Compositions in Time

What a summer I had!  In my summer studio in Duntara, a small community on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean,   I work almost exclusively in reclaimed wood and wood assemblage.  The whole series is called Compositions in Time.  I scour the  beaches in my area for finds, chat with people about my love for the old and discarded, and forge interesting friendships that often result in finds coming my way.  Everyone want to get in on creation.


It was one of my most productive periods in years.

 With two shows slated, one a group show in July at 2 Rooms Contemporary Art Projects in Duntara,   and the other a solo show in September at Two Whales, Port Rexton,  I knew I  didn't have time to waste.

Here's my  art summer in pictures....

 Looking across the  Duntara harbour at our house (it's the little speck on the far shore)

Our garden that rolls to the sea with views that inspire. 

Our new pristine workshop (shared with my husband)  was completed in early May after a fire demolished our old one the year before.   Thanks to a kitchen reno in our St. John's house this space has mega counters and storage and always looks so organized and pristine.

Showtime 



Two Rooms Contemporary Art Projects, Duntara .  This is not your ordinary gallery.

And this is not your usual opening....  What a beautiful day we had. 

Some shots of my work in the gallery

And then on to Two Whales in September.... 

 Two Whales Coffee Shop , art John Hoffstetter 

I loved how my work looked so comfortable on the walls of this old house/ coffee shop. 

And there you have it.  This fall I started posting  on Instagram in earnest as a way to be accountable.  While I miss my wood pursuits, I've been experimenting with encaustic monotype and collage.  I seem  have a great need to create, decompose and recompose, where's it going I have no idea. 

Catching time

Well that sure flew by.  I can't believe I wrote my last post in September 2015 after our big  workshop fire.   Perhaps there's a good reason for no posts. Yes, indeed there is! You can't make work when you aren't in the studio, and you don't go to the studio when you are creatively flatlined.  Thankfully that's over.

 I am back at the summer house and busy getting the new workshop workable,  and at the same time madly scouring my usual haunts to find new reclaimed wood and interesting attachments for my future assemblages to complete enough work for my Solo show in September.  Remember I lost three years worth of collecting in one day.

In a fit of positive thinking (that doesn't happen much) I saved some of my most precious wood scraps in the hope of getting the smell of smoke out of them.  That little experiment begins June 1.

It seems I am finding all sorts of things on the beaches, but none of them, are as far as I know now, are  of any use for  my future creations.

Perhaps I'm wrong! I just may be on second glance.  

Endings and beginnings

Yearly transitions have marked my life since I first began teaching in the early 1970s.  September still remains a month for new beginnings and untold possibilities.  I need that this year after a dismal summer of cold weather,  unexpected house repairs, and then a fire in our Duntara workshop.

The way it was....

Now....

Summer is my time to create art and our workshop was where it happened. My summer art pursuits changed over the last three years.  If you aren't familiar with my new work you can read about my Compositions in Time here and here.

I lost most  of my salvaged wood  gathered over the last three years,  2 partially finished assemblages, encaustic medium, my lovely band saw and lots of small bits and bobs.  As a result the sum of my  assemblage creations this year was 2, one of which has smoke damage. That might not be so bad if I weren't getting ready for a group show in July and a  solo show September 2016.

Samples of past compositions  ( better composed  than photographed)

                  2014 (Private collection)                                   2013 (Private Collection)

2013 ( Private Collection)

 The pressure is on.

It's not like you can order my materials from a store.  I came upon them in dribs and drabs, and I was so proud of my collection of "specials",  the objects/woods that usually prompt a composition.   I loved them so much I had them standing along the work benches to ogle them.  Ah pride goeth before the fall.  These were the ones that were damaged beyond use with smoke and noxious gasses.   They're gone now, and with them all sorts of possibilities.  Interestingly, the insurance guy describes them as scraps of wood with no monetary value.   Really?

 Up to this point all my wood came from the  areas around my summer house on the Bonavista Peninsula.  I liked the colour consistency that automatically happens when you are working with a palette limited by location.  Some of the work was obviously sourced from outside buildings as the third one above and others were woods used  inside. It's clear that the wood controls the composition and the feel of each piece.

 September: Begin chapter 2

Friends have taken up the cause and are bringing me any salvaged wood they find.  My criteria of must be worn and have paint on it is seems to make it easy to find these gems.  If it has bits of wallpaper even better.

 An artist friend began my new collection after hearing about our plight.  I now have a new colour and the compositions will be from the Avalon peninsula,  specifically  Bay Roberts.  Thanks Peter!

 I've collected some new wood myself while walking.   I'm getting calls from other friends who have things for me.

 My husband is getting worried because all of this is ending up in our small workshop in St.  John's, his domain, not a shared one.   I am not allowed to take over, and I have to store the wood in my studio.  The ground rules have been laid.  Many I not end up consumed by creativity and forget my place!

For the first time in a month I feel optimistic.

Making meaningful art

Have you ever watched as you back up your IPad photos?  I just saw my life over the last four  years flash before my eyes.  My IPad 2 turns 4 in nine days.  It just won't hold its charge any more.  I see parallels with my own life especially with art production.  I am all intention and I quickly dwindle.

But back to the photos.  There were a lot of photos of my work and vacation pics.   As they flitted onto the computer I understood why there is so much blue in my recent work, and why water and sky have begun to dominate my imagery.  Many of the pics were of a Mediterranean cruise out of Venice and various shots from the south of England = sky and water.

Minack Gardens, Cornwall

View from Doc Martin's House, Port Issac, Cornwall

Grand Canal, Venice 

And of course my summer place is always about the scene in front of me, sky and water.


And from those experiences work springs forth.  Some make it to the Leyton Gallery and others are experiments....

 Above and Below 10 x 12 in. 2012 encaustic and paper on cradled panel

Lost fishing nets floating in the vast ocean under a moonlit sky

Experiment...  Water on sun lit pebbles in a shallow pond, encaustic monotype, later chopped into squares and rearranged into a grid

 Experiment (Gulch Duntara), encaustic, just to the left of my house looking down from the road into the water

On the bay, 2012 encaustic monotype applied to hardboard

This work is a direct response to sitting  in my rocking chair looking out the bay for hours over many days.  An artist friend now has it on his wall.  That makes me very happy.  Of course having his work on my wall makes me even happier.  

So my work is becoming more landscape oriented.  I didn't plan this; it just happened. 

Some artists are  very focused and develop a "look" that is recognizable. They strive to achieve this and many buyers like this predictability.   My work is not like that;  I am an intuitive responder to all that is around me.  One of my friends often points out  (not in a negative way) how different my work looks from year to year, but I admit, it makes me feel like a bit of an artistic fraud at times.

 While these land and sea pieces have a coherency, they are very different from my  Remnant series and my Reading a Garden work. But, when I stand back and consider this I realize that to the untrained eye it might appear that way, but woven into everything I do is my response to the passage of time, and no where is it more obvious than in nature.

How about you?  Is there a tight coherency in your art making or does the work evolve without your planned consent?

Studio organization Part 2: Works on cradled panels

  Big blip since my last post.  Life sure does get in the way.   All my great ideas for organizing my art space were just that, ideas.  After saying the final good-bye to my mother, I now feel like I just might have some art in me.  I'm slowly getting back on track.  But my studio is only slightly more organized than it was in my last post.

On to storage of cradled panels in this post....


Most of my work is on cradled panels ranging from 4 x 4 in. to 24 x 36 in.    I tend to want to hang any work I think isn't finished on the wall so I can reflect/critique it. That requires one type of organization, and then there are works that are waiting to go to the gallery or have returned from the gallery.  They require different storage spaces. Right now some of them are hung higgly piggly on the walls and some are wrapped and stored wherever I can find a place.

Because many of my pieces are smaller than 10 x 10 inches, I think using eavestrough has merit.  The ones  at the top are  metalwhich I'm assuming you can still purchase. I've only every seen plastic which should hold small works.

This is a good idea for work larger than 10 x 10in. because I could still see the work and it could be placed on one of my many counters. 

Even better is a floor to ceiling one that could be placed in a corner, nook or under the stairs.

Why not make use of  small vertical space under a stairs if you have it?  

Or in a closet or the tall space under your stairs?

I love this idea of pegs on evenly spaced strips for work in process or at the critique stage.  I would just have to figure out the smallest piece I would do standing up and go from there.  I often sit to paint small works.   Right now I have long screws mounted on each stud.  It works to a degree but I often can't find the right placement to hang  smaller work.

 If I had a tilting tabletop like this one I could do small and medium work there.  

Now that's a lot of ideas, all are reasonable.  Which will I choose?  We'll see. 

Check out all links on my Pinterest board, Art Studio 

Studio organization Part 1: Hanging works on paper

This is not my studio.  I wish it could be because  I crave light.

This is my studio.

My studio is in the basement of my house and currently it is a mega mess.  That's what happens when you have two studios and you're away from your main one for four months.  It becomes a catch all for the family.  I now have ceiling tiles, a bicycle, a half finished guitar, a ladder,  paint cans, art supplies, and my work hung randomly around the room.    Thankfully the folding 7 feet studio acoustical panels are gone!  It is not a pretty place, but it has great potential.

My art is all over the place; I don't even know what I have anymore.  As a result I've been thinking about ways to hang/store art in the studio so I at least know what I have.  In the past I've put art away and completely forgotten about it.

 It hasn't always looked like this.  I've featured it here. Messes happen when you let the little things slip.

Fast forward... I'm developing a long term plan for the studio that will encourage me  to actually go there to create work. If I try to do it all at once I will never have time to work.

 I need...
- more lights;
- a way to  hang/store paper works;
- better organized storage for  art materials;
- storage for work on cradled panels
- a better painting table that tilts;
- a way  to mount larger works on the wall while they are in process;

This is Part 1 of a series of posts on Studio organization.

Hanging works on paper 

Cork board 

I've always been a fan of cork board and the more space you can use the more display area you will have.

If you don't want to stick pins in your work this clothes pin/tack combo would be great or you could also use a paper clip hung on a tack or a metal grip. You won't be limited by a permanent layout.

I love this idea of display and storage that swivels.  Efficient and effective. 

Paper Clips

source 

This is a simple and versatile idea for studio use when you do works on paper and want to get them out of the way or critique them.   These boards look a little heavy to me, but the ideas of bulldog clips has merit.  Check out some other options ...

 I would be more inclined to mount a long strip of wood and space clips along it.  That would accommodate different size work. You could have two rows of wood strips if you wanted.

Variations on a clothesline

Good old clothes pins have lots of uses.  I like rectangular hanging frame below.  It is compact and out of the way of other things.  Space above your head isn't useful for much else.  I'm noting this one  is hung  near a corner which would keep it out of the way for bumping.

What could be simpler than a strip of wood and clothes pins.  I would use the top pins for photo references or other reference material and the bottom one for art work.

And a plain old clothes line idea.   

Pegboard

I'm a fan of pegboard because it is so versatile.  When you paint it white or the same colour of your wall it becomes unobtrusive. The flipping pegboard provides more storage because you can use both sides.  As to how I would mount it, just move that problem over to the resident handyman.

This is a multipurpose piece that gives me several ideas.  You can make it wider for more exposed pegboard space.  Have one door opening and you can use it for storage inside.  Put it on a lazy susan and it will swivel.  It would also look great and fit well in a corner.

There's great storage ideas here.  I like the framed pegboard to hang finished work.  Painting it the same colour of the wall will help to give a more open feel to the space. 

Clothes hangers

Whew!  Lots of choices here. Which ones will work for my space?  If you have any new ideas for hanging works on paper or you use on of these do share.

Links to all of these ideas are on my Pinterest page under Art Studio