the Arizona Art Education Association Conference in Prescott. I started the page by gluing in some fodder from the trip, and over the last couple of months, I have been slowly adding to it building up layers of watercolor, watercolor pencil, and ink.

This spread was started a couple of days ago when I broke out the liquid watercolors. I wanted to do a little experimenting with these concentrated paints, and I had a yearning to tackle some blank space. So, I turned to a blank spread, and I used yellow, orange, and brown to begin a haphazard painting across the pages. Tonight I added the watercolor pencil squares to give the spread more structure. As always, I have no plan for these pages, and they'll develop over the coming months. As I've said before, Art is about the discovery.

Western Loudoun Artists Studio Tour

I can't believe that I have yet to mention on here that I will once again be part of the Western Loudoun Artists Studio Tour. This will be my fourth time as part of tour, and the tour celebrates it's 10th Anniversary with more than 60 artists spread throughout the western part of the county. I will open my garage studio in Purcellville, VA to the public the weekend of June 20 and 21. So mark your calendars and make arrangements to head out to Northern Virginia to see some great art in June. For more information, please visit the tour website.

I can't wait to share my work with everyone!

Accidentally on Purpose

I was once a great, big ol' perfectionist. I would spend hours on my art trying to the get the smallest of details just right causing myself a lot of anxiety and grief, and though I have loosened up over the years, I sometimes feel those perfectionist tendencies creep up. A great way to stay loose, is to embrace the imperfections, and one of my favorite things to do is to use my journal as a means to capture unintentional and accidental marks as I work on other pieces of art.

On the page that I started above, I placed 6"x8" papers on the 11"X14" page as I worked on a multitude of smaller works of art. In essence, my journal became my paint table and collected the marks, spatters, and run off as I painted the small papers. Some of us my lay down a drop cloth or a large scrap of paper to keep the table clean, or we may just wipe up any messy paint that happened to get on the table. Instead of doing either of those, I have started a page in my journal with the random and haphazard marks that happen as result of painting to the edge of those smaller works.

This allows me to start and work on the smaller works that I am fond of, but it also allows me to add to my journal without consciously adding to my journal. This technique is not for everyone because it really does take an openness to the process, but I feel that there is a certain beauty in the imperfections that result.

I will continue to add to this page, both consciously and unconsciously, and I can't wait to see where it will lead.

Home: The Process

For a little over a year, I have been working on my Home series. It began with a painting that I created by projecting maps of the various places I have lived and called home. I then proceeded to create another painting using all the places that my wife has lived and called home. Other paintings in the series have sprung from layering different combinations of these two painting. For my latest paintings, I wanted to work on a bit of a larger scale and to take the work a step further. Instead of working on paper or canvas, I decided to work on two 22"x30" panels that I had made over the summer using wood and masonite. I originally intended on mounting some works on paper onto these, but I changed my mind and decided to gesso them. Once the gesso dried, I used Golden High Flow Acrylic and painted the pieces with a light blue. Up until now, I have left the background white, but I wanted to try working on a slick, acrylic surface other than white.

Once the light blue was dry, I projected a variety of locations onto the panels. I used several clamps to clamp the pieces to the table and to one another. For the locations, I used the places that my parents and my in-laws have called home, and I traced all the roads and highways in pencil. The image above shows a portion of Washington, PA where my parents lived when they were first married.

I'm in the process of creating the initial web using a pink I mixed up using the Golden High Flow Acrylics. I love using this paint in Montana Paint Markers because it gives me such better control of the paint. It's a slow process of converting the pencil lines into the web, but I have one panel almost finished.

It'll take some time to complete the pink with all the tightly knit lines and spaces. I do like how the accumulation of marks from the various roads build up into an organic structure. But this is just the first layer. Next, I'll project more locations, or I'll project portions of other Home paintings to create at least three different layers of webs. I can't wait to see how this diptych turns out. For more information how this series came about, see this post from November.

New Work, New Tools

I've been working the last few days on a new piece in my "Home" series where I combined my two previous paintings (one that represents me and one that represents my wife) into one by projecting photos of each onto a 22"x30" piece of mixed media paper and tracing with pencil. The result was a complex and detailed web of lines.

I wanted to try something different when painting, and I am still digging Golden's High Flow Acrylic. But I wasn't looking forward to painting all the small details by brush. Since the High Flow is the consistency of ink, they work in refillable markers, so I picked up a few empty Montana Acrylic Paint Markers to try. I am definitely loving the control and the detail, and I'm thinking about buying more of the markers to fill with all the different colors of High Flow that I have.

I'll share more when I finish.

Snow Days

Some unexpected ice and snow hit Northern Virginia over the last two days, and school was cancelled. Needless to say, I took full advantage of the two snow days by spending some quality time in the studio working with my web imagery. I've been struggling with what this imagery really means, and I have been working with ways to make it more purposeful. Up until now it has been rather random.

Today I had a bit of a breakthrough and decided to incorporate my interest in maps and places. Using Google Maps, I looked up five places that I have called home, and projected them onto a 22" x 30" piece of Strathmore mixed media paper. I traced each location with pencil allowing the lines to build up and create a somewhat random web of lines. It's hard to see the light pencil lines in the above photo. They're a bit easier to see in the detail below.

I didn't like the horizontal format from the tracing, so I turned it vertically, and began painting the main "veins" using Golden's new High Flow Acrylic. This new paint is thinner than their fluid acrylics and has the constancy of ink. It is well suited for my needs with this painting.

I slowly filled in the rest of the painting to create the intricate web, but I wouldn't say that I am finished with it. I need to erase a few stray pencil marks, and I may add some smaller details. Then again, I may leave it as is. Now that I have a digital image of it, I plan on projecting the image and details of the image into other works of art including some of the collaborative pieces I have in the works.

Process of Discovery

As artists we must pay attention to the things that we keep coming back to for they hold our greatest potential.

We can intellectualize art as much as we want and have grand reasons for why we make it, but it all starts with a small seed of intrigue - a technique, a line, a color, a notion. We come back to this seed again and again revisiting  that technique, that line, that color or that notion, and slowly it grows into something.

At least that’s the way it is for me. I latch onto something and explore it over and over again until I can discovery the meaning of it. Usually it starts out as an unconscious mark to fill space in my journal or a simple thing to try something new. That is how all of my work has started - my Excavation series, my Palimpsests, my mixed media pieces. Over a great period of time I come back to the idea again and again. I play with it, cultivate it, develop it, and finally figure out what it means to me.

So, it is the same with my latest fascination. For much of the last fifteen years, I have explored imagery that has dealt with Connection - connection to self and connection with others, and the latest iteration of this Connection imagery is a web-like image that first grew out of a tree/artery image (see above) in a journal more than five years ago. Over those years, I have revisited that image, and pushed it and pulled it. I have explored a variety of materials from ink and marker to acrylic paint and paper cuts. Something about it fascinates me, and I am still trying to discovery what it exactly means to me.

It’s web-like, and tissue-like. There is a definite organic quality to it - like blood vessels or microscopic views of cells. I tend to use red a lot though I have explored black and blue as well. I know it’s about connection - connection to and with others. My Excavation series was all about the connection to myself - about digging deep and going within. The web is about the ties that bind us to others, but I’m not particularly sure how or why. But that is the fun of art - the discovery. If I knew what it all meant, what it all was to look like, I wouldn’t have to make the art. It’s all about the process of discovery.

I do know that this line of inquiry needs to grow larger in more ways than one. I do know that I want to involve creative collaborators, and I have some ideas in the works. I’ll share more soon. Until I hope you enjoy my latest direction.

Turning a New Leaf

My life has swung amazingly out of balance lately. I have been feeling tired, disconnected, scattered, and woefully out of touch with myself. I've been feeling overwhelmed and pulled in many directions, and I've been forgetting a lot of small details. Unfortunately, this has been a familiar feeling over the last few years.

My studio has shown the effects of this mental imbalance with all its clutter, piles, and mess. It has been almost a year and a half since I thoroughly cleaned and organized the studio making it a difficult and uncomfortable place to work. So, I haven't worked there much. Although I have done some small works and have started a few larger pieces, I have allowed myself to be pulled from my work. I am feeling the effects tremendously.

I am trying to shift the balance, and this past weekend, I began cleaning and organizing the studio trying to purge the clutter and make sense of a lot of junk that has accumulated. I haven't quite gotten it completely cleaned and organized, but it's well on it's way and not the frightful mess like the picture above. I'll share another photo of the studio when I complete the overhaul.

I'm hoping that this major studio cleanse will be the start of a shift back to center to a state of greater balance and peace of mind.

Topography

Although this summer has already been busy (Dave and I had our retreat, and I taught a weeklong journal camp for kids), I have had some time in the studio. I have been woking in the journal as well as on some small scale mixed media pieces, but I have also been working on some pieces that are starting to move into new directions.

For some time now I have been enamored with topographic imagery, and I have explored it a lot in my journal over the last couple of years. I love maps and the way they connect us to each other and our environments. I love how they are representational of those connections and relationships. I think the main reason why I have been attracted to topographic ideas has a lot to do with how they can not only show how high something is, but also how far something recesses - thinking of canyons and rifts. On a flat surface, the lines of elevation are only shapes and how close or far away from other lines, represents the steepness or flatness of an area. But once those shapes are cut out and stacked up, they begin to show the form. As a lover of paper, I am fascinated, also, by how a flat surface can be used to create form. More specifically, I like how the paper can create a form that recedes into the surface - how it can stack layer upon layer. I even experimented with some thin drawing paper back in February.

In the example above, I used twenty-five 11x14 inch sheets of Strathmore Imperial Watercolor paper to create the recession. Using a very sharp X-acto knife, I cut each piece individually beginning with the top layer. I haven't glued them yet, and I think that I want to cut out a couple more recessions that bleed the edges and break up the surface a bit more. The stack is about a half inch thick, and I'll probably glue it all together and seal it with Golden Soft Gel Medium and mount it on a cradle once I am finished cutting. I love the white relief, so I have no plans to paint it.

Studio Time

Despite the sheer exhaustion from teaching elementary art, the busyness that springtime entails, and constantly trying to promote the retreat. I have managed to make it into the studio a few times over the last few weeks. Besides working in my journal, I've managed to begin a series of small 4x6 inch layered, mixed media pieces. I enjoy the small size because I can work on several at the same time often following the same basic process but experimenting all the while. Some pieces will grow into finished work, and others will stall and stagnate, but it is all part of the process. I'll reveal more as they develop.

Showing Up

In an attempt to show up more, I have been documenting the days that I work in the studio, as well as the time I spend working on art or in the journal outside of the studio. By marking this down on my calendar, which is in the back of my journal, I can see just how much I am showing up, and it becomes a great motivator to show up even more.
How do you find ways to show up? How do you stay motivated?

New Directions

Although busy with travel and school, I have been working in my journal and working on art, and now that I have some time because of my winter break, I have time to post a few peeks into what might be a new direction for me. Well, not completely new, it's a motif that I have been playing around with for the last three years. The above image is a peek at an ink doodle in my journal on top of a map of Montreal and watercolor pencil.

This image is a peek at an experiment of layering of cut paper. I'm anxious to see what this experiment will lead to. I've been experimenting with other forms of cut paper for a while now.

This final image is a peek at a small graphite drawing using the same motif. All just experiments. Maybe there's a new direction. Maybe not, but I have been playing around with this idea for a while.

I am a firm believer in paying attention to the things that keep coming back. There's something there worthy of exploring.

Recent Travels

This has been one eventful fall - lots of travel, lots of presentations, lots of workshops, lots of great people, and lots of fun.

Dave working on his journal during our impromptu stay in Toronto during Hurricane Sandy after a great time in Edmonton at the end of October.

 Dropping an art bomb in Montreal over Thanksgiving.

The kit participants received at a workshop at the Memphis College of Art.

Studio time at home.

Journal for the Second Book

I've been working recently in a journal that I specifically started for our second book. I decided to go through all the prompts and techniques we plan on using in the book and use them in a journal that I will ultimately send to North Light (our publisher) to use as artwork for the book.

Though both Dave and I have used many of the prompts and techniques throughout the years that we have been doing journals, we have a lot of other techniques, ideas, and media in those journals that we are not really covering in the book. I thought that this type of journal would more clearly illustrate our ideas.

It's been interesting keeping two journals. I plan on posting more glimpses as I work.

And speaking of the new book, we have a title and have seen a couple of design possibilities for the cover. I'll share more on that when I can. But in the meanwhile , Dave and I will be traveling to Cincinnati next week to shoot photos for the step-by-step. It's all coming together quickly.