Susan Gallacher-Turner’s Delicate Shape-shifting, X-treme Handiwork

By Shu-Ju Wang

Above, a corner of Susan’s studio with various complete and in-progress work.

Susan Gallacher-Turner is fascinated by shape-shifters. Characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, stories from Native American traditions, or even looking out the car window where faces appear in the distant hills and trees…these are all sources of inspiration for her boxes, repoussé work and aluminum window screening sculptures.

Susan is a bit of a shape-shifter herself…

Wait, did you say aluminum window screening?

***

Yes. Lets talk about that, it is a bit unusual. Although Susan did not start out intending to create sculptures with aluminum window screening, she now does much of her work with that particular material. Previously, she had been working with beadwork and fabric and was trying to create a painted fabric piece that needed to be shaped and formed. After trying various methods, she hit upon the idea of using aluminum screening to shape the fabric and brought it in to consult with her sculpture instructor.

“Why are you bothering with the fabric?” was the instructor’s response.

Once Susan let go of the fabric, it all came together and she started working with the screening material more and more, and she hasn’t looked back.

One might call aluminum screening sculpture X-treme Handiwork. Instead of holding a silk handkerchief and slowly building an image thread by thread, Susan holds a giant piece of aluminum screen in her hands as she slowly and gently pushes into the material to create a form. There are no molds or drawings, she just holds the material in her hands and starts pushing. The nose comes first, but only barely at the beginning. The first round of ‘pushes’ creates the sketch, if you will. Once the sketching is complete, she then goes back and pushes again, to deepen the definition. The process is slow, as once done, it can not be undone; Susan is careful to not over-push it.

As she works, if appropriate, she also starts to shape the entire piece into a form that can stand up by itself. Again, all by pushing and shaping with her fingers. Slowly, the aluminum screening transforms into a human face, an eagle, a lion or a variety of other half animal, half plant creatures. Then Susan paints the sculpture. Coats and coats of paint are needed for the colors to finally built up and be visible on the mesh material. As she paints, she watches for where the material needs more definition and she returns to pushing again.

Back and forth, back and forth, until she’s satisfied with the form, the colors, and the balance. The standalone pieces stand up by themselves indoors; outdoors, they do need some support so that they don’t blow away.

***

Now, where were we? Oh, yes.

Susan is a bit of a shape-shifter herself — she’s a professional writer, and for those long time readers of this blog, you know that she has contributed much to this forum; she’s also a sculptor of many different mediums, including clay, copper repoussé and, of course, aluminum screening.

To see Susan’s larger and smaller sculptures (many are jewelry pieces), visit her studio during Portland Open Studios on Oct 17 and 18, 2009. Susan is artist number 79 on the tour. You can see more of her work at her website at http://www.susangt.com/.

To learn more about Portland Open Studios, visit their website at http://www.portlandopenstudios.com/.

Below, top: Susan’s workbench where she works on her repoussé work. With the copper sheets, she does sketch first and follow the sketch; bottom: The Shape-shifter Polar Bear.

Margie Lee: Following an intuitive path through art and life.

By Susan Gallacher-Turner
Podcast audio interview available at www.voicesoflivingcreatively.com

“I have done a lot of different things, but I think that’s the way my art developed,” says Margie Lee. “It’s not just a straight path, that’s for sure.”

Margie at work in her studio

Margie Lee’s life path has led her across the country and Europe, and across the fields of geology, literature and art. Margie’s interest in art started in second grade when she tagged along to her older brother’s private art lessons, “I was very encouraged by my brother who was a painter. It was a very rich environment, all the teachers were from the college,” Margie explains. Her early schooling in Bellingham, Washington, was at the Campus School, a lab school associated with Western Washington University.

Margie’s interests grew to include math and science in high school and it was there her path took a turn that led her back to art. “I got kicked out of French class, and put in art which was horrible because all the weird kids were in that class,” Margie laughs. “But I started doing my sketching. I liked to draw figures and fashion illustration. The teacher noticed and said I think you should go into this…so I kept that in my mind.”

Fashion illustration was Margie’s first career choice, but with the advice of her mom, and her interest in science, she went to Western Washington University getting a BA in Geology but right after graduation her path took another turn. “I worked for one day, and I got fired,” says Margie. “So that weekend, some friends and I went to Carmel. It was so beautiful, and I wanted to know who lived here, and they said artists.” That’s when Margie realized, “I don’t think Geology is for me. I think I’d better go into art.
So I started that path.”

Seeing her figure drawing and painting as characters, someone suggested she look into working in costume design. Since there were only a few places in San Francisco that hired costume designers, she took another suggestion and headed across the country getting a job working as a wardrobe mistress in New York. It was there, resident playwright Lanford Wilson, asked her to do the graphics for the theater. That’s when Margie started taking classes at The Art Students League.

“I studied printmaking,” says Margie. “Then I met an artist named Ari and he said why don’t you try oil. I was very frightened of oil but I tried it and I just got hooked on oil painting.” Her classes didn’t lead her to graphic design for the theater, but into the fine art world instead. Margie describes her path, “I had a few exhibits in New York, went back to Bellingham and had some more exhibits, then I won a Purchase Prize at the Anacortes Art Festival and I used that to go to Europe.”

Margie went back to New York after Europe and met her husband, a writer. From there, they went to San Diego, where Margie painted and her husband wrote a book. A move to Boston led her back to college, this time to study another love, literature. After getting her masters in English and American Literature from Harvard, Margie started writing. Making art and writing was a balancing act according to Margie, “It’s hard to do both. Because, all this time I’m doing different jobs to make a living, I could not possibly do both. When I say balance, I mean I’ll do writing for 4 years and art for 3 years.”

Margie’s worked at a variety of jobs over the years including UPS loader, telephone survey researcher, fish cleaner, Burger King cashier and bookstore clerk. But it was her last job that finally allowed her to combine her unique skills. Working at the Columbian newspaper in Vancouver, Margie did graphics and art. “I did a lot of charts and maps,” explains Margie. “I mainly wanted to do illustrations for the features section. My art was being used, not in fashion illustration but in this character study way. I did it all from memory and on photo shop. I get them all out of my head, my imagination. You have to have an imagination for that, that’s why they want an artist because the artist can do something they can’t get from a photograph.”

Describing her painting process Margie says, “I start with a blank piece of paper or canvas. I just start putting paint on it, sometimes I have an idea in my mind and sometimes I’m just putting paint on it. I’ll see what’s on the canvas. If I see something exciting, I’ll just go with it.”

It’s her intuition and imagination that fuels her creative process now more than ever. Whether it’s writing poetry, creative non-fiction, painting or her newest passion, video, Margie is involved in characters, words and stories.

This year in addition to being on the Portland Open Studios Tour, Margie is on the board and produced a video about other Portland Open Studios artists. As she learned about how other artists work, she learned more about her own work as well, “It’s just amazing what these artists have in their backgrounds. You’re going into a studio with someone who’s practically spent their whole life on something and what a wealth of information. I was just amazed at the biographies and process.”

While filming artist Bill Park painting, Margie recalls he said, “And now, it’s getting really ugly and that’s just where I want to be.” Margie agrees, “That’s just the perfect point to be in art, to be creative, when you’ve just lost everything and you have nothing more to lose.”

Margie’s never at a loss for work these days, dividing her time between her solo studio work, Five Windows Studio, her poetry and creative non-fiction groups, video work and Portland Open Studios. Margie’s life and art have taken many turns along the way but there is a common thread to her intuitive path, “There are just so many projects that I want to do. As an artist, my number one thing is experimentation and always something new.”

You can visit Margie’s studio and watch her at work next weekend October 17 and 18th during the Portland Open Studios Tour. Tour Guides are available at Art Media, New Seasons, Powell’s and our webiste.

Jason Kappus, A Circuitous Path to Luminous Abstractions

By Shu-Ju Wang

Jason Kappus is full of contradictions. A natural-born story-teller bent on making non-narrative art; a painter who thinks of himself a writer; and a gifted portrait artist who can’t help but create non-objective, abstract work.

Below, Ode, by Jason Kappus

Jason Kappus is a standout in other ways too. As children, almost everyone draws—that’s what we do because we have no other means of visual communication until we learn how to write. And once we acquire the skill of the written language, many give up drawing all together, leaving behind our colorful crayon lines and forms that perhaps only a parent can love.

But Jason wasn’t going to have it that way—before he could write, he dictated children’s action adventure stories to his parents (who wrote them down), and Jason illustrated them. And as a teen, he taught himself how to do portraits using graphite as the drawing medium and fashion magazines as sources . Before long, he was making technically excellent, realistic portraits. But perhaps because he was doing it on his own, without the guidance of a mature artist, he couldn’t take it to the next level. He couldn’t figure out how he could use his technical skills to create expressive work, and without the expressive component, these realistic portraits became an exercise in frustration. Impatient with how-to books and with interest and talent elsewhere, he gave up painting and returned to writing.

After moving to California and enrolling in film school to study screenwriting, he quickly ran out of money and dropped out of school, and found himself working as a lighting technician in the film industry.

It was during this time that Jason started painting again and discovered Elmer Bischoff, an abstract expressionist who returned to figurative work. The trajectory fascinated Jason—he saw in Bischoff’s path a possible way for himself to move forward. That he could use abstraction as a way of learning the painting medium without having to achieve specific goals. That he could return to figurative work with this new skill set.

But that never happened. Jason discovered that he appreciated abstract art, that he enjoyed the ability to express himself with shapes and colors. In abstraction, he finds “…a viewer has no way to judge whether the abstracts are accurate, or even if they are relevant to my initial sketch or thought, that since there is no automatic gauge to judge them by that if someone enjoys them then I have achieved a greater accomplishment.”

And although Jason hadn’t said so, I think that it is not a coincidence that he found success in painting after working first as a lighting technician. After all, the organic, luminous forms in his paintings shimmer like they have been painted with gelled lights. Each scene is orchestrated and colors carefully chosen to pulsate against and melt into each other, creating a beat, a rhythm. Using a time-consuming technique known as glazing, colors and forms are slowly built up with layers and layers of paint until the proper intensity and luminosity are achieved. The images might imply looking up at the sky, peering through the microscope or perhaps looking through dense brush, but glow they always do.

To see more of Jason’s work, visit his website at http://anonymousphenomena.blogspot.com/.

You can visit Jason and 99 other artists during the 2009 Portland Open Studios tour, October 10, 11, 17, and 18, 10am-5pm. To learn more about Portland Open Studios, visit http://www.portlandopenstudios.com. Tour guides are available at New Seasons, Art Media and other retail outlets listed on the website.

Below, a corner of Jason’s studio, with new work in progress and also older, portrait work

Katie Simpson Spain: ‘Our Own Jungle’ at Tyson Gallery

Work from 'Our Own Jungle' by Katie Simpson Spain

Brightly colored, intricate sculptures constructed out of recycled plastic bags make up a large, new installation entitled, “Our Own Jungle”. Artist, Katie Simpson Spain created these pieces by crocheting yarn fashioned from strips of plastic bags.

The opening is First Thursday, October 1st from 6 to 9 pm at Tyson Gallery located at 625 N.W. Everett Street, #116.

If you’d like to learn how to turn plastic bags into art, Katie is teaching a class in Salem. Check the description below.

Plastic Bag Yarn and Crochet Class
Mission Mill Museum in Salem
Saturday October 24 from 1 pm to 4 pm
Mission Mill – 1313 Mill St SE Salem, Oregon 97301 (503) 585-7012
See details and sign up here: http://www.missionmill.com/fiber.html

You can visit Katie’s studio and watch her work both weekends during the Portland Open Studios Tour, October 10, 11 and 17, 18. Pick up your Tour Guide at New Seasons, Art Media, Powell’s and our website.

Kate Krider, Riding the Waves

By Shu-Ju Wang

Kate Krider had a recurring dream—trapped in a house suspended above a body of water, she was about to fall through the floor into the churning waves below where ‘evil’ lurked. The waves splashed and slapped, and Kate was afraid.

One night, she finally did fall through that floor, and found herself falling upon the ‘waves’ in the raked gravel of a Japanese garden. It was beautiful, peaceful, and delightful.

She knew she had to paint this image, and the dream has never returned.

***

Below, Kate Krider’s first painting, that of her falling through the house into the ‘waves’ below.

As an artist, Kate Krider has always known what interested her. The signs of civilization that give us comfort—whether it’s a house, a cairn, a spirit dwelling or a holy object—form a continuous thread from her days as paper-maker to the mid-career artist of today, working in painting and 3-dimensional collages.

But at the same time, that other sign of civilization, water—both comforting and menacing—is also evident in her work. That water is absolutely necessary in the art of paper-making and paper-casting balanced against her struggles and fears of water in her dreams. Or that she loves to paint cairns of rocks made smooth by water, precariously balanced and reaching up to the sky.

Her travels to Vietnam in 2001 served to heighten her interests when she instantly connected with Vietnamese paintings of houses on water and the ideas of spirit houses. And she has been painting houses on water and making spirit houses elevated on stilts or ball feet ever since.

Although Kate considers herself to be a self-taught painter, she has a formal arts background with an MFA in Mixed Media from JFK University in California. Looking through her portfolio of her paper-casting pieces (her specialization in graduate school), the themes of ‘house’ and ‘water’ were clearly present then. Paper-making and casting eventually gave way to painting and 3-dimensional collages as she found her paper-casting more and more commercialized and less personally and artistically satisfying. But as she switched mediums, the threads of house, home and water continued.

“Family, home, and finding home are the big themes in my work,” Kate says. I also see that looking for that point between comfort and uncertainty being an important aspect of her work. She puts the water above the stilts; she makes the house with an invisible floor, or a floor covered in undecipherable writings; and finally, her anything goes attitude when it comes to making spirit houses. There’s a spirit house for Keith Richards, for example, covered in guitar picks for roofing materials.

In recent months, Kate has focused on making 3-dimensional collages based on cigar boxes. But perhaps you won’t be surprised to find that house, water, and spiritual places play an important role there too!

Below, a recent 3-dimensional collage based on a cigar box.

To see more of Kate Krider’s work, visit her website at http://katekrider.com/. Kate is artist #43 in the 2009 Portland Open Studios tour. To learn more about the tour, visit http://www.portlandopenstudios.com/. Tour Guides are available online through the website, or at New Seasons, Art Media, and other retail outlets listed on the website.

Below, her sculpture Family Arc presents herself as a newborn, coming home from the hospital with her mother, enclosed in a transparent arc on stilts surrounded by water. Only the watery waves are between the arc and the stilts, almost as if she is telling her baby-self to see the water, to be on the water, and to not fear the water.

Late Bloomers:Artists find creativity is central to life no matter what your age.

By Lisa Griffen

For several of the artists in the Portland Open Studios Tour, art came as a later career. Some had early artistic ambitions but postponed pursuing them. Others only discovered their need for creative expression after doing other kinds of work. Regardless of their age at starting, art became central to their lives.

Below: Kelly Williams working in her studio

Kelly Williams began painting with watercolors as a way to relieve the stress of her work with troubled children. With her background in psychology, she quickly realized that art could give children a way to express their feelings about traumatic experiences. It ended up serving the same purpose for her, becoming an important outlet.

Kelly found that art allowed her to communicate about issues emotionally rather than intellectually. Painting became a bigger and bigger part of her life. She eventually became dissatisfied with watercolors and found that encaustic painting felt like a more dynamic medium. People responded. They asked for her paintings and encouraged her to share her work.

The most important aspect of Kelly’s work is truthtelling. She says, “To live like I want to live, I have to paint like I want to paint.” She strives for emotional honesty in her art. She is currently combining her former work and her art career into a project that she hopes will help people deal with the pain of addiction and recovery.

Above: George Perrou

George Perrou had no background in art. He was in his early thirties and working as a waiter when he started feeling a need for a creative outlet. He made collages from magazines, then got interested in photography. His black and white images quickly found an audience. Within a year of buying his camera and learning to print photos, he was selling prints. This early response encouraged him to try painting.

George painted a few paintings freehand but was dissatisfied with the results. Preferring clean edges, he developed his own technique of using masking tape templates. Despite a positive reaction to his art, George was reluctant to give up the security of his restaurant job. He continued to do both for several years, even after sales of his art matched his earnings as a waiter. In the end, the restaurant closed suddenly and he began painting full time.

George thinks his lack of training let him develop his own unique painting style. In fact, George’s art education has occurred backward: he learns about past artists when people relate his work to theirs. He believes that every person has the seed of an artist inside, but the hustle and obligations of our daily lives can mask that creativity. He seems awed that art has become his career and the center of his world.

Above: Carole Zoom working on a woodcut

Carole Zoom had always taken photographs as a hobby but when her life changed dramatically, art became a new calling. In her mid-thirties, Carole was hospitalized for months and had to accept that she would physically dependent on others from that point forward. She says, “I drove myself to the hospital but when I got out I couldn’t even lift a cup of tea.”

During her recovery, Carole started painting with watercolors. Then her mother asked Carole to reprint the woodblocks Carole had done as a middle school student. Printing was something Carole could do on her own. She had some extra ink so she bought linoleum and began carving blocks.

A five-day class with a master printer from Japan helped show Carole the potential for a career in printmaking. She also realized that art could help inform people about issues affecting people with disabilities. She says she is trying to communicate “a fairly raw message” about losing independence. Since 2006, Carole has combined working as an artist with being an activist for social justice.

Below: William Park

William Park always thought he would be an artist but had not gotten around to it. At forty-one years old, he was working as a sign painter. One day he pictured his life at age seventy and imagined the regret he would feel over not pursuing art. He began painting that day. He did not think of art as a career but simply something he needed to do.

He kept working full time and spent four or five hours each day painting. Gradually, the time he spent on his own work increased. He considered going to art school but felt that he had already lost too much time and could learn faster by painting as much as possible. He did take several classes over the years and says they helped teach him what it means to be an artist. Technique, he believes, is something that is mainly gained through practice.

Below: Nicky Falkenhayn welding

Nicky Falkenhayn also had an early interest in art but decided to coach and teach Physical Education because she thought there would be time to be an artist later. When she moved from Switzerland to the United States she decided it was time to focus on art rather than getting certified to teach.

Nicky took classes at Oregon College of Art and Craft. She chose fiber arts as her field because she had sewed her own clothes as a teen and felt comfortable working with cloth. When a close friend had breast cancer, Nicky wanted to figure out a way to make her a metal bra. She had no experience working with metal so she crocheted the piece out of wire. This led to a new interest in sculpture and jewelry making.

Nicky got involved in welding because she wanted to make more interesting supports for her crocheted wire sculptures. Once she started welding, she was hooked. She appreciates the immediacy of the results. It is an art form that is well suited to public pieces, a challenge that Nicky especially enjoys. Nicky believes she benefitted by starting her art career later in her life because she has more confidence and more life wisdom to put into her art.

As Nicky and these other 4 artists illustrate, art and creativity can become a central part of life, no matter your age.

You can visit the studios of Nicky Falkenhayn, William Park, Carole Zoom, George Perrou and Kelly Williams during the Portland Open Studio Tour, October 10, 11 and 17 ,18 from 10 am to 5 pm. Pick up your Tour Guide at New Seasons, Art Media, Powell’s or on our website at www.portlandopenstudios.com

Bridget Benton wants your plastic bottle caps!

By Bridget Benton

I am a woman obsessed with making art from just about anything I can get my hands on. I naturally tend toward collage and assemblage art, and have
incorporated this approach into my work making jewelry, fiber art, acrylic
paintings, and now encaustic art. The more media I can combine—and the more crazy materials I can incorporate—the happier I am. In fact, the materials often guide my work. Later, I will discover themes and meanings emerging, but in the magical moment of making, the materials are the driving force.

About a year ago, a material that grabbed my attention was all the plastic
that I couldn’t put in my new blue curbside recycling bin: plastic bags,
clamshell containers, and the humble plastic bottle cap. It looked like a
whole lot of potential art to me! I made a few necklaces from bottle caps,
and then started thinking about what I could do if I had a lot of bottle
caps, maybe even hundreds or thousands of bottle caps.

So, my boyfriend and his family started saving me bottle caps. I got a few
from other friends. I started experimenting with different ways of
connecting them. You look at things differently when you have a lot of them:
in many ways, they become more interesting, more beautiful. You see
patterns of shapes and colors, and you begin to see patterns of consumption.
And then I got involved with the group Leave No Plastic Behind and their
plastic art challenge. I learned more about the impact of plastic on the
oceans, as well as the fact that bottle caps come right after cigarette
butts on the “Most Common Beach Litter” hit list.

All of this collecting, connecting, and consciousness-raising culminated in
the construction of this chandelier, called Drifter. It’s now on display in
the lobby of the office building next door to SCRAP off of MLK. The piece
is over 5 feet tall, and includes a long string of Christmas lights. I
haven’t counted how many bottle caps are in there, but it’s a lot, and it
was all collected over a relatively short five-month period from only a few
households.

[Above, the chandelier constructed from bottle caps.]

Now, I’m in the process of collecting another big batch of bottle caps for
the creation of several more light fixtures. If you have plastic bottle
caps – any size, any color – from beverages, shampoo, household cleaners,
peanut butter, whatever – bring them on over when you drop by my place
during the Portland Open Studios tour. My demos will all be about encaustic
painting, but as for the conversation, well, all materials are welcome.

Below, Bridget’s collection of bottle caps.

To learn more about Bridget Benton’s work and classes, please visit her website at http://www.eyesaflame.com/.

You can visit Bridget and 99 other artists during Portland Open Studios weekend. To learn more about the event, visit http://www.portlandopenstudios.com/.

Kitty Wallis: Artist, Teacher, Entrepreneur and Founder of Portland Open Studios.

By Susan Gallacher-Turner

Kitty Wallis

“I’ve spent many, many years waking up in the morning saying what do I feel like doing today? As an artist, do I feel like going into the studio? Do I feel like going out meeting people? Do I feel like getting reference material? I’m very young looking for my age. And I think that’s one of the reasons,” says Kitty Wallis.

From the streets of New York to a California commune, Kitty has always lived an artist’s life. As a child growing up in a small, poor Pennsylvania town, Kitty’s mother was proud of her artistic daughter and encouraged her to draw. Later, it was a high school counselor who, saw Kitty’s talent, took her to New York City to apply for a full-tuition art scholarship at Cooper Union. Only 10% of the applicants to Cooper Union are accepted into this privately funded 150 year old college. After passing the difficult 8 hour entrance exam, Kitty was accepted into the program. Making her first move away from her small town home, in 1956, Kitty describes how it felt in the big city, “Culture shock! The first day was traumatic because I didn’t realize the importance of the fact that no one would know me. Because everybody knew me when I was growing up, there were only 2,500 people in my town. But people helped. By the end of the first day I had a place to live and a job. It’s amazing.”

Although being a student at Cooper Union is an honor and Kitty learned to work in a variety of media, she had her difficulties. The school was embracing abstract impressionism, the new wave of art in the 1950’s and Kitty wanted to do realistic work. Walking from her office job to school one day, Kitty passed by a group of sidewalk artists looking for customers when one of the artists said, “Get your portrait done.” Kitty replied back, “If I wanted a portrait of myself I would do one myself.” He challenged her to do his portrait right there and then. “So I did. And I was so excited by the whole thing because I did a good portrait of him. It was just a little charcoal sketch but it was right on.” The artist was so impressed with her skill, he suggested she set up her own street portrait business. Kitty says, “I was out there the next night with my chairs, easel and art supplies, the whole thing. That was the first move I made to be independent instead of having a job.”

Kitty’s journey began doing portraits on the streets of New York, but has taken her many places along the way. After three years at Cooper Union, Kitty got married and with her husband set up a shop in Philadelphia. He made sandals and she did portraits. Deciding to join a commune, they moved to California and a year or so later, Kitty moved to Santa Cruz. Kitty has traveled the country and the world making art and money, seeing old friends, making new ones and setting up gallery shows featuring work from her travels. Kitty says, “I first wanted to travel around the country so I could learn to be a traveler. So I got a van and some art supplies and started across the country for a year and a half.” Kitty found ways to make money along the way doing portraits, plein air painting and working with a therapy community. This led to a unique opportunity Kitty explains, “I got to a gallery in Dallas that had a few of my pieces. They were excited by what I was doing and said let’s do a show of your work when you get back.”

For a while, Kitty settled back in Santa Cruz, California enjoying the artistic lifestyle there. Then, she moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico where the gallery scene was thriving but after a few years, missed California and moved back to Santa Cruz. It was in Santa Fe, she overheard an art store conversation that led her down another professional road. “I had been using sandpaper and that gave me that painterly quality, rich hard edges color on color. It was sold in art supply stores as pastel paper even though it was disposable paper,” says Kitty. “I heard the art company rep tell the store owner that they weren’t going to supply the sandpaper anymore. I knew I had to have a paper with that texture and a product that wouldn’t fall apart after 50 years. And it had to have the sandpaper surface but smooth.”

It was a personal need that drove Kitty to develop her now famous Wallis Sanded Paper. At first, she made it herself on a Santa Cruz hilltop. With a spray gun in each hand, she sprayed resin on the paper first, then pumice. At the end of the sessions, covered with paint and pumice, Kitty would have enough paper to last her several months. But when her students wanted to know how she achieved her unique pastel effects, she realized she had to share her paper with them. And it was a student with manufacturing experience who helped her find a way to get the paper mass produced. Introduced at the first semi-annual International Association of Pastel Societies in Denver, Colorado in 1995, the paper was a hit and Kitty began receiving a regular salary for the first time in her life. “When I first got into this business I was very excited about finally having an income that didn’t depend on selling paintings. I wanted to see what I would paint if I didn’t have to pay the rent with the sale of my work. So the first thing I found out was, I depended on that need to sell for my painting discipline,” explains Kitty.

About that time, Kitty moved to Portland from Santa Cruz, bringing with her the studio tour idea that she’d been involved with there. “When I moved to Portland, my heart was so much involved in the open studios idea that I felt that Portland needs this,” she says. “But I didn’t want to come busting up here with, “In California this is how they do this.” So, she waited 3 years, meeting artists and collecting the names of artists whose work she liked. Kitty explains, “I got eight people to come to a meeting in August of 1998. We put up our own fees for the first year, $80 dollars a piece, enough money to print applications and send them out. And when we got applications back and juried, we had 49 people in the first tour.”

Ten years later, the Portland Open Studios Tour has grown to feature 100 artists at work in their studios all around the Portland Metro area. Kitty has watched Portland Open Studios grow with pride. Although she’s not as actively involved, she still enjoys participating in the tour every year. Kitty says, “I am so proud of how people took the ball and ran with it because you don’t want your baby to die. And to have such strong legs on your baby is a very nice thing. Because it’s growing in strength, vitality and popularity every year.”

In addition to Portland Open Studios, gallery shows, Wallis Paper company, teaching around the country and doing her own studio work, Kitty, at 71, is busier than she’s ever been. Retirement is not in her future, says Kitty, “I have never been so busy in my whole life. I’m 71 and I’m far from retiring. “I never thought of it as a goal. I would brag to people I’m so glad I belong to a profession that I don’t have to retire from.”

All those years ago as a young Cooper Union student, Kitty says she wanted to develop the chops of a master. As an internationally known, award-winning artist, teacher and entrepreneur, she’s done all that and more. Now as she works in her studio, she’s painting not just what she sees around her but what she feels within. “I finally allowed myself to understand that I was bored with realism,” she explains. She wants the colors and shapes to come from her gut, and her work continues to grow and evolve. “Now I seem to have found a new challenge. I’m doing something new and I don’t know how to do it. It’s a good thing. I want to learn how to create an expression that is mine,” Kitty says. “This is who I am.”

New work by Kitty Wallis

You can visit Kitty’s studio during the Portland Open Studios Tour, October 10, 11 and 17, 18 from 10 am to 5pm. Tour Guides are for sale at New Seasons, Art Media, Powell’s and on our website at Portland Open Studios.

Hear the podcast about Kitty Wallis at Voices of Living Creatively website.

From Pulp to Prints, three artists coordinate their hands-on demonstrations

Above, Helen Hiebert making paper.

Helen Hiebert, Diane Jacobs, and Shu-Ju Wang are 3 members of an art collective who have been meeting and working together for several years. Their most recent collaboration, the installation For the Love of Food, was shown at Cedar Crest College in Pennsylvania earlier this year.

They are also participating in Portland Open Studios this year and have decided to coordinate their hands-on demonstrations. Visitors will have a chance to see the process of creating a print, starting from making paper from pulp to letterpress and silkscreen printing.

Start at Helen Hiebert’s studio (artist 49), where visitors are invited to make paper. From there, visitors can go on to Diane Jacobs’ studio (artist 44) and Shu-Ju Wang’s studio (artist 90) to see how text and images can be printed using letterpress and silkscreen printing techniques. You are encouraged to visit both Diane’s and Shu-Ju’s studios (in either order) to see how the two different printmaking methods can be combined to create a finished print.

Between the three, they will also be showing finished work that range from handmade paper, lanterns, prints, artist’s books, sculptures, paintings, photographs, cards and more.

They are also in 3 different regions of metro Portland – N Portland, NE Portland, and SW Portland, perfectly spaced for people doing the tour throughout the Portland metro area. Note that Helen’s and Diane’s studios are open on October 10 & 11 only, 10am-5pm; Shu-Ju’s studio is open October 10, 11, 17, and 18, 10am-5pm.

To see more of Helen’s work, visit www.helenhiebertstudio.com; Diane’s work at www.dianejacobs.net; and Shu-Ju’s work at www.fingerstothebone.com.

For more information about Portland Open Studios, visit the website at www.portlandopenstudios.com.

Diane Jacobs setting type…

And Shu-Ju Wang Gocco printing.

Kamala Dolphin-Kingsley, Theater on Paper

By Shu-Ju Wang

Below, Thirteen Sisters Approach the Fantasy Planet by Kamala Dolphin-Kingsley, in watercolor, acrylic, and glitter.

Not so long ago, there lived a princess in a beautiful meadow full of wondrous creatures. Chameleons, dodos, caterpillars and pugs with wings kept her company as she spun elaborate tales and staged magical plays that charmed the denizens of her kingdom.

Then one day, she packed up her bags, and moved to Portland.

Really. Only now, in Portland, she creates her fantastic theater on paper, using watercolors, acrylics, and glitter. And she really likes glitter.

•••

Welcome to the world of Kamala Dolphin-Kingsley—a world where family pets, exotic flowers, fantastical creatures, pirates and screen legends from years past mix happily with men playing golf and elderly gardeners tending to their roses. Her art lives at the junction of the probable and improbable, kitsch and class, tacky and humorous.

To stand in front of one of her pieces is very much like walking into a grand opera, an opera elaborately staged but has no libretto nor music. Imagine a silent opera that is a visual mashup of Mozart’s Magic Flute with Puccini’s Turandot, where all manors of creatures plot, conspire, and run amok among the lotus ponds and pagodas.

Kamala Dolphin-Kingsley is a creator of tall tales, fables, and myths, very much the product of a childhood spent as the only child of back-to-the-land parents who met at UC Berkeley. She spent her early years under giant Redwoods taking goats on walks, sitting with a rooster on her lap, creating communal banana slug, newt and centipede farms, and dressing up her pet rats and making them ride the dog. And of course, she read a lot. In other words, she kept herself entertained, relied on her own inventiveness, and was immersed in nature.

From there, she went on to receive a BFA in Photography from California College of Arts & Crafts. Although, she almost immediately moved on from photography upon graduation to doing illustrations professionally and to fine art. It is perhaps inevitable that she would find photography constraining, to be limited by what is available out there in the 3D world, when she can paint and draw unfettered by such constraints.

Unlike many artists who see art as a way to investigate the self or the community they live within (the larger ’self’), Kamala sees art as an escape from the self. Starting with what she knows so intimately well even as a child—the natural world—she mixes in her love for art of the Victorian era, Art Nouveauu, Art Deco, religious art, Japanese prints, stained glass and costume jewelry to arrive at her unique way of story telling, of escape from the ordinary. In this bizarre and beautiful world, the family dog takes his leashed human on a walk, the dodo bird lives in an ice cave, the puppy rides a caterpillar, and the hedgehog has tiny wings. And you, the viewer, are invited to create you own stories from the lush landscapes of Kamala’s imagination.

***

PS. Even her name hints at what you might find during a studio visit and in her art: Kamala, the Hindi word for lotus; Dolphin, one of the most storied and beloved creatures on earth; and Kingsley, from the king’s meadow.

To see more of Kamala Dolphin-Kingsley’s art, visit her website at http://www.kamaladolphinkingsley.com/. To really enter her bizarre and beautiful world, visit her studio during Portland Open Studios; she is artist number 45.

For more information about Portland Open Studios, visit http://www.portlandopenstudios.com/.

Below, a corner of Kamala’s studio with her graphics table and her collection of sketches and found objects.

“Don’t Tell Fred” Teresa Sullivan’s piece is featured in Fiberarts Magazine.

By Susan Gallacher-Turner

Last year, when I visited with Teresa, she showed me a note found with a necklace she’d bought at an estate sale. It was a short handwritten note with more questions than answers. The mystery intrigued and inspired Teresa to make an art piece incorporating the note with the beads from the necklace along with other icons. The piece entitled, ‘Don’t Tell Fred’, is featured in the September/October issue of Fiberarts Magazine. You can pick up a copy at Powell’s and read more about the mystery surrounding this wonderful piece.

Read more about Teresa Sullivan and her beaded sculptural art here on our blog, http://portlandopenstudios.wordpress.com/2008/09/18/teresa-sullivan-sewing-seed-beads-into-superwomen/
You can buy a 2009 Tour Guide and visit her studio during the Portland Open Studios Tour in October.

Mark Randall and George Perrou showing at Milepost 5, August 14-23

The Manor of Art Show features 10 days, 20 bands and 100 artists at Milepost 5 located at 900 N.E. 81st Avenue in Portland. You can see work by two 2009 Portland Studios Tour artists, George Perrou and Mark Randall. For more information about the show check out the website www.milepostfive.com

“Chop-Chop-Wood-Bird” by Mark Randall

Kelly Neidig: Painting Landscape Memories

By Susan Gallacher-Turner

“I’ve painted and drawn ever since I can remember,” says Kelly Neidig. Now, when I think of my memories a lot of the details are lost, but I can remember the colors and how I felt.”

Below, Kelly Neidig at work in her studio.

Kelly Neidig remembers drawing birds in kindergarten, and they were so good, even her mother didn’t believe she’d drawn them. After winning an art contest in first grade, Kelly devoted most of her time to art. Growing up in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, a small town west of Pittsburg, Kelly went to schools that didn’t have any art programs, but she didn’t let that stop her. “I would just stay home and draw all the time,” says Kelly. “One year, my dad got me a big box of Prisma colored pencils, which are really expensive. So I was so afraid to use them that for three years, they sat in my room on my dresser. I still have them.”

All that drawing led Kelly to a major in landscape architecture at Penn State where teachers took notice of her natural talents and skill in art. For the first two years, the majority of the work focused on things Kelly loves like drawing, perspective, and working with color but then things changed. “Then it got into computers,” Kelly says. “For the next three years, you had to be on the computer and I didn’t want to be on the computer. I wanted to work with my hands. So I switched my major to art.”

On her first day in the art department, Kelly knew she was in the right place. “Walking around the art department, I felt so happy,” explains Kelly. “I actually wanted to apply for an art major but you needed a portfolio and I didn’t know what that was. But after two years, I realized I could just transfer because I was doing an integrated degree, I was just able to play and take whatever classes I wanted. It was awesome to be taking art classes.” Kelly took a variety of art classes including figure drawing, sculpture, ceramics and book making. Even though she did take a painting class, she found the teacher too structured for her and learned best when the class was more flexible. These classes taught her more about being open to the flow of the process than trying to control the product. “I’d rather just do it and see what happens,” says Kelly. “I do that with my paintings. I don’t ever try to have a complete idea. I like to go with the things that naturally occur.”

Letting things happen naturally is a reoccurring theme in Kelly’s art and life. From college at Penn State, Kelly moved to Arizona while her boyfriend went to school, she learned about the desert landscape all around her. “I only lived there for a short time, but coming from Pennsylvania and going to this landscape that was so alien,” explains Kelly. “It was like living on the moon, you can really see how the land is formed. I love the desert. I can’t get it out of my head.” While she was there, driving around the desert seeing the clashes between farmland and urban landscapes, taught her much about the importance of having natural places left undisturbed by man.

This sense of honoring the natural sense of place stayed with her when she moved to Portland. A choice Kelly says was driven by her art, “One of the reasons we chose Portland, was because I knew there was a big art scene here. And if I’m gonna be an artist I should be somewhere where people embrace art.” Her art career started on the street where she lived, selling small paintings on Alberta Street during the Last Thursday art openings.

It grew from there one step at a time from Last Thursday street sales, to coffee shops, wine bars and ultimately a gallery show at Guardino Gallery on Alberta Street. “I just started taking all the little shows on and started selling my art, and was able to work less and less at a job and work more on my art,” says Kelly. “Finally I quit my job and I’ve been a full-time artist for two years.”

In the last two years, Kelly’s been busy painting and getting her work out to the public. “I just say yes to everything, and figure the more places my art is the more chances it’s gonna be seen by somebody so I get it out there as much as I can,” Kelly says. Her goal – to make her work accessible to everyone at every price range – has led to some very interesting opportunities. Kelly now has paintings hanging in a Westin Hotel in Cincinnati and the U. S. Embassy in Doha, Qatar, as well as an upcoming show in La Conner Washington at the Museum of Northwest Art from October 10, 2009 to January 10, 2010.

Working on the paintings for that show and others, Kelly finds her process evolves naturally, “I start with a lot of layers of drippy acrylic and see something in it. Then I go into it with thin layers of oils and then thicker layers.” As Kelly adds layer and layer of color, the feeling of landscape emerges for her connecting her memories to a sense of place. “I’m more creating a feeling of a place on the canvas using color, rather than creating a specific place or statement,” explains Kelly. “I omit a lot of detail and let the viewer put in their own ideas. I try to help people connect to their memories using color. I use color to create a feeling that helps people connect with a place through color.”

Helping people connect with the landscape or each other is another important part of Kelly’s life and art. It was a neighbor’s suggestion that helped Kelly become part of Portland Open Studios. In 2006, Kelly says, “I got accepted, went to the first workshop and didn’t know anybody. But after the event, talking about my art for two days straight to perfect strangers, I had a better understanding of what I was doing.”

Kelly enjoyed the experience so much she re-applied in 2007, got more involved working on the publicity committee with Bonnie Meltzer and at Bonnie’s suggestion became a board member and president the next year. Kelly is amazed at how much she has learned as a Portland Open Studios artist and president, yet in the three years it’s the connections and community she values the most. “Meeting all the artists in Portland open studios is definitely my favorite part,” says Kelly. “I have a really good community of other artists. And the artists who do open studios are the type of artists who are open to sharing what they do with other people.”

Kelly wants to encourage artists and art lovers to come on the tour and get more familiar with Portland Open Studios. When she first took the tour, before her first open studios weekend, she learned so much. “It was a bit overwhelming at first,” Kelly says. “But all the artists that I saw were just great. I loved seeing everybody’s art work and going into people’s spaces. As an artist, just seeing the way other people do their artwork, it always reflects their environment.”

Kelly Neidig may be president of Portland Open Studios, but she welcomes anyone’s questions about art or the tour. Kelly says, “I’ve gotten so much help from other great artists and people in my life, I just love helping other people as well.”

You can visit Kelly Neidig’s studio during Portland Open Studios Tour as well as 99 other artists all around the Portland Metro area. Tour dates are October 10, 11 and 17, 18 from 10am to 5pm. To find out when your favorite artists studio is open, buy your Tour Guide at New Seasons, Art Media and other outlets listed on the website www.portlandopenstudios.com

Listen to a podcast interview with Kelly at www.voicesoflivingcreatively.com.

Visit Kelly’s website at www.kellyneidig.com.

Sabina Haque, Closing the Gap

By Shu-Ju Wang

Below, Sabina Haque with one of her lightbox pieces One Nation Under God.

Dominating, subversive, motherhood, submissive, breast—these were but a few of the words Sabina Haque received in response to her question “what comes to your mind when you hear the word ‘woman?’“

For the word American, the responses—superpower, righteous.

For Muslim—brown, religious, militant, and exotic.

Three words, three starkly different reactions.

These questions were a part of an installation/experiential exhibit Sabina produced in 2003 that also included portraits and interviews she created of 25 Pakistanis and 25 Americans. In the center of the installation were large posters of Muslim American women.

Sabina Haque is a Muslim American Woman.

***

Born in the US and moved to Pakistan with her family when she was 15 months old, Sabina grew up where people never questioned her identity–she was assumed to be Pakistani though she’s Scandinavian on her mother’s side.

After coming back to the US to go to school in Massachusetts for her BA and MFA, she found herself needing to define herself in a country obsessed with questions such as “where are you from?” and “what are you?“

And so Sabina found herself in the “category” of Muslim American Woman. Soon, she started to move away from her previous work of representational paintings and started to use mythology, politics, religion, social, and regional concerns to address the issue of identity, and creating work for exhibits titled “Who Are You?” and “Home? Crosscurrents in Contemporary South Asian/American Art.“

In these shows, Sabina engaged the public by finding the thread that binds us all, the thread that tells the story that we all share despite our seemingly disparate backgrounds. She created work based on 14th century Italian frescoes of Christ, and combined them with images of lotus blossom, the dagger of Kali, and verses from the Quran. Using the pages from a Bible and a Quran, she created a 12 foot woven tapestry. From this tapestry, she constructed a pillar, a pillar of the Bible and of the Quran. A pillar about the One Story, about commonality.

With her American citizenship, she’s able to delve into that space that’s in between two cultures, to cross borders, to define that space in between on her terms. She can see things from both sides. There are few people who have that biological and cultural advantage, to create work that sheds light on what it means to be American–and really, to be human–to close the gaps between us, to tell these personal psychological dramas that we can all understand.

Sabina continues to shed light on that commonality in her current work. She has started to talk about motherhood and family by exploring the myths around virginity and the cycle of birth and death—a topic without borders, if there ever was one.

Below, a self-portrait in Indian Madonna and Child.

Sabina Haque is artist number 58 in the 2009 Portland Open Studios tour. To see more of her work, visit her website at http://www.sabinahaque.com/.

Last weekend to see Mark Randall’s show at Albina Press-Hawthorn

Mark Randall
SOLO Show

Closes this Sunday, August 3rd, 2009
Albina Press
5012 SE Hawthorne

Mt. Tabor Paint-Out

Saturday, August 1 & Sunday, August 2

Several 2009 Portland Open Studios artists—Jason Kappus, Shawn Demarest, Theresa Andreas-O’Leary—along with past participants Brenda Boylan, Mandy Main, and Kimberly Kent are participating in the Mt Tabor Paint-Out/Exhibit August 1st and 2nd. Over 40 artists will be exhibiting plein air work created between July 25th and August 2nd in Mt Tabor Park. Plein air painting is simply painting outside (as opposed to from a photo, or in the studio). The exhibit coincides with the Mt Tabor Centennial Celebration, celebrating the 100th birthday of this Portland jewel.

Mandy Main demonstrates her oil painting technique and Kimberly Kent her encaustic technique Saturday from 1-4. Brenda Boylan demonstrates her pastel technique Sunday 10-1. Please visit the exhibit tents located near the picnic pavillion for directions to where the artists are working.

Visit www.mttabor100.org for further information about the celebration. For further information about the Mt Tabor Paint Out please call Shawn Demarest 503 975 3122.

Below, Hot Day by Shawn Demarest.

A pastel by Brenda Boylan, below.

Art & Labor and The Labor of Art Show

A summer exhibit at the Olympic Mills Gallery from July 13-August 30 focuses on the issues of labor, reinvention and the rich creative opportunities that have emerged in our country during economic hard times.

Visiting this show curated by Lora R. Fisher, you’ll see work by three of this year’s Portland Open Studios artists—Christopher B. Mooney’s beautiful, photo-realist paintings depicting ship captains, dock workers and other hard laborers; Allen Schmertzler’s provocative and satirical watercolors and pen and ink illustrations; and Susan Gallacher-Turner’s mixed media sculptural boxes depicting three women from Niger, India and Japan.

For more information about the show visit PortlandCityArt.org .

Art & Labor and The Labor of Art

The Olympic Mills Gallery
107 S.E. Washington Street
Monday-Friday 8am-6pm

July 13-August 30, 2009
Monday-Friday 8am-6pm

Below, from top to bottom, Susan Gallacher-Tuner’s mixed media boxes, Allen Schmertzler and his work, and Christopher Mooney and his painting.

Nicky Falkenhayn: Building a studio of her dreams

By Susan Gallacher-Turner

Above, Nicky with one of her recent sculptures.

“About three years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer,” says Nicky. “During chemo, my dream was to build the studio.”

Three years later, Nicky is putting in the electrical outlets, painting and plumbing to make her dream come true. As a metal sculptor, Nicky needed a safe place to weld, grind and patina her large metal sculptures as well as showcase her knitted wire jewelry. Now, all she has to do is walk out her door, along a covered walkway and into her studio to work.

She’s worked in many different places and spaces over the years. Born in Florida where her father was a fighter pilot, Nicky is an American citizen with an international life. After her family left the U.S., Nicky lived in Holland and Switzerland. In addition to art, she loved sports and was a Physical Education teacher for 20 years. After moving back to the U.S., and finding out that her Swiss teaching experience couldn’t get her a job, she decided it was time to explore her other love, art. “If I have to go back to school,” says Nicky. “I’ll go to art school. So that’s what I did, I went to the Oregon College of Arts & Crafts and started with the basics and then just start doing it.”

Her first studio was the kitchen table where she did her wearable art coats. Then she moved to the attic which was so hot in the summer, she had to start her work day at 8 pm and sleep during the day. After that, her studio was in a basement in Corvallis until she became pregnant with her first child, Hans. Even though her wearable art was being sold in over 40 galleries across the country, she knew she had to quit. The dyes involved in her work were toxic and she didn’t want to take any chances during pregnancy. “I didn’t even clean up my studio,” says Nicky. “I just locked it and that was it. Then I decided this was the time to change.”

Nicky’s art moved from sewing wearable art to crocheting metal wire breasts. “My best friend in Switzerland had breast cancer,” she explains. “When she had mastectomy, I wanted to do something for her, just for a joke, I was going to make her a metal bra, I couldn’t weld, so I got some metal wire and started crocheting.” That experiment led her to a whole new way to create work, support her far away friend while being a mom at the same time. “Everytime she had chemo, I would knit her a breast,” says Nicky. “I had a backpack with a roll of wire in it and my crochet hook and Hans would play on the playground and I would sit and crochet.”

Nicky created a line of jewelry next, these delicate knitted earrings, bracelets and pendants still sell well at various shows and galleries around the country and allow her to work while her son is doing his homework. A memorial to her grandmother, her first crocheted sculpture, holds gold and silver beads that represent all the stories her grandmother used to tell about her life. After that, Nicky realized that to give her sculpture stability, she’d have to learn to weld. Taking classes at PNCA and PCC, she says, “I fell in love with welding. Just the smell of molten metal is like a drug. It’s the immediacy of it, it’s really amazing.”

Her goal now is to do larger public sculptures. And even though she has no experience in public art, she’s not letting that stop her any more than she let her own cancer stop her from building her dream studio at home. “Slowly I’m starting to make it a really good studio. It started after I was done with chemo and it took a while,” Nicky says. “It went way over budget, so I had to stop in the middle.”

Using skills she learned doing home remodeling, Nicky’s studio is finally taking shape. Doing some of the work herself saved Nicky enough money to have a bigger studio. “My idea was to build the biggest studio possible,” she explains. “And it’s kind of fun to be part of it and you feel proud when it’s done.”

Some people might give up on their dreams when facing breast cancer but not Nicky. It made her even more determined to have her dream studio, her art and her life. “It woke me up. It’s like, you know girl, you better live now, because now is what’s happening. Dream your dreams. Don’t put them in the future. Put them right here, where you are now, because nobody knows how long you’re going to live. I don’t think anymore that I ever had cancer, but I’m going to live now no matter what.”

This year, she’s finishing her studio, selling her jewelry at a show in Bellevue, Washington, doing an artist residency in Calgary, Canada, a large scale commission and showing public art in Grand Junction and Lake Oswego. In addition to being part of the Portland Open Studios Tour for the second year, Nicky loves the connections she makes with visitors to her studio.

For Nicky Falkenhayn, building a studio, creating her art, are her dreams come true. “I’ve always had something to look forward to and this drive to get it. If I have to learn something new, then I go for it. I live my life the best I can, I don’t take it for granted anymore, I just cherish every day.”

You can visit Nicky’s studio along with 100 other artists during Portland Open Studios Tour. For more information or to buy a Tour Guide, click portlandopenstudios.com.

To hear a podcast of Nicky’s interview, go to voicesoflivingcreatively.com.

To see more of Nicky’s work, visit her website at nickyfalkenhayn.com/.

Below, Nicky putting in an electrical outlet in her new studio.

Bonnie Meltzer at Beet Gallery

Clothing Chronicles: Biography in Very Mixed Media

Recent mixed media pieces by Bonnie Meltzer

Beet Gallery
NW 18 and Lovejoy
Portland, Oregon

Now through June 27, 2009
Last day informal artist’s talk Saturday, June 27 at 3:00pm

Below, Packed Clothes, by Bonnie Meltzer.

In this new body of work, Bonnie Meltzer ponders our connections to clothes in a series of mixed media constructions. Wood cut-outs embellished with found objects, crocheted wire and text are in the shape of garments — a brownie uniform, a prom dress, a band uniform. Another part of this series about clothes takes a new form for the artist: actual articles of clothing — ties, underwear, uniforms, ballet shoes — become part of paintings on canvas. Although some of the pieces use way more paint than she normally does and that eight of the works are on canvas they are still sculptural. The clothing, often rumpled, and found objects add a sculptural quality.

Our memories are jogged by old garments. Conversely, thoughts of the past often lead us to think about what people wore. Personal stories are told with clothes but they are entwined with the era in which we live. In our mind’s eye clothing becomes a visual shorthand to a particular era evoking all the stories — the personal and the values, virtues, customs and even politics of that time period.

Garments came from her own collection but they were offered from friends and family as well. Other Portland Open Studios artists found, lent and gave her clothes to use for this project. Conversations with them brought ideas and other perspectives. She asked Portland Open Studios artist Sabina Haque, “What did you bring from Pakistan when you moved here?” “Everything”, which is evident if you see Sabina’s paintings filled with portraits in traditional dress. In Packed Clothes Meltzer thought about bringing clothes with you when you emigrate and the buying of exotic garments on a trip. Each is filled with emotional baggage.

On the last day of the exhibition she will give a gallery talk. She will weave the stories that inspired these particular works into tales of costume history. And there will be a chance for you to tell your clothes stories.

Read more about this exhibit online at Boom magazine.

For more information about Beet Gallery, see http://www.beetgallery.com.

To learn more about Bonnie Meltzer and her work, see her website at http://www.bonniemeltzer.com.

Linda Womack/Marcy Baker Collaborative Workshop

Making Connections through Portland Open Studios: Marcy Baker and Linda Womack Collaborative Workshop

Above, a collaborative piece between Marcy Baker and Linda Womack, using the techniques they will be teaching in this two-session workshop.

The seed for Take 2: Monotype & Encaustic was planted when Linda Womack visited Marcy Baker’s studio during Portland Open Studios in October 2008. Linda, an encaustic painter, and Marcy, a monotype printmaker, discovered a mutual love for teaching and interest in combining techniques. It turns out the two processes work beautifully together, and several Take 2: Monotype & Encaustic collaborative workshops are being offered this summer. Both artists will also be participating in Portland Open Studios in October.

Details on the workshops:

Take 2: Monotype & Encaustic

June Workshop
Session 1 with Marcy Baker
Thursday, June 18, 1pm – 4pm or 6pm – 9pm
Session 2 with Linda Womack
Thursday, June 25, 1pm – 4pm

July Workshop
Session 1 with Marcy Baker
Sunday, July 12, 9am – 12pm or 2pm – 5pm
Session 2 with Linda Womack
Sunday, July 19, 2pm – 5pm

August Workshop
Session 1 with Marcy Baker
Thursday, August 13, 1pm – 4pm or 6pm – 9pm
Session 2 with Linda Womack
Thursday, August 20, 6pm – 9pm

Learn how to combine two very different techniques, monotype printmaking and encaustic wax painting, to create unique pieces of art. In this collaborative class you’ll first work with printmaker Marcy Baker to create one-of-a-kind monotypes. Inks are applied to a Plexiglas plate, then transferred to paper with a press. Explore the use of stencils & other tools to build layers of ink on the plate, creating rich imagery & texture. The next session will be with Linda Womack, where you will apply vividly colored wax to your monotypes, allowing you to add pattern and texture to the surface using stencils and embossing techniques. You can also collage with wax instead of glue to incorporate papers, fibers and dried plants to your finished painting. Students will leave class with 2 finished projects. No previous experience is necessary in either technique, just an open mind and a desire to experiment!

Both instructors’ studios are located in southeast Portland. Space is limited to six students with two sessions, three students each at Marcy’s studio and everyone working together in one session at Linda’s studio.

For more information, view images, and register for workshops, visit:

Linda Womack Workshops: http://www.lindawomack.com/books//workshops/t2-monotypes.html

Marcy Baker Workshops: http://www.marcybaker.com/workshops.html