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.

When The Workshop Is Over

When the last person left the workshop at the Creative Arts Center, all I could think about was locking up, blowing the clay dust out of my nose and quenching my very dry throat with a glass of wine. I was exhausted.

In this workshop, we sculpted in clay from a live model. It's kind of like a figure drawing class except working in clay instead of charcoal and paper.

Because this was a free workshop, the participants felt that they had nothing to lose by take a chance on something new, which was the whole idea behind offering the workshop, although I was hoping it would draw a bigger crown from outside the CAC umbrella.

Here is the class room break down: 10 people signed up for the workshop, 2 of which didn't make it to class. Of the 8 attendees, 6 people had taken other classes at CAC, but no one had ever taken a figure sculpting class before. 6 had never worked from a live model, 6 had never worked with clay in any form, and 1 person was surprised to see a nude person standing in the middle of the room.

We worked from the same pose for the whole 3 hours. I was really happy to see how each person kept working and reworking their sculpture, dramatically changing it to refine the form as they began to really see what was in front of them.

Seeing, THAT is the first step to working from the figure. Seeing what you are really seeing and not working from what you think you know. It's hard, and it takes work and concentration to override your brains' constant insistence that it knows all the answers.