Newest experiment

against a white background

on a brown background

Here I am trying some more finishing techniques, like trying to get some of the crochet to match up with the paintings, having the yarn weave in and out of the painted objects, and re-incorporating shrinkydink plastic.

I'd say with moderate success.

Feeling pretty productive lately!

Sunday I went to my friend's studio and we worked for a few hours.  It felt amazing, like old times, like being in the studio when I was a student and my whole job was to make art and experiment.

I don't know if these pieces I've made lately are finished.  I look at them and feel like they aren't finished, though I don't know where I would go from here.  I'm just keeping them in stasis.  I'm not ready to be like "done!" and hang it up and move on.  I feel like there's more to it than this but we'll see.  I've kind of been wanting to do some embroidery and then stretch it onto the back of the frame, but...

I'm back, baby!

That's right!  Making art again!

It's been a while since I posted.  A lot has happened.  A lot a lot.  But in the process of trying to find myself again and get back into making art, I am going to start posting here again.  Here, the blog I worked on for so many years, the place where I recorded so many of my art related thoughts from November 2007 until almost exactly two years ago in October 2011.

I'm back.  It feels... delicious.

Endings

I won't be volunteering anymore at the end of the month, so I'm not sure what happens next.  I made a calendar and put it in the art room so we could talk about endings, and how things are going to end in a few weeks.  It's scary.

It's also odd because the last day of the program (and my last day volunteering) is also Erev Rosh Hashana.  So my new year will start without this volunteer gig, something I have literally been doing since the day I got here in New York.  I'm really not sure what will happen next and it makes me nervous, but I am trying to see it as an opportunity to do something new...

Boozy Birthday Present

JewishGuy's birthday was Friday so for his birthday I made him a painting of his favorite Scotch.  Well, it used to be his favorite, I hear rumblings there may be another contender.  But he always has a bottle of this in the Scotch cabinet so he at least likes it enough to have a painting of it on his wall at the office.

I almost didn't do the lettering because that is my absolute weakness (painting lettering ... just ask my former job as a custom plate painter at a pottery painting studio).  You can see I'm not very good at it.  But without the letters it looked so blah and generic.

Anyway, I like the way it came out, and I'm writing this before I give it to him because I scheduled this post for the future so he won't see it before he gets his present so I haven't seen his response yet.  I think he will like it!

Haggadah Project, here we go!

I'm working on my illustrations, trying to make up for some lost time.  Working on the pages is making me so anxious for some reason.  It takes me forever to sit down and actually do them, and even though each one doesn't take very long to make it takes a long time to actually put brush to paper.

This painting will be the illustration behind motzi matzah (where we say the blessing over the matzah).  Imagine it without the watermark, and instead having the text formatted beautifully around and through the image.

(Read My first post about the haggadah project!)

Good-bye Fiona

Today Fiona passed away. She died at the ripe old age of (roughly) 7 1/2 years, after living in 5 different states (Virginia, Maryland, Texas, Illinois, New York), with two other pigs and a cat, and having more lettuce, peppers, carrots and hay than she knew what to do with. My little piggy-face :( I made this painting of her when I got home from one of my favorite pictures of her. She had the best piggy lips. We will miss you, Fiona!

More about Fiona's last illness and my other pigs here.

DESTROY and create

Recently in two of my groups we worked on watercolors for a few weeks. A lot of the clients are used to working on an art piece for one group and never returning to it so trying to get people to continue working on one project week to week is taking some adjusting. Most people "finished" their painting in the first session and didn't want to return to it in the second session. My suggestion was cutting up the original painting, gluing it to a new sheet of paper, and then working from there.

One client did actually cut his painting up and we talked about what it was like to destroy our artwork. He said it made him sad to do it. It's interesting because he did it without question, and I didn't even demand it! I said, why don't you cut it up and turn it into something else? or you can start something new with watercolors? But he really developed his painting a lot more after cutting it up. It was also a little surprising to me because I had the impression that he hadn't invested much effort into his original painting (a large splatter-painting). However, he said he liked what came out of this process and he seemed really focused while he was working on it.

I don't have a picture of my original painting (which I realized after I cut it up), but here is where I am right now:


It's interesting the kinds of things that happened when I did this with mine. I first only glued one strip of the original painting down. Then, after starting this new painting, I glued two more pieces down to kind of line up with the new marks I'd made. I wanted to blend these new strips into the painting a little, but not too much.


I just glued the new pieces down using elmer's glue, which means they aren't totally sealed to the paper. I'm also pretty impatient so I started painting while the glue was still wet. I like how it looks like the paint is flowing underneath some of the new pieces.


I'm finding this piece much more interesting to work with now that I'm adding bits of my own work back into it (postmortem?). It's not finished yet so I'll continue to work on it during the open art studio groups I have at the end of the day. I think it's good for me to continue projects in that group that I've started in previous groups because it models the type of attitude towards art making I'm trying to encourage in others: our art is important; we should care about it and actually invest time in making it.



Plus, with all the holidays this month I haven't really had an opportunity to make art at home, so I've been looking forward to this time in the open art studio. :)

Variation of Ripped Paper

I was pretty inspired by the ripped paper directive I came up with this week so I made a variation to do at home. I am usually intimidated by a blank canvas (I think this is the same with most people) and my painting teachers always told me to just cover it with another color. That somehow doesn't usually work, either, because then I just have a blank brown/yellow/blue/orange canvas instead of a blank white one.

This time I made an unplanned shape on the canvas:



Then I stared at it for a little while. I left, did some grocery shopping, cleaned a little, came back, and it still kind of looked like a troll doll waving hello. Hello troll!

I turned it around and looked at it from a few different directions and finally left it on its side and began to fill it in. It was kind of random at first, but the shape jutting out to the side now looked more like a leaf than a troll doll's head.

This is how I left it yesterday:


Today I attacked it with glazes. I like glazing because it makes the colors glow and add a lot of depth since you aren't just layering opaque paint on top of opaque paint. Also there's a lot of surprises since you don't pre-mix the colors on the palette; they mix on the canvas when you put down the transparent glaze layer.

And the final product:


I like this technique, I had a good time painting this piece with pretty low-pressure in terms of having a desired outcome. When I started feeling like it was being overworked I just stopped.

I have at least one more canvas board sitting around and a few canvases that have paintings on them I sorta hate, so maybe I'll keep going with this idea :)


11x14" acrylic paint on canvas board

Exploration of Watercolors

I made this in one of my art therapy groups that I ran a few weeks ago. It was a day when the directive was mostly to explore a medium, which was watercolors (one of my favorites). I don't usually do watercolor paintings without using my favorite pens but here is what I made.



Sometimes it's good just to stop using the markers and crayons. Markers and crayons are good, but it's easy to get in a rut and make the same things over and over. By just changing the medium, the subject matter will change and hopefully it will inform other (marker and crayon) work. Even if it doesn't, it's nice to break out of the repetition - or, at least, it is for me!

Another time (in a different group), we explored clay and sculpey. I wasn't quite sure where I was going with it but I really felt like it was a clay day that day. This particular kind of sculpey is interesting because it doesn't make your hands messy, but at the same time it is very hard and takes a lot of strength and endurance to make anything out of it. It turns out dealing with frustrating clay is kind of like dealing with other frustrating things... you just kind of have to keep at it, and know when to change your strategy. So much potential for conversation and metaphor!

Art therapy is so neat.

Fruit of Light

This is an update on this print that I made from a scribble. It just didn't feel finished, the more I looked at it. I felt like the little balls/fruit of light coming off of the tree weren't radiant enough and needed a little more something.

The metaphor that came out of this print was that fruit doesn't form without pollination, which actually can't happen in isolation. So every time I come in contact with someone (metaphorically speaking), they help the pollination process, which creates fruit. I identified these fruit as the part of me associated with my emotions, intuition, etc. I'm not a lone tree but a tree in the forest and all of us interact with each other on an almost invisible level to create our fruit :)

Freedom

I was kind of in a rough situation for a while... I made this painting in response to the cautious feelings of freedom that I felt when I thought I saw a light at the end.

Stress (and avoidance)

This was the last painting I made in the series, actually. I made it during the packing and moving process.

Art Therapy (for me)

This semester I went to an art therapist regularly for a few reasons... 1) I was having a really hard time with a lot of things relating to school, so I needed some support; and 2) I am an art therapist so I'd really like to know what it would be like to be a client.

Because I'm an artist I didn't use my time in sessions to make artwork. I used the sessions to process the work I made at home or in other classes/situation that I felt related to what was going on. I also decided that I would use the time in one of my classes this past semester to make art for my therapy sessions - in this class we were supposed to outline a project at the beginning of the semester and work on it consistently during class. I decided to explore myself through art making.

July 1 was my last day because we are moving this week, so we put up all of my artwork on the wall and talked about it. I didn't put it up in chronological order, but rather the order that seemed to make sense visually.



The pieces at the bottom are print-outs of large scribbles I did at my internship (many of which I featured here).

I think I will show some of the paintings from this exercise throughout the month, especially if I can't think of anything else to write about!

Being a client was an interesting and educational experience for me. We took a narrative approach, by that I mean I identified characters I play in different situations and really analyzed them (instead of analyzing me). I learned what some of these characters feel like when I'm playing them, when/why they show up, and how they affect others. Well, mostly anyway. It didn't feel like it was enough time to really get into it! But you can see the characters showing up in the paintings and interacting with each other, which is really cool.

I'm definitely glad I had that opportunity and I can't wait until I actually get to see clients again...

Out it goes

Needed to make this today. It feels good.

Termination Paintings

Termination is what the end of a therapeutic relationship is called, but a lot of times (it seems) it becomes the word for the end of any relationship. And the end of a relationship a lot of times involves exchanging gifts that show that you recognize your relationship and value it.

For my termination pieces for the staff at my internship site, I made these paintings (they're all about 2x4"). I then used a directive that I used in my class: I laid the paintings out on the floor and asked people to guess who they belonged to and why. This exercise encourages people to talk about each others' strengths and what they value in their relationships, so it's not just about me but it's about everyone.

In the future when I have a long term group, I'd like to do something like this where everyone makes pieces for other people and then we all try to group them together or something like that. It's really neat. But I think it would be even better if there were multiple perspectives - these were about my relationships with the staff, but their relationships with each other are different, so they notice different things than I do.












Each one represents my relationship with that person and something I noticed about them. :)

Thesis Readers Thank You

I am doing termination pieces for EVERYONE UNDER THE SUN. For real. I've done so many for so many clients, I've done some for coworkers, some for teachers, and now here are the pieces for my thesis readers.



These are about 7.5 x 10.5. I've been using this fancy paper for the termination paintings and the paper really does make all the different with watercolors. Wow.

These paintings I'm making for people are about how I feel about our relationship. Some of them have poems on the back, some of them have messages, some of them don't say much of anything. They're for the receiver to interpret how they want.

I'll post more termination objects after they're revealed to the people who will receive them... as I'm pretty sure my thesis readers aren't reading my website, I think it's safe to post these (I will give them to them tomorrow and Thursday).

A Positive Fantasy

Almost like a womb (again)
Growing (again)
It isn't growing alone, it is surrounded by health and vitality.
It's safe here to come out -
And if you aren't ready to come out we will reach in and help you realize
This is healing water
Water to help you grow.
It is not poisoned.
It comes from the fresh sky and the fresh rain and lands on fresh, fertile earth.
This time it is different
This time you can put down roots.
This is good soil
This is good earth
This is good water,
Clean and fresh.
It's okay because this time when it rains it will be just enough.
And when you're planted it won't be so deep you won't be able to get out.
And the sun will obey its natural cycles and come and go as the sun does.


.

Protecting My Eyes

My eyes are the chariot that protects
The lids droop to protect the eyes
From taking in
As if the light is too bright and will burn the retinas causing permanent, irreversible damage.
Oh.
It's that serious...
The chariot patrols the borders through my eyelids
The shape of my eyelashes reflect its spines,
Its protective gear,
Keeping out contaminants
Keeping out the harsh rays that threaten to destroy my vision
Forever.
It's okay to let them droop.
Plants grow in the dark.
Did you know that?
Too much sun can kill even a cactus.
They need the dark to grow and digest.
So keep your lids down,
So you can grow and heal.


.

Artist-in-Residence Group

Right now at my internship I am running a group that is kind of in the "Artist-in-Residence" style of art therapy groups. I sit in the room and make art for two hours and invite people to come in from the drop-in space to join me.

Today in class we made art about a type of group that we run and then talked about it. I kind of like the art piece that came out of this process. So here is my representation of artist-in-residence art groups:


I'm the blue figure at the bottom of the blue circle creating/existing in the blue space. Potential group members are the other figures who pop in and out of the space. I made it as an interactive piece so the figures can actually pop in and out by pulling little tabs stuck to their feet.

Close-up of the figure of me and one representing a potential group member:


The cool thing about the artist-in-residence style of group is that it kind of opens up the art room to the participants, so maybe they will feel like they can come into the art room at other times to work even if you're not there. It rests firmly in the "art as therapy" end of the spectrum of art therapy.

Wedding Present

Since I'm fairly certain they don't read my blog, its probably safe to post this here (also I already gave them the gift). My cousin got married this weekend and I made a painting (and framed it) to give to them as a gift from Ilan and me. I thought it would be nice to give them a separate gift since they gave us a wedding gift separate from the rest of their family.

I started out by looking at their wedding invitation and made an abstract form, then painted it how it needed to be painted. It doesn't look anything like the invitation nor does it have the same palette but I was thinking about them when I made it and this is what came out.