The girls walked me through their tiered garden naming the vegetables along the way.  They told me that each year the garden gets a little bigger and that this year they started planting along the fence line.  As we neared the end of our tour, I noticed an accumulation of old building materials; pieces of tin, wood, and steal.  This is the Moore Family Junk Yard.  It is refuse Alan picks up on construction sites or the side of the road.  We rounded the corner, leaving the junk yard and returning to the studio where Alan and two of his other children, Aidan (6) and Liam (4), were waiting to transform junk into art!

The Moore children sketched designs featuring birds, which are my favorite subject to draw, and of course, ninjas.  Who doesn’t love a good ninja?  I know I do.  The drawings were done on metal that Alan cuts out for them.  The kids then paint the metal birds and ninjas with bright colors.  As everyone worked on their pieces I snooped around Alan’s studio and discovered an amazing collection of vintage cans and bottle caps.

I asked Alan about the origin of his collection of vintage cans.  He told me, “My work has always included recycled materials. From painting old barns before they are torn down to finding refuse and creating with it.  In the past year I have
become very interested in working with color without using paint.  This means I find materials like old red rider wagons or weathered wood and work with the colors that are already there to create my compositions.  Recently I have found an array of colors in buttons, old tape measures, bottle tops and old steel cans.  I find the steel cans and bottle tops the most exciting.  I can assemble them into anything.”

I wanted to know where he was getting all the old steel cans.  These are not the kind of cans one finds laying around.  He told me he gets a lot of them from EBay, thrift stores or estate sales.  As an artist, I find it very curious and kind of exciting looking at all the cans and bottle tops.  These objects have literally become his paint.  Instead of going to the art supply store to pick up canvas and colors Alan sifts through old thrift stores and EBay sights for his medium.

As Alan and I talked about his work, the kids painted and ran around the yard playing.  Around 5:30 Alan’s lovely wife, Lori, came into the studio with their youngest boy, Kian (1), and let us know dinner was ready. We finished up our pieces and headed inside for Taco Night.  Lori prepared a delicious and well-balanced meal and I was excited to be a member of the family, even if only for one night.  We all held hands as Isabella said grace.  We chatted about the family while we ate.  Lori told me about her experiences home-schooling the kids, working inside the home while Alan holds down a day job along with creating his extensive body of work.  They are an amazing team giving so much to our community through their children and their art!  Thank you Moore Family for allowing me the opportunity to share in the fun.

For more information about Alan up coming show show that opens March 25th, 2012 at the Full Circle Gallery visit the website www.fullcirclefwb.com.  To find out more about the Moore family check out these links:  www.themoorefamilyfolkart.com, folkartistalanmoore or sweettatersjunkyardart.

In early February, artist Denielle Harmon invited me to her studio for an introduction to her newest series of encaustic paintings titled “Transcending Decay.” Denielle best summed up her own collection by saying, “Everything changes, everything becomes decayed. As an artist I want to elevate what others see as decay and use it as a metaphor to show there is a choice in the way we evaluate an experience and choose to fall apart or move past the pain to transcend and turn ourselves into something more amazing .”

As I looked around the studio, Denielle’s process began to emerge. On the porch was a container of rusty nails and bolts, two pieces of plywood, and a large roll of sheetrock tape. Harmon explained how she takes a strip of sheetrock tape, puts it on a piece of plywood then lays the rusty nails and bolts carefully onto the strips of tape, creating a “rust print.” Once all elements are where she wants them, Denielle sprays down the entire piece with a salt water mixture and covers it with the second piece of plywood. The creation is then left to cure for 24 hours.

Finished rust prints are incorporated into her encaustic composition. Some of Denielle’s pieces have components that are sewn together while others are rust prints with layers of wax and rusted objects embedded into them. I watched as she worked on the final stages of a piece, removing the unwanted wax with heat and scraping. It looked like great fun and I was excited to jump in and get creative. It only took a short time for me to realize scraping the wax required a lot of strength and patience. Denielle definitely made it look effortless, but as I always say art is work.

Here is more from my discussion with Denielle Harmon:

Why do you create?

Denielle: “Because I cannot not create. It allows me to process myself and the world around me in a non-verbal way”.

What is your new work about and how does it tie into your past work, which was more focused on realism and the figure?

Denielle: “My past work was about understanding the human experience, about our pleasure and pain. It examined the truth that the more you love the more it has the ability to hurt. This new work is about transcending the human experience. It is about the emotional process of growth and how it takes place in people and in the materials that surround us every day.”

What made you want to switch medium from acrylic to encaustic?

Denielle: “I have wanted to work in encaustic for a while. I got a chance to take a workshop at Studio B this year and that allowed me to grow into the new medium. For some time I wanted to find a way to create dimension and depth in a medium. Encaustic seems like that bridge between sculpture and painting. I am also really interested in using rust as a symbol of transition. The encaustic medium allows me to embed rust prints or actual pieces of rusted material into my paintings. I can build up and break down the surface of the painting like we build up an break down the lairs of ourselves.”

Where do you find inspiration for your work?

Denielle: “Being awake.” The answer made both of us laugh. She continued by saying, “My work is a constant exploration to understand the human condition, life cycles and the collective consciousness. In this new body of work rust has been very inspiring. For me rust has both a literal and figurative meaning. Every experience is a transcendental move. Something we may see as negative or painful may someday be the thing that transforms our thinking or self into something new and positive. When most people look at rust they see decay and breakdown, something undesirable, and through this body of work I am trying to help people see how decomposition is just a shift to a new part of the life cycle; a transformation into something that is possibly more beautiful.”

The theme of Creatures is illustrated by symbols of time and motion contrasted with images of invertebrates.  In Kendall’s own words, “The hash marks symbolize time wasted, the compass is about finding direction, the arrow  represents forward progress and the insect is the thoughtless hive creature.” Marsh’s body of work examines the constant question of whether to move forward or remain in our own habitual cycle.

When asked about her creative process Kendall says, “I start with the background, even if I don’t have an idea yet.  Then I feel a vibe, create a super loose sketch of shapes and go from there. I like what I think about while I am painting.  Its a time to let go, free my mind and find my motion.”  Our conversation closed with Kendall reflecting on those around her by saying, “The idea of creating something others will enjoy is what motivates me to work.”

Kendall Marsh’s The Slowest Moving Things: Creatures of Habit is on display at Full Circle Gallery through March 4th, 2012.  Visit our facebook page to see photos from the opening reception.  Read more about artist Kendall Marsh at  http://kendalldeeee.tumblr.com/ .

Thanks to everyone who helped out with the show and a special thank you to Melissa Salter from My Visual Creation and Larry Beat from Bad Habits Lounge Studio for the amazing pictures.

The process begins by throwing clay forms which become my canvas for sgraffito.

After the pieces are thrown, they are removed from the wheel and set aside for drying and trimming.  Once trimmed, the pieces are painted with the black slip and ready to be carved.

At this point, I decide on images to carve into the pieces.  Choosing imagery requires some sketching and basic geometry.  The slip can be sketched on with graphite which will burn off once it is in the kiln.  People often ask me how I decide on the subjects for my pieces.  I primarily use the female form, spirals, waves, trees, stars, celestial bodies, feathers and birds.  I roll these images around in my mind and come up with different ways to incorporate them into the pieces.  The underlying geometry in these pieces makes that process even more intriguing for me because there is already a structure to work with.  It is almost like the patterns are there waiting for me to find them in the surface of the clay.

Each piece is carved with its own design.  After I finish carving  the pieces they are bisque fired.  Finally, a glaze is applied.  This is when I decide on color or lack thereof; blue, green, or black and white.  Creating this body of work has once again allowed me to concentrate on the form and image of the pieces.  In my constant search for color I ironically found myself back in the realm of black and white. Again leaving me to question where color comes into my work.

When artist Justin Lyons and I sat down for our painting session these are the words he said to me.  As I looked around his crazy colorful studio we chatted about his process and his inspiration.  I wanted to find out more about how he creates, take a peek at the pieces for his upcoming exhibit “OBJECT-ion” at the Full Circle Gallery, and I wanted to gain more insight about his approach to color. 

The questions:

Why do you create? Justin: “To release stress, work through ideas, figure things out but mostly I use painting as my microphone.”

What is your work about?    

Justin: “I have always wondered why I think certain ways about profiles and stereotypes.  Where I got ideas about the good and bad; how I got programmed?  Where is the programming coming from?  That is what my work is about getting at the programming.  Throwing away the manual, getting people to open the doors in their minds and question the experience.”

What about the imagery and symbolism in your work?                                        Justin: “When you see something attractive you have that initial peripheral experience, and maybe if the object or person is very attractive a little endorphin rush.  The feeling of wanting something.  That is the vibe I try to evoke in people.  I like to draw the viewer in with a childish feel of wanting, with  a safe candy coated look to the work, and once they begin to bite, chew and digest it they see that maybe there’s some meat to it as well.”

Where do you find inspiration?                                                                            Justin: “I find a word or phrase or idea and I pick at it.”                                    As I watched his process this is exactly what he did.  He would draw little doodles and sketches, paint over them, paint around them, then write a phrase to the side.  He also did a lot of sitting, looking and wondering back and forth.  At one point I found him in the yard sanding a ding out of his surfboard.  “Multitasking” he says is his is inspiration and process.

I wanted to know more about his palette.  As you can see from his studio there is color everywhere.   Justin explained that his choice of color is intuitive.  He prefers to use shades and hues of colors over dominating his pieces with primary colors.
When he puts the paint on the canvas he uses colors he knows he is going to like and if he doesn’t like it he just paints over it.  That is what I really enjoyed about this experience and getting to paint with Justin.  His studio is truly a space with no in the lines, no boundaries, no rules and definitely no manual!

P.S Thanks Melissa Salter from My Visual Creation for the amazing pictures!

All of this new information was and still is a bit overwhelming.  I found myself frozen in a moment of possibility and complexity.  I felt greatly affected by all of this and was flooded with the feeling of where to begin. What binder to use, what pigments would be best, where am I going with this and why?  To move forward, I decided to start with materials that I already had and was somewhat familiar with.   Having some experience with the oxides, stains and ochers used in coloring glazes I took some of the pigments from my glaze studio to begin.  I fire ^6 oxidation (2232 degrees Fahrenheit); the glaze palette in my studio  consists of blues, greens, yellows and browns. All thought I am trying to get away from dark earth tones I decided to make my first painting pallet with the colors I already know.  For a binder I decided to start with wax.  The encaustic painting processes seemed somewhat similar to the glaze processes.  Like glaze, the wax binder and pigment melt together when heated and cooled to hold the pigment in place.

For the first experiment I wanted to see which binder I would prefer; synthetic paraffin wax or natural bee’s wax.  I took a muffin tray and filled one side with paraffin and the other with bee’s wax.  After melting the wax I added the pigment.  Because I had six pools of melted wax, I decided to choose three colorants:  (1)Turquoise Masson Stain 6364 (2) Red Art (3) Yellow Ocher.  This testing process is very similar to experimenting with glaze colors.  First the base recipe is developed then, one can play with getting the color right.

The information this experiment yielded was that  I prefer the bee’s wax to paraffin as a binder or base because of its texture, even thought it adds a bit of yellow to the color.  The pigments are more soluble in the bee’s wax and it smells better.  The pigment that seemed to be the most consistent was the Turquoise Masson Stain.  It was smooth and it mixed well with the bee’s wax, the color was warm and rich.  Because of the pigments I choose, I created a very dark earth tone pallet.

For the next experiment I will try working on a red and making the yellow and blue brighter.  I hope that my next test painting will be more vibrant with the goal of leading to richer red glazes.  After all, these experiments started because I wanted to bring brighter richer colors to my sculptures and understand color better.

Journey (test #1 with paraffin)

Planting the Seeds of Inspiration (test #1 with bee’s wax)

On more than one occasion since I opened the Full Circle Gallery I have been faced with the challenge of creating a color  palette for something or another. In these situations I found myself saying “I am not a colorist”.  As a potter I have spent years developing my forms, though the color is important, for me form has always come first.  After putting the “Reikan” exhibit together with Sol Davis I have decides to take a deeper look at what color means to me as a potter and an artist.

I greatly appreciate Laurel Siwicki’s artistic input and the invitation to speak to the students’ of Crestveiw High School.  Magdalena Bankovicova for the suggestion to hang the blanket from the ceiling, not on the wall.  Angel Agagas, Perri Panella, Jennifer Diaz, Neslihan Celik George thank you so much for keeping me inline and truly keep the Full Circle Gallery on track.   James Thomin for his continued support and encouragement with my endeavors.  I could not do it without you.   And finally everyone who created a square, the SOS Security Blanket would not exist with out you.

This project is a success and will continue to be because of all of you!  Please continue to spread the word about the blanket.  Let people know they can continue creating squares for at least two more years and if they want to do more they can make a secure donation here.    Thank you for helping me make the SOS Security Blanket a reality and for helping express the need for better uses for petroleum.  It is an amazing feeling to make art that makes a difference!

Surprisingly it has been very inspiring and exciting working with these recycled materials.  When I originally started developing the concepts for this piece I did not think I would enjoy working with garbage.  Now nine months later I have developed the PAC Apparel line and am finding more and more ways to incorporate what would have been garbage into my art work.  Below are some of the PAC Apparel pieces.

Below are the seat belts I found with some recycled tarps set to me from Twin Oaks Farm.  If you have any fun plastics you would like me to upcycle please bring them by the Full Circle Gallery.