In the Art Room

Here are a few images of new student work. For the last few months we've been working with the theme of "Relationships." Our inspiration came from a greeting card with an interesting quote on it. The quote reads, "I am, because we are." This sparked a discussion of what it means to be both an individual AND part of a group or a pair. After our discussion, we embarked on a weaving project. Weaving seemed appropriate, since you need more than one string to make a weaving. Students started by envisioning and building their own looms or structures on which to weave. I was really impressed with what they came up with without a lot of teacher input. After their looms were built they started weaving. Some chose to use traditional weaving methods. Others chose to use slightly more "abstract" weaving methods. Either way, they have turned out really beautifully. I'm still in the process of photographing finished work, but here are a few photos.

New Work

After quite a long break, I'm finally getting around to posting something. New paintings are underway. My latest endeavors are two fold. First, I'm continuing my seasonal garden series now that Spring has sprung. As much as I love painting images of snow, some color will be nice. I'm also, starting a series of drawings of images I captured during the protest rallies at the WI State Capitol that have occurred throughout the spring. Here is a sketch for my first big drawing.

In other news, I now have an online gallery on Portal Wisconsin, a website generated by Wisconsin Public TV and WPR for all arts related events happening in the state. It's a great resource for artists and anyone interested in participating, supporting, and enjoying the arts in Wisconsin. Click here to check it out.

I also have paintings on display in Ripon, WI at the Watson Street Sub Shop.

Urban Gardens and the Passing of Time

Over this past year, I moved from central Wisconsin to the woods of northern Wisconsin, and then finally this fall settled in Madison. Over that time, I started to become far more aware of my immediate surroundings. I grew up in central Wisconsin and lived in that area for much of my life. Those surroundings were familiar and safe. Living in the north woods, I found amazing and inspiring beauty. Moving to Madison, I was afraid I would miss seeing woods and water directly outside my window, but I was so pleasantly surprised to find a different kind of beauty in Madison. I was lucky enough to move into a neighborhood inhabited by skilled gardeners. Walking through my neighborhood, I started to notice all the unique garden designs and plant choices made by my neighbors—or the professionals they hired to assist them. (Either way, as a non-gardener, the visual impact is still great.)

The undeniable links between the natural world and the human experience are both fascinating and comforting in a world that seems to be growing increasingly complicated and hurried. In these particular paintings, I’ve been working with the concepts of time and change over time by depicting urban garden plants at different stages throughout the seasons of fall and winter. In addition, the garden as a “human-orchestrated” form of nature has been a crucial idea in this series.

In considering the concept of time in terms of all its forms, measures, and impacts on humans, I started to think specifically about time in the social and cultural framework of contemporary life. I decided to look more closely at my day-to-day surroundings and all the influences pulling on average folks such as myself. I saw a lot of people like me. Happy to get by with what they have—a few spots of rust on their old cars, the signs of a wrinkle or two at the corners of their eyes, clothes from a second-hand store. Rust, wrinkles, wear and tear—these things all happen over time. It finally occurred to me that this way of life accepts the progress of time and changes that happen naturally over that progression. After making this connection, I then started to see the many forms of social and media pressures screaming messages trying to drag my sights in another direction—Don’t let your face age naturally, don’t let your car get old, don’t let your clothes go out of date! These voices are everywhere--on TV, on the internet, in shopping malls, on the shiny magazine covers at the check out aisle in the grocery store. Essentially, these messages are saying, “Don’t let time happen to you!”

Mulling all this over on walks through my neighborhood, I returned my observations to my physical surroundings. The seasons changed from cool, crunchy autumn, to the first snow fall, and then to all the subsequent inches upon inches of snow. Despite the change in seasons, the gardens I passed hadn’t been cut down, but were still there underneath it all. I saw frozen stalks and stems plunging out of snow drifts. I saw plants, long since gone to seed, balancing headdresses of snow on their delicate crowns. What I first saw as plants in a garden, I now saw as quiet, graceful totems to the undeniable progression of time. In these paintings, it is my goal to put them on a pedestal or at least carve out a little visual space for this particular area of life where humanity and nature intersect, where time is allowed and accepted.

Hard at work in the studio

While Talullah supervises from her basket, I've been working on a new series of paintings that I'm really excited about. I had started painting small 12"x12" paintings this fall. I didn't really have a focus as far as subject matter, which started to bother me. I've found that I need to have a theme. I can't jump around from subject to subject. So, I've started painting closeup images of plants and gardens that I photographed around our neighborhood. I'm lucky enough to live in close proximity to a lot of skilled gardeners who don't cut all their plants down in the fall. On my walks through the neighborhood it finally struck me how beautiful some of these plants are especially as they turn color and decay as the weather gets colder. I became even more inspired after it snowed which added a whole new element. So here is what I've come up with so far. I'm also going to start some large scale paintings in this same vein. I love painting small paintings, because I can finish them in under an hour if I put my mind to it--or take my mind away from it in some cases. But I need to have big paintings going too. More to come as those get underway.

Happy New Year!

My blog posting diligence kind of fell off after November, but here are some new photos of the projects my students are currently working on. Right now, they are thinking about and practicing methods of effective collaboration. I gave some direction when needed, but they were able to choose what form their projects take. They are required to work as a class or in small groups. The challenge is to first communicate with their teams about what direction they will go, the theme of the project, etc. Then they must delegate tasks so that the parts of the project are made and come together cohesively. For these particular students, practicing how to shift their thinking from "my work, my ideas" to "our work, our ideas" is really necessary. Hopefully this project will give them the opportunity to strengthen those skills. This lesson format has also allowed me to introduce new art techniques and processes as students need them. They are also seeing how they can really delve into a project when everyone comes together and shares the work. They are having fun watching it unfold.



So far, all three age groups are coming up with great ideas and are showing a lot of skill in working together. Each group is approaching the challenge of collaboration a little differently, and I addressed the issue a little differently in each class. In the photo above, this group is creating a group mural of a neighborhood. We started with a whole class period of learning about watercolor washes. Thinking about the sky in its various states, the students created beautiful washes on small pieces of paper. These separate pieces later came together to form the sky of their group mural. The next class I asked them to spend making buildings and houses. After we had these two basic parts of the mural completed, students naturally started making their own additions--people, trees, playgrounds, a ballerina, and even a few spaceships for good measure! After gluing all the pieces down, students ended their last work session with the idea to make the mural a progression from night time to day time. More photos to come as this progresses!

Below is a project being built by two students in the oldest group of students. At left, another group from this class works on watercolor paintings as part of their project.