In the Cave

For Laurie's birthday, we* all went to the Mystery Caves in southern MN. There are about 13-14 miles of navigable passages, if you are an experienced "caver." We stuck to a very nicely paved route through about 3/4 of a mile of the caves. We saw bats, pooled water, stalagtites that have taken more than 350,000 years to form, and flowing limestone that is just beautiful in it's frozen moment. We also saw an 8 foot deep pool with a beautiful blue bottom.

We had fun in the car playing a word game with Jon, but truth be told, I enjoyed a nice nap on the way there, and the way back. Lunch in the state park and a strange encounter with some Luddites in Forestville who had a steam powered copy machine were also part of the day. Unfortunately, they wouldn't let me take their picture. :(

* Paige, Karen, Laurie, Jon and Laura

Here are some photos of the day:

Saturday's ArtCation Activities

Today I was intending to go see an exhibit on pieces of things together at the Walker Art Museum, but I got lost down at the Mill Ruins area of the river in downtown, then made a wrong turn off the freeway and found myself at the Port of Minnesota. Who knew?

There, I found large, shiny piles of black coal - the kind your parents warned you would be in your Christmas stocking if you didn't behave. We don't see coal in California - it's not a major part of our energy menu. But coal as an energy source here in the midwest is huge, and seeing the piles like that make it all the more real.

Here are some photos from today. Tonight there was a salon at the Phillips-Spayde home and we were treated to Jon's one man show on the History of the Vibrator. I'll have pictures and more about that tomorrow. We're going spelunking tomorrow too!

Collaging in Minnesota

Today we did a mini-workshop on collaging techniques at Laurie Phillip's house with her friend Becky. Laurie is a graphic designer, coach, artist and co-inventor of Vision Cards. We started by listening to Jon Spayde read from Episodes by Pierre Delattre. These are exquisitely written 800 word pieces.

For the art, we took off from Claudine Hellmuth’s tips, using the caulking material to transfer images, and the watered-down paint and shape masking as techniques for creating interesting backgrounds. We also used Anna Corba’s painting techniques for making interesting papers to use later in collaging.

Here is Becky using the fan to dry paint on her piece.

Here I am - happy, smiling and doing art.


Laurie shows off her painted paper.


The cigar box interior and exterior we finished:



The small collage we did to showcase many of the techniques:


Tonight is BAD ART NIGHT. It will be fascinating to see what comes up for me here.

Fishies

These fish prints were challenging for me. Initially, I liked the way the images came off the press. Using the fish cut from paper as masks on the plate left stark white places, or in some cases I textured up the fish with ink and set it on the plate to reprint and it produced a nice mottled image. But then I got these home and they looked amateurish next to the red and black pieces I'd done toward the end of the day on Sunday.

I let the fishies sit for the day, then pulled them out tonight, and started embellishing with watercolor, colored pencil and pastels. Now I really like them! I wish I'd photographed them "naked." I'll have to remember to do that next time, so that there is the "before" to go with the "after."

More detail shots are posted at the end of this entry. Click on the images for even more detail.

Workshop #1 Complete

The weekend went by too quickly at Aurobora Press, in San Francisco. Today, there was a Giant's game going on in the background, as the studio is just a few blocks from the ballpark. So, there was a lot of foot traffic in the alley, but we were immersed in our work.

I started the day continuing with the fish, and getting more sophisticated with layering and textures, thanks to the good instruction from Master Printer Deb Sibony. But in the end, partly due to my desire to always use out all my inks, I worked with the red and black on my palette that I had not been using in the fish pieces. The result, six 13x13 monotypes with 8x8 plates, are works I'm very happy with. I used a scratch tool to incise the circles after laying in the black and red ink with a brayer using the techniques Deb taught us today.

I love to use the circles in my work, and I was able to do several ghost prints from the plates, alternating with adding Olivera oil to the centers of the circles along with more contrasting ink. When I got home, and back to my vast pile of ephemera, only a few pieces of torn paper were needed to complete the series. We return to Aurobora in about a month. In the meantime, I have a lot to do to make the fish series more complete. I'll show some of those base images in tomorrow's blog. It's late and my feet hurt.

First Day at the Aurobora Press Master Class

Today was my first day in Aurobora Press' new location and the first day of the five month Master Class workshop I'm taking there. Aurobora recently moved from Natoma Street, behind the SFMOMA, to 370 Brannan in SOMA.

The new space is light-filled and beautifully remodeled by Michael Liener. It is also within a very short walk to the South Park area, which has several nice restaurants and a tree-filled park. I'm going to enjoy being in this location for this Master Class.

Deb Sibony, Master Printer, setting up the press:

And mixing the inks:

My first plate, all inked up and ready to print:

The first few monotypes - the Fish Series:

More Encaustic (Beeswax Coated) Art

Here are three new pieces, each 11x14 when unframed. They were inspired by an Italian magazine/newspaper I got from a yard sale over the weekend. It is called Piccola and looks to be from the 1940s. I couldn't find any information when I googled it. Maybe I will ask my friend Roberto to see if his dad, who lived in Italy during this time, remembers it.

The pieces read:

Edward agonizes over not being able to control his emotions.


Doreen is jealous of those around her.


Jaques confides to Alexandra that he's keeping secrets from Claudia, but pulls back from revealing what he knows about Claudia's role in Michel's death.

Cow 2805 Finished, With Details

Cow 2805 Ready for Encaustic

I really, really do need to wait until tomorrow to let this dry before putting encaustic on it - just on the polka-dotty parts. The cow is already varnished with a glossy medium. That helped her look more like she was painted in oil. Ok - I'll go to bed and get up early tomorrow morning to milk her, I mean cover her with beeswax.

Working Bigger - in the Collage Style

Here's the base of the painting - Cow 2805 - ready for the mixed media collage part over it.

Prints with Akua Inks

Today's experiment was a set of four prints using the collagraph technique and Akua soy-based inks that came by way of today's UPS driver. He can't quite figure out why I'm smiling so much when he arrives. Because he always has something new and fun for me to play with!

Painting for Yesterday

This might be called: Fishies Whisper Secrets in His Ear, Mixed Media/Collage on Board, 18x24