Back to School - First Year Art History and Humanities Done!

Fall semester went by so fast, was wonderful and I am now officially a second year student! I completed three studio courses and a humanities - an interesting mix. I am taking this semester off to travel but will be going back next Fall.

When I first started thinking about going back to take a BFA, I had some concerns about the non-studio courses. First, I wasn't sure if I was really up for the academic grind after so many years. Second, while I know research skills, critical thinking, and essay writing are important skills to learn for first year students, I've been there and done that as a student and professionally in another field and was reluctant to face having to go through the process all over again from the beginning.

There are two first year Art History courses that essentially cover the history of art from prehistoric times to present day. There are also two first year Humanities classes that cover critical thinking and an introduction to the art world today. Before applying to the program, I took a first year Art History class to test the waters - I highly recommend this to anyone thinking about doing a BFA. I quickly realized that I really enjoyed the academic challenges and was embarrassed to remember thinking of Art History as a "bird" course back in my science days - I learned a huge amount and spent many hours memorizing hundreds of images of famous artworks and all their related info. The essay writing process was as annoying as expected - perhaps even more so, but what I learned from the content made up for it. I decided to take the second Art History class by distance education from Athabasca University with pretty much the same impressions although this approach was very different - the flexible schedule is a benefit, but I spent far more time and felt overwhelmed by the scope of the workload without the cues provided by an instructor and other classmates in a classroom environment.

After going over the humanities course content in detail, I came to the conclusion that I had covered the content of one of the courses in my past academic life and was fortunately able to convince a faculty member to give me credit for the course. I hesitantly took the introduction to the art world today course and was pleasantly surprised - I've always thought that a key reason to go back to school was to learn the things you don't even know to think about and this course definitely addressed this. I learned about art critique and curating, went to talks by professional artists, and visited local galleries. There was emphasis on learning the "vocabulary" of the art world, which while taxing is helpful in being able to translate "art-speak". We also read a selection of readings, did some research and wrote some papers (with the same annoyances as described above).

Overall, the three first-year non-studio courses that I took were very worthwhile and I feel like they were a good investment of my time. There were some things that I would have chosen to avoid (e.g. I had to learn a third new citation approach - MLA - which I really dislike) but these build character - right?

Experimenting with Functional Art

 I have been having an enormous amount of fun experimenting with different felting techniques. I prefer to make an object rather than just a sampler and pillows and tea-cozies work really well for this purpose. These pillows were created by laying down a dark background, laying bands of lighter coloured wool over top, cutting trees into the middle layer to expose the dark layer, and adding silk, bamboo and wool surface embellishments. The wool is laid onto turban cotton to provide additional strength without having to resort to very thick felt. The pillows are created as a one piece envelope that have button closures on the back.

In this tea-cozie, vertical light bands were "woven" with yellow and green horizontal bands. A resist was used under the vertical bands at the points were they overlapped the horizontal bands, emphasizing the weave.

 Felting seems to be becoming very popular and a surprising number of new techniques and ideas are out there. In the early 1990s, nuno felting was developed and fibre artists are taking it in many directions. In this technique, wool is felted onto a fabric with a fibre or weave than enables the wool to attach itself to the fabric. I took a nuno scarf workshop from Sue Scott, an amazing local felter. For this scarf, I laid black wool onto a very summery looking shear silk fabric (the silk fabric is exposed on the right had edge in the picture on the left which creates a ruffle once the wool starts to shrink). Picking up the colours from the fabric, I created geometric designs on the surface using wool, silk, ribbon, and bamboo embellishments as well as laying on small scrap pieces of the silk (encased in the blue diamonds and burgundy squares). Before and after pictures are on the left and right respectively with a detail shot below. It was a fun and valuable workshop experience. Just to give you an idea of the amount of work that goes into felting, this piece took about 6 to 8 hours to complete.

2D Felt - The Leap to Mixed Media

Woolly Lilies

I've been experimenting some more with 2 dimensional felt over the summer. I wanted to try more abstract shapes and images as well as surface techniques. In "Woolly Lilies" I used resists to lift the flowers and leaves off the surface as well as adding silk and mohair on the surface. I liked the result but was once again faced with the challenge of how to mount it. As I've talked about in other 2 dimensional felt posts I've tried a number of different approaches with more or less success. 

Detail - Woolly Lilies

In this one I decided to create a painted canvas that incorporated mixed media and ended up using wool, silk, thread, acrylic paint, rice paper as well as different glosses and gels to create a rich surface texture. And ... suddenly I realized that I should be thinking about a unified mixed media piece rather than something to support the felt. After adding wool into the paint (a very tricky process - it either looks great or like something hauled out of a bathtub drain) I added the diagonal stitches across both surfaces. Together, they tie the canvas and felt into a single integrated piece. I can't wait to try some more but with school ramping up, it will be a while - darn.

Art criticism - for the birds!

Relaxing in the shade and hauling out water colours is one of my favourite vacation activities after a hot morning at the beach. Fred and Franny Farkle, the resident mynah birds, took particular interest in pieces that I hung to dry. Apparently everyone is an art critic!

Bragg Creek Days Painters Show

What a beautiful day at a beautiful venue! Suncatcher's Gallery graciously hosted the Bragg Creek Painters for a show and sale during Bragg Creek Days. The rain held off, the music from the community centre was wonderful, and the company was great.

The only challenge was smelling the perogies from the food truck across the road - I eventually gave in and had Brie and Basil perogies no less - the ultimate upscale comfort food! Thanks to all who came out, to all the painters who participated, and particularly to Elizabeth for welcoming us to her lovely gallery in the woods.

A Horse of a Different Colour

 A great big thank you to Spruce Meadows for a creative fund raising idea to support groups impacted by last year's flood. The Bragg Creek Community Association was one of the successful candidates to receive a horse to paint. You can see all the completed horses currently on auction at Spruce Meadows Horses Leg Up. They are all amazing! I was out of town until the day before the deadline, but was able to do a little bit at the end (literally). This was definitely a first for me. I got to paint trees on a horse's butt! Kudos to the local artists who very ably created a beautiful beast who reflects the four seasons in Bragg Creek. Watch for these creatures around Calgary - check out Spruce Meadow's web sight for details of the project.

Calyx Sale was Wonderful Yet Again

The Calyx Sale was wonderful as always.  These are some of my stone and felt pieces at the sale.  So much wonderful art by so many different artists - my objective every year is to sell more than I buy.