UArts Students: sign up for my class!!!

Me, being all officially and teachery in Scotland with artist/student Angela Steele (whom you should all check out!)

Hey UArts students (and anyone else)--my class has only ONE person enrolled in it!
Mayday Mayday! Sign up now!!!!!!!

its CRGL221 for 3 credits W:8:30-11:20, 1-3:50 in the glass studio in Hamilton.

If you have any interest in producing imagery in glass this is the class for you!
See other blog entries to get an idea of what will be covered...in short...everything. And its an amazingly quick learning curve. The techniques are pretty simple.

Sign up now--you will not be disappointed! (And please tell your friends in Painting, Printmaking, Illustration, Graphics and Animation that they have a big gaping emptiness in their lives that can only be filled with STAINED GLASS!!)

Thank you.

I recently received a stack of papers from Site Santa Fe, (where my work was exhibited recently in their wonderful "Pretty is as Pretty Does" show).

Apparently their Education Department has a program called Youth Guide Art Journal, which has worksheets available for when school children visit which helps them to engage them with the artworks. In my case they had an image of the piece (the one seen above: "Phosphenes") and they asked the children to respond to two questions...

I worry about children looking at my work sometimes and I was relieved at least one of them said it made them happy...besides that I found their comments to be insightful, intelligent, funny and very, very sweet...here are some of them below:
1. what’s going on in these pictures?
I think that the little girl is lying in an oven burning
2. What do you think the characters in the images are thinking about or how are they feeling? What makes you say that?
Because she looks kind of hot.

1. what’s going on in these pictures?
I see flowers and I see like some butterfly flying and I see the sun
2. What do you think the characters in the images are thinking about or how are they feeling? What makes you say that?
I see a girl laying on her bed thinking of something. She looks like a clown.

1. what’s going on in these pictures?
I think that the girl is sad and she’s lieing on a hammok but for some reason it is snowing in the summer
2. I think these characters are sad. I thnk they are sad because the looks on their faces.

1. I see a baby on a bed looking up at you
2. It makes me happy


1. A girl is laying in bed and I see a flower and it looks like she is ascareded.
2. It looks like if she is ascerd because I see her eyes.

1. It looks like its snowing on a baby who is sleeping on a cushion from a couch.
2. Sad and lonely they look weard they are frowning + hair +eyes look sad.

1. I think the little girl is looking up at the sky on a mattress.
2. I think she is tired and sad and maybe she is a fairy.

1. There is a baby dreaming about her mother.
2. She is feeling very sad that she is thinking about her mom. She’s in the bed.

1. It looks like she’s lifting to heaven.
2. She’s felling skerd because she blind and she’s going to heven.

1. I think she is a baby girl.
2. She is so bord.

1. She’s going to sleep in a dream with snowflakes inside.
2. She’s feeling very sad and poor on a matres. And looking at snowflakes in the sky.

1. It looks like she likes the textur.
2. It looks like she likes the feeling of the bed.

1. I see a clock. I see some corn. I see a child.
2. I think she’s dreaming about corn and clocks. Because of the colors.

bird sketches

Composited (spellcheck wants me to change this to "composted"!!) from about 20 notebook pages. They are about 1.5" or so apop. Click image to see larger.

Mad Meg

"Mad Meg" 26" x 34"

The title was inspired by "Dulle Griet" ("Mad Meg") by Breughel:

Educational, demo-ey stuff

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen and other interested parties. Here's the breakdown on the layers for Mr Sin Eater. Click on the image to enlarge it, if you please.
The red is Lambert's R/clb
The blue is actually a St Just turquoise flash #221
The pink is an old piece of Desag--no longer made. But it was a very sweet pale pink, machine made flash. Cheap and nice color. I, for one, don't care for screaming neon gold pink...
All pieces were:
1. sandblasted
(the red was wiped down with some paint and fired to make it more of an indian red and to ensure that the filing would produce an even wider range of tones)
2. Highlights engraved with a flex shaft...and some color removed with a 3-M diamond disk pad flex shaft attachment--customized by ripping off the useless velcro and siliconed into place. From HIS Glassworks
Using these bits can take down the flash nicely and evenly if its too intense.
3. Further tones added with diamond files
4. The red was painted with stencil black vitreous enamel and silverstain. I chose to do this to the red layer BECAUSE: both the turquoise and the pink strike in the oven. Bad, bad turquoise and pink!! But those 3-m disks can bring back some shine after the sandblasting has frosted it. So there.

Sin Eater

Still in progress...I have no idea what to do for a background...but here's the figure...
the color on the head detail is closest to reality...the yellow is less lurid in real life.


Inspiration provided by Lucas Cranach...thanks, Luke!

Opera! Not Opium!

Ok...I think pretty much everyone gets the connection between the idea of beautiful music and sadness, right? We like sad songs, a great sad song is beautiful. No one calls sad songs "depressing". Or at least not if they are beautiful sad songs-- although I think its almost solipsistic: a good sad song isn't depressing because its beautiful and its beautiful because it isn't depressing...
I think music has the right idea...sad songs help us feel our feelings deeper, make the difficult moments all the more profound and poignant.
Its almost a no-brainer. So how come people grouse about sad art work? Why do so many people want their art happy happy happy? Prettyprettypretty pictures that are sweetsweetsweetly nonoffensive?
Any thoughts?

working on this

Recipe:
Lambert's 1001 r/clB...tried for a nice even tone, no cords.
Cut glass and sandblast all of it evenly with no mask.
Trace image with razor pt sharpie.
Wipe with mixture of stencil black and red for flesh (3 parts blk, 1 part r/f/f aprox) and wipe off excess so paint is sticking to the texture but no more.
Paint traced line in with glass paint--I used a 00 Simmons white nylon liner. Woohoo!
Fire to 1213F--no ramp, no soak full steam ahead! Grrrrrr!
Engrave and diamond file highlights...working into the shadows oooh baby, thaaaaat's right, just like thaaaat....!

Pilchuck class

Amazing class...amazing, amazing work...here's just a small sampling....


Class Left side front to back: TA Kara Rennert, Tasha Kuring, Nikki Hillman, Sharon Peters.
Front: Sachi Fujikake, Doreen Garner
Right side front to back: Me, Barabara Nichols, Deb Wright--behind Barbara--sorry Deb!!!! :-(
Deborah Horrell, Marina Marioni
TA Tim Belliveau is leaning over the table...easily identifiable as the only male...!
Kara Rennert
Sarah Tippit

Tasha Kuring (two views--the top shows how 3-D this was...)
Tasha again
Nikki Hillman

Tim Belliveau

Sachi Fujikake
Deborah Horrell
Barbara Nichols

Sharon Peters
Marina Marioni
Deb Wright

Doreen Garner

Holy Fool

Pencil 13x23

piece finished at Pilchuck

Images from class to follow soon...!

latest stuff

Small (8" wide) piece. In progress--to display at Pilchuck when I'm there in July.

Bull engraving (from above--done on 1006bl/clb Lamberts)

Bull sketch--I dunno nuthin' about bulls...this was made from a composite of sources including photographs found on the net, a simple cartoon, images of the Taurus zodiac symbol and "Ferdinand the Bull" by Munro Leaf. This is all in preparation to do a piece on the theme of Minotaur.


Eyeballs before and after. The black ellipses are a second layer. I am pleased with how strangely labial they look! And when they're not labial, they look like fish or bugs...

Crafts are fun....

But only for “everyone”....whomever that may be...certainly they’re not fun for everyone!

from http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/

eyeballs versus lips

any thoughts...? I'm making a real quickie-tiny one to show when I teach at Pilchuck. The eyeballs...a bit trite..but then again, they're freaking EYEBALLS and have an automatic engaging thing going on with the viewer's eyeballs responding on an animal level. Lips are nice...the sexiest part, if you ask me...but not as powerful an image, perhaps. What say you, good people?

I'm working on this:

Not quite the G.A.S. Conference

Light, vent and mildew stain.




Dale Chihuly's worst nightmare ($90)



Scary!



Scarier!!


Uh oh...it appears to be lit...


Steve and I at the Dinosaur BBQ in Syracuse NY

But what I did after....drove with Steve Easton to an antiques junk mall near Rochester...it added three hours to the trip home but it was fun as heck! And I like taking pictures....so here are some.

Doreen Garner

Doreen making great stuff...





detail of window above













Mad props to the fantastic Doreen Garner who was my assistant at Penland. She is incredibly talented and wonderful in all ways.

Penland class

Top row: Steve Ramsey, Barbara Atkinson, Mariko Brenner, Louis Sarris, Amy Atkins, Jeanne Forrest
Bottom Row: Doreen Garner, Samantha Hookway, Me, Kathy Jordan, Slate Grove (Penland glass shop coordinator)




Louis Sarris



Samantha Hookway



Mariko Brenner



Kathy Jordan



Jeanne Forrest



Amy Atkins



Steve Ramsey



Barbara Atkinson

Some pictures of my student's work at the recent Penland workshop--I was blown away by how fabulous they were!

light table

Things slowly happening with all the faces....

Late breaking noose!

Two spots open for my workshop at Pilchuck this summer! Session 3--July 7-24
contact Pilchuck!

further progress

Layers together and apart...

in progress

Engraved turquoise flash.  About 16" tall.  Tentative Title "Mad Meg" after Breughel's painting.

Ashes to Ashes

ASHES TO ASHES: LIFE AND DEATH IN CONTEMPORARY ART
April 24-August 23, 2009

Ashes to Ashes: Life and Death in Contemporary Glass is a thematic, conceptual group exhibition which exposes the public to some of the best established and emerging glass artists in the field today. The exhibition explores issues of morality, spirituality, rejuvenation and resurrection through various tropes and processes. The diverse sampling of works brings the following artists together within one space: Kiki Smith, Judith Schaechter, Marc Petrovic, Dafna Kaffeman, Sybille Peretti, Mark Zirpel, Frida Fjellman, Karen Willenbrink-Johnson/Jasen Johnson, Jane Rosin, Tim Tate and Beth Lipman.

link

on the light table

One: The demo posted some time ago.  Still pending.... (along with the Cold Genius albatross debacle)

The second image:  two redheads I started the other day.  (the lefterly one is a revisit of a head used in a piece called "Mother and Child"--its one damn difficult image to translate from drawing to glass for some reason...)

Third down: Another version of the crouching figure from the last post (which was a study--a small piece intended to lead to something more "grand" at some point). I've had many version of that crouching figure in my sketch files--this new one is the original version with her arms raised in the manner of one responding to one hell of a migraine....in fact the file is called "migraine halo".
Finally: The blue engraving is "Mad Meg".  This is a Saint-Just turqoisey blue flash that just begs to be engraved.

new piece

untitled...more than a study but a real small one...16" x 21". Glass paint, silverstain.
Originally, the crouching figure was to be chopped up and used as scraps in "Self Portrait of Someone Else" but I couldn't bring myself to do that (and I had enough material already anyway).