Art Auction

Recently I participated in the annual student art auction on campus. The problem with studio classes is that you are usually making things that either you want to keep or no one will want to buy (like the odd practice still lifes that we did for most of the semester in painting class or the 20 body parts for sculpture) and that I don't have much extra time to make things to sell. When this year's auction rolled around, I actually had stuff to submit- extra prints from print class last semester. I picked a few out to auction and sold four of them. The Student Art League takes a 25% cut of the bids, but even after their cut, I had made $18.75! Not bad, I was pleased. I found out later that my woodshop teacher had bought one of them!

I don't think I ever got around to posting the rest of what I did in print class, I'll have to show that sometime. I would love to do more in that area, but the classes fill up crazy fast- way faster then the other studios.

I was pleased with a lot of the artwork up for bid- in past years there has been a lot of crap because they will let anyone submit anything. Last year I was outbid and didn't win anything, so it was a pleasant surprise to win three of the four things that I wanted.

So here's what I won:

This is a little (about 8x10") photo/painting collage on board by Mel Keiser. She has done some really great paintings in shows on campus so I was excited to own one of hers. I fell for the hair/flowers area. I don't like a lot of collages because it's often hard to mix materials and make it work but I think it works here. I paid $14 for it.

This intaglio print is called "A Lot of Frames to Fill" and it's by Makenzie Cherban. This is done with a metal plate and she scratched all those lines into a coating on a metal plate that was then put in acid to eat away the lines. Printing is time consuming as well- you fill the lines in with ink and then wipe wipe wipe the surface of the plate- when it goes through a press, the enormous pressure pushes the paper into the lines and you get a print. 

It's pretty large and I liked all the ornate frames- it made me think of the one I spraypainted black. Worth $9 to me.

I had seen this unframed in a different show and liked it- so I was glad to see it in the auction. Entitled "Barflies", it's by Courtney Bryan and I thought she made a fun screenprint. I liked the positive/negative space and bright colors. I liked the fly silhouettes. Registration (things lining up) is always an issue for printmakers. Sometimes mis-registration works and sometimes it doesn't but I like the way the black outline is off. I paid $31 for this, which was a bit expensive but if I were to frame it myself I'd be spending a chunk on that so it actually is a good deal.

This is the one I wished I'd won:

I really enjoyed this painting- I really liked the tones/colors used in it and the technique is good. It's larger- about 2.5' square. A big reason why I liked it so much was that I did a series of similar b&w handprinted photographs way back in 2001 that were very well received (and won me prizes and money and clients). I would have loved to have had this up with them on my wall. Sometime I will have to scan and show those. I would love to have that series become a book.

A lot of people want to collect art but don't know how to go about it. Clearly I'm not collecting art as an investment, but for enjoyment. I think that often people worry too much about collecting names or spending lots of money. I don't believe that collecting art has to be expensive, quite the opposite. I've found great stuff for pennies. I feel that a lot of the expensive art out there isn't worth it. A lot of art is expensive because of time and materials but just because it is a Warhol doesn't mean that it is the best thing ever- artists generally have periods of artmaking that are better than others and this could be part of the lesser stuff. And there might be some no-name thing that is the best thing ever.

A lot of people say "I don't know art but I know what I like". Exactly. Collect what you like. It's ok to do so! Then it will be worth something to you.

The art world is a two way street- creator and collectors. I think it's important to support the art world-  I like it when people look at or buy my stuff so I make an effort to see what other people are doing. If I fall in love with something, then I'll make an effort to own it. Art makes our world interesting.

For crying out loud, support your artists- who wants to have a boring cookie cutter living room anyhow? If I can duplicate your living room down to the manufactured BB&B art on your walls, then there's a problem.

Be unique.

And can you tell that I will need a LOT of wallspace in my future abode?

Kodak

More prints going on here in Liz land. Over the weekend I went to school (sigh!) and got a multi-color reduction print out of the way, it's a requirement to have one done by midterms...which are this week.

My Kodak camera makes its way into a lot of my artwork, I love it's vintagey goodness. Remember my wire version? And even before that it made it's way into still life photos many moons ago in community college. Well I decided to immortalize it in print, too.

After coming up with the design, I transferred it to my block...can you spot the fatal error?

The moral of the story is: Don't transfer your image at 2 am when you are not thinking...my Kodak logo is the "right" way on the block which means that it would print backwards!! Whoops! Doh!

And I even carved out that logo before realizing my mistake! Clearly, I need more sleep. So I had to scrape it all off and print just the camera.

How does a multi-color reduction block work? Well, I decided on three colors: silver, gray and black. You can do more colors, but each color = more labor and time. Even in Print, I'm a b&w photographer! You plan out where each color will be, hence the color-coded block above. It's challenging to plan out a block like this one, you have to think backwards and use the spatial part of your brain. I found it to be the good kind of challenging, it was fun.

I carved out the silhouette of the entire camera and printed it in silver. You always print going lightest to darkest. Next, I carved away those areas (in yellow) that I wanted to stay silver. Then I printed again, carefully lining up my paper/block, using the gray ink. Then I carved away the parts I wanted to stay gray (the green part of the block) and printed again, using black ink. I used the ram press each time. I made 8 overall, which was time consuming- I was rushed to get it all done in three hours.

It's a total pain in the butt to line stuff up, but I liked how it turned out:

There's some "noise" (carving marks) to the left of the camera, which I tried to avoid- but oh well. If I wanted, I could carve out the camera with an Exacto knife and glue it to unblemished paper, it's done all the time in the print world.

Anyhow, it's fun to do and gives you appreciation for multi-color printed things! Especially when they line up! Registration (aka lining your colors up) is a big problem in printmaking, no matter how fancy you get.

Very Merry

So as of today I'm all done with the semester! I'm very excited to start break and have some breathing time to enjoy Christmas time. It's been a good semester, but there's always some crazy business going on.

So after teaching an RS lesson about being prepared and recently teaching a YW lesson about time management, you'd think I'd be all set, right? {snort}

I got a late start on this final painting- my teacher explained the project options to us and then only gave us basically a day to come up with a fab idea and gather all your materials. That's a tall order when you want to do something good, not cliche. It took awhile to gather everything and glue the still life together. So I found myself finishing my painting at 2 am this morning. Other painting students stayed even later!

And even though yesterday started off with no snow, by the time I left school there was three to four inches on the ground. I didn't have boots or a heavy coat with me because it'd been so nice out earlier when I'd left for the day.

Oh, and I had to be at school at 8 am this morning for my other final. And and keep in mind I live nearly an hour away from school.

The best solution was to get a hotel room in Edinboro, by the time I got McD's and got checked in it was 2:40 am. So there I was- no pj's, no toothbrush, no change of clothes, no makeup or hairbrush. I'd taken my other clothes out that had been in the car. I made do, got up at 6ish, showered and picked up a couple things (like a toothbrush) at Wal-Mart. There are few things grosser than having to put back on socks that you've already worn!

And I'm having to walk around campus in my tennies when I should have had boots. Blech.

So that's a lesson to me to 1) manage my time better so I don't have to do projects at 2 am and 2) to be more prepared in all this snow.


Anyhow, on to my painting. It took a long time to do because I wanted it to be good. Things went well in critique today and I got an A! I was also asked to bring it back for display at school next semester.

Am I painting bubbles? Nope, Christmas ornaments!

Normally you would work your entire painting from general to specific, but since I had so many colors and a large canvas (18x24) that was pretty impossible. It became kinda like paint by numbers! You had to look at each ball and separate the reflections into shapes.

A good start:

A little more progress...

and then it was done! It's even more colorful in real life. My teacher liked how they gleamed like vintage ornaments, that was the look I was going for. I really like how the colors popped against the dark. The trick in painting is not to use black but a very very dark color, like blue. If you use a true black then it becomes rather dead looking.

So act surprised....this will likely be used for next year's Christmas cards!

The Healing Power of Jesus Christ

I've seen the exhibit "The Healing Power of Jesus Christ" twice this month (once with the YSA and once at the Kirtland YSA conference) and it is truly amazing. Artist Angela Johnson has done a really beautiful body of work. For a limited period of time it was exhibited in the church's visitor's center in Kirtland, soon it will be in Nauvoo from what I hear. If it is in your area, please take the time to go see it, it's so worth the trip. I enjoyed it on several levels: the subject matter, the design principles used, and the bronze work itself. Most of the pieces were 2.5 to 3 ft tall.

I don't remember the exact titles of all the pieces, but this one is of the woman who wiped Christ's feet with her tears:

Walking on Water (I love the water texture):

Christ praying:

With Martha and Mary:

I believe this one was titled "Free to Choose"- starting at the middle (with the family), it depicts how we are free to make choices that lead us to or away from Christ. Each figure represented a specific virtue or sin. The artist also intentionally made the sin portion darker and the virtue portion lighter.

I really loved this one of Jesus with the Leper, I also really liked the texture of the leper's clothes:

One of my absolute favorites was this one with Christ calling Lazarus out of the tomb:

This one was inspired by the scriptures where Christ says he would gather Israel like a hen gathers her young:

I also really loved this one of the First Vision:

The trees were probably about 4 feet tall.

Here's a closeup:

This one is of the adulterous woman, I believe it was called "Where are Thine Accusers?":

I can't say enough wonderful things about this exhibit, the statues are so beautiful and they really bring in the spirit. Even my mother (who is not so big on statues and paintings of Christ) really loved it. I'm really glad I was able to see them in person.

Birdhouse in Your Soul

For this assignment, you had to find "visual" song lyrics and use them to create a piece. You had to create ambiguous space using several methods and you had to have several color schemes. After all that, you had to write an analysis of your work. We were being graded quite a bit on the actual analysis. I used "Birdhouse in Your Soul" by They Might Be Giants. I posted the entire lyrics awhile ago, but the lines I used were:

• "Let me be the bee in your bonnet"
• "Leave the nightlight on inside the birdhouse in your soul"
• "Blue canary in the outlet by the lightswitch who watches over you"

I spent a lot of time on this piece and on my analysis (I did the analysis in Photoshop, printed it in color- made it look professional and my teacher was impressed) and got a bit frazzled. I'm glad to report that my critique today went well- my teacher was very pleased with my piece and my analysis. I expect a good grade. I think this is my favorite piece that I made all semester.

I couldn't believe how many other students blew this off- there were a lot of poor pieces and several half finished ones and some didn't have one done at all. A lot made poor analysis', too. This is the final! There were only 4 pieces at the most that I thought were good. It's scary when we've been talking design and color all semester and many students still just don't get it- they still don't know their color schemes or elements of design...and they expect to get jobs in the art world!