Inspiration Archives | Page 5 of 5

December 21, 2015

Thanks to Snowflake Bentley and his obsession

I had intended to post something late last week as is my habit. As I took advantage of sunny weather and just below freezing temperatures to take a winter’s hike, I obsessed about an image of snowflakes on which I have been working. I was creating my annual surprise for my collectors, and it wasn’t coming together as my inspirational and critical creative self had imagined. More drawing, carving and printing, as I yielded to this obsession, resulted in the following image — which will now be transformed into my New Year’s surprise…

Snowflake Obsession — A compilation of snowflakes — soon to be disassembled and transformed into thank you’s for my collectors. Watch your mailboxes!

I must admit that I did not capture the intricacies of these snowflakes first hand. For that I have to thank W. A. Bentley, who spent his entire adolescence and adult life perfecting a Continue reading “Thanks to Snowflake Bentley and his obsession”

December 6, 2015

A bit of hope for the season

Making art when you are worried or under stress can be hard. I created this linocut, entitled Hope Despite the Evidence, in response to a dear friend’s medical crisis. An homage to the great printmaker M.C. Escher, it portrays barren, flooded fields that capture a hopeful scene of blue skies and white clouds in a reflection. A wise friend observed recently that hope is more than an emotion — it is an action. Today I saw hope in action…

Hope arrived this morning at my progressive church in Bloomington, IN in the form of about ten members of our city who are of Turkish descent. Many are graduate students or faculty at Indiana University, but they are also members of a nonprofit organization — founded in the Midwest — that encourages Muslims to bring Noah’s Pudding to Christian congregations as a way of creating community and understanding.

The making of Noah’s Pudding is a cultural observance in the homes of both Muslims and Christians in the Middle East. It is created (with no animal products) by boiling grains and legumes and sometimes almonds with water and sugar to create a congealed pudding. After sitting overnight, dried fruits, other nuts and spices are simmered, and the entire creation is served cold topped with pomegranate. Recipes are large, and the intent is to make enough so you can share cups with all of your neighbors.

Our minister said that this observance had been scheduled long before the violence in San Bernadino, CA took place this week. He also observed that he could think of no better action that we could take in response to this violence than to establish warm relationships with our Muslim brothers and sisters.

The pudding was delicious, and it was a joy to meet people who have traveled far from their warm, Mediterranean homes in order to study and to teach. They filled our stomachs, and our hearts. I am already wondering how we can reciprocate.

Hope is an action…

November 19, 2015November 11, 2015

Expanding your mind away from the studio

Some months it is difficult to find studio time, and this November is one of those months for me. After attending Art Biz Breakthrough, an art marketing conference in Golden, Colorado, I am off to care for an important person in my life.

Elizabeth Busey, Universal. Reduction Linocut. 10 x 20in, ed of 18.

When I am away from my studio, I miss it. I wish I was the kind of person who could take her sketchbook and create wherever she was, but I’m not. The outside world is my inspiration, not interiors or portraits. So to keep my sanity and the creative juices flowing, I do two things: Continue reading “Expanding your mind away from the studio”

November 12, 2015November 11, 2015

Looking for a breakthrough

One of the most challenging things for me about being an artist is that about half of the time I must be a businessperson. I must find collectors for my work, if for nothing else than I need to buy more paper. But in truth, I also need to find homes for my work because that conversation — between me and collector — is crucial.

A butte in Golden, Colorado looms over the quiet college town.

Some may be lucky enough to have a gallery that just handles all of the business side of creating art, but I am always seeking new ways to market my work to the world. So last week I took a break from my usual studio routine to attend Art Biz Breakthrough, a conference in Golden, Colorado produced by artist coach, Alyson Stanfield. I have worked personally with Alyson in 2015 and will again in 2016, but the event still gave me lots of great things to think about. Continue reading “Looking for a breakthrough”

September 17, 2015October 14, 2015

Navigating through the creative doldrums

I am always relieved and pleased when I finish something. I’m a devoted list maker, and the black ink mark across a task or goal is tremendously satisfying…

The problem comes the next day or week when I am faced with the proverbial blank canvas. In my case, it is a clean studio, surfaces ink-free, drying rack without a mid-way linocut. The process of thinking of the next work, the next project, feels a little like the doldrums. In maritime use, the doldrums are a place without wind, where a sailor could be trapped for some time. We also think of it as a state of inactivity, of low energy or mild depression.

So like the sailor who is trapped without winds, I begin the process of shaking the sails to try to get moving again. While I blithely write “new series” on Monday’s to-do list, the reality is that it takes some time to come up with new ideas. My ideas lately have been circling around global climate change, especially our country’s willingness to harvest our below-ground energy sources like tar sands, rather than increasing our use of renewable energy. I live in a coal-burning state, so even my time on the computer is emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

But how to put these noodlings into actual artwork? Sometimes I have to sneak around this problem, so to get my creative brain out of the doldrums, I do experiments.

Layers of leftover inks, provide an interesting starting point for this exploration.

An experiment thinking about layers. The first two layers came from blend rolls of leftover inks. The current layer was a tinted lemon yellow…

Continue reading “Navigating through the creative doldrums”

July 3, 2015October 14, 2015

Inspiration from another sea bed

Get out of your studio! Get in your studio! These push-pull messages are always with me as I decide how to spend my art time. We have been inside for most of June, as my area of the country has had record rainfall. As the sun began to peek out, I quickly kidnapped my husband from his nearby university office and we went out to the Indiana Limestone Symposium held on the grounds of the Bybee Stone Company in nearby Ellettsville, Indiana.

One of may favorite things to do, when I am not carving a new linoleum block, is watch other people creating — especially those who work in 3-D media. I find ceramicists and glass blowers fascinating. I have lived in Indiana’s limestone belt for over twenty years, and I wanted to see how stone carvers coax life out of our fossilized sea beds.

Amy Brier uses an air chisel to sculpt a figure out of Indiana limestone.

Amy Brier uses an air chisel to free this figure from the limestone.

Amy Brier, a co-founder of the annual event, showed us a technique where she used an air chisel to sculpt a figure. She explained that as she is working on an area, she is seeing each individual line as it makes its way around the figure. Her chisel is actually more gentle on the stone than a hand chisel and hammer, and the air forces the chips away from her. (Amy was very quick to mention this, as she insists that all of her students and those doing hand carving wear safety glasses.)

As she carved, the noise from the compressor was loud, but the carving looked surprisingly soft. The grey stone only hints at the entire ecosystem that lived and died in this place, giving us the material that we have used to create structures both grand and mundane. Amy talks in depth about her love of limestone in her Bloomington Tedx talk. She also designed the world’s largest anatomically correct brain that now resides outside Indiana University’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences where my husband works.

Indiana limestone is shaped into an anatomically correct brain. Designed by Amy Brier. Located in Bloomington, IN.

Visit this sculptural brain at the Indiana University Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at 10th & Woodlawn in Bloomington. Visit it after dusk for an interactive light show.

I chatted with site director Delaine Gerstbauer about the challenges of deciding what to carve, and what to allow the viewer’s own visual system to complete. When is an incompletion a hint of something else, and when is it an error? This is a question I ask myself all the time. Too much and the work is to literal or static. Too little and the entire image is confusing and frustrating.

Stone and wood carver Delaine Gerstbauer is the site manager of the Indiana Limestone Symposium and also works on her own carving.

How much of “anything” should be carved away? Wht cn yr brn rd nywy?

I not only observed seasoned stone carvers at this event, but I also saw a noted neuroanatomist and a beloved local singer/songwriter, each lost in the creation and destruction of the carving. I decided since they were clearly there to stretch their creativity, they didn’t need me outing them, or acting like a groupie. I doubt I will ever have need of such anonymity, but I thought I would extend it to them.

One person I did chat with was glass artist Abby Gitlitz. I asked her about the differences between blowing and working her glass, as opposed to her hand sculpting a limestone block. She said that working in a different media helped her to get her creative juices flowing. We both wondered about the possibilities of combining her colorful glass with the quiet mat textures of the limestone.

Abby Gitlitz usually works with glass but finds working in other 3D media helps keep her creativity fueled.

Glass artist Abby Gitlitz uses a hand chisel to coax a form out of a limestone block.

Getting the creative juices flowing is so important, especially after you have worked very hard for a period of time. I’m taking baby steps with a new small linoleum block, and enjoying using my Iphone camera to capture images of inspiration. Perhaps next year I will schedule a few days at the Limestone Symposium and try my hand at relief carving in a whole new way.

May 28, 2015October 14, 2015

What if the canvas was blank?

In preparation for my upcoming show and Open Studios, I’ve spent the better part of the spring in my basement printing and thinking. My latest linocut, Evanescence, considers a land form that is both beautiful and under threat — the river delta.

Elizabeth Busey, Evanescence, Reduction Linocut, Edition of 10, 28in diameter, $550 unframed.

River deltas are wetlands that carry and deposit sediment into a particular mostly triangular shape. Like other wetlands, they are very important to both people and wildlife. River deltas provide protection from storms, filter run-off, and contain food and other resources.

River deltas don’t just happen anywhere. Strong tides or wave actions from the body of water that they meet prevent many from forming. Many river deltas are sinking because of human activity. Dams and other water control measures change the delicate balance between sediment and water flow. Removal of deltas’ water, oil and natural gas resources are causing their elevations to change. Imagine if these lacy fans vanished into the oceans — leaving places like Bangladesh, Louisiana and the Pearl River in China vulnerable. An estimated 500 million people live on river deltas.

It is a puzzle to me how visual artists can illustrate the lack of something. White canvases a la Robert Rauschenberg? What is the visual equivalent of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring?

Questions like these were on my mind as I spent an afternoon recently at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. On the top floor I came across a mixed media installation by Mark Dion and his studio team. Harbingers of the Fifth Season is comprised of an artist/naturalist’s desk complete with materials. Detailed watercolors on cork board illustrate the many invasive species that have been introduced to new habitats and subsequently damaged existing ecosystems. On the reverse, three chalkboards chronicle the ever-growing list of extinct species.

Mark Dion, Harbingers of the Fifth Season, Mixed Media Installation, 2014.
Invasive species are chronicled in naturalist’s watercolor sketches.

Reverse of Mark Dion’s Harbingers of the Fifth Season, 2014.
Extinct species are handwritten on three large chalkboards.

The installation is calm and quiet, belying the real pressure that invasive species are placing on ecosystems around the world. How much can one artist’s work do, sequestered on the top floor of a medium-sized city’s art museum?

Time to reread Silent Spring and try to discover Rachel Carson’s secret.

If you are anywhere near Bloomington, Indiana please consider joining me for:

• Considering the Beloved •

Bloomington Convention Center Art Gallery

302 S. College Ave, Bloomington IN

June 5 –
July 27, 2015

Opening
Reception, Friday June 5, from 5pm – 8pm

Hors
d’oeuvres, wine & performance by guitarist Atanas Tvetkov

•
Bloomington Open Studios Tour •

Join me in my printmaking studio

4324 E Beacon Ct, Bloomington IN

Saturday,
June 6 (10am – 6pm) and Sunday, June 7 (10am – 4pm)

See new
work, enjoy refreshments and try your hand at printing.

Visit
BloomingtonOpenStudiosTour.com to plan your entire tour.