The place to go for beautiful last minute gifts

I stopped by the Art Center at Fuller Lodge this morning, and it is a great place to go if you're still looking for last minute gifts. I got (OK - it wasn't a gift, I bought it for myself!) a gorgeous Lobelia necklace made by Jennifer Moss, which was really cool because she was there, volunteering, and when I bought it she said, "I made that!"

There were a lot of southwestern Christmas ornaments, many wonderful little jewelry boxes under $10, hand knit hats and scarves. There were some intricate wooden boxes with southwest scenes and planets (made by Regina Dingler) that really caught my eye (hint hint to Santa Claus).

Things Fall Apart

Last week I was cleaning out my closet and found an old straw beach bag that my mom used all the time, but it was falling apart.
I have a lot of memories attached to the bag. My mom carried it with us whenever we went to the beach up at Leech Lake, or spent the day at the dock at our family's cabin, the 5-A. It was full of beer, pop, a John Grisham novel and Cheetoes.

Anyway, I had been using it myself this summer and was feeling attached to it, and when the colorful braided straw started to unravel, it was a major bummer. It just seemed like a waste to throw it away. I wished I could make a project out of it, but I didn't have any ideas, so I sent it to Carol Mullen.

When I met Carol this summer, I was amazed and inspired by her artistic process. It begins with ongoing junk collecting, constantly combing antique stores and junk yards, finding things that catch her eye and then she creates little "people" with them. (She will have some of them at the Affordable Art exhibit next week at the Fuller Lodge). I've been watching a lot of Fraggle Rock lately, and her studio is like Margorie, the all knowing Trash Heap oracle.

Anyway, seeing her in action makes me want to toss things into the mix and see what happens. I gave her a black and white photo of my dad when I first met her, which she copied and put into her photo file/ She sent me a note saying that she would put the bag to good use.

I was really happy to know that the bag will have a new life as a piece of art. But it's not just about that particular bag. For the past six years I have been going through some stage of grief, and it's hard for not to get really attached to things that my parents owned, and get really depressed when they get old and fall apart. I've got this red sweater that my mom wore in high school and then she gave it to me and I wear it all the time. But the buttons have fallen off and there's a snag in the elbow. It's like a metaphor for death.

Anyway, I'm trying to learn from Carol, and not try to let the things I have just sit and rot, but if they get old I can see if I can turn it into something else that I can use, or find a way to display it in a meaningful way.

Sunday afternoon in Tesuque

Yesterday we took a drive down to Tesuque village to for the afternoon. It was a beautiful drive. The fall colors were peaking, and it was a warm day. First we went to the Shidoni Sculpture Garden and sat in the shade and read while Calvin took a nap. When he woke up we had some fun, eating the apples from the tree, walking under the legs of the giraffe sculpture and looking around. Calvin especially liked a piece in the shape of a star.

I saw an original bronze gate with two egrets standing in tall reeds. ($25,000) It seemed like that would be the kind of yard art that I would like to get. Something beautiful that is also functional. I could see it in the fence around an adobe house.

Margie Sarrao

Last January Margie Sarrao sold her first painting at the Four Seasons Show at the Fuller Lodge. It was a small painting of pretty pink hollyhocks in front of an adobe building. “It was pretty and springy. She (the buyer) told me it made her happy.”
“I want to create art that people will want to put in their home,” said Sarrao. “Most people would want to look at things that are pretty.”
Although Sarrao doesn’t see herself as a cutting edge artist, she is determined to find her own artistic voice. Her inventive spirit and rebellious nature is leading the way.
“When you start to take a class you want to do what the instructor says. Instructors have a style, and they think it’s the right style, but with art you need to start to develop your own style.”
In high school she was in a group that got together at a woman’s house to do still life paintings. She said, “It was very classic. Very realistic. I was already rebelling.”
She was working on a painting of a vase of flowers and fell in love with the colors mid-process, and decided she wanted to keep it that way (it’s hanging in her dining room). “The woman teaching the class said, ‘this painting’s not finished.’ But I really liked it and put my foot down.”
She said, “My mom and dad were dead set against me being an artist. They wanted me to sustain myself financially, so I ended up going into teaching.”
She put her art aside for many years, but five years ago she decided to get back into it and has disciplined herself to take classes at the Art Center.
She started out doing more still life paintings, but (like most of the artists that I’ve interviewed) her artistic life changed when she found a material that she loved to work with – a palette knife. She said, “I just took to it. It’s so textural. With the palette knife you smear paint on. If you don’t like it you scoop it off.”
People have told Sarrao that you just can’t paint portraits with the palette knife. It doesn’t work. But she is determined to find a way to make it work.
“I’ve seen people who do portraits with palette knives online,” she said. She met a woman who does who calls them “gestures.”
“It could go badly at first,” she admits, but is excited to use the broad textured strokes of the palette knife to paint things like children in the distance, so that you can see that it’s a child in a snowsuit, or portraits of people with interesting faces.

Stars of Enchantment Quilt Show is Today!

The Stars of Enchantment Quilt Show, presented by the Los Alamos Piecemakers Quilt Guild, it today and tomorrow at the First Baptist Church, 2200 Diamond Drive.

I'm going because Calvin's blanket is going to be on display there.

There will also be a drawing to win a quilt, a silent auction, demonstrations, a children's "I spy" game and prizes.

It's a great morning to take a walk downtown!

Because there are two art events happening in Los Alamos. There is the SEC Sandoval Chalk Walk on the sidewalk behind Fuller Lodge from 8 am - and it will be judged at 12:30. David Delano will be in the park drawing caricatures and the Life Drawing Group will meet in the park and you can see them in action.

Also, Christy Hengst will have an installation of her porcelain birds in front of Fuller Lodge, today, and around Ashley Pond on Sunday.

I am going to check it out tomorrow, because I'm in Taos right now. I just want you all to get a chance to see it.

The seven days of creation - quilted

There are a lot of really amazing quilters in Los Alamos! Here is a series of quilts that are on display in Graves Hall at the United Church of Los Alamos. It's a depiction of the seven days of creation.

St. Dimitri's Ethnic Dinner is Sunday

Taste the zip of a Feta crumble tucked into a fresh tomato. Smell the golden spanikotpita, stuffed with spinach. Take a bite of baklava from the recipe of YiaYia Maria Marros and savor the flaky layers of honey and nuts.

On Sunday September 20th at 5:00 pm the members of the Saint Dimitri of Rostov Orthodox Church will host a dinner for the community where they will serve a sampling of ethnic and Mediterranean dishes.

After every liturgy, the families at Saint Dimitri’s they have a meal together. Because of their mix of ethnic backgrounds, they usually serve traditional foods from Greece, Russia, Bulgaria, Sweden and Romania.

“We fast before we come to church, and so we’re always really hungry,” said Elizabeth Bezzerides, “and we like to visit with each other.”

The United Church of Los Alamos has volunteered to let them use their dining space in Graves Hall at 2525 Canyon Road.

Bezzerides converted to the Orthodox religion after marrying her Greek husband and learned to cook Greek food by watching her mother-in-law (and later getting a great cookbook). She will be cooking Greek macaroni meat and pasta classic dish. “Food is basic to people’s relationships,” she said.

Even the kids help. A seven year old boy will help his mom make Spanokopira, phyllo stuffed with spinach and feta cheese.

For dessert there will be baklava, Russian tea cookies, and galactoboureko, a Greek custard pie, coffee and Russian Tea .

Seating will be limited. Make your reservations today by calling 661-7466.

Suggested donations are $15.00 for adults, and $5.00 per child of 10 years or under.

Dream method helps you overcome writers block and gain deeper insights

Eugene Kovalenko, Ph.D., from Los Alamos, NM, has created a simple method of using images from your dreams to infuse your writing with deeper meaning. It’s called the CREEI Method.

Remembering what you dreamed about can be a challenge for some people. “If you have to get up to turn on the light and start getting ready for the day, usually the dream will fade -- unless it was a nightmare!” said Kovalenko, who recommends keeping a notebook by your bed, or in the bathroom, so that you can write down your dreams with the least amount of effort. “If you make a minimum effort to wake up to record a dream, even a few key words can be like a little thread. You pull that thread and it becomes a string; the string becomes a cord; then a line, and before you know it you've landed a dream fish!”

“Dreams are your language, your personal metaphor. Every dream has something original in it, something new,” said Kovalenko. For writers, simply writing your dreams down can help you overcome writer’s block. The raw dream images can help you find your writing voice. Discussing dreams is a way to put aside ways of thinking that can hamper creative growth.

But CREEI can do more than help you collect images. It can actually change your life by helping you work through problems that lead to writer’s block.

Using CREEI people can record their dreams by answering 12 yes or no questions and plotting the answers on a spreadsheet. The questions are:
The questions are:
1. Is the scene Clear? (Can you describe it?)
2. Is your Role proactive Rather than absent, passive or reactive?
3. Is your Emotion (passion) high?
4. Are you Expressing your emotion?
5. Are you Interacting with others? (Rather than withdrawing or being alone.)
6. Is the scene complete or resolved?
7. Is it pleasant? Does it include satisfaction, joy, beauty, aesthetics and/or abundance?
8. Are you secure? (Do you feel safe?)
9. Do you have a sense of healthy self-worth?
10. Are you being your authentic present self? (Rather than pretending.)
11. Are you becoming all that you can be? Are you on the path towards self-actualizing?
12. Are you beloving of all beings? (Do they experience their own beauty in your presence?)
Answering them quickly makes it possible to avoid judging, analyzing and interpreting the dream prematurely. The questions lead to “AHA! moments” that foster creative and spiritual growth and also help you identify problems and issues.

Each dream is categorized based on how many yesses and no’s you have. Dreams can be “transformative,” “motivational,” “anticipatory,” or “traumatic”.

When a dream is puzzling, disturbing, or thought provoking, CREEI offers a technique to help you gain further insight.

In the three stanza poem, the first stanza is a word sketch that captures the dream as you remembered it. In the second stanza you can mess with the dream: ask questions, make changes, or reject certain parts. In the third stanza you rewrite the dream, bringing in heroes or outside support, so that it scores transformative. Kovalenko said, “The very act of writing these words actually makes changes in you, and they are permanent.”

Dreams are close to the boundary between the physical world and the spiritual world. Looking at that boundary will help you answer questions like Who am I? Where am I going? Why am I here? and will give you a new style of writing that is more creative, direct and honest.

Kovalenko offers a free online video course at www.creei.org.

Michele Tisdale

Fall is Michele Tisdale’s favorite time of year because it’s a great time of change. During this time of year she feels tremendous pressure to finish. She said, “There are so many things to paint and they’re going to be gone.”

Her studio is surrounded by her gardens, and she loves to bring flowers and plants inside to paint. She’s inspired by life and movement. She is working on a painting of a morning glory, climbing up a wall. She can only paint it during the short time of the day when the flower blooms. But it’s worth it to go back to the flower, instead of using the photograph that the layout of her drawing, because the photo doesn’t capture the light or the color the way she sees it.

Besides, she enjoys returning to the same places many times. It helps her capture the mood of a place. When she painted the gardens at Los Luceros, all the master gardeners were there and they were all talking. “There was this buzz in the air. It was wonderful.” She loves to paint areas where there is a farm, with pastures, like the place she grew up in Michigan and she love’s painting her friend’s home, which has tremendous warmth and beautiful spaces. Her painting at Chimayo includes a pilgrim, which was the most important thing to her, because she has done the pilgrimage to Chimayo a few times. “You keep seeing more and more. You can never get it all.”

About six years ago Michele had a head injury that turned her world upside down. She said, “I had perceptual problems, pain, difficulty reading and I was drawing everything backwards. My speech therapist said this might be an opportunity to change my life. To take a new direction. After years of dedication to watercolor I switched to oils.”

“The injury actually affected the way I see the world. Shapes are more apparent, colors are brighter and somehow different. Changing to oils was like taking a deep breath and feeling at home. I loved the texture of the paint, the vividness of the colors and the brush stokes. I felt I could render texture in my paintings and that finally I was achieving what I envisioned in color.”

“There are so many times when people are hurrying and there’s so much beauty around and they miss it. I want my paintings to help people pause. “

Like many people, Michele struggled to find time to be creative. But when she was thirty-nine she resolved to make it her top priority. “One day I just decided I could not wait another moment to devote more time to my art work,” she said. “I've never really slowed down since then. Painting is the driving force in my life. My brushes have mileage on them. There's a restlessness, a peacefulness and joy in the work. I'm always finding new things to learn and I know it is a never ending process I hope to continue as long as I live.”

Where do ideas come from anyway?

People always ask Carol Mullen where her ideas come from. "I can't tell them," she said. "I don't know."

But if you spend a little time with her she will give you a wonderfully useful demonstration of how creativity works.

Her dining room table was covered in fetishes (objects believed to have magic powers, a charm) shaped like little magical people destined for the One World Gallery in Taos, The Weyrich Gallery in Albuquerque, Conley and Friends in Madrid and she will show her work at Cathedral Park in Santa Fe during the last week of September. They look so primitive and different, it's no wonder people ask where they come from.

To show me, she led me up a wooden staircase to her studio loft. She didn't clean up for me, because she wanted me to see how she worked. It was a small room covered in piles, stacks and heaps of stuff. It was a trash heap. It was like stepping into the subconscious mind. It was the chaos that God used to create the world. It was a primordial soup.

The first thing that she could say about ideas is that they're everywhere. "When they come I write them down. I collect them."

Scanning the surface of her studio, she begins to point out the types of things that she collects. Homemade paper, dried leaves, beads from a thrift shop necklace, rusty bottle caps from Molly's Bar were people can take their beers outside to drink, pieces of plumbing, a piece of a watch that looks like a little llama, button collections from estate sales, snapshots and letters, gum boxes and car parts. People find things for her to use. Her husband Jeff goes with her to the car salvage lot where they walk around and pick up stuff. "I call it ephemera on the ground."

When people see her looking for stuff, they sometimes ask Jeff, "Is your wife OK?" She doesn't care. Looking for things is as much fun as putting it together.

In her studio she starts with the paper. "I sit here with the stuff," she said, "and don't think about anything, really. I start adding things and see what happens."

The process is spontaneous, and playful. She trusts her instincts, letting herself put things together in ways that appeal to her. She has stashes of old letters and stashes of old postcards and has plans to put the photo of the crazy looking guy with the misspelled letter about how Dorothy promises to send money to her brother so he can go on killing rats. She wants to pair the photo of the girl in a sexy outrageous outfit with the postcard from the sunday school teacher, inviting her to come back soon. Her collages tell a story.

Before she did collages she knit. She shows me a whole stack of photos of her wearable art, including a vest that Julia Roberts bought. She is so immersed in and comfortable with the creative process that I had to ask: Has she ever been blocked?

She said, "No. Well, once."

When her mother died it took her several months to start working again. She worked through it by making a grief collage that had images of mothers form other cultures, crocheted things, buttons and recipes. She took her time with it, and when she was finished she was able to work again.

Sally Hayden Von Conta's Pastel Awakening

When Sally Hayden Von Conta moved from New York to Santa Fe, she took an audio tape of the rivers; the Chama, the Pecos and the Rio Grande, and did a successful series of abstract paintings based on the sounds of the rivers. But then she went back to New York for a visit, just before the terrorist attacks on 9/11.

She couldn't go back to the studio and do what she had been doing. It was too isolating. She wanted to find a way to get back in touch with the land. So she joined a Plein Air Pastel class with Kathleen Schalock.

Sally wasn't a pastel artist - she was a watercolorist, and at the time she really just wanted to join the class to have some company while she worked. She loves how five or six people can be looking at the same sight, and none of the paintings come out the same. She said, "It's the inner vision that comes out."

After a few sessions where she sat in on the class, painting with her water colors, Kathleen told her, "I don't care if you don't pay me, I don't care if you don't want to be taught. But this is a pastel class, and if you want to stay you have to try pastels."

"It was like eating candy," said Sally, "I was so at home with pastels." The vibrant colors and the texture helped her to finally get the impact that she was looking for in her art.

Once she fell in love with pastels, there was no going back. She and a friend, Janet Shaw Amtmann, travelled to Italy and stayed for three weeks on a working farm in Umbria and painted. She came back with nine finished pieces. She has since gone to Montana and all over New Mexico.

Her work will be displayed at Harry's Roadhouse on Old Las Vegas HWY during the month of November, and her piece received the "Best of Show" award at the Twenty First Annual Fine Arts Show at the Old San Ysidro Church, October 2-10.

Mastering Fundamentals Helped Molly Hyde Find Artistic Freedom

When I visited Molly Hyde in her studio she had just finished a twenty minute exercise to get ready for a painting session she was planning with a friend the next day. She didn't know where she was going, or what the conditions would be like, so she made a chart of the colors that she might encounter. She said, "If you're painting in New Mexico, you have to pain cliff walls, rocks and skies. The skies are so beautiful."

She especially loves the sky over El Dorado, where she lives. Streams of air come over mountains on all sides. The air eddies, and creates storms.

Her goal is to master the fundamental technique, and to have it so ingrained that it comes automatically. That way, when she's on location, she can just paint and not have to struggle.

She learned the importance of classical artistic technique when she lived in Putney Vermont. In 2001 she became acquainted with a group of artists who asked her friend if they could use her big barn as a place to paint. The painters turned out to be led by Richard Schmid, and the group of 11 would later be known as the Putney Painters.

She got her classical art training as a member of the Putney Painters. She painted with them for 4 1/2 years and learned things like color temperature and value.

When she and her husband retired and moved to Santa Fe, she joined a plein air class with Anita Louise West, so she could continue developing the skills that she was learning in Vermont.

Another way she is improving her landscape skills is by studying with Kevin Gorges, concentrating on still life. Painting onions and peppers helps her to paint mountains because it makes her more conscious of value shifts. She always looks at one shape in relation to the shapes around it. She's always comparing one patch of shape to another. With still life she can take her time and concentrate on this.

When you paint outdoors you have to do the same thing, only very quickly. You have three hours to work, maximum. With her still life pieces she has stretched her range of values. She has deeper deeps and lighter lights. She is able to simplify the forms that she sees in nature. She said, "There's so much out there. You have to focus on a few shapes."

After 4 1/2 years, it can still be a struggle to get the New Mexico landscape. "Coming from new England to New Mexico was a challenge to my palette. I was using New England greens, which have a lot of blue in them, instead of New Mexico greens, which have a lot of orange. But a challenge is not necessarily a bad thing. It can be really fun!"

Janice Muir wants to take you to a peaceful place

Growing up in Albuquerque, Janice Muir spent a lot of time watching the clouds with her father. "My dad was a great skywatcher. He loved weather. Loved the outdoors."

So naturally, she loves to paint outside, on location. She is drawn to places of peace, of meditation, or places that just make you smile.

She recently painted at the Grand Canyon, which is a challenge for any artist. She said, "There's something awe inspiring about the Grand Canyon. But how do I transfer the feeling I had while I was there?"

When she teaches Plein Air painting, the first thing that she tells her students to do, and the thing that is hardest for beginners, is to edit. Ask yourself, "What's the most important thing about this place? What makes you happy about this place?"

Things change fast when you're painting on location. Especially the quality of the light. She said, "When you see the light, paint it and leave it."

Janice often uses a journal to take notes on the place. Once the image is down she takes notes on colors and sounds. Anything to help her remember where she was. She takes her time setting up so that she can center. She said, "Take the time to set up your easel. To put out your paints. Listen. Smell. Is it sage? Is it wet earth? What's that sound? Is it slow moving water?"

Once when she painted at Anniversary Trail (one of her favorite places) she heard coyotes across the canyon. Although she didn't paint the coyotes, listening to them while painting added another dimension to her art.

"I have a lot of spiritualism in my painting," she said. "My spiritualism is connected to nature."

The skies look alive and changing in her paintings. She said, "I watch sunsets, being very observant about how light changes. Skies are extremely important to me. It goes back to my childhood. For a long time I didn't want to paint a cloud until I could do it well."

The greatest feedback Janice can ever receive is when someone views one of her paintings and says, "That's a place I'd like to be," or even, "I feel like I've been there." When that happens she feels like she has made the connection.

Aspen Vista

In addition to her landscape and wildlife photography, Corinna Stoeffl has been experimenting with abstract photography. This piece, "Aspen Vista" is an example of the multiple exposure feature of her Nikkon Camera. This was a straight shot, the multiple images were made inside the camera. Nikkon is the only camera that has this feature.

Art gives hope to Lara Sandling-Bennett

15 years ago, after seeing dozens of doctors, Lara Sandling-Bennett was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. "It's a very depressing syndrome," she said. "I couldn't work anymore. I felt lost because of the pain."

But in 2007 she took steps that would change her life. With the encouragement of friends, she started taking classes at the UNM-Los Alamos, and is working toward earning her studio art degree.

She comes from an artistic family, and has done a lot of arts and crafts in her life. But when she took her first painting class, taught by Patrick Harris, she learned some wonderful things about herself.

The first assignment was to "paint your ideal outdoor space." She did her painting "my secret window," which is now on display along with 15 of her other paintings in building 2 at the UNM-LA campus. She said, "I was shocked and surprised that I had that artistic ability in me."

"While I paint everything goes away. Stress. Pain. With all the other arts and crafts that I've done, I've never had that experience. I call it my Zen Moment. I lose all track of time and everything seems right."

Lara thinks that painting has an especially mediative effect on her because she enjoys working with the colors, and she said, "as I paint, I'm giving someone else a glimpse of how I see the world. I can express all the things that most people take for granted. A beautiful landscape. Or my cat. It just takes everything else away."

She has found the teachers in the UNM-LA art department to be inspirational and supportive. Patrick Harris encouraged her to enter the Impressionism exhibit at the Fuller Art Center and two of her pieces were selected.

She has made other opportunities for herself by following her heart. You can see from her paintings that she has a passion for cats. "One of the cats that I had helped me get through my diagnosis with Fibromyalgia."

To commemorate her special pet she joined the Friends of the Shelter, an organization that makes sure that cats and dogs in the Los Alamos Animal Shelter are being taken care of. The Friends help screen for potential adopters and help the shelter maintain an unwritten no-kill policy. The only animals that are euthanized are are truly beyond medical help.

Because of her involvement with that organization she will be painting two murals for the new shelter, that is scheduled to be completed in November 2009. There will be a social room where people can get to know cats and dogs to see if they connect before deciding to adopt.

"Art has given me hope," she said. "And a chance to show others that there's hope - a chance for a new life no matter what disease you may have."

Corinna Stoeffl explores her the beauty of her backyard

I was raining when I visited Corinna Stoeffl. The road was already slick with mud and I wondered if I would get out, or would a flash flood trap me there. The weather showed me how her Abiquiu home is the perfect place for a landscape and wildlife photographer to live. I wanted to pull over to capture the way the stormy clouds made the red rocks look different from every angle. I wasn't the only one. Greedy photographers walked along the highway, hoping to catch a glimpse from an angle that no one else has seen, or for the clouds to highlight the curves in a new way.

Most of Corinna's photos are taken in Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado, but she first got serious about taking pictures in the summer of 2004 when she had a chance to go to South Africa. She bought a good camera and made it her goal to take some pictures for herself that she could be proud of.

As it turned out, she took some great pictures, and began to sell her photographs in art fairs the following summer. Photography became her main focus. She joined a mentorship program at the Santa Fe Photographer's Workshop "I didn't want, ten years from now, to look back and wish that I had done something."

She looked out at the threatening weather and said, "Later on I may just get in the car and just shoot."

She usually shoots two or three times a week. There's a big difference between how she approaches her work when she's traveling and when she's at home. When she travels, she looks for things that catch her eye, but there is a sense that it's now or never.

But when she's at home she goes to the same places, over and over again to explore the changes. The creek behind her house is one of her favorite places. She likes to capture how the rocky bed of the creek will become murky when there is a flash flood. She said, when you go to familiar places, "you get to know it and keep discovering new things."

She has a deep connection with nature. In an interview in the Rio Grande Sun, she said, "I tend to see details in nature that are interesting to me and often have difficulty in capturing them to my liking." It is in her visits to familiar places that she can experiment with things to try to make it work, and see what she can change.

One of the hardest lessons that she has learned is: "Never leave home without your camera!"

Every Sunday Corinna sells her work at the Community Fair at the Farmers Market in Santa Fe. She will participate in the 2009 Abiquiu Studio Tour, October 10-12, and she will have a solo show in the Fuller Lodge Portal Gallery March 26th through May 2010.

Slow Down Enough to See God

Has the beauty of the natural world ever made you feel closer to God? The sun shining through leaves like stained glass. A deer looking you right in the eye. A soul expanding landscape. You imagine what Heaven is like. You feel exhilarated. At peace. You try to savor the moment by snapping a picture…

…But when the picture is developed it doesn’t look a thing like you remembered! It’s flat and boring. The feeling you had when you were actually standing there is lost.

Michelle Stump’s images are what most people wish they could have captured. Her digital art spreads a sense of peace by showing the sacredness of the earth. “God shows us the other side, but not many people slow down enough to see it.”

To show me what she’s talking about, Michelle had me drive five miles per hour down a dirt road in El Rancho past quaint old estate walls, quirky artistic neighborhoods, the perfect view of Black Mesa, and the trickle of the Rio Grande that keeps the rose bushes lush.

“I believe the place calls to you. You can hear or feel a place beckoning.”

I recognized the fence from her picture, Perfect Pasture, where the horses just came up to her while the setting sun warmed the barrancas in the distance. But the place where she took the picture for Cottonwood Arcade was unrecognizable. Someone put in a fence and cut the boughs. “The images are here for an instant, and then they’re gone.”

“Don’t take a picture that’s already been taken.”

Few people can capture the magnitude of the sprawling mesas outside of Los Alamos, but Michelle did in The Rio Grande Rift Valley. Most people take the shot at Anderson Overlook – there’s a place to park your car.

“One morning I took a shot that I don’t think anyone else has taken,” she explained, “from further up the hill.” She then cropped it so there was less sky and more layered cliff. “Cropping really brought the viewer into the picture.”

Stump’s advice for anyone who wants to take better pictures is to learn as much as you can. “You can get really good at Photoshop at a community college photography class,” she said.

To demonstrate her favorite Photoshop techniques, she took a photo of my son, Calvin.

“One thing that makes photographs look more professional is equalizing the lighting,” she said. The equalize feature on Photoshop evenly distributes the brightness values of the pixels. It can be found by selecting Image, Adjustments and Equalize.

In her photo of Calvin, the sunlight behind his head made him look pale. She wanted the viewer to focus on his hand splashing in the water, so she placed points of light where the action was by selecting “Filter,” “Render” and “Lighting Effects.”

Photoshop lets you customize your lighting effects. Michelle adds pink to bring out the flesh tones.
Michelle’s cards and posters are available at the Old Town Card Shop, Papers!, Beeps and www.harpofthespirit.com.


This article was originally published in the July issue of albuquerqueARTS.

Los Alamos Life Drawing Group

Ken Nebel is a local children’s book illustrator and who supports the creativity of other artists by leading the Life Drawing Group.

Artist can use all the support they can get, because, let’s face it, creativity can be elusive.
Whether you’re born a creative person, or you’ve developed your talent through years of hard work, it’s all about practice. Stretching out, letting your hand go loose and your imagination fly.

That’s exactly what happens when the Life Drawing Group meets every Wednesday from 6:30-9:30 pm and Sunday from 10:00 am -3:00 pm. in the room above the Fuller Lodge Gallery. They use the sessions to get something on the page, right now.

There is no time for anxiety or analysis. As soon as the meeting starts they pool their money to pay the model; who takes a seat in the focal point of a semicircle. They prop painting boards and sketchbooks against wooden benches and line up their pencils and paint brushes.

Everything is ready to go. The subject is there. Natural light saturates the room. The CD player is stocked with schmaltzy jazz music, Spanish love songs, “Love Shack,” modern classical music and Mamma Mia.

Nebel sets the timer and the room hums with collective concentration. A paintbrush splashes in a cup. Hands and brushes fly. You can hear the whisper of pencils and charcoal against paper. An artist with a t-shirt spattered with orange paint holds her paintbrush in front of her eyes to check the symmetry of the model’s face.

The models come from all walks of life. Sometimes Ken even asks strangers. “It’s kind of weird asking people from off the street. I also ask my friends when they come to town.”

Actors and dancers are especially good, because they have discipline and their poses come naturally. They’ve had an acrobat/clown who posed nude. The models’ ages range from 13 to 73. They’ve come in from as far as Albuquerque. They’ve had a hippie from Cuba and a breakdancer covered in tatoos, piercings, and tanlines.

“The best thing about new models is that they don’t know if they can hold a pose for a long time and so they’ll try something different,” said Nebel. “Sometimes it actually works.”

There is as much of a variety of artistic approaches as there are models. Gwen, a model, said, “It fascinates me how different I can look through other people’s eyes.”

Some people are faster than others. Moving onto their second or third drawing before twenty minutes are up.

David Delano, who draws caricatures for parties and for companies, uses an elaborate easel that folds down to a wooden box full of half squeezed paint tubes, a can full of brushes. A paper towel roll hangs off the front. He’s captured the bright colors of Gwen’s turquoise dress and red hair.

Someone’s charcoal drawing makes her look older and sadder. Others focus on her bangs cut straight across or her hands, resting on her knees as if inviting someone to draw them.

Kathy Geoffrion Parker has been coming to the group since she was in high school. Back then there were nude models all the time but they had to get their parents to sign a permission slip to go. She said, “Sometimes when the models don’t show up we’ve had to take turns. Five minutes is a long time. It helps us appreciate the models.”

Being creative is like being in a relationship. To make a relationship work, you need to get together often. “It’s good to get together,” said Ken. “So many times I work on my own. Kathy challenges me. She’s gonna make me do 100 hands in a year.”

The life drawing group is getting ready for an exhibition October 16-November 21, called “Life Drawing Sketchbook”. It will be an informal exhibit showcasing work that captures the human form. The entry form is available online at www.artfulnm.org.

“I don’t think there’s ever been a show like this,” said Nebel. “I’ve got to show these people off. They’re awesome!”

To get more information about the Life Drawing Group, become a model, or to get email reminders of the sessions, contact Ken Nebel at kennebel@hotmail.com or 690-1715.

"Recovery to Self Discovery is the Ideal Class for Musicians

Musicians know that stress affects your whole body. Your breathing gets tight. Your fingers clench. Your posture suffers. You might get injured. Your sound suffers.

To play a wind instrument or sing well you need to fill your body with an open relaxed breath. The air is what produces a beautiful tone, what helps them reach the high notes, what supports the ensemble, and makes vibrato warm and the phrases musical.

Whether you sing, play the tuba or play the piccolo, Karen Martinez, or Khushbir Kaur, invites you to her weekly yoga class called “Recovery to Self Discovery.” She believes Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan is ideal for musicians because its strong focus on rhythmic breathing.

Each session combines breath, movement and stretching in a way that targets specific physical, mental and emotional issues and creates the mind-body awareness that you need to play music. The meditation portion develops concentration and makes it easier to change old patterns.

Kundalini Yoga is an ancient technology that has been passed from yogi to yogi in secret through the centuries. In 1969 Yogi Bhajan began teaching those secrets in the West.

Martinez is a Kundalini Research Institute Level One Kundalini Yoga Teacher. She studied many forms of yoga, but turned to Kundalini Yoga as Taught by Yogi Bhajan to relieve her chronic back pain. She said, “It transformed my life. Yoga and meditation allowed me to define myself, to fulfill my myself by focusing on the things I want to achieve, and to act and think at my highest consciousness.”

“Recovery to Self Discovery” can be enjoyed by everyone who wants to increase energy and build physical and mental strength. People who suffer from body aches and pains, or have limited mobility will also be able to participate.

The class is Saturday mornings from 10-11:15 A.M. in the Great Room of the Betty Earhart Senior Center, 1000 Oppenheimer Drive. $15 per class, $54 for a monthly pass and $162 for a three month pass. For more information call 505-753-6686 or 505-927-0768.

The Durango Art Center is awesome!

Quinn Calvin and I just got to Durango, and were headed for the brew pub for a late lunch when we walked past a paint bar at the Durango Art Center.

For $8 an hour we could sit there and paint, and they cleaned up. I was so impressed. It was exactly what we needed after a long drive. So we fitted Calvin with a smock and got him going. Here are the pictures:

Calvin's reaction to a painting we have

One year for my birthday Quinn bought me a painting from a man who was selling his art outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The painting is called "Midnight Snack" and is of a naked woman kneeling in front of an open refrigerator. It was very cartoony, like Wallace and Gromit, almost.

Anyway, whenever Calvin see's it he points and says "Mommy." Like he has no doubt in his mind that it is of me. It's pretty funny. I'm going to edit this post in the next day or two with a scanned image of the painting.

Jack Knife

Quinn and I had a party in our back yard on Sunday, with brats, beer, about 40 friends and and awesome local band, called Jack Knife.

The members, Dave Hemsing (bass), Dan Seitz (drums), James Carothers (lead guitar), Adam Houlton (rhythm guitar) and Jerry Adair (vocals) are from Los Alamos and have been playing together for years. They play a blend of southern rock, metal and country, but were cool with playing an acoustic show in my back yard while everybody ate their corn on the cob.

They made our birthday/housewarming party very memorable.

Jerry Beguin

Jerry Beguin’s artwork is being exhibited in the Portal Gallery at the Art Center at Fuller Lodge, in Los Alamos, May 8th – June 13th.

I visited his studio which is full of photographs, "Muzart" and paintings. The eight-by-five canvas by the door is covered in sketches based on String Theory. He joked, “It’s a theory of everything that predicts absolutely nothing!”

Beguin’s artistic life has truly been unpredictable.

He knew that he was an artist when he was in the third grade. His teacher was always scolding him for drawing in class, instead of doing his work. But one day she let him draw a castle on the chalk board with colored chalk, and she ended up leaving the drawing up for the rest of the year.

When he was older he talked to his parents about going to art school, but his dad said that it was a “sissy” thing to do, and so he went into construction instead. He worked as a carpenter for 45 years, but continued to work on his art the entire time.

Then in 2000 his was one of the 400 Los Alamos homes that burned down in the Cerro Grande fire. He lost everything. He had a lifetime of art in the house, including watercolors of his tour in Viet Nam, and and a five by eight painting that he had just finished. His family’s creativity had blossomed into two businesses. He had created dozens of games that he was going to sell, and his wife had about five hundred handmade dolls that she was about to sell online with a company called Blossom Dolls. His house and yard were completely leveled.



Having his work destroyed shook him. He asked himself Why did I become an artist, do all this work, only to have it burn? “I still don’t think I’ve recovered,” he said. “It was like losing my lover. It was like a death.”

The fire suppressed his interest in art for a few years, but then several years ago he just had a strong drive to do more artwork. When he started to work again he found that he had changed as an artist. “I see better. I see more clearly. I used to be finicky about artwork. It had to be perfect. Now it doesn’t have to be perfect.”

That’s why his newest work, Muzart, fascinates him so much. He and his son make music together (their duo is called “Metal Tomatoes”) and then he uses that music to create colorful images on his computer that he experiments with to create art.

He hopes to develop a program that would allow people to make art from music, and possibly to allow people who are physically handicapped to create art using only the movements of their facial muscles.

Looking around his home, I realize that we are completely surrounded by products of his creativity. He built and designed his house, and his son’s house next door. He showed me the tiny outbuilding where he and his wife lived while they were building their new house. He filled his yard with trees and a garden to give himself a peaceful sanctuary.

Being able to create after his work had been destroyed in the fire is what makes Jerry an artist. “There’s a meaning to it. It’s going to affect someone’s life.”

Solidify your imagination

Last fall I visited Marc Hudson’s garage studio to watch him throw. The six pound lump of clay that he plopped onto his wheel was completely amorphous. As Marc described it, the clay, “Doesn’t have any opinions about its final destiny. It’s the byproduct of erosion and it doesn’t mind that. When people see clay (or a blank sheet of paper or an empty canvas) they need to create something, to use it to solidify their imagination.”

It’s physical – he leans his body into the clay as he slowly moves around the piece, allowing it to take shape. First it becomes a tall cylinder, and as he coaxes the walls to expand, to be less than an eighth inch thick, until it becomes what he calls a “rumptious round.”

It looks like a form of meditation. It turns out that when he began working with clay, that’s exactly what it was.

He had just been drafted to the Viet-Nam war. He said, “The fact that I could contribute to killing people just by doing what I was told was hard to accept. I needed a relaxing center in clay as an alternative to being in the military.”

Since then, working with clay has been a long creative journey where Marc has developed his sense of style by devising experiments that allow him to get the results that he wants.

For example, he wasn’t getting the results that he wanted using commercial glazes. The list of people available to teach him how glaze materials work was pretty short and he wasn’t getting the answers he needed.

He bought tools – a scale for measuring ingredients, bags of chemicals, books with recipes and chemical analyses of ingredients, and software that describes how ingredients interacted with one another – and experimented.

He wasn’t being a perfectionist; he just wanted glazing to be an adventure. He said, “My usual approach to clay is to exercise considerable control while it is on the wheel or in the extruder, so it is refreshing to let my guard down and let the glaze act and react serendipitously.”

“Wood ash particularly appeals to me as a primary ingredient in glazes because it is a bit of a ‘wild card,’ its effect somewhat unpredictable,” Hudson said. “Ash likes to flow at high temperatures, yet its surface tension tries to make the glaze bead up–like a struggle between control and abandonment.”

He devised a system of organization that allows him to easily look up the recipe for any glaze. Over a thousand glazes on test tiles are coiled on the ceiling of his studio. The tiles are all numbered and grouped by thirty on each string.

“While I enjoyed mixing and testing glazes a great deal, my wife told me that I needed to just get on with making pots!” said Hudson. “But learning about clay and glazes is a journey.”

One of his favorite glazes was made possible by his experiments. He wanted to reproduce the recipe for Richard Aerni’s wood ash glaze that was featured in Ceramics Monthly in December 1994. The problem was that Aerni single-fired his pots at cone 10 in a reduction kiln whereas Hudson bisque and glaze fired at cone 6 in an electric kiln. Through experimentation he was able to make a glaze with ash from the fireplace that could be fired at cone 6.

The high chaparral that lines the Rio Grande River between the Jemez and Sangre de Cristo mountains is where Hudson finds inspiration. Many of his pieces are ornamented with a cholla cactus branch. In order to imitate the cactus he designed his own extruder dies.

His innovations with the extruder make his dies more user-friendly and long lasting. He uses an unequal leg aluminum angle in the place of a U-bolt. The pressure of clay deforms the centerpiece of the U-bolt and causes wear and tear. Aluminum doesn’t bend the same way and lasts longer because it is on the shear.

He holds the die parts together with pop rivets, which are easy to adjust. This setup minimizes the clutter inside the die.

His father was a physicist who made oil paintings of physical phenomena like shock waves and crystals forming. Whenever Marc used design, technology and experimentation to let others see what was in his imagination, he followed his father’s example.

He had mastered his craft enough that when his father died, Marc was free to make an urn that was meaningful to him and his family. After dividing his father’s shes into the four urns he sprinkled some of the ashes onto the glaze before firing. The urns turned out beautifully, but more important, he was able to honor his father in a way that resonated with him and once again find peace with clay.

Marc Hudson is part of a new Website; www.printedculture.com. Printed Culture makes art more accessible by creating calendars, prints, posters and greeting cards from photographs of works of art and giving the featured artists a percentage of the profits.

Here's the response I got from Martin Spei's wife, Nancy

Hello Mandy,
Thank you for informing us of your blog regarding Martin Spei's sculpture.
I am Martin's wife and handle all his promos and the business end of the sculpture. Martin forwarded your contact information to me. I want to say thank you for your interest in his work and let you know how much your feedback is appreciated.

Martin's sculpture is atypical of almost all the bronze sculpture you may see out in the contemporary art market. He is able to combine classicism, the traditional bronze medium and a very contemporary wit and humor in his sculpture. Bronze is a stodgy, old material, but when approached with Martin's understanding of the human figure and way of bringing historical references into current, sculptural language the bronze can bring forward all the metaphors Martin has intended to portray.

Artists tend to work in a solitary way and thus have little opportunity for feedback outside of shows and sales of the work. Thank you for taking the time to voice your opinions, you may not realize it, but comments such as yours are very inspirational to Martin. Sometimes it's just nice to know someone out there gets it.
Best of luck to you with future "Art Field Trips"!
Sincerely,
Nancy Spei

ps. Martin is in a show at The Edge Gallery, here is Santa Fe, opening on June 13. Two new pieces, we're excited!

Martin Spei's sculptures capture complex emotions about work

I stopped in at the Art Center at Fuller Lodge to see the Sculptural Ideas exhibit. Martin Spei's bronze sculpture "Dagda III" was what stood out. It's a sculpture of a bald man with bare feet clutching a briefcase, as if it's going to fly away, or someone is threatening it. His work. But the man is so physical, he almost doesn't look like the type to be carrying a briefcase. Like he should be doing something else entirely. He's not suited to be wearing a suit. It was really interesting.

Getting over sticker shock

I was sitting on the lawn at the Shidoni Gallery this morning, with the sprinklers going and the lawn guy weed whacking around the legs of a bronze turtle. It was such a quiet ordinary day, and I wondered what it would be like to choose a piece of art to go in your lawn.

Looking at one of the first pieces that caught my eye, it was clear that I'm not nearly rich enough to collect art. $7,500 for Philip Glashoff's "Lion" and $22,000 for Jospeh Fichter's "Cutting Horse." That's precisely the amount of money that I earned my first year out of college when I worked as a legal proofreader (with all the other starving artists, writers and actors)!

Even though I swallowed my middle-class tongue when I saw the five figure price tag, I can't imagine paying less. Glasshoff's Lion was like a fantasy lion and Fichter captured the horse as it was running and leaning into a sharp turn. Even though it was made of two dimensional slabs of bronze, it was full of life and vigor. It may have taken a whole year to make it, and who can even calculate the time and money that went into developing the talent to sculpt a horse at that impossible angle.

Anyway, artists should make as much money as humanly possible, so they can sit around dreaming of sweet stuff to make. It's not good for artists to actually starve, wasting their time and talent working as legal proofreaders.

Interview with Małgorzata Oleskiewicz-Peralba

Małgorzata Oleskiewicz-Peralba, author of The Black Madonna in Latin America and Europe: Tradition and Transformation (published by University of New Mexico Press), talks about “The Black Madonna,” a cultural icon of a mother with a dark complexion that blends ancient goddess and female symbols with the Virgin Mary, and is worshipped and adored by millions of people around the world.

What draws so many people to these images?

These images are not just images. They’re imbued with sacred energy. The most popular ones are the black ones or the dark ones. This is especially true in Europe, where the color does not reflect the population.

In Russia the dark complexion is compared to the earth. The moist earth. The female deity that gives birth to everyone. The all encompassing mother. And black earth is the most fertile.

How does the Black Madonna relate to Our Lady of Guadalupe?

The place where Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared used to be the worship site where the Aztecs venerated the goddess Tonatzin. So the power was already there. It did not start with the sighting of the Virgin.

How have these images changed over time?

They’ve become independent of religious worship. People who don’t consider themselves to be Catholic have images of the Virgin of Guadalupe in their home. Not everyone who believes in her believes in God or religion.

At the borderline between cultures there is a lot of creativity with the images because of cultural ambiguity and a multiplicity of influences.

Mexican American women artists transform the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe to suit their purpose and to reinforce their message. Our Lady of Guadalupe has appeared as a Xicano rights fighter in a painting by Ester Hernandez and Our Lady of Częstochowa was depicted on the cover of the Polish magazine Wprost wearing a gas mask to protest air pollution.

The Black Madonna goes with the times. She is always identified with social struggle.


Why is there a need for the Black Madonna?

People need to feel protected and guided. They need to feel like they have a mother.

* This article originally appeared in Albuquerque Arts.

Pouring Molten Bronze at Shidoni Foundry

Shidoni Foundry’s first bronze pour was in May of 1971. Founder Tommy Hicks had just sold a piano for $350 to move his family to Tesuque from Amarillo, Texas. His new foundry was in an old chicken coop, the burn-out furnace was made of fire bricks and old vacuum cleaner motors, and he used cheap plaster for his mold investment. After inviting people from local museums to see it, the molds all exploded the second the bronze touched them!

Even though it was a failure, the first pour made it clear that people love to watch the flow of liquid bronze.

37 years later Shidoni is one of the top foundries in the world. Every month they pour over 9,000 pounds of bronze at their 1,400 square foot facility. The gallery and sculpture garden represents 147 artists and the foundry is staffed by working artists.

Ede Ericson Cardell, the foundry manager who has several sculptures at Shidoni, explains lost wax bronze casting:

First the artist creates an original sculpture out of wax or clay. A rubber mold captures every detail of the artist’s work. Molten wax is poured into the rubber mold. “It’s like a chocolate Easter bunny, with a seam down the middle that they later remove,” said Cardell. “All the wax becomes bronze.”

After the wax figure is removed from the mold a trained artisan finishes it, making it a perfect copy of the original sculpture.

Wax rods are attached to create a plumbing system that allows the bronze to flow evenly. This step is called “spruing.” The bronze will be poured into a sprue cup.

With sprue system is in place they make a ceramic shell “investment” by repeatedly dipping the wax statue in liquid ceramic and then sand. After the investment is cured for several days the piece is fired in a kiln, baking the shell, melting the wax and leaving a cavity for the bronze.

When the ceramic shell is removed from the kiln, molten bronze is immediately poured in at 2100º F.

Once cooled the ceramic shell is broken away to reveal a bronze sculpture. The sprue system is cut away. The pieces are welded together, sanded and polished to look exactly like the original. It can be treated with chemicals and heat to become whatever color the artist chooses.

The foundry completes every step of the process in house to ensure quality. The cost of a bronze piece comes down to labor, hours from start to finish, and the pounds of bronze used. Shidoni helps their employees (most of them are emerging artists) build a body of work by letting them cast their pieces at cost, instead of retail.

“We’re very proud of our Made in the USA policy,” said Cardell. “It’s really important to keep jobs here and to keep our people employed.”

Shidoni has done well inviting collectors and visitors to see the behind the scenes process. “We’ve actually made a few collectors that way. They saw it and were hooked,” said Cardell.

At a Saturday afternoon pour in December, Tommy Hicks personally led the crowd of people into the facility.

Hot air, green light and energy whoosh out of the stove. A worker wearing earplugs, silver protective pants, a long silver coat, helmet and thick gloves dipped a thermometer the size of a weed whacker into the mouth. The temperature is 2154º.

Our attention turns to the monstrous burn-out furnace, with the word hot scratched onto the surface. An elaborate pulley system slowly lowers a platform of piping hot ceramic shells and places them on a sand pit, center stage. Using the pulleys, the workers guide a cauldron around the shells and pour bronze into each sprue cup, muttering “you’re good,” and “up a little bit” or “down a little bit.”

Spectators click pictures and gasp when glowing bronze almost splatters a boot. When it’s over, everyone applauds.

* This article first appeared in Albuquerque Arts.

The purpose for this blog

I moved to New Mexico from New York City a little over a year ago, and one of the things that I have enjoyed the most is seeing the art galleries and meeting artists from New Mexico. The art scene is full of vibrant colors, tradition, and originality, and I find it very inspiring.

I have been lucky to have a chance to write about artists for the local paper and regional magazines. My idea for this blog is to continue to write about artists that I meet and admire, and have a place to jot down my ideas and point out things that catch my eye.

Enjoy!