An uplifting weekend with artist friends, part one

I am very blessed to have friends and colleagues in the artist community. This weekend proved how we all come together to support each other.

On Saturday, five members of the Culver City Art Group attended a memorial for our friend Violette Czukor who passed away unexpectedly on January 8, 2012. She was a photographer who specialized in floral images.

Her cousins organized a luncheon for her family and artist friends. Several of us spoke about her as a person and as a wonderful photographer. She was a very private person and I learned a lot about her at this get-together. I was very happy to be there to honor her life.

She could be difficult at times, but she was always sweet to me on a personal basis, and I liked her.

I won't go into all the details here as I have told the story to many people. But the lesson I learned from my last time with Violette is that it is important to be kind and patient with everybody you deal with, no matter what the circumstances may be.

You have no idea what they may be going through at that point in time. And you certainly don't know, whether they may be a friend, an acquaintance, a colleague, or a business associate, if that will be the last time you ever see them. So in that context, fifteen or twenty minutes out of your life is not such a big deal.

So I am glad, despite other things I thought I needed to be doing, I did take the time to talk to her about some projects she was thinking about. It was a beautiful day, and that conversation will be part of it forever.

My next blog will be about supporting a fellow artist at her first ever solo art exhibit.

(photos copyright Violette Czukor)

Moving through mutations of the Galactic Landscape

I was in a "sixties" kind of mood when I laid this design out on paper (well, actually in Adobe Illustrator).

Original Adobe Illustrator sketch

 

Galactic Landscape after firing with first layers of glaze

But I wasn't happy with the way it looked after the first firing... it was too blah.



Galactic Landscape after firing with third and fourth layers of glaze
(Three 6x6-inch tiles - 8 inches x 20 inches framed)

So I covered it with a reddish glaze, let it dry and then applied the top layer of Black Cobblestone. Now I am thinking I should have reversed that order.

But I'm not unhappy with it and don't want to mess with it again. I am done and on to other ideas.

(designs and photos copyright roslyn m wilkins)

Meeting an old friend, discovering a new friend at Santa Monica Museum of Art

What a day! I was waiting to take some more tiles out of my kiln and, as usual, the suspense was killing me. As I had been promising myself I would visit the Beatrice Wood exhibit at the Santa Monica Museum of Art (SMMoA), I decided this was as good a time as any. Full steam ahead and all my other deadlines be damned! 

As an art lover and artist, I consider myself to be so fortunate that at any given moment I can drive my car, take the bus, or even walk to a plethora of art galleries and museums.

I don't know why I love art so much but I was born this way and there is nothing I can do about it. This is NOT a lifestyle choice!

I enjoy visual art in all its forms be it fine art, contemporary or classical, arts & crafts, architecture, archaeological artifacts, illustration, 2D or 3D... you get the picture (oh, my brain makes these awful puns and I have no control over it).

As I have stated in previous blogs, I even love the art I hate. The only art I don't bother with is stuff that leaves no emotional aftertaste. What is the point? As long as an artist is passionate about his/her work, has given their life over to it, or is making some kind of statement, I'm up for it.

Today was one of those days I could live over and over again. I love Beatrice Wood as a person. I never met her but I have seen several documentaries about her. My opinion of her was that she was a tough old broad who had an incredible sense of who she was. She was working as a ceramic artist pretty much up until her death at 105.

I remember in one film I saw about her, she stated that the greatest excitement in her life was waiting to open the kiln in the morning. I sure relate to that! That may be the only connection we have, but it is enough. Oh, yeah, she had a cat, so that counts too...

Today at SMMoA I watched two videos about her. My admiration only deepened. Which she would hate. One thing she said resonated with me—that you have to endure the terrible events in your life in order to appreciate the good times. I have always felt this way to the point of embracing the painful circumstances, knowing that this will enhance the beauty in my life.

You can look up the salient points of her biography on the internet, so I won't go into all the details. Let's just say she led a more than interesting life which is worth researching.

So who is my new friend? Georgi Tushev: Strange Attractor is in an adjacent gallery to the Beatrice Wood exhibit. To put it mildly, I was totally blown away. I love texture in artwork. And his pieces have it in mega-spades.

From the website: [Tushev] presents paintings... that investigate the effects of oil paint when exposed to extreme magnetic fields. He uses pigments that contain high concentrations of iron that, when exposed to magnets, create textured, three-dimensional surfaces, where paint seemingly explodes off the picture plane.

The paint doesn't "seemingly" explode. It does explode! I have never seen anything like this. You have to go see it.

By the time I arrived home my kiln was at 250F degrees. Cool enough to open it a tad and speed up the cooling process. To cap the day off I was reasonably happy with the tiles I took out of the kiln once they cooled off completely.

Change of heart for ceramic tiles

I painted a set of four ceramic tiles but when they came out of the kiln I wasn't very happy with the outcome.

Once again, jumping into the unknown, I decided to take a chance on destroying hours of work to create something more satisfactory.

I covered the fired tiles with two coats of Mayco Royal Fantasy Jungle Gems glaze and hoped for the best.

So, was the experiment successful?

As I have noted before, it is just about impossible to show ceramic glazes on a computer monitor. The glazing on the tile is a lot more complex than can be shown this way.

But without me reaching through your computer screen, scaring the daylights out of you, and handing you the physical tile, this will have to suffice.

Below is the result.  

I am pretty happy with them. I call the series Ghost Hearts 1-4. The tiles have an eerie, ethereal quality. The more I look at them, the more I like them.

4.25 inch ceramic tiles, 6.25 inches framed.
(Designs and photos copyright roslyn m wilkins)

A visit to Autry National Center

A lovely day at the Autry National Center. Read all about it on my blog post, Cowboys and buffalo meet fine art at the Autry National Center.

(photo copyright roslyn m wilkins)

96-year-old mosaic artist still going strong

I love reading stories about how the love of art has impacted an individual's life.

This 96-year-old has enjoyed his hobby as a mosaic artist for 52 years and is now having his first art exhibit.

http://www.chillicothegazette.com/article/20120205/NEWS01/202050301/96-year-old-mosaic-artist-readies-first-art-show

Hearts of Stone

Heart of Stone One
4.25" ceramic tile, 6.25" rosewood frame

I was painting these tiles while watching Dickens of London, a 13-part 1976 Masterpiece Theatre mini-series about the life of the author (played by Gene Foad as a young man, morphing into Roy Dotrice as he aged). Not only does it provide details about Charles Dickens that I didn't know before, but it is also an interesting reflection of life in the Victorian age. (Dickens was apparently obsessed with the young queen.)  

I was so absorbed in the drama that I did not pay enough attention to my painting. Halfway through the tiles I realized I had painted each one with the same colors in the same order, so after firing they would all look alike.

Heart of Stone Two
4.25" ceramic tile, 6".25 rosewood frame

Usually, before I start painting, I label each color on the tile like a paint-by-numbers canvas so I don't get confused. Many of the glazes look alike before they are fired, and of course, none of them look the same pre-firing.

Especially as some of the glazes move around in the kiln and some are stable, I need to be careful which glazes I put next to each other to get the effect I want.

Heart of Stone Three
4.25" ceramic tile, 6".25 rosewood frame

When I realized what I had done (oh horror!) I had to figure out a way to give each one a different look. Even though I had spent a considerable amount of time up to this point, I decided, what the heck, I will experiment by painting a layer of different colored glaze over the glazes already painted on each tile. They will either turn into a muddy mess or something interesting will happen.

Heart of Stone Four
4.25" ceramic tile, 6.25" rosewood frame

I finished laying down the first two coats of glaze, waited until they were somewhat dry and then covered the tiles with the extra layer of glaze.

So although each tile started out looking pretty much the same as the next one, they each took on a different personality after firing.

(Photos and designs copyright roslyn m wilkins)