Traces: A New Series

Right from the get go, this summer presented its challenges. I say challenges because I like to think that I can rise to them, rather than being overcome by them.

So, when my 85 year old mother experienced a series of unfortunate events (think Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day), it was time to put my thinking cap on. She was beset by one malady after another and while helping her through, I knew that I needed to re-craft my art practice. This is because art is both a vocation and something that’s hard to go without. I had to create a series that was a marriage of necessity and curiosity.

Right away, I decided to reduce the size of the prints. I’d been working in sheets of 9″ x 12″ that arranged in 3 rows of 3, created a piece. “O.k.,” I thought, “I’ll jump back to the 30 x 30 challenge. 6″ x 8″ it is!”

And my topic? Over the last few years, I’d noticed that the recycled copy papers I use to mop up extra paint produced some extraordinary layers. The effect is something like a stucco wall with many layers of paint; an inadvertent fresco.

Sample of Traces

But how to create that effect on the thicker art paper?  I began by simply putting pieces of paper down on the painted plate and leaving them there for a time. In this hot, dry valley, I didn’t need to wait overnight. Several hours could produce a paper with a thick layer of acrylic, very satisfying to pull off the gelli plate. I also added one or two layers of gel medium, tinted to bring out the color I was working with.

It’s been tremendous fun and the smaller sheets of paper provided a journal format; a way that I could record the mood of the day, the season and my own internal drive to leave traces of these days.

Summer Camp Days Ahead

These hot June days take me back through the years to the days of summer camp. My first experience was a YWCA camp on the shores of a Michigan lake. It was all foreign to me; morning reveille, raising the flag and evenings by the campfire, singing songs whose words even now come to mind. Most of all I remember the sensation of walking through woods, the paths banked by ferns with tiny  pine cones crunching under my feet. And the dark, cool inside of the craft cabin, where any imaginable project might rise from the sturdy wooden tables.

In the last several years, there has been a resurgence of summer camps for adults. It's a great idea and our local art center offers day camps for adults. So why not a day camp for cancer patients and their caregivers? Of course!

I've created a 3 day, 2 hours per day Art Camp for Wellness Within, an organization serving cancer patients, their families and caregivers located in Roseville, CA

We will make art that stretches the boundaries of what we think we are capable of, that heals our spirits, and provides a respite from the woes of cancer.

Of course there will be snacks and laughs and lemonade and maybe a little kombucha too. If you know someone in the area who might benefit from this program, please tell them about it. There is no fee for these programs.

Bridging the Gap

I've been tucked into my studio for the last couple months, drawing jade plants, diverse succulents, taking notes and obsessively printing gelli prints. I’ve filled a notebook, and in the process, found a rhythm and perhaps some answers to a problem I've been trying to solve.

For the past couple of years, I've worked on a series called Shift, in which I explored my ecological niche of Davis. As the series progressed, I became more interested in the unusual shapes of plants I found visiting various botanical gardens. I began another series of collage works I called Botanical Dreams, inspired by the 30 paintings in 30 days  challenge presented by Leslie Saeta.

I’ve wanted to continue this series and I wanted to wed the monoprints of Shift with the collage, but after several months of trials and lots of recycled prints, I think I’m trying to make an arranged marriage. Shift needs to be one series and Botanical Dreams another.

As I write this, I realize that actually, I'm the bridge. I think that it's hard to leave the safety of a known series and decamp to another largely unknown territory, but the connection lies simply in my own two hands.

Poppies, Lupines and Printmaking Too!

Many years ago in graduate school, I was introduced to a form of printmaking called monoprinting, or sometimes, monotype. I'm a person not well suited to the long and meticulous craft of printmaking. But I did so love the notion of placing paper onto plate, applying pressure and seeing the creation of a whole new piece. It appeals to the alchemist in me.

Through the years I've experimented with different kinds of plates: glass, plexiglass, even the plastic surfaces of cutting boards, but I couldn't find a decent, printable surface that worked without the aid of a press. Then, one day several years ago, I visited an open studio event of a friend. She gave me a tour, and there, in one of the other artist's spaces, it's colorful package glinting in the sun, was a gelli plate.

As I touched its soft yielding surface (much like a batch of jello), I considered the possibilities. My friend offered to show me how it worked and we had several weekend workshops including other interested artists. I was hooked. Now several years and a number of plates later, I'm still experimenting, trying to push the limits of what the plate can do.

Next month, I'll be teaching a gelli printing workshop at our local Pence Gallery: Saturday, May 14 from 10- 3. There are still a few spots left, so whether you're new to gelli printing, or you'd like to stretch your printmaking  boundaries, I'd love to have you. I'm super excited about the planning--and look forward to sharing what I've learned about the simple beauty of this process.

"Be Happy and Color!" Goes Live

I was standing in front of my art cart about a year ago at the UC Davis Children's Hospital, looking over my supplies, organizing them for the day, when a nurse came through the door and began riffling through the coloring  books on an adjoining cart. "Do you have anything for a three year old?," she asked. "That's a good question," I thought as I too flipped through the stack of donated coloring books. I saw Spider Man and his assorted cohorts, but nothing that would really be appropriate to a 3 year old's developmental needs. As I walked back to my office, I thought that we could really use a book with healthy images that connects children to the natural world without the inclusion of violence.

When I got back to my office a bit later, I logged on to my email and found a new  note from a person that I didn't know, Pauline Molinari, a book editor, asking me if I would be interested in writing the text for a coloring book.

Kismet? Ask and ye shall receive? I was delighted that my unspoken question was answered so promptly. I quickly researched Pauline and the publisher for whom she worked, Walter Foster Jr.(an imprint of Quarto books), and picked up the phone.

Thus began a collaboration between myself, the fabulous illustrator, Stephanie Peterson Jones and Pauline. I was fortunate to have free reign over the structure of the book and decided to focus on 4 of the 5 primordial elements: fire, air, earth and water. (I didn't include ether because, well, you get the picture.)

Over the next several months, we mapped out spreads, I created prompts and Stephanie's illustrations unfolded in response.  All the while, I began to see more and more coloring pages emerge on artists' and art therapist's sites. I was excited and after the last prompt was done, the last quotation cited, the last drawing approved, I couldn't wait to hold the book in my hands.

But I did-- until last Friday, when I arrived home from an opening to find a package with the publisher's return address on the label. There, packed neatly, was the quotient of copies promised to me; crisp and ready for crayon wielding fingers.

I'm very pleased with the results and can't wait to share the book with my family and friends.  If you'd like your own free copy of Be Happy and Color, leave me a comment at the end of the post. I'll put all the names in my husband's Irish cap and draw one. (And I promise to draw blind.) That fortunate person will receive a package full of inspiration and coloring bliss.