Holiday Boutique Sale in the Marina

For those of you who couldn't come to the art show last weekend because you had to de-flea the dog or weed-whack the lawn, ha ha, here is your second chance!! You can now visit my ceramic tiles, some new, some not so new.

Holiday Boutique, Saturday & Sunday

November 22 & 23, 9:00am to 4:00pm

Santa Monica Windjammers Yacht Club

13589 Mindanao Way, Marina del Rey, CA 90029
Located next to Burton Chace Park.

For questions contact Pat Salcedo (310) 578-9912.

Looking forward to seeing you!

(Flyer design copyright roslyn m wilkins)

Gauguin and the Tuxedo CatI was looking through some old photos on disc and found my cat Friday staring back at me from the screen. The image was screaming "TILE!" For the background I immediately thought of the rug in Guaguin's "Arii Matamoe (The Royal End)" which I wrote about recently.
He is a handsome guy, isn't he?
Ceramic tile, 6"x6"
(Photo and design copyright roslyn m wilkins)

Lucky 13th Annual Culver City Art Group Holiday ShowDon't miss our show. The Culver City Art Group has some fabulous artists (far better than me, thank goodness). And if you don't like art, come for the snacks!
I will be showing a handful of new tiles, four Photoshop digital "paintings" that I experimented with, a couple of mosaics and two small acrylic paintings. I also have three entries in the "Colors of Fall" exhibit. How's that for variety?
Saturday, November 15, 2008 from noon to 6:00pm. Meet the artists (and those snacks) between 3:30pm and 6:00pm). Rotunda Room, Vet's Building, Overland and Culver in Culver City. Plenty of free parking! See you there!

(Flyer design copyright roslyn m wilkins)

Ancient Mosaics Among the Saguaros

One of the many niceties about going to the Getty Villa for an event is the drive along Pacific Coast Highway with the view of that seemingly endless blue ocean... LA has so many facets to it, and the Pacific Ocean is certainly a good enough reason to live here, even if I don't make the attempt to see it as often as I could... but I digress (my favorite thing to do).

And so, Thursday morning my car was headed back to her favorite parking spot at the Villa, this time to take me to the one-day class, "Ancient Stones in Modern Contexts" taught by Lillian Sizemore. In the morning we discussed ancient and modern mosaics in general, toured the four mosaics on display (which I pretty much know by heart now, although always noticing something new each time I see them), then visited the exhibition "Jim Dine: Poet Singing (The Flowering Sheets)", a contemporary installation inspired by scupltures in the collection.

The idea was for us to design our own mosaic based on the ancient mosaics we had viewed that morning. I did a preliminary sketch of grape leaves in a geometric pattern but I had no enthusiasm for it. After a short meditation I saw a vision of saguaros in the southwest with mountains against a sunset. I had no idea where this came from or how it would translate into what was supposed to be a geometric mosaic, especially as we had to use the pieces without cutting them, but there it was, so I proceeded to lay it out on my board.

As the design progressed I realized I had gotten myself into more than I could deal with and part of me had the strong desire to wipe all the mosaic stones off and start over with something more organized, but as we only had a couple of hours to work it was too late. Nevertheless, another part of me was compelled to see the outcome of this mess.

Regardless of my design choice, I have to say I enjoyed the process, of being in the moment, and the realization that no matter the outcome I was creating something that had never existed before. That, to me, is the beauty of the creative process: the opportunity to give birth to an entity entirely new with a life of its own.

Even though, as one of my classmates expressed, the Jim Dine exhibit was not my cup of tea, I "got" what he was doing. This mosaic was my expression of all the influences of that day and of my entire life.

Later, reflecting on what I had done with the mosaic I understood where my inspiration came from. Looking at the mosaics had tapped into my love of archaeology in general and specifically, the project I am working on currently, drawings and photos from an excavation in the southwest US. The images in the mosaic are not just saguaros, but as another classmate commented, look like some of the Indian petroglyphs and pictographs to be found on rocks and cliffsides. So perhaps my subconscious mind was weaving together the designs left by the ancient Romans with those of the Indians. Stones hewn from the mountainsides, rocks and cave walls painted, pebbles and clay taken from the earth. It's all the same. Art is what ties us all together.

[As a side note, one of the many things I learned this day was the technique of dry grouting. Because these mosaic stones are very porous, it's not a good idea to apply wet grout. Instead, you can sprinkle the dry grout over the finished piece, let it fall into the spaces and brush off the excess powder. Then spray the piece with water, carefully clean off any grout that has bubbled up over the stones and let dry. Repeat this process until the grout is as you want it. I am in the process of doing this. Very useful advice for grouting my framed tiles as well, as the wet grout sometimes mars the wood frames. I'm going to try it with my latest tiles.]

(Photos copyright roslyn m wilkins)