Mixed media at LeMoyne

Betsy Markowski using a jeweler's saw to demonstrate how she makes a silver chain

I just came from Betsy Markowski's talk at LeMoyne Center for the Visual Arts. Her work reminds me of Joseph Cornell's collages: she takes detritus -- incidental pieces of wood and metal of no immediate consequence -- mixes it meticulously with more, and breathes life into it. Her work is small scale, refined, and maybe even obsessive. Markowski grew up in Tallahassee, and now lives in North Carolina. 

Markowski is sharing LeMoyne with stunning pieces in many media by members of Affiliated Artists of LeMoyne. The show runs through July 26. Admission is free.

And then there's LeMoyne's Live Oak room, a community-wide invitation to be on the walls of LeMoyne now through July.  It invites you -- yes, you! -- "to take a photograph or create artwork of trees and bring them to LeMoyne. We will pin them to the wall and create a room filled with trees." For inspiration, there's a young live oak in the center of the room. I just told C about this, and he grabbed his second-favorite photograph, drove straight to LeMoyne, got accepted, and saw his photo on the wall. Does this inspire you?

Detail of LeMusée 
Mixed Media
Betsy Markowski
$10,000

Deep lessons in digital photography

Sunshine Alterations
 in our neighborhood
taken for digital photography class

I took Charles Badland's digital photography class at LeMoyne Gallery so I can photograph my art and enter shows. I learned a few more basic lessons as well:

• A good camera takes better pictures.
• Take my camera everywhere.
• Take extra batteries too.
• Read the manual.
• Take lots of photos.
• All those aperture and speed options make sense if I spend time using them.
• Photos make me see. 

I still need practice photographing my art. Here are two sites that will help:
Shoot that quilt
Artcall for entries. Tells how to resize photos using Photoshop and has basic photo guidelines from Maria Elkins

I want to help Mary, who makes window treatments. Her photos tend to emphasize the bright window more than the lovely drapes. When I see her we'll explore:

HDR
High Dynamic Range -- a setting that takes three photos of the same subject, then combines the results into a single photo with the best light balance. Badland said he thinks the newest iPhones have this option.

Pictures close to home

I showed these photos at the digital photography class at LeMoyne Wednesday.

Grapes on our table

I set out to take pictures last Saturday and the first person I saw was out taking pictures on Saturday

Road kill on our street

Another kind of road kill,  thrown into the street and then run over

Not sure -- might be weeds

Looking out the front window before sunrise

Through the trees as the sun comes up

Silk Art at LeMoyne

I love painting on silk. I love how the silk takes color. But all I ever do is change color of fabric; I don't make pictures on silk. If you want to see that, head to the LeMoyne Center for the Visual Arts, 125 Gadsden St., where there's a "mini-fisival of silk" through Aug. 31. See what you think.

Abstract Sparkle
detail
Karen Dungee

Visiting the Everglades
Edith Perman

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

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.

Encaustic love

Sunset flower
silk, wood, encaustic
3 1/2" x 5" x 1 1/2"

I love to make encaustic art! That's because I love texture and wood. (Dad's workshop smelled like sawdust.) Since encaustic is painting on or with wax, it's got to have a firm base: the wood. I made this little sunset flower in Amanda Wilke's encaustic collage workshop at LeMoyne yesterday. It started as just the stem, leaves, and pink circle on orange background. They are silk. This I glued to a scrap of wood  from the shed. I covered it with a layer of melted beeswax, which hardened immediately. Then I got something sharp and drew petals, and painted over that. I love the result. It doesn't need hanging -- just set it on a shelf. This is one technique I'm going to make my own! 

Writing on stone

A couple of weekends back I attended a collage workshop with Amanda Wilke at LeMoyne. She taught us how to do lithography. I don't see much future in it for me. But whenever I say that, sometime hence there you'll find me, immersed in what I first rejected. So I paid attention to Amanda.
After she showed us, we did it ourselves.

Once I took a printing class -- for an entire semester I studied ... well ... something about making magazines and newspapers out of paper and ideas. Some info I stored;  most I shed. But I do remember that lithography means writing on stone. OK, now you've got me, Amanda. Can't do that with my iPad! Amanda assured me there are no stones involved. Any flat surface will do, so long as you can put greasy ink on top of it. The greasy ink prints, while the rest of the surface, being kind of wet, rejects the ink. That's the general idea of lithography, isn't it, Mr. Gutenberg? Oh, that's not your thing, Mr. G? Listen to Amanda then:

Lithography (Wear gloves)

Materials: glass, oil paint, gum Arabic (art supply store or order a big one from Graphic Chemical online), stand oil (I forget where you buy that -- probably an art store.)

1.    Find a high-contrast image.

2.    Make a copy of the image on a printer that is not ink-jet.

3.    Brush gum Arabic over the image.

4.    Sponge off the gum Arabic. Be gentle so it doesn't tear.

5.    Mix oil paint with stand oil to get it runny enough to coat the brayer. This is not always necessary. It depends on conditions, such as temperature and humidity. Your oil paint might work all by itself.
6.    Spread the ink on a piece of glass that has tape around the edges so you don't cut yourself. And "work" it until it is right for the brayer.
7.    Ink the brayer.

8.    Put your copied image on glass

9.  Lightly roll the brayer over the image.

10. Put the blank paper (or fabric) on top of the image. Roll with brayer.

11.    Sponge the image.

            12. Remove from glass.

Am I missing a step? There's only one way I'll find out -- by doing lithography on my own -- soon.