Scribbling The Night Away

For this Class on Drawing Fundaments I began by show examples of famous scribblers from the past; Matisse, Cezanne, and yes, Daumier. You might not know it, but Honore' Daumier is a fantastic scribbler. All of these artists drew with speed and passion, never letting the fear of getting it wrong slow them down.

The scribble allows you to react and respond to the subject intuitively. You make decisions about composition before you have had time to think about composition. The scribble involves your whole body, not just your fingers.

So, tonight, working from one large still life, we drew like devils. Starting out with several one minute drawings, then 2 minutes drawings, then 5 minutes, and finally finishing the night with a 30 minute drawing. Here's a montage from the class.

Next week- Pain Air Perspective.

Filming At LRTX With Mark Birnbaum

I spent a crisp Sunday morning at La Reunion TX with the filmmaker Mark Birnbaum. You might recall previous posting about his videos on this blog.

He was there shooting footage for a short film that will highlight the natural setting of LRTX.

And how the artwork is integrated into the landscape. I was there to mostly carry his tripod, but also to take advantage of this opportunity to learn more about the art of filmmaking.

Panning the horizon, the sun cut beautiful blue holes in the cloud cover turning the dry prairie grass into a field of shifting gold.

Back at the studio, with the raw footage downloaded into one of the dozen backup hard drives, Mark cuts and splices the best of the footage and sound recordings, then adds a few lines of text. We watch the results over hot cups of coffee and homemade oatmeal cookies. The video will be posted on the LRTX website soon, I'll let you all know when that happens.

First Steps To A Wall Installation

Here's a quick snapshot of a wall installation in the mud and plaster stage.

My sketchbook is getting filled with drawings of elongated forms that often have knobs, forks, and horns. I am turning some of these into small ceramic sculptures that will eventually be installed as a random scattering on a wall.

In the photo above, in the bottom left corner is an oil clay model on a 5"X 7" MDF panel. The white block next to it is a plaster mold cast from one of the oil clay models. Above that, to the left is a plaster mold filled with clay. Next, shows the extra clay cleared away from the mold surface. On the blue board are the clay sculptures after being removed from the molds. 

From here the sculptures go into the kiln to be bisque fired, then glazed, and then high fired. The ones that survive this torturous trial will become part of a large wall installation.

The Dark Side Of Mass

In tonight's class on Drawing Fundamentals we focused on describing mass, volume and shadow. Starting with a simple still life of fruit laid out on the table under a bright spot light, we drew quick sketches to get our eyes adjusted to seeing the subtle changes in shadow and high light. Then moved on to a few longer drawings.

To push the eyeball exercises a bit further, we switched over to drawing with white pencils on black paper. This switch means that you are now drawing the high lights instead of the shadows. Your marks relate to the brightness hitting the surface. We did two of these, and with all the groaning/conversation they took longer than expected. Seeing the light is much harder than following the dark.

Our long draw for the night was only about 20 minutes. It consisted of all white objects, related to the human head, and lined up against a white wall. The spot light accented the mass and the positive and negative shapes. Even though the drawing above is not finished, notice how your eye falls into that black void.

Next week, it's time to get down and scribble.

Building A Vocabulary Of Mark Making

A common issue faced when drawing from life is the frustration cause by a lack of a mark making vocabulary.

Drawing is the language of describing the 3 diminutional world on a flat sheet of paper, and doing it without the use of letters or words. Drawing uses marks, scribbles, dashes, smears... hundreds of variations. If you approach a drawing with only the mark making language used in hand writing, your drawing will reflect that lack of knowledge. It's like reading Moby Dick at only a Dick and Jane reading level.

So, tonight's Drawing Fundamentals class focused on building a vocabulary. We started by copying a few Chinese landscape drawings, which are loaded with mark making variations. In the drawing above, you can see that Clayton is exploring how to reproduce those marks.

We then moved on to drawing from a still life. Clayton is now using his pencil to a much fuller extent. Creating marks that describe light, texture, weight, and volume. These variations are the nouns, verbs, and adjectives that create visual poetry.

Next week we will be exploring the Darker Side Of Mass.

Tin Time In The Studio

There's a strange winter garden growing in the studio. A catfood can garden.

After burning away hours/months on my Wordpress website, I've decided that my humble Blogspot blog is really very nice, and that I should drop the mantra Right after the website is up, and just get back to blogging.

Negative Space In The Drawing Class

When drawing from life, it's just as important to see what is NOT there as it is to see what is there. So, in tonight's drawing class we focused on Negative Space. Those spaces between the things we normally think of as the objects that fill our world.

We all know what a chair looks like. You can probably picture one clearly in our minds eye. But, unless you develop the ability to see the negative spaces between the legs and runners, you will always struggle with drawing from life, because you are only looking at half the story.

In Kevin's drawing above, you can see how his focus on the spaces between the chair legs transforms the drawing, turning the chair into an empty void.

This seeing technique flattens the world into 2 dimension, which makes it easier to capture the relationships of ALL the elements in front of you. These relationships; positive and negative, are the building blocks for the construction a solid pictorial composition.

Next week, we explore making marks.

Walking With Ants At The Creative Arts Center

In each of the Drawing Fundamentals classes I focus on one element of drawing. In this second class, it's Contour Line drawing. This, the most common type of drawing, focuses on the outline of an object. So when drawing an apple, you end up with basically a wobbly circle. When drawing a lemon, you end up with basically a wobbly circle. When drawing a pear, you end up with basically a lopsided wobbly circle.

This generalization of course fits right into the brain's massive backlog of symbols, which in turn means that instead of really looking at THE apple, your brain simply projects the symbol of an apple, basically a wobbly circle.

Think about an apple, one with a bite taken out of it...

Does it look juicy and delicious, or more like the logo of the computer you might be reading this blog on? Which one is clearer to see in your minds eye? For this class we are derailing those backlogged symbols by taking the ant's eye view of the world.

Exercise #1- Blind Contour- Place your paper so you cannot see it while you are drawing. Look at your left hand (your right if you are left handed). Now imagine you are watching an ant crawling slowly along the contours, cracks and creases of your hand. Your pencil is the mechanical recorder of that ant's travels. When the ant goes up, your pencil draws a line upward. When that ant traverse your life line, your pencil continues to record that trail. Do not cheat by looking at your drawing!

Ants are very slow, the recorded path pictured above took 30 minutes. Try it out. Repeat twice. How did that make you feel? Did you sense a shift in your perception? Was it hard to draw so slow? Did you look at your drawing before the time was up?

Other drawing adventures followed, filling our night with undulating, descriptive lines. Next week we'll be looking at the spaces that are not there. Negative Space.

Teaching Drawing at CAC

Very excited to find myself teaching Drawing Fundamentals at the CAC.  Due to a dramatic prequel,  I only had a single day to prepare for the class, so I grabbed my dusty copy of Drawing On The Right Side of The Brain AKA Learn to live like a Dyslexic, and pieced together a rough curriculum. (I'll be fleshing it out this week)

For this first class, I leaned hard on the Left - Right brain theory, believing that the most common problems in learning how to draw is turning off that hyper critical left side so the creative right side can take some risks and start to really see the world around us.

So, a few exercises to derail the left side and feed the right, such as the drawing above. It's a copy of a drawing by Degas. And yes, it is upside down because it was drawn upside down. Doing this allows you to more easily see the lines and shapes as simply lines and shapes, and not as a head, right hand, left hand, buttons, a pocket... all of which the left side already knows what those things look like, so it's going to draw what it knows and not what you are really looking at.

Next week, we'll be looking at blind contour drawing...

PS- And a big Thanks to the CAC for thinking of me when they needed help.

And The Idea Fund Grant Goes To...

This was my second time to apply for an Idea Fund grant. The first was in 2009, as a joint effort with Beam, Plank and Flitch, constructing 6 public wood benches made from urban harvested trees. That one missed because I think the judges thought it was to pedestrian and not art centric enough. Although sense that time Dallas has become over run by urban harvesters.

In 2011, I applied with the Automated Cordycep Project:

The Automated Cordycep Project is about playing with a narrative; it’s about combining sculpture, nature, and science, with a gorilla approach to exposing the public to a sci-fi narrative of near future disaster…

And the prize… went to somebody else. Actually 10 somebody elses. I looked over the list, and can say that on first glance, they all look like solid proposals. Each having a large friendly public component, which I think is where my project might have been lacking. Mine had public interaction, but more on the level of terrorizing large crowds with remote controlled cars infected with a parasitic fungus.

So. I’ll add this to the list of impressive art organizations that I have applied to but have not been accepted by. It is said that if you don’t get rejection notices, you’re not trying hard enough, which I do think is true, although I really do prefer the non-rejection notices.

Wordpress Move Not So Fast

A few months ago I thought it was a good idea to up date my website and blog by combining them into one Wordpress theme. Now, as I look at the calender, I see that I have spent enough time on this simple conversion that I could have white washed the whole ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. AND it's still not up and running. Guess I'll need more paint to do the walls.

Dallas Aurora After Glow

It's been a few days sense the Dallas Aurora event in the Dallas Arts District. People are starting to post images and videos. One of those in by my good friend Mark Birnbaum, who unbeknownst to me shot this great video of my installation. Thanks Mark!

Aurora 2011: A Thing To See And Do

Water Walls Dallas Arboretum

I have felt for a while now that I should be spending less time at the computer. All those hours logged on has left me feeling a bit like a big wooden log. So, it's up early, a balanced breakfast, walkies, perhaps a bit of yard work, and get involved with a few art events to get me out of this damn house!!!

Aurora 2011 is one such event. This year it's being held in the Dallas Arts District. 97 light and sound installations will turn the 19 block area into a night of color. The big power switch will be flipped on this Friday, October 28th at 7:30pm-12:00 midnight. Here's the Art and Seek post.

Fountain Place Park Dallas TX

I missed being part of the Aurora 2010 because I was in Italy, which I enjoyed completely and blogged about maybe a bit to much. That said, I have been waiting all year for the next Aurora event. This time I am in town, busy at my computer spicing together bits of video... So much for getting out of the house, or the walkies, or the balanced breakfast.

White Rock Lake 2 AM

I am producing 2 videos that will be projected onto the west garden wall of the Meyerson Symphony Center. Both videos are about water. One is natural footage of ponds, streams and puddles as seen in the top 2 photos above. The other video uses the same footage and manipulates it by re-filming the clips multiple times to produce color separations and distortions, as seen in these bottom 2 photos.

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

This will be my first time to show any of these videos publicly. Very excited about it, and about seeing all the other installations, too!

After the Auditions

The 3 winners of the TEDxSMU Auditions were very solid choices. Belinda Baldwin, Jasmin Brand, and Will Clarke each demonstrated a well crafted comfort with the stage and presented topics that were intriguing. Each topic could be easily be expanded into longer in depth presentations.

Sarah Hodge has posted a complete recap of the evenings presentations. Thanks Sarah for doing that. I mentally missed half of the presenters while trying to calm down from my turn under the spot light.

Here is my totally self absorbed, center of the universe recap of the evening:

From the beginning I did this for the fun, and because it was my way of showing support for TEDxSMU. I have seen how sending out a Call To Artists can result in lack luster returns in both quality and quantity. Happily in this case, TEDxSMU did end up with over 50 applicants. Dallas does have a lot of engaging topics and dynamic people.

Each of the 13 presenters approached the microphone differently. Some had that envious natural ease, some followed learned presentation techniques, some approached it as a short performance, 3 minutes on the dot. And some, well 3 minutes can be a long time.

Personally, I follow the school of practice, practice, practice. I practiced until all the cats ran out of the house. Then I went down to the railroad bridge and practiced some more.

Reflecting back on my performance, I can see where it lacked clarity, and where I verbally stumbled. Sense a part of me seems to enjoy this form of punishment, maybe I should seriously educate myself in the art of public annunciation. But where to start?

TEDxSMU Auditions: Time is Ticking Away

When I signed up for the TEDxSMU Auditions it was the middle of August when the Texas heat was so intense you could fry up a whole chicken on the hood of your Ford truck.

Now it's October, I have survived, I have also realized I signed up and/or volunteered for things like a man soon to die. October has become an out of my comfort zone experience. This audition being what my Dad would call a personality growing experience.

So here it the ruff draft. I'll be one of 13 people presenting a 3 minute lecture on a topic of our own choosing. 4 judges and an audience pole will decide who goes on to present an extended lecture at TEDxSMU in December. Here is the itinerary. Thank god I"m not going last, but on the other hand most of my friends are well known for running late...

Brad Ford Smith                "What People Reach For When Things Fall Apart"

Christian Genco                "Outsource Your Brain: Why Everyone Needs to Learn How to Program."

Golbahar Dadyan             "Unlocking the Creative Genius: Living the Dream Circuit"

Jon Eric Fountain              "Follow My Heels"

Will Clarke                           "Seeing Through The Haze: Why Do We Haze?"

RJ Daum                               "Wild Mustangs, Wild Life"

Short Break- music

Sean Springer                    "Making Good Product: Inspirations, Sensations and Values"

Stacy Cherones                 "Make Cafeterias Complete"

Jasmin  Brand                    "What Ike Turner & Social Media Have in Common"

Belinda Baldwin                "The Power of You"

Darren Collins                    "Disaster Relief Housing: A Clown's Perspective"

There will be a short intro of each speaker- just name and talk title.

Each speaker will only have 3 minutes. Anyone that goes over 3 minutes will be pulled off the stage, but in a fun way :)

Doors open at 6:00 and we will begin the program at 7:00. We will have one short break with live music by Kerri Arista. She will also perform at the end while we are counting ballots and the judges deliberate. A winner will be announced that night.

We strongly urge any additional guests buy their ticket online since we will only be selling tickets at the door if we don’t sell out before. Ticket link: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2042078913/mcivte

Houston Fine Art Fair Shopping List

The Houston Fine Art Fair was like going to Whole Foods, row after row of good for you art work. Unfortunately I left the wallet containing big wades of cash at home. I posted my shopping list and a few observations on Art and Seek. (Photo- Keiko Gonzalez, Salar Galeria de Arte, Bolivia)

Next month is the Texas Contemporary Art Fair. Will it be worth another 8 hour roundtrip drive?..

Houston Fine Art Fair

Well I just can't stay away. I'm heading down to Houston for the Houston Fine Art Fair. I've posted a short blurp on Art n Seek , which I'll follow up on with photos on monday.

Walking AND Looking

Most every artist will tell you that for them making art is way more important to than selling it or even exhibiting it. That the creation of each painting, drawing or sculpture is for the moment the most important thing they are doing, and if questioned further, they will admit that when completed, that work of art will be eclipsed by the next painting, drawing or sculpture.

Like it or not, I have to admit that's my studio practice in a nut shell. I have once again spent the year focused on crafting three art projects. Three really great, pushing my boundaries, all consuming art projects. They now languish as the top layer of the art pile. I am now starting on my next really great, boundary pushing, all consuming painting, drawing, or sculpture.

I have been walking through the woods so focused on each footstep that I am completely missing the forest. That by not spending the time and energy to get the artwork exhibited I will never really see what this path has to shown me.

With this in mind, I am sending in a proposal to the Lawndale Art Center, Applying for a grant from The Idea Fund, and once again applying for the artists residency at Artpace.

Up Lifting View from Texas Museums

I just got back from the 2011 Texas Association of Museum Conference. 3 days of lectures, group discussions and workshops with 388 people that work in museums from across the state, museums like the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, as well as hundreds of smaller historic museums, historic parks, historic houses, culture centers, libraries, and foundations.

Between the sessions a lot of the coffee talk was about the resent cuts to the Texas Commission on the Arts, the Texas Historical Commission, and the Texas Parks and Wildlife. That said, the overall atmosphere of the conference was upbeat, with sessions focusing on Do it yourself public relations, Developing partnerships and Resource building. A Yes this sucks, and it's going to continue to suck, so let's make the best of it attitude prevailed. I for one, came away invigorated by the commoratery and the positive problem solving attitudes.

Next year, the TAM conference with be in San Antonio, March 27-30th. I'll be participating as part of an Art Conservation roundtable. More on that next March.

Planning How to be Strategic in my Planning

Usually my posts are kind of a light hearted ramblings, but this 3 day Creative Capital Professional Development Program at Arthouse kind of knocked my for a slow loop. Most of the info was standard business planning stuff infused with a fine art perspective. And the other 24 artists were a joy to meet and interact with. The 5 instructors were insightful, approachable, and vocal with their opinions. All good stuff.

But now I am back in Dallas, rewriting my notes and working on the Strategic Planning Workbook... and I realize that I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I know kind of what I should be doing, but mostly I just blow in the wind like a tumbleweed, hoping to get snagged by a barbed wire fence with a nice view.

I'm going to approach The MAC or the Dallas Contemporary to see if they would apply to have Creative Capital come to Dallas. Having a local group of artists to meet with and work though this with would be wonderful.

At any rate, I'm doing my homework now. Stay tuned.

A Little Fungus For A Good Cause

I should have posted this sculpture before the Art Conspiracy's fundraiser happened... Well I'm doing it now.... This is Cordycep Flamingo. He was part of the Better Gnomes and Gardens auction put on by Art Conspiracy.

He is your average pink flamingo except he is suffering from a cordycep fungus. This type of parasitic fungus mostly infects bugs, like grasshoppers and ants, slowly driving them insane and turning their bodies into stalagmite covered husks. It looks like a horrific way to die. I would love to see this happen to a few of the fire ant in my front yard.

I created this sculpture in hopes that placing it in your yard or garden it will act like a scarecrow, and scare the holly crape out of all the fire ants.

By the way, a few of my friends did point out that items at fundraiser tend to sell better if they are based on humor or cutely puppies, and not horror show fungi. But like the commercial says Who doesn't like to kill fire ants? And I am pleased to say that it did sell for a nice amount.

To see some great photos of cordycep covered bugs, as well as lots of great pictures of Normal bugs and fungus, check out Kim Fliming's Flickr site.

A Workshop in Strategic Planning for Artists

The people at Creative Capital call it a Professional Development Core Weekend Workshop, PDCWW for short. It is a "Crash course in self-management, strategic planing, fundraising and promotion. Based on a rigorous and comprehensive curriculum..." Those of you who are regular perusers of my abombitallizations of grammer, know that I do love orderly things and planning, but the closest I ever come to Rigorous, is babbling on and on and on, (case in point)

How every, when I read more about this workshop, I saw it as an opportunity to focus on some of my weaker points... in a healthy constructive sort of way, as opposed to the binge induced rants that me and my fellow artists normally indulge in.

So I applied for 1 of the 24 spots, sending 10 slides, a CV, and a short artist's statement. I am happy to say that I was selected, AND I got a Creative Capital Subsidy Grant as well!

Sorry, that's getting very close to blowing my own horn, but I am very excited about this workshop. Hopes are high that I will learn a lot about modern professional art practices, and connect with a new group of artists to interact with.

The workshop is being held at the Arthouse in Austin, hence the oldish photo of me standing next to the Arthouse placard.

Hey! have you signed up to get the Brad Ford Smith Blog delivered straight to your email box?!

Putting on a Polish

On the bottom row are the 3 bronze sculptures I have been working on in the last wax casting class at CAC. They are polished up, patinated and to all purposes they are finished. They are about 2 inches long, and fit very comfortably in the hand. A friend said they feel like worry stones or hand candy. Perhaps I'll carry them around in my pocket, and when someone asks what I do I can hand them one and say "This, only bigger."

In my last posting I mentioned the risk of losing all your hard work during that .05 seconds of pouring bronze. Well, the first 2 items on the second row are a good example. I mislabeled the flasks, so when I poured this flask I didn't have enough bronze to fully cast the sculptures. GRRR

The black shapes are paper cut outs of the sculptures yet to be poured. We have one more class this session. We'll be spending the whole time casting. Our teacher, Rebecca Swann is a highly skilled jewelerist and a well of knowledge.

Playing With Hot Molten Metal

In last weeks lost wax casting class at the Creative Arts Center I invested 3 small wax sculptures. This week it's time to pour hot molten metal!

The wax sculptures have been melted out of the investment leaving behind a hollow space inside the very, very hot flask.

Now it's time to  slip on flame proof gloves and welding goggles, pull out the torch, and melt some bronze. This takes about 5 minutes.

Once the molten bronze starts to swirl around in the crucible it's time to pour. Note the orange stream of bronze going into the flask. Hot, Hot, Hot.

It's in there, and it should have filled ALL the hollow areas... Let us pray... In lost wax casting you can work hours and hours on the wax sculpture, just to loose everything in that .05 seconds of poring.

And here they are! 3 small almost perfect bronze sculptures!!! There are a few nubs and surface burps that will be removed when I take off the casting sprues. Then, well then we move on to polishing. This is not a quick process.

Lost Wax Casting: Sprues of Hope

It's called sprueing; attaching wax sticks (the red stuff) to the wax sculptures (the purple stuff), then mounting the sculptures onto a mold base(the black stuff). Next the steel tubes you see in the background, slide into the bases and are filled with investment (high temperature plaster). The wax will be burned out leaving a hollow area that the metal, in this case bronze will be poured into.

Technically, I think I followed all the rules of lost wax casting, but during the pouring all you can do is hope for the best. I'll be pouring/casting next week, so stay tuned to find out if they turn out to be beautiful sculptures or monstrous blobs?!

You can follow this project as well as all the other stuff going on in and around the studio by subscribing at Brad Ford Smith Blog.

Small Scale Sculptures

I started a Lost Wax Casting class at the Creative Arts Center last Thursday. As you can see Stanley, the art critic is letting me know which of my wax sculptures needs more work. Eventually the wax sculptures will be cast in bronze and become part of a wall mounted installation.

Sparkles the Bling Bling Birthday Cow

About 18 years ago there was a city wide public sculpture project in Chicago where all the artists were given life sized fiberglass cows to do artistic things to. As you can imagine they did just about anything you can imagine to those cows. It was a very big success.

The city of Dallas followed suite a few years later, except they used a fiberglass Pegasus. Personally I think the Pegasi supplied to the artists were over designed, with to much pre-built in creator, so most of the Pegasi I saw were not very good. Some of them can still be seen around town 10 years later. I was actually asked to do a conservation assessment on one. It was such a bad mix of badly mixed mediums that I pronounced it lame and suggested they shoot it.

Anyway, I started thinking about all of this because I spent today making a 2394 rhinestone incrusted bovine as a birthday present for a dear friend. She's having one of those landmark birthdays, the kind that includes a big California blow out built around a cowgirl theme.

I was kind of surprised to find that when my socially sophisticated friend moved to LA, she started cultivating her very, very slight association with cow culture into a Texas Cowgirl gone LA mystic.

Happy Birthday Cowgirl! Don't take your spurs off until the saloons close up and your horse falls asleep.

Behind The People Behind The Video Camera

One of the benefits of blogging for Art and Seek is the access it affords to people, places, and events. That's also one of the reasons I first got into doing art conservation. I get to handle and explore artwork that gives me a special understand of how the artist works. Of course with the blogging I don't get quite so physical.

One of the first events around the Dallas Art Fair was a press interview with the artist Jim Lambie, who is presently showing at the Goss-Michael Foundation. You may recall his colorful tape installation at the DMA a few years back.

The folks from Art This Week were there as well. And that is really what this post is about. Art This Week has been producing video interviews of artists and curators sense May 2009. Their latest interview with Jim was their 100th video posting!!! Congratulations ATW!

Unfortunately this honor falls on an interview with Jim, who is no Clark Gable when it comes to sophisticated silver screen personas.

Lauren Kennedy interviewed Jim, while Caroline Belanger snapped some pics, and Richard Serrano filmed the action. Hard to believe Richard shoots all the videos on a camera the size of a deck of playing cards. I don't know much about ATW. They appear to be a young, bootstrap organization that doesn't let the limitations of equipment and funding prevent them from pumping out one video after another, 8 in the just the last 30 days. Admittedly, the end product may not be up to the evening news standards, yet. But who knows, given some time and some cash, and Jerome Weeks may have some serious cultural coverage competition. Then it's onto tackle Art 21.

I've added them to my Links Page because ATW has a DIY attitude that is just what the Dallas art scene needs to see more of.

Posting About The Art Fairs In Dallas On Art and Seek

This is a quick post. Still have more art to see before it's all gone. I've been posting about the Dallas Art Fair and the Suite Art Fair on Art and Seek.net. Here's the link to all those pages, plus my older posts on art go by.

 I'll be blogging more about the art fairs on my blog soon.

A Suite Art Fair Just Up The Hill

Just posted a review about the Suite Art Fair on Art and Seek. Here's the link A Suite Art Fair Just Up The Hill

Eyeball Exercise Coming Soon At The Dallas Art Fair

The Dallas Art Fair opens to the public next Friday! I've been really jonesing for this event. This is the third year of the DAF. Each time it gets a little bigger with a few more galleries signing up. Plus there is the Suite Art Fair being held over at the Belmont Hotel. (I'll be stretching the corneas there as well)

The beautiful people at Art and Seek are once again indulging my rambling prose, so keep an eye out there for my latest misspellings. I'll post links here on my blog to any posts I make there.

Tonight, I'm doing some warm up exercises at the local art gallery openings.

Loading The Kiln At CAC

The sculptures from the workshop I led at the Creative Arts Center are finally dry enough to load into the kiln. Glo Coalson has been teaching me the delicate art of firing large lumps of solid clay, AKA sculpture.

Looking down into the kiln, it kind of looks like a relaxing day at the spa, except the girls in this sauna are going to get unbelievable hot.

Playing In The Mud At The Dallas Arboretum

Being involved with the Creative Arts Center has opened up several unexpected opportunities to push my studio centric self out into the public eye. The latest example was at the Dallas Arboretum's annual art fair, ArtScope. It focuses on artisans like potters, wood turners and glass fusing-ists(?) About 100 artisan booths nestled among the blooming trees and flowers.

Anyway, DA asked CAC to send over a few art teachers to do art demonstrations, so here I am standing under the trees working on a clay bas-relief sculpture of the cafe gardens. 

I was out there for about 4 hours. I don't think the sculpture is the best I have done, but it was fun talking about making art, having my photo taken a lot, and handing out little balls of clay to all the kids.  A casual observer might think they were watching a sun burned Van Gogh feeding dirt to young children...

Next week it's off to North Park Mall for some speed sculpting at ARTsPARK.