Art in the Pearl and The Unbound Book

Every Labor Day, I brave the traffic, and parking (or lack of) in Portland and set aside a day to tour Art in the Pearl. A premier art and craft sale, it never fails to disappoint and this year was no exception. I noticed a few things this year that I don't remember from earlier shows, (although maybe I wasn't looking as hard to find a way to purchase art that would not leave holes in my pocket book)....no one had any cards for sale. I was sad on this account. As photographs are not allowed in most booths (although many people ignored the signs and took them anyway), the one thing I could do is buy a card or two to remember art that touched my heart or a technique I wanted to know more about. But with art everywhere, and several public displays, I was able to snap a few shots:

This last piece of art is made from hundreds of pieces of wood about a 1/2" square. From a distance it looks like a painting. So much inspiration to be found that it was hard to keep it inside my head. Hopefully it will come back to me one day in a serendipitous moment when I am sorely in need of inspiration.

This weekend, I had the pleasure of participating in a class at Oregon College of Arts and Crafts

called The Unbound Book: Painting Techniques for Book Artists taught by Lisa Onstad. I am so excited by what I accomplished in this class that I can't wait to do more....and learned techniques that will change the way I work with acrylics, both in painting and in the foundation for my encaustic work. The photo above shows the start of cards we made for our project. Paint a little, draw with colored pencil. Sand a little.

Paint again. Sand a lot. Learn to cut stencils. Stencil a little. Sand a little and stencil some more.

Snack on a bit of seaweed, and sand some more...

And come up with amazing results. I love this technique and hope to experiment on larger boards to see how I can incorporate this in my own way into my painting and encaustic. The cards receive a final coating of wax, so once the wax is on, it's fair game for some of my encaustic techniques. So expect to see some experimentation with transfers and foils.

Once we had a feel for what we were doing, we made an edition of work to share with other students. We were divided into two groups; a plant theme and an animal theme. Each of us selected a work that spoke to us from a written narrative and made a card for everyone in our group. Not one of us duplicated a word! And while we used the same technique, each card was very different from the others.

Animal

Plant

A weekend well spent. Can't wait to take her next class in the spring, working with the same techniques on larger canvases!