Tag Archives: art

Supercrawl in Hamilton, ON

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….last weekend I went to my first art crawl

Since 2009, Hamilton has hosted an art supercrawl that now spreads over 16 city blocks and has gone from a one day event to an entire weekend. It celebrates the diverse art community in the James St. North community in Hamilton. This year it featured numerous art installations, hands on art demonstrations, live bands, street performers, dozens of food trucks, and hundreds of vendors selling jewellery, crafts, paintings, clothing, knitwear and handmade toys. Supercrawl 2016

 

Florence, Italy -An Art Lovers Paradise

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…..Florence is well known for famous sculptures, paintings and architecture 

Everyone told me I’d love the art in Florence. There certainly was a lot of it. The city is noted for its culture, Renaissance art, architecture and monuments. The city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti.

Florence was home to one of European history’s most important noble families, the Medici. In 1469, Lorenzo de Medici, grandson to Cosimo, took over control of the city from behind the scenes. He was a great patron of the arts, commissioning works by Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli. To his peers he was known as Lorenzo il Magnifico which ironically was also the name of the street our apartment was on.

If you are going to Florence in the near future I would recommend that you prebook your tickets to the Uffizi Gallery. We booked on line the night before and went right to the front of the line when we arrived at our designated time. In fact we were ushered to an even faster line because we had the baby with us. Even though the baby was free of charge they wanted to see her passport before they gave us our tickets. We didn’t have the passport so we pleaded ignorance. Who knew? Did they think we were going to smuggle in an adult on an infant’s ticket? Other than that, getting into the popular Uffizi was quick and relatively easy and well worth the few extra euros to book ahead of time.

We never did get to see the real Michelangelo’s David. The two in the gallery above were replicas. I thought I would be disappointed if I didn’t get to the real one but there was so much to see and do and it was so hot in Florence that it wasn’t worth the ultimate exhaustion we would have suffered trying to get to the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze, which is now the home of Michelangelo’s sculpture of David. Maybe I’ll go there the next time I’m in Florence.

Ciao!

Back Into My Painting Groove

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….seems like I need complete solitude to paint

I’ve found in the past that I get my best work done late at night when everyone is in bed. At the cottage it is more difficult to do because the light isn’t good after the sun goes down. Today I found myself all alone at the cottage. My neighbours had left for a few days and I didn’t have a lot of things to pack before I left for home.

I got out my paints and set up my brushes. I had a large canvas that already had the background done. In fact the background had been done for two years and I just wasn’t sure how to finish it. Then I remember hearing these wise words….” it’s only paint”. In other words don’t worry about messing it up, just go for it.

I knew that I wanted to paint pears and I had a vision in my head how I thought it might look. I lightly sketched two pears and then started adding colour. I like to work quickly and I use brushes, rags and my hands. Two hours later I finished my piece and am quite happy with it.

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Peggy Guggenheim Gallery in Venice

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….one of my favourite art galleries in all of Italy

I guess I shouldn’t have said ‘all of Italy’ when I’ve only seen a small portion of the country. I had never heard of Peggy Guggenheim before this trip. Of course I knew of the famous Guggenheim Museum in New York but I had no idea that there was another Guggenheim in Venice.

Peggy Guggenheim was an avid collector of modern art and in an eight year period she amassed a collection of art by Kandinsky, Jackson Pollock, Picasso, Calder, Henry Moore, Motherwell and Max Ernst, just to name a few, who represented Cubist, Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist movements in art.

She moved to Venice after WWII and set up a gallery of her collection at Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal. In the summers she opened her home to the public and when she died in 1979 she left her estate to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation on the condition that the collection would remain intact in Venice and would be recognized as hers. The Foundation assumed responsibility for both the collection and for Guggenheim’s palazzo.

In 2015 a movie of her colourful and controversial life was made. Here is the trailer.

Peggy Guggenheim

I think I enjoyed this collection so much because it was full of modern artists that I admire very much. The Palazzo itself was light and airy and the outdoor sculpture garden was serene and calming. Being on the Grand Canal added another element of vitality and I could just imagine Peggy sitting on the balcony with her dogs observing the gondolas and small water crafts making their way through the green waters of Venice.

Venice Architecture Biennale 2016

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….featuring different aspects of architecture from around the world

One of the must see venues in Venice for my family on our recent trip was to take in some of the Venice Biennale exhibits, mainly the the Victoria and Albert contribution curated by our son.

For those who have never heard of biennales let me explain. A biennale takes place every two years. They are large international art exhibitions dealing with contemporary issues around art, music and architecture and take place all over the world. The Venice Biennale was founded in 1895 and highlighted city marketing, urban regeneration and cultural tourism. This year’s theme is titled REPORTING FROM THE FRONT, and is curated by Alejandro Aravena. The show runs from May to September and the exhibits can be found at  the Giardini and the Arsenale.

The exhibit our son curated in agreement with la Biennale di Venizia and  the Victoria and Albert Museum out of London, England is titled A World of Fragile Parts and focuses on how the production of copies throughout history and today has aided in the preservation of cultural artefacts.

This exhibit highlights the new technologies that make it possible to fabricate copies of historical artefacts that are ravaged by war, tourism and environmental factors. For more information about the exhibit go here.

Old technology using plaster casts.
New technology using digital scanning and 3D printers.

Unfortunately while we were there our son was not so to prove that we actually went and saw the exhibit we posed in front of the sign for A World of Fragile Parts. Even the baby got involved by pointing out her uncle’s name on the list of credits. A week later Brendan did go back to Venice to give a talk and teach a class on the exhibit.

My only regret is that we didn’t get to see more of the Biennale. Two days in Venice is not enough time.

Paul Klee Inspired Art

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….experimenting with Paul Klee’s style

The students in grades 1,2 and 3 that I teach art to were given a couple of quick assignments that could be finished in one or two periods. Seeing that we’re nearing the end of the school year this was important to me.

The first lesson I taught involved drawing a Klee style portrait. It didn’t have to be of a person. Many of the children chose to draw an animal. The technique that I used for this lesson came from Splat, Scrap and Glue Blobs and Deep Space Sparkle.

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A couple of weeks after introducing my students to Paul Klee, Carl Sonheim from  my on-line course Y is for Yellow also introduced us to Paul Klee but instead of portraits she focused on his grid paintings. Some of my classes needed a quick project that could be framed for Father’s Day so I took a chance and taught the children how to draw a grid and how to carefully use watercolours to fill in the spaces. I limited them to three colours of their choice and demonstrated how to control the water and the amount of colour to use. They learned how to mix the water with the paints and control and change the darkness and lightness of the colour. They also learned how to erase mistakes by adding more water and dabbing away the excess water.

I’m always impressed with students who actually listen and follow the directions. Very few children created ‘mud’ and those who did were able to fix it or when they started again created a much better product the second time around. One of the grade one classes framed their paintings with a frame from the dollar store and wrapped them up for Father’s Day. Children’s art always looks so nice when it’s framed. I would have loved any one of them as a gift.

 

The 50 Mile Coat

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…last weekend I attended the closing day of the EHS Inspires show at the Neilson Park Creative Centre  where the 50 mile coat had been completed and was on display

A good friend of mine is a member of the Etobicoke Handweavers and Spinners Guild. They recently undertook an enormous project that took 800 hours to complete. They designed and hand made a coat that used materials that were accessed within a 50 mile radius of the the studio where the materials where assembled and put together.

It started with the shearing of the wool from sheep in Pelham. The wool was then cleaned and carded and spun by hand into yarn. I don’t remember the numbers but there were several spinning wheels at the centre where members took turns spinning the wool into yarn. Neilson Park is in the middle of a naturalized park area and ladies of the guild collected plant materials to make natural dyes. One of the plants they used were marigolds. The yarn was dyed and then the loom was set up with the warping threads.

Once enough cloth was woven for the coat, the pattern (designed and made by one of the members) was pinned to the fabric and cut out. The entire coat was hand sewn with thread that was also handmade. The buttons were made from wood that came from another members property and carved into beautiful shapes. My friend made the felted colour for the coat.

I’m sure I haven’t done justice to the long process that was involved in making this coat and I’ve probably missed some steps. Now that the coat is done it is going on tour. I’m not sure where it will end up but it certainly should be in a museum somewhere so that many more people can enjoy it.

The show also featured many other beautiful works of art made by the members of the guild. All the felted pieces featured here were made by my friend ML and the one piece at the top of the gallery of photos she describes as ‘a memory of the colour and textures of the Aran Islands on the west coast of Ireland’.

Georgia O’Keefe Inspired Art

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….a great lesson for symmetry and using oil pastels

My grade 1, 2 and 3 classes were given a quick introduction to Georgia O’Keefe’s flower paintings. I had some beautiful calendar pages that featured some of her florals. I pointed out how she blended colours and how the whole page was filled with her flower image. Most of the classes had studied symmetry in their math classes so I showed them an example of symmetry in nature and one that was man-made.

For this lesson I wanted them to try and create a flower that had at least two lines of symmetry. I showed them how to divide their paper into equal quarters and then I started the flower from the middle. I demonstrated how to blend colours and over lay colours using oil pastels.

Most of the students got the concept and many loved adding more and more colour. When a student didn’t like their colour choices I showed them how to add white or peach to lighten or soften their picture. They were so open to trying this technique and most came back with a completely different picture and much happier with their project.

The first slideshow is work from my two grade one classes and the second one features larger samples from my grade two class.

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Starting With a Child’s Piece of Art

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….an assignment from one of my many on-line classes

One of the classes that I’ve taken this year is from Sketch Book Skool.  We had 6 different instructors who all assigned different sketching and painting projects. One that especially intrigued me involved getting a young child to draw in my sketch book and then work a drawing around the child’s original piece.

At school I have a couple of students who like to come to the library after school and help me put books away. When I was given this assignment I asked J in grade one if he would like to draw in my book and then allow me to draw around his work and create a new piece. He was more than happy to do that and he took my book and very carefully and thoughtfully began drawing his picture. I thought he might draw the typical house and tree with him and his family standing in front but to my surprise he drew six flower pots with a flower in each.

Here is J’s work and then what I created from it. I used watercolour and ink around the pencil crayon drawings.

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