Encaustic Artist Joy Matthews

Yesterday encaustic artist Joy Matthews drove here from her home near Albany, Georgia to demonstrate how she melts wax into art. About a dozen of us at the LeMoyne Center for the Visual Arts watched Matthews cook cupcakes of beeswax, add a resin hardener, stir dabs of color from oil paint, and brush it onto birch, where the wax hardens faster than an egg on a skillet. Then she took a blowtorch to it.

If I concentrate on kitchen metaphors I love encaustic. The studio smells like a candle at Christmas, while images emerge like figures in a dream. And the blowtorch -- which serves to fuse layers of wax -- is, after all, the same gas flame that I light on the stove without incident each day. Yet there's something daring about encaustic art. The beeswax turns caustic if it smokes. You could burn the house down if you're careless.

You can see Matthews' work at the Wiregrass Gallery Artist Cooperative in Thomasville.

Matthews paints a layer of orange beeswax over her gessoed birch panel

Carving tools cut designs into the wax

Dabs of oil paint leach oil into paper towels, leaving pure pigment to mix with beeswax

Pouring and brushing a new layer of color

Tilting the board creates wave-like rises in the wax

Color Love

What color combinations do you love? OK, OK... everyone loves blue. (You don't?) I've been thinking beyond my favorite color, turquoise -- really paying attention. I had fun running through my photos, noticing what grabbed me. Not thinking, just responding.

Three salads and a soup

Boring but useful: that's a label we used to give a certain kind of story assignment -- one you had to write but didn't really want to.

That's the way I feel about my decision to have three salads and a soup for the backbone of our summer weekly menu. It works, but I don't even want to talk about it.

About a month ago I planned to discipline myself by writing the week's menu in this blog. Yay! Then you too could eat boring but useful dinners, without even planning.

What happened is that we are actually eating this way, but the planning is slipshod.

No excuses!
Here's what I learned so far:

Mom's slaw with fish and rolls, Greek salad (cucumbers, tomatoes, green onions, olives, feta) with shrimp, steamed asparagus with lemon and salt with hard-boiled eggs,  chicken salad, sharp greens like dandelions with fried eggs and smoked paprika, tuna and white beans and roasted red peppers ...

Soups: chili, lentil with ham, lentil without ham but with brown rice and frizzled onions, pumpkin and lentil.

Big dishes: Mom's spaghetti and meatballs, chicken cutlets in the oven topped with some bottled sauce (There are lots of these now -- we like Thai.),  grouper with tomatoes and olives, easy chicken Parmesan with tomato sauce and noodles or polenta.

I am experimenting with spending less time in the kitchen. I kind of miss the old way of messing around, humming tunes and chopping and stirring. To be continued.

Nina Freeman demonstrates acrylic painting

Long Art Summer program
1-3 p.m. every Saturday
LeMoyne Center for the Visual Arts
next week: Joyce Estes on painted silk

Nina Freeman
It took painter Nina Freeman a while to get to abstract painting, she said Saturday as she painted swaths of acrylic in abstract cruciform at LeMoyne Center for the Visual Arts.

"Abstraction takes more knowledge of the elements to do it well," she said, explaining that she started out painting realistically and moved to abstraction as she gained confidence.

Freeman demonstrated her process, going slowly, thinking out loud about color, shape and line.

Freeman applying gesso so different sizes end up at the paper's edge. She starts with black or white -- using gesso for these colors because gesso is opaque, mixing the gesso 50-50 with polymer medium for its glow.

 "I limit myself to two or three colors," Freeman said. She showed how she makes a whole painting with only turquoise and transparent red iron oxide with black and white.

Burnishing layers of paint

After first paint has dried, consider focal point, depth, color.

Collage: adhere pieces with soft gel gloss; top with wax paper, brayer, top with a weight.

You can make collage material, using freezer paper with paint on top or craft tissue paper topped with paint, then Golden soft gel gloss. Top with wax paper, smooth with brayer, cover with a weight.

"I always work with the colors a lot before I begin on the painting." Another favorite combination is orange, cobalt teal, and green-gold. Above, Freeman is mixing two colors.

Techniques from Nina Freeman 
Check her blog for more.

• Add texture with brayer, print blocks, credit card, crumpled tissue.
• Get squeeze bottles from beauty supply store for gesso and paint.
• Use freezer paper as a palette.
• Make a portable painting surface with insulation material. Then ask the store to cut it to fit your full painting sheets.
• Murphy's oil soap cleans brushes. Soak hardened brushes in it.
• Show distance through: cloudy color, muted lines, less clarity. Titanium buff over a color makes it blend into background, providing depth.
• Show closeness through: big size, clear lines, bold color.

Almond-fruit Cake for Fathers Day

Blueberry-almond cake

More pastry than cake, this delectable dessert inspired C to say, "You've got to make this again!" That was a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday, when I asked what he wants for Fathers Day, he repeated, "Make it again!" Don't tell C,  but the last time I'd made this was 2004 (I jotted it on the recipe!). I think he said "Make it again" that time too ... and I did, nine years later. Sunday -- less than a month since last time -- I'll be making this again. It is so delicious and relatively easy that I really should make it more often.

Patrice gave me the recipe. You see they call it Pear Cake, but my notes tell me I've also used apples, a combination of apples and raspberries, blueberries (above). This Sunday it will be cherries.

Patrice's Homely Pear Cake

2 C. plus one T. flour
3/4 C. plus 2 T. sugar
2 T. light brown sugar
1 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt
1 stick plus 2 T (5 ounces) unsweetened butter
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1/2 C. almond paste
2 T. fresh lemon juice
2 t. cinnamon
2 pounds firm but ripe pears -- peeled, cored, thinly sliced

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Butter an 8-inch square pan.
2. In food processor, pulse 2 C. flour with 3/4 C. sugar, light brown sugar, baking powder and salt. Add the butter and pulse until it resembles cornmeal. Add egg and combine.
3. Turn the dough onto a work surface and knead several times. Divide roughly in half,  with one piece slightly larger. Flatten into disks, wrap in plastic or wax paper, and refrigerate 20 minutes.
4. Into food processor put the almond paste, lemon juice, cinnamon and remaining 2 T. sugar and 1 T. flour. Pulse until smooth. Scrape into bowl and gently stir in the fruit.
5. On an unfloured work surface (I think I may have sprinkled some flour first.), roll out the larger piece of dough into an 11-inch square. Fit it into the baking dish, pressing it three-quarters of the way up the side. Spoon the fruit in. Roll out the rest of the dough and press it on top, sealing the sides together by squeezing. Bake 55 minutes, or until golden. Make sure fruit (if apples or pears) is soft.
6. Cool at least 6 hours, preferably overnight. (This is a joke! It is delicious, if a bit runny, right out of the oven.)

Talking Hope

Hope
36" x 36" 

"HI. This is Kathleen Turner, in Tallahassee, Florida. I’d like to tell you about this quilt Hope."

That's how I began an audio intro to my piece in the Sacred Threads exhibit, in Virginia near Washington, D.C. in July. Visitors will be able to dial a number on their cell phones and hear me talk. I think there's a separate number for each piece. 

I'm one of those people who wander through museums wearing a headset so I can hear the tour. But this is more intimate. I encountered it a couple of months ago at the Mark Rothko exhibit at the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio. Several pieces had a phone number, and when I called I heard Rothko's son tell me about the art in front of me. 

Sacred Threads people asked us to talk about symbolism and what the piece says about our lives. Here's the rest of what I said:

In my studio I keep an orchid nearby as I work on my art. Orchids inspire me to make beautiful things. In the room there are two tables. One is for paint and other messy processes, and the second is for sewing. The orchid sits on my painting table.

This quilt Hope started with an orchid blossom that fell onto the table. I didn’t want to throw it away, so I pinned it to my bulletin board. At first it was pink and lovely. After a while the blossom shriveled and turned brown. For some reason, I still thought it was beautiful. After several months, I made a sketch of the blossom, and the sketch turned into this quilt. I started with the lines of a beautiful flower, but one by one my creative choices turned it into something else. In the end it resembled a bird.

Then I traced an orchid leaf and made many of them so they could circle the bird in a kind of mandala. But I saw that the leaf shape also could be flames. My orchid had turned into a creature like the Phoenix, the bird that rises from its own ashes, more alive than ever. It also reminds me of the shining, elusive Firebird from the Russian fairy tale.

The swirls below the central figure resemble an orchid’s aerial roots, but I think they could also be a spiral of confusion.

Even so, the whole image speaks to me of rising.

I didn’t consciously set out to make such things, and in fact when I started this quilt my heart was not exactly hopeful, but kind of heavy with family concerns. But by the time the quilt was complete, with its triumphant bird shape rising on a spring green field, it shouted HOPE.

Buying, saving, spending time

Life is not a dress rehearsal -- so I've heard.  At 67 I kind of believe it. We die.  Eeek!

Remember that saint who kept a human skull on his desk? The guy who always kept death in mind? Jerome? Really, I don't think they have shown us kids that Caravaggio picture. I prefer the sugar skulls a Mexican student once gave me.

Still, I'm getting careful about how I use my remaining seconds. Making art is near the top. It's like discovering what I was born to do. Which leads me to my rules about time:

Don't hurry.
Go slow.
Do less.

What makes a good art website

I want an art website, and I will probably eventually make a simple one. You can too. I'm collecting advice before I jump in. Today I read Sandra Sider''s curatorial take on quilters' sites. (iYou can find it on p. 2 of the Spring 2013 Studio Art Quilt Associates journal.) Sider says art sites should be simple and engaging, with -- obviously -- good writing and spelling. Don't be cute, be clear. Have good photos, and be sure to include length, width, and year completed, with one whole and one detail photo per quilt. Sider, the SAQA president, lists some effective sites. Here are a few:

Shelley Brenner Baird

Jayne Bentley Gaskins

Kathleen Loomis

Sidney Snell

Heather G. Stoltz

Art quilt: emphasis on ART

I just attended Leni Wiener's webinar on entering Studio Art Quilt Associates shows. 

In a few days you'll be able to find the hour-long audio, with its guiding PowerPoint, on the SAQA web site. For now, here are two points that impressed me:

1. SAQA means art. People want to see art. Some of those people are not sure they want to see quilts. So for SAQA shows, they are looking for jurors who are artists or fine are curators -- and not necessarily quilters. I am glad!

2. An artist's portfolio should look like all the pieces are made by the same person. This means it is coherent in palette, technique and style. If you check Wiener's web site, you'll see that she offers guidance in developing a style. (The $100 fee seems reasonable.)