Painting every day

Love this blog:

Paintings for $100 and just gorgeous stuff.

Berkeley watercolor blog plus more!

Found this - great peek at someone's sketch process: http://janabouc.wordpress.com/

Which led me to a blog where this guy has asked several people to draw/paint a portrait of him from the same photo. It's great fun to see the results: http://thistimeforreal.blogspot.com/

For those who may not have already discovered it - the classic fab illustration blog spot: http://illustrationfriday.com/

long time no write

I've been happily very busy with work and more travel to Austin lately.

Now settling in to the new company and carving time out again for artistic pursuits.

Going on Saturday to sit in on Gary's class and FINALLY get a start on the commission I have for the cat.

Also signed up for a Life Drawing class at Richmond Art Center for Wednesday nights. Body, body, body. It's the word du jour.

Was noodling around checking out artist residency programs and stumbled on a couple of artists web sites that I really liked:

http://www.wuongean.com/about.htm - narrative, soulful, slightly funny and disturbing at the same time

http://www.christinebourdette.com/ - seems to be very aware of physicality, feminity? I love this statement from the artist herself: "I seek to express the familiar, but with undercurrents that are dark, peculiar, elemental, or funny. For me, this expression reflects the ornery illogic of the human condition, its strengths and frailties. It remains a fragile circus, unlikely and charishable."

sadly, a Napa arts initiative a bit too late for me...whinge alert :)

I got this intriguing email from the Arts Council of Napa Valley today including a press release on an initiative to establish a cultural plan for Napa. Here is a key part of it (the emphasis is mine):

"NAPA, California, February 7th, 2007: In the last five years, donors and funders in Napa County have invested close to $150 million dollars in the arts – without an overarching plan. The result?

- World-class venues, but not enough local audience to fill them
- Numerous arts organizations, but a tough financial climate: at least 12 galleries and theater groups have closed since the fall of 2004
- A wealth of individual artists of all disciplines, but few who can make a living in Napa County
- Committed and passionate arts supporters, but significant fatigue and uncertainty within the donor pool
- 4.7 million visitors per year, but most of whom don’t know about all we have to offer in the arts

To address these problems and opportunities, Arts Council Napa Valley, in concert with arts organizations, community members, and civic leaders from across the county, is creating a road map for a healthy and vital arts and culture sector that represents what the community wants to see, hear, and experience through its local arts. This road map is called a cultural plan. Cultural plans, and the cultural planning process, have been successfully used in communities large and small across America to create strong, vibrant, exciting arts sectors. This plan will be by the community, and for the community. To accomplish this, Arts Council needs Napa County residents to get involved and speak out for the arts. "

I responded to Michelle (whose art planning blog is here), who I was fortunate enough to meet a few times in Napa and found to be lovely and bright.

Here is my email back to her:

Hey Michelle,
I checked out your blog (great idea!) and left a comment there. This initiative looks so exciting, but sadly a bit too late for me. I think that one way to better support the arts in Napa would be to encourage industries like software and high tech. Many of us can't support ourselves full-time doing art and are earning livings as programmers, project managers, graphic designers, animators. But those jobs are few and far between in Napa.
I would also say that Napa needs to lean further to the left and positively embrace / celebrate minorities and gay people before the tipping point to 'artist-friendly' county could happen. I am (as you know) fishbelly-white and straight, but really disliked living in a homogenous, conservative, old-boy-network-heavy community. When working as a fundraiser in Napa, any energy I expended that reeked of "new kid in town" was received with either hostility, derision or plain old passive-aggressive attitude of "let's ignore her until she goes away." The folks running government and key organizations need a serious shift of belief - they need to truly feel that new ideas might be a help instead of a threat, that a rising tide will raise all boats.
I gave it a serious try to stay in the county but just couldn't do it for the reasons noted above, among others. I would have LOVED to help out with this kind of effort but feel like Napa wasn't set up for me to make a success of it.
Just another two cents for your group to consider / forward to the powers-that-be.
Thanks and very very best of luck to you all,

Point Richmond / mental maps and artistic takes on those

Moving on Thursday to Point Richmond, about which I had heard a bit but just got the best vibe about the place when I went in person last week. It feels a bit like a beach town. I guess since there technically is a beach, it is a beach town of sorts. Just one that is sitting on the freeway tucked in behind the oil refineries. But that’s how it’s semi-affordable, I suppose.

This photo is of the two churchs just a block from my new house. The one on the right hosts the Tuesday night meeting and the one on the left hosts the Thursday night meeting. Artists, alcoholics - we're everywhere, like mildew. (As Chester Arnold once said - although he was referring only to artists.)

More on Point Richmond:

good general everything page: http://www.pointrichmond.com/
visitor review from Daily Planet: http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?archiveDate=05-12-06&storyID=24125
arts guild: http://home.comcast.net/~point_arts_guild/

richmond arts center: http://www.therichmondartcenter.org/
smells great: http://www.gracebaking.com/GRACEBAKING/Default.htm
or sometimes not so great: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/01/22/18350759.php

and http://www.cccpointrichmond.com/updates.html

Rosie the Riveter memorial: http://www.ci.richmond.ca.us/index.asp?NID\u003d603

local blogger: http://pointofview.bluehighways.com/

East Brother Light Station: http://www.ebls.org

Hiking / walking: http://www.berkeleypaths.org/walkhandouts/walk_Point_Richmond.htm/

Golden State Model Railroad Museum: http://www.gsmrm.org/

______________________________________________

And links about Maps from Memory and Mental Mapping, for some reason quite fascinating to me today:

Maps from memory

London by Ellis Nadler (his blog http://ellisnadler.blogspot.com/)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nad/380055005/

Susan Holderread http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/holderrd/map_from_memory/intro.html

Interesting student projects from Mount Allison University:
http://www.mta.ca/faculty/socsci/anthro/mental_maps/mental_map_page.html


Memory mapping
http://www.expandedfield.com/memorymapping/index.cfm

Article from V&A about Memory Maps
http://www.vam.ac.uk/activ_events/adult_resources/memory_maps/what/index.html

Memory Maps project by Smithsonian
http://www.localprojects.net/lp/featured5detail.html

Illustration Friday Night http://illustrationfridaynight.blogspot.com/

Times, they are a-changin'...

I tried to get into Chester Arnold's class, but he was totally over-subscribed (over-booked?) Anyhow, his class was too full. He sent me over to a painting class, but I don't know that I like the teacher and the students were all about 18 years old.

So instead I signed myself up for a Thursday night "Figure Painting" class at California College of Art! yay! Teacher is someone named Sian Oblak . I find her work intriguing.

The teacher from College of Marin last night did show some fun slides before we started in on painting and I jotted down a couple of new names - artists I liked.

David Salle

Raymond Saunders (image in this post)

It looks like I may be able to keep my job in Berkeley, despite a recent acquisition of our company by a competitor. I like the new guys (from our new HQ) and also like their product, so it would be great to stay.

As it turns out also, my art-class friend Carmen just got a job in Kentfield and doesn't want to commute from Napa, so we may find a place down here together, ideally some loft-type space where we could leave our art projects out. Yippee!

Had a great meeting this morning with Molly. She is so perceptive and encouraging. It's a real gift to be a good teacher / coach and I just feel so lucky when I get hooked up with one.

have a heart

"An artist needn’t be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men."

Vincent van Gogh

Stephen Huneck

Another dog artist I love. Hey GP, he's from Vermont!

The Compact

The other day on the radio, I heard about this group of friends who swore off buying new things in 2006. I tried to remember their name so I could look it up when I got to work, but got distracted by this and that. Then my mom emailed me a link about The Compact. Very interesting stuff! I joined their yahoo group and think it would be fun to meet like-minded folks. I may give this a try also, now that I understand it's more about reducing footprint than being abstemious. They enjoy buying things used, making an effort to reduce landfill and waste. That I like.

I also love it when things get another use, another chance, a new beauty.

I also highly recommend a book called Mongo: Adventures in Trash. It's all about people in Manhattan and how they re-use things that are tossed. Also see NY Times review.

One reviewer (Rob Hardy on Amazon.com) : " "Mongo" is slang that originated in New York in the 1980s for "any discarded object that is retrieved." This decidedly does not mean mere garbage, the worthless rotting ephemera which no one wants. There are plenty of discarded things, however, from books to wood scraps to blocks of buildings, which the person who did the discarding thought were worth zero and which the eventual collector thought had value. And many times, that value is in the thousands. Frequently this is a surprising story of rags literally going to riches. Botha reminds us, 'The street collector you see today could well be a bum or a lunatic, that's true enough, but just as easily a millionaire, a schoolteacher, an accountant, a doctor, a housewife.' He has contacted all these levels to report on them."

More visual artists I love

Jane Liston, in San Rafael - I was lucky enough to meet her, chat about creating art and buy a study from her at an open studio a few years ago. She was very encouraging and down-to-earth; liked her a lot.

Susan Hall, from Point Reyes. Luminous!

Robert Bechtle!

Jason Mecier (east bay also) He was also featured on Spark.

remember this girl, P?

Freud, Lucian
Girl in a dark dress
1951
Oil on canvas
16 x 12 in. (40.6 x 30.5 cm)
Private collection

new finds

Discovered another painter I like (Portland Oregon's Hal McCartor) and his blog is groovy too. It's interesting to read about his process (as much as I hate the words 'his process.')

I also ran across Julia Kay's site and looks like she's right here in the East Bay - maybe our paths will cross.

Edge case

My art, when will I have time for it when I have to paint, pack move? Will I have to sneak in a doodle here or there, around the edges?

I see the words "my art" that I just typed. I think perhaps that makes no sense, that phrase. What about the creative activity I enjoy can be "mine" in the same way as a teapot? Hmmph.


I have this very cool book called "Drawing From Life - The Journal as Art" in which one of my favorite journals is this very dense pen and ink work a guy did every day on his subway ride in NYC.

I had a couple of reactions to this:

a - why can't I have a subway ride? if only I had a subway ride, I would be fulfilled happy artist with a cool journal

b - if that guy can do such cool artwork on the 'fringe' of his day, surely there is something I can find to do, some edge or fringe that I am overlooking.

I have been trying to remember to bring my sketchbook whenever I am going to be sitting around the dog park. Part of me thinks - who am I kidding, these dogs keep moving too much and I'll never get any fruitful sketching done this way. But I gave it a shot anyhow, because what can it hurt, and when I looked at the page the next day, I thought it was pretty cool. Worth doing.

Part of my challenge is to be braver about drawing stuff when I'm in public and people can see me. I get so shy about it and I also worry that people will get upset if I am making them my subject.

low art / high art

I have spent so much time being delighted with myself for knowing tacky from tasteful, kitschy from edgy, and am lately just finding it all kind of pointless and a bit mean-spirited and superior.

Lo and behold, I ran across Jon Carroll's column today and it fit in perfectly with that theme. Just brilliant, that man.

Do I sense a trend back toward sincerity and enthusiasm? Let me be among the first!

This afternoon at work, a gaggle of folks noticed big flames and smoke coming from a nearby building and we heard lots of sirens and then helicopters too. Shortly after that, we got an email from our IT guy:

Subject line: Please stop watching the live feed of the fire

Body: Unless you are using the proxy server, please stop watching the video of the fire so we don't keep spiking the T1.

Just go to the QA room and watch it live it you really gotta watch it.

Thank you

-Robin

The Paint Off

Well, as you'll see, I didn't win this Paint Off in the official sense. But I am nonetheless congratulating myself on subverting my natural tendency to run screaming for privacy and invulnerability and actually staying through the entire event.

I am so grateful to Laura, Tom, Kathryn, and Hank for showing up to give me much-needed moral support. Laura and Tom even helped me pack up my stuff at the end of the day; now that's a sign of a trooper right there. I get so weirdly uncomfortable accepting help, but if I want to be a real part of the world, not just a "wad in a box" (copyright Gary Stutler), that's going to be part of the deal.

What was great - discovered a couple of artists who I like both personally and artistically. Number one best discovery was Hwei-Li Tsao, who I knew only as "Number 36." Thank goodness she won second place or I'd never have found out her name.

Also good was to force myself into a situation where I am the little fish in a bigger pond. It was motivating to see these other talented artists at work, albeit a bit humbling too.

My key learning about the painting part itself was that I wish I'd gone slower, done some more sketching to get my composition together, been patient with creating a limited palette piece, thinner layers, and then add the brighter fun colors more near the end. Ah the delayed gratification thing.