Category: Happenings

On Sunday, March 18 I will give a demonstration of my creative process for the West Texas Watercolor Society headquartered in Lubbock. It will be at the Louise H. Underwood Center for the Arts: 511 Avenue K. Their meeting starts at 2:30.  There’s excellent coverage about it in their March newsletter: http://pages.suddenlink.net/wtws/archive.htm   This link takes you to the WTWS Newsletter page, you will need to click on March 2012. Feel free to contact me if you need additional details.

INNOVATIVE WATERMEDIA andCOLLAGE
HELEN GWINN, INSTRUCTOR
APRIL 11, 12, 13  in Albuquerque, NM
at EXPO NEW MEXICO(which is the State Fairgrounds)

This class will be a delightful, experimental, creative, innovative approach to developing a watermedia painting or a mixed-media painting or an assemblage or……….who knows? Take a look, on the pages of this website, and you will see the variety of images I create. I will demonstrate, discuss, critique and give individual help throughout the class. Contact one of the individuals below for additional information, enrollment procedures, and a list of suggested supplies.
Contact persons:
Fran Krukar <fran@krukar.com>  505-292-3917  or
Kathy Arneberg <darneberg1@comcast.net>  505-379-2448

KEEPING WATCH
mixed media, 16X12X2 inches on a cradled panel

The Weems International Artfest was superb, the art exhibited there gets better every year. Many of the top artists in the Southwest participate: Chris Morel, Kristin DeSantis, Dan Stouffer, B.C. Nowlin, Russ Ball, Sarah Blumenshein, Fermin Hernandez etc. etc. Some of us have been a part of Artfest for many years  and it’s interesting to see the growth and maturation in our expressions. The recession in our national economy may be affecting sales somewhat but it is not making a difference in the quality of the works  of art nor in the amount of works being produced.

“In human life, art may arise from almost any activity, and once it does so, it is launched on a long road of exploration, invention, freedom to the limits of extravagance, interference to the point of frustration, finally discipline, controlling constant change and growth.“

Susanne Langer (1895 – 1985)

Twenty three years! It’s hard to believe but I’ve been showing my works of art at the Weems International Artfest for twenty three years!  An amazing range of emotions and experiences fill that history. Frustration, exhilaration, joy, madness, delight, sadness, hope satisfaction, affirmation….you name it, it’s been part of Artfest.  Jeni, my daughter has been my right-hand helper at the show for about 8-10 years, before that Allen, my husband,  made it all work for me.  These days, the division of labor goes like this: I create the works, document them, maintain the mailing list, file the photographs and do some of the framing.  Allen photographs the work,  packs it and loads it into the car.  Jeni unloads, installs and makes sales (she’s an all-round friendly PR person). I help them with their jobs and they help me with mine except for creating the works. What a deal! I’m one fortunate artist to have such a devoted and loving “staff.” Truly I could not do it without them!
I will take my new pieces from The Window Series which I wrote about in the last blog. Here are a few. I have posted some of the others  on the pages of my website. (Note: click on the pages along the bottom of the heading on the homepage of the site)

The Window Series: Finestra                                                             watermedia/collage, 15X15 inches. This one is “floating in a clear maple frame.The Window Series: Habemus ad Dominum
collage, 10X10 inches, matted and framed in clear maple.

The Window Series: Western Window
collage, 10X10 inches, matted and framed in clear maple

The dedicated painters in the Art For Soul Critique Group in Albuquerque meet monthly to share their works-in-progress, and discuss ways to make them better. They have a very special camaraderie. As I critiqued with them they wanted to hear all my comments about the works and they had no qualms about letting the rest of the group hear each critique.  They create some outstanding varied work don’t they? Half of the painters have focused on watercolors, two of them wanted to explore acrylics while I was with them. One painter is so ready to take the watercolor medium and her expressions to the edge! She is somewhat in transition already for she has been pushing it for some time. It reminds me of a scenario which reports that the creative person was called to the edge, “No, no, I will fall.” Again and again she was beckoned to the edge, “No, no, I will fall/fail.” Finally she let loose and came to the edge, she was pushed……… and she flew! (Sorry I cannot find the exact expression of that scenario, or to whom it belongs, but it is a powerful thing to consider.) May we all move willingly to the edge and learn that we will soar!

Judi Foster

Sue Ann Mika    www.NMArtists.com

Mabel  Culpepper

My apologies to Sandra Quinlan, Susan Birdsong and Lynda Burch  www.lyndaburch.com   You are courageous and determined dedicated painters.  Although I received images, or captured them off websites, I was unable to make them arrive here. I will be happy to insert them if they can be sent to me in jpg format.
When I teach or work with other artists, I also learn. This group taught me much. I hope to paint with them again. They are an inspiration!
In April of 2012, I will teach INNOVATIVE WATERMEDIA WITH COLLAGE, a 3 day workshop. It will be part of the Masterworks event in Albuquerque. In that class I will more thoroughly demonstrate my process of layering, collaging, embellishing and pushing my images to the “edge.” Some of them actuually get “airborne by the Spirit and fly.” Always, the process is a charge; it doesn’t fail to enrich my creative spirit.

My watermedia painting “Taking Flight” is on the cover of the current New Mexico Bar Bulletin. A small blurb about me and the fact that I’m represented by the Weems Galleries in Albuquerque, New Mexico is just inside the issue. The painting lives in Albuquerque with its owner! “Taking Flight” was also published in the March, 2011 isssue of  New Mexico Magazine.

My brain ruts were flattened and smoothed by a handsel from Chinati on Saturday, April 23, 2011, the forty-third birthday of my daughter.  She was on the Gulf Coast celebrating and I was in the Chihuahan Desert of South-Southwest Texas,  receiving subtle jarring grace.  Charred by the recent wildfires, one major fire still covering the sky with clouds of smoke, we drove into Marfa, Texas to visit Chinati, the art compound of the late, famous, controversial minimal artist Donald Judd.
This phrase by David Raskin about the scale of Judd’s work rings true for me as I weigh Judd’s hypnotic, serene, laconic style: “the immaterial becoming dense and the material ethereal.”
The connection between “Untitled Works In Mill Aluminum ” (100 mill aluminum “boxes” of the same external dimensions, with varied internal elements, exhibited in two parallel rows, in two converted artillery sheds) and the stark, seared, spiny desert beyond the huge glass windows established an altered state in my spirit, a state of questioning the reality of what my eyes beheld. Moving through the exhibit with others on tour and my friend, Janice, kept me grounded in the present.
Donald Judd’s presence was palpable in his works. Careful consideration of detail, moved beyond careful all the way to consuming meticulous concentration, with a silent, still rhythm immanently marking both placement and presentation, each as vital as the physical images.  What is there to say? my intuitive response borders on a profound spirit of silence, a wordless respectful acknowledgment of  precise, stark, creative power.

One of my paintings, “Let’s Talk” is on the cover of the current New Mexico Bar Bulletin, a publication of the New Mexico Bar Association. You can see a good reproduction of the painting on my website: Paintings page. “Let’s Talk” is a good symbol for attorneys ……… agree? I’m delighted to see it there. The cover of the publication is here:

I read on the Sketchbook Project web page today that they received a little less than 10,000 completed sketchbooks. That’s quite a different number than the 26,000 reported earlier; still many many sketchbooks to deal with. I hope a procedure will be worked out to make it easier and less-stressful to view the wonderful books.