The only time segregating by color or type is ever acceptable is when it brings order to the chaos…of my paints!

Everyone has those days…you know the kind where you feel like it’s always a slog.  It’s a real temptation to give up.

EmptyEasel.com had a wonderful blog entry addressing just this feeling today, so I wanted to share it with you.

Great advice for artists thinking about giving up from EmptyEasel:
http://emptyeasel.com/…/advice-for-artists-thinking-about-…/

I couldn’t let Pride Day end without a HUGE kiss and shout-out to all my LGBTQIA family, friends, and students. Like this wonderful Balthus painting, The Mediterranean Cat, may you enjoy many tasty happy rainbows!

A union for artists… Now THAT’S what I’m talking about!

The US film and music industry have a union, and I know that it has helped those creatives make a better life for themselves and have safer working conditions too. My sister-in-law who works as a script supervisor in Hollywood really sings the union’s praises. And I listen.

Why would fine artists who are independent entrepreneurs want a union? How about if we had a union in the US, we could negotiate insurance premiums as a big group for better rates. We could enforce fair trade practices like getting paid by galleries within 90 days of sale.

I’ve been super fortunate to have been with gallerists who were honest, but not everyone has had the same experience. I personally know several artists who’ve had their work stolen, damaged, and sold but never saw a single penny for their art. The clout of a union and it’s legal department could help artists fight for their rights.

Read about the Union here: http://artforum.com/news/id=60754

The photo of the unionists is from the Artforum article linked above. I looked for a photo credit but didn’t find one.Anyone know who the photographer is?

And so, we come to the end of the Spring term!

What a great bunch of artists I worked with in all my classes! Such an honor to mentor young artists. Today I take my hats off to a wonderful painting class.

THANK YOU especially to Seattle Art Museum for giving my students free entry to the permanent collection so we could study color schemes and techniques.

Here are my favorites from this last critique, even though it’s hard to pick– I love seeing how the museum’s treasures inform the works!

THANK YOU to Seattle Art Museum for giving my students free entry to the Graphic Master’s Exhibit.

The exhibit is worth many, many visits! I’m still a little shaky from being so close to ALL the Capricios by Goya and so many others by Rembrandt, Hogarth, Durer, Picasso and even Crumb!

Here are my favorite student responses to the museum visit. The best of them made personal connections to the artworks and created true artistic dialogues with the works on loan and those in our permanent collection.

Such a joy to see!

In honor of Memorial Day…The Exodus installation, from 2010, three feet high by 30 feet wide.
A ten-panel painting, organized like a free-form graphic novel, exploring the emotional connections between ordinary people and historic events, inspired by the Cuban Missile crisis, The Bay of Pigs, and the US Service men and women who served at the Larson Airfare base.

‘I paint my own reality.’ – Frida Kahlo

Inspiring me today…okay, MOST every day. And not just because I LOVE parrots, monkeys, flowers, skeletons, idols or jungles, either….

FRIDA!!! Not only was she the most amazing confessional painter of her day, but she lived life on her own terms. Righteous chick!

Whoa…my eyes are really tripping! I DARE you to not see these moving!

Tomorrow, I’ll instruct my students on the tradition of self-portraiture.

One of the really cool things about the practice is being able to compare how you change both physically and in your thinking. For example, in my self-portraits from the Epic series, Regarding Parabellum, I hold a gun in one hand and give my audience stink-eye. That’s 2009.

Fast forward to Splashdown, from the Migration series, finished this year. Both are highly political. But in Regarding Parabellum I was considering historic/philosophic positions to war. Now my work is much more personal. The new self-portrait commemorates Toni, who entertained the kids interned in La Trampa by dancing with a skeleton. This very personal story is conflated with the larger story of Mariel and the subsequent ‘wet-foot, dry-foot’ policies which resulted in countless of Cuban refugees being denied entry into the US.

Last week it was Salvador Dali’s birthdate. No question, where-ever his spirit is, it is raising cane!

Are you a fan like me or into surrealism too? Then check these vids out!

Dali on What’s My Line?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXT2E9Ccc8A

Dali in a chocolate commercial” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3xvcn-gDNM

Dali On a TV talk-show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AozSUIICbPc

Today I mentioned to a student that Davidson Galleries is a little dangerous for my pocketbook. It’s no wonder my husband holds on to my wallet whenever I take students there on field trip! Here’s another of the romantic prints that I collected at Davidson’s. This is a lithograph by Ben Shahn–I love how the two lovers merge into one field– is that a profile of one or the 3/4 view of the other? Do they share a single torso? And then, there’s the fact the genders aren’t exactly clear. I collected the print when my heart and soul were so battered it seemed love would never enter my life again. That’s why I HAD to have it. As a reminder that love is real. If life couldn’t show it to me, great art could!

This week I confessed to my students that deep philosophical issues ground art practice. Listening to Lee Ufan speak about the Moon Jar, and how purposeful imperfection opens up the experience of art reminded me that this bridge between the ineffable and the material is one we all share. I’ve been embracing imperfection in my recent work. I’ve purposefully been stretching a translucent ground for my paintings so the repurposed discolored stretcher bars can be appreciated.

Lee Ufan

I am so thankful today for Chris Rollins of Dick Blick Art Materials. I’ve known Chris for eons, have some of his gorgeous prints in my collection, and have depended on him for advise on art supplies since his days at Utrecht.  I am so happy to say he is still helping artists out now. Every term he comes out to the campus hauling the kits over to the studios so that the SCC art students can get acquainted with what they need for the term. Not only are kits heavily discounted, but Chris usually brings them goodies, and this term he brought gift cards on top of the other freebies! Generosity upon generosity.

I’m thankful too for Michael Rives from Artist & Craftsman Supply. He travels even further to meet with my students and talk to them about their kits and supplies. He brings the students goodies too. I think we all acted like locusts descending on the huge stash of Golden paint samples brought in, and don’t be surprise to see everyone sporting buttons all up and down the hill. I mean…who doesn’t love buttons?! Michael also always shows a lot of heart reaching out to our students!

In this day and age when everyone seems out to get and never to give I am especially grateful for both of these corporate sponsors who extend a friendly and generous hand out to a whole new crop of emerging artists.

Daughters of Immigration opens tomorrow.  My gratitude to the incredibly talented Blanca Santander. Not only is she an amazing painter and illustrator, but also a highly creative curator as well. It’s not often so much talent is concentrated in one person!

Thank you also to Ken Matsudaira, the director at the M. Rosetta Hunter Gallery. He was at the campus bright and early to help the artists drop off work and then hung the show all by his lonesome…all during spring vacation. Now THAT’S dedication and  heart, folks! Ken, you are an angel!

Learn more about the exhibit and my fellow artists at:  http://seattlecentral.edu/artgallery/currentshow.php

That’s me as The Magician…. Brush in hand, I light the way for anyone interested in the wacky patterns and garden sprouting out of my head. That’s how I see my role as a teaching artist!

Poor art students are at a disadvantage in higher learning. They have to buy their art materials, which let’s face it, run hundreds of dollars even at kit discounts. And they are also expected to shell out hundreds of dollars for textbooks.

One of the ways I try to combat the rising cost of art education for my emerging talents is by preparing COPY TEXTS for each level that they can download into their laptops or smart phones. No need to print these out and kill trees, no need to kill their budgets either.

It also gives me the ability to tinker with curriculum from one year to the next. I ask students for their feedback and change my approaches to best meet their needs.

I’ve spent all week working on expanding options for the ART 202 students. Some were so delighted for the strict Light, Color, & Composition assignments, but too many others felt confined by these projects. This new ART 202 COPY TEXT gives students a choice of five different project series to engage their creative investigations!

ART 202 copy text

Enjoy!

I am so grateful tonight for the Seattle Art Museum’s generosity in comping tickets for the museum’s special Kehinde Wiley exhibit last week to my drawing class. In all my years of bringing students to the museum, never has there been such excitement. I mean there were eye-balls popping out of heads. There were tongues dragging on the ground. There was swooning. And although Kehinde Wiley himself isn’t a religion (though clearly a talent of mythic proportions) there were more than a few converts!

Here are a handful of my very favorite Art 111 and Art 112 drawings inspired by Wiley’s unbelievably stunning work!