Art Theraphy

Yesterday when I went into Dallas to deliver my mixed media piece to the show I took my camera and a plan to check out a few shows for my class. I decided on stopping by the MAC, the McKinney Avenue Contemporary. I did a little exploring which loosely translates as letting myself get lost. But in doing so I made myself better acquainted with the area. I found some dogwood trees that were still blooming, some azalea and tulips all by Turtle Creek. Great find. So I was very happy with my little photo session.

I went to the MAC and was pleasantly surprised by the show. The artist in the main two galleries was a man named Olin Travis, the show called People, Places and Visions. The first room houses what I thought was the more serious art. It is dramatic in theme and execution. All the work has dramatic sources of light, lots of colors that fade into blacks. They are full on human emotion and pathos. As I took my time studying each one I was taken in by them, they struck a chord with me that was unexpected. I also related into them through my own art. I could see a connection that I have with. I bought the catalog so I will be able to reference that paintings when I work. I want to try some things I saw in them. The first room had both figures and an environment; I won’t say landscape because the landscape was invented. The other room held his more traditional landscapes and portraits that I loved because of the subject matter and the more impressionist rendering of the work. You could see the influence of the Impressionist and post impressionist cubist painters in his work. One of the landscapes was of a boat dock at White Rock Lake. That is when I realized the painter was a Texas artist. I did not know until I read the catalogue that the MAC at its inception was determined to celebrate early Texas artists. I wondered why the art was not contemporary.

On particular painting stood out to me, its title was Man Mourning a Lost Hope. It isn’t hope in general, that is being mourned but a highly valued hope. The artist achieved that by composing the painting with a small figure seated at the bottom of a huge canyon like cityscape. It seemed to say to me that all the things that the world has to offer will be mourned, have the capacity to cause us to feel at loss. Looking at the art I knew I was at that place. I think if we are honest all of us have been there from time to time. There has to be something different. Like Solomon said in the book of Ecclesiastes, all is vanity and chasing after wind.

I have experienced a lot of loss but this sense of loss is different. It is a hope I had for myself, a personal goal, a sense of accomplishment. I don’t think that it is a bad thing to be at the end of, but that doesn’t make it less of a loss. It is giving up doing life my way. And when I looked at the painting I could no longer deny that there was a message in it for me that God had been waiting to deliver.

Art Rag III

Since I am taking the gallery management class and I have entered an art show in a faith based community I thought I should offer to volunteer for some aspect of the show. I know that the event is very labor intensive. When I went to drop off my art piece I asked the woman who checked me in who I could talk to about volunteering to help hang the show. We have done installation in class. I just attended a three hour lecture by my professor Greg Metz who is known for his work in installation. The lady “in charge” was pointed out to me. I went and introduced myself, told her I was a student at UTD and was interested in helping hang the show and could receive class credits for helping. Over the course of the conversation I was basically told “I don’t want to bother with you.” I have thought about this a lot since I had the conversation, trying to come up with another explanation, but that was it was, “I don’t want to be bothered.”

I was approached by the woman who helped me checked me in as I was leaving; she asked if I talked to the lady “in charge.” I told her I had and that she couldn’t use me. The check in lady was a little surprised. She asked me if I told her I was with the university and studying installation. I said yes. I told her it was OK. I explained that I live in Plano and there are a lot of places closer that will let me help for school, but I was interested in helping here because it was a faith based show. I would find other ways to get my credits

I had several reactions to this encounter. There was outrage, but not so much personal outrage. To tell you the truth for me to try to get uptown to help would be a huge sacrifice of time for me. What I saw that made me cringe was a ministry killing attitude. It made me question why the church was doing the show. This is important to me because a friend of mine and fellow artist Brenda Gribbon are in the process of starting an arts organization for Christian visual artists. I am thinking through questions like why. What would be the purpose of an organization like that? One of my disappointments with the church that has been hosting the art show for the last three years is that they have said one of the purposes of the show was to connect Christian visual artist in the area. There haven’t been any other events except the show and a meeting where they take input for the show. To their credit they have had some speakers over the years in conjunction with the show, but no movement to create a community of artists. The impetus for Brenda and myself is a desire for community thus opportunity for ministry as artists. The conversation I had this afternoon as I dropped of my art fell short of good ministry for me for several reasons.

As a person who has worked with volunteers and as one who wants to build a community of artist I wonder why I was not asked to do something else if the hanging team was trained and in place. I wondered why the lady “in charge” didn’t take a little more interest in what I was doing, just to be polite. I wondered why I wasn’t asked to give her my name and contact information for next year. I was amazed by how many ministry building opportunities she had missed. My pastor has spoken to me about doing something like they are doing on a smaller scale. If the church is interested in promoting Christian visual artists then an opportunity was missed to begin conversations to grow this idea. But one person’s response won’t stop me; I will try to talk to other people at the opening event. I am on mission. However so far I am not interested in doing things the way they are doing it.

There was a time when I was in a women’s ministry that was flourishing. We put in place some guidelines to help grow ministry. We gleaned the concepts behind them from some of the best leadership in the area. We wanted to expand our women’s ministry to include as many women in the church as we could in a vital way. We wanted to affect the community outside the church too. One of the foremost concepts was the word INCLUDE. So simple but something we women by nature tend to not do by default. We tend to be cliquish. We get comfortable and we like being with our friends and we forget to include and invite. Then we wonder why only 50 women show up for an event when 500 attend church. We wonder why no one volunteers to help. We get burnt out, self righteous, discouraged when our ministry dwindles.

Organizations that want to thrive need to be intentional in their inclusion. They need to think about what’s next and make sure they have people in place to replace members who move on for whatever reason. How many ministries fade away when the people who started them leave?

We did a few simple things. When we built teams we included all demographics of the women in our church; young and old, single and married, with children and empty nesters. When we had an event and organized volunteers we made a rule that we needed to recruit three to four new member or inactive members for each event. We rotated leadership in the various positions. We learned to give ministry away and tried to get as many people involved as possible. We trained our volunteers because we felt some were hesitant to step forward and serve and lead. We nurtured relationships because that is how God works, person to person. We looked for new ways to do something so we could use the gifts and talents of the people in the church. We were thankful for the women who served and lead out. We tried to communicate that. We tried to give ownership to our volunteer by giving them the assignment and letting go. We provided guidelines to keep us all on task and to avoid confusion. We networked with other churches to help us see the bigger picture and learn from their experiences. We believed that the body of Christ is a body and that we can all work together in purpose. It was a beautiful thing. Anyone can do it,

Art Rag II

I picked up the two pieces from Kinkos last night, in the rain before class. I am sick so I am sure this colors my feelings, but this work which I was really, really liking isn’t working at this stage. I am bummed. But before you think there is a conclusion here, I will tell you this is a process, AND this is the moment of breakthrough. In real art for me there is a point of crisis, something goes haywire and needs to be fixed. You either press on and get it to work or give up. I usually press on, my nature, which is deeply embedded in my genes. The results most of the time is something I love and is better than it would have been had I had no crisis.

But facing the crisis is always, always yucky. I do this maybe I will never attempt mixed media per Photoshop again. Why did I spend the money to see if this would work? I have had this idea, one day I will put it on canvas instead of paper and I will love it, now it is a waste. And a waste of time and I have no mixed media direction. I should go back to bed.

Instead I went and got my drawing pencils and found the imperfections that the scanning process caused can be fixed with a pencil. I may or may not add color. I will go step by step and consult Scott my greatest and most trusted critic.

I need to get stretchers (Maybe I have some. I have quite a few from painting class, I need to look in the garage studio) I need to order a frame.

Something I did get from the gallery gawk on Saturday was when I looked at the mixed media pieces I thought the artist were very, very brave in their work. They really took chances with the media, subject and process. What held it together if it worked, some did, some didn’t, was design.

I want to be brave with my art. Brenda reminded me I was very, very brave with my writing. That helped me think maybe I have it in me.

Scott the critic just in.... "Mom it is the bomb."

We are discussing keeping the imperfections. We decided to reproduce the griding cause by the scan and pull it into the sky instead of correcting the imperfections. To do this I figure I can scan the part of the drawing with the grid on it and print it out. put graphite on the print out and rub it to the sky, subtly reproducing the effect. We think it will work.

It is so much fun to have an artist son.

Art Rag

My art blog isn’t all I wanted it to be. I have art blog block. I know this is rare and probably not a real problem, but I realized tonight I want to learn to write about art and I get writing about art block. I guess I think I don’t know how or I shouldn’t. There is a language that goes with art. I do speak it, maybe not fluently but I do speak it. Painterly, is my favorite art word at least for now. You know how I am about favorites of anything. I love all the colors. Maybe I lean towards red for while, then blue, brown… who knows what's next? I think it will be black and white art for awhile.

However, this weekend when I went gallery gawking with Brenda I noticed a new trend. Colorful art just like the fashions right now are very, very colorful. And also painting that had a varnish finish, very thick high gloss like an epoxy. Everything shined. I didn’t like it. It looked too Miami. And I know what I am talking about.

Another trend which I did like was the paintings that were done on wood especially an artist named Mark Smith at the Craighead Green Gallery. Check him. Brenda and I fell in love with his work.

Update on my submission. I forgot to pick up my canvas at Kinkos tonight. I ordered a canvas and a watercolor paper print. We will see which one works. I hope they turned out, you never know with Kinkos. (Kinkos is a bad word where I work.)

At work I am actually doing design, as in sketching and then rending in Illustrator. I got into a really interesting place before I had to leave today. I am working on a logo for a church’s capital campaign. The best part is I did this all in front on my boss and she was kind of amazed. Like I was on the light table sketching, then I drew it in illustrator and I was changing the line width and color and adding textures and she doesn’t know people can do these things. Then I tell her where I got the idea; from listening to the lady talk and looking at the architecture of the building and send the lady font samples and asking which one she likes and “look” like her church. People can’t give me a font, but they can choose one that is selected and they know if something fits or not. I know how to work with people.

My biggest frustration with work has always been people under estimating what I can do and not giving me a chance to do things. There I said it. I love the design process. One on my most favorite things was when I made mini quilts. I sometimes got to design them for other people. I would meet the ladies at a fabric store and pick out fabric and talking about motifs and sized and who the piece was for and all. I listen to people then I create. I learn about them and then I design. It isn’t so much about me as it is expressing something artistically for another person.

Work as Art

It is either this blog or therapy tonight. I worked on art work for the PCPC art show tonight. It was so much like work. And work was really rough today. We got busy and all the usual challenges were there. It was nice to have some distraction. I haven’t had much sleep this week. I’ve stayed up reading, had trouble unwinding after class and then just had a lot on my mind. I haven’t talked to my counselor for about a month and I know I need to. I miss her because we are really just friends now. She is writing curriculum for an online Biblical Counseling course, so she is busy. She has taught at DTS and is a writer. She is always a great encouragement to me.

For the art tonight I took the new scan that didn’t lose the grayscale and once I found it on my hard drive I cut out the drawing shape in photoshop. Next I had to find the background photo on my hard drive and resize it and put it through a watercolor filter. Then I placed the cut out drawing on top. I moved it around a bit. Then I tried to find where I wrote down the finished size that I submitted when I registered for the show. It is nowhere to be found. I made a new size up and hope it is close. 22 x 28 inches. I am writing here in case I ever need to know what the finished size is like when I buy stretchers and a frame.

Next I resized the artwork and saved it as a jpeg, CYMK. That is because the printer will convert it if I don’t. I want to convert it myself. It is a graphic artist thing. I want the control, not to give it to the machine. Then I saved the file in a smaller size in RGB for the web. This all takes time because the file is BIG. Writing this out makes it sound simple, but I almost crashed photoshop when I converted the file to a pdf for Kinkos. I have to walk away from the computer when the large files are converting, resizing or saving. I plan to take the file tomorrow to have it put on canvas.

Interestingly enough the day I redid the scan and decided to go for the canvas my friend Tim came into the print shop to work on some of his products and he wanted to show me his canvases. He does something very much like I do on canvas, so he gave me the inside info. And I discovered watercolors work best on top. So I was very excited and thought Tim’s visit was a God thing.

Now I need to find out when the banner people are at Kinkos. And then the next step will be to add watercolor on top of the canvas. I am going to have three canvases made. I also plan to have some done on the color copier at work. I need to resize the artwork for that and I don’t think I can handle that tonight. It has just been too long of a day on the computer doing work.
On a brighter side, tomorrow at work a lady from a church in Plano is coming to drop off files so I can design them a brochure. That will make me happy. Also I made arrangement with my artist friend Brenda to go gallery hopping on Saturday. She has been a friend to me in a time when I really did lose most of my friends. She is a pretty cool lady, but her sticking it out with me make me love her even more.

It amazes me how writing like this calms me and helps me put things into perspective.