Category Archives: Drawing

More Drawing

Posted on by
Reply
Cooperative drawings with my friend Jem.

Cooperative drawings with my friend Jem.

Here’s more of the work from me and my friend Jem. This is from the second night of our efforts. She said she didn’t realize at first that it would take us so long to do them. I laughed. I’ve done one of these alone before, and it took something like two weeks of free time to do it, and it wasn’t nearly as big as even half of one of these. Super-fun stuff, though, we both agreed. She’s much better at the color blending than I am, which is adding a lot to the project. Can’t wait to see what they look like when they’re done!

Free Style

Posted on by
Reply
My friend Jem working on some of the free style drawings we started that night.

My friend Jem working on some of the free style drawings we started that night.

I messaged my friend Jem the other day. “You like drawing?” “Yeah, why?” was her response.

Fast forward a couple days, and we’re leaned over pieces of paper at my dining room table, pens and pencils strewn about. What I’d thought would be a fun couple of hours turned into fun that lasted until she looked at her watch and said, “I better go. You don’t wanna know what time it is.”

Time flies when you’re having a truly excellent time with art. I hope to bring you updates on these works in the future. We already have some color on them, and they rock!

Artist vs. Artist vs. Artist

Posted on by
2
It was kind of scary, but pretty cool too.

It was kind of scary, but pretty cool too.

My friend Darrel has been a bit of an encouragement with my art for some time. He’s a lot more steeped in creative efforts than I have been, at least as far as his length of involvement. He’s one of those people who identified with his creative side pretty early on, and put himself right in the middle of it and never really thought of it any other way. Me, I was more the type who thought, “It’s fun and all, but I’m not really that good, and that’s not really stuff you do when you have a ‘real’ life.” I changed my mind recently, as you may have guessed from hanging out here, and I’ve started meeting people like Darrel.

For a while he has told me that we should hang out and I can check out some of his work and this massive collection of art magazines that he owns. Today I agreed to go over there, and I brought some of my supplies as he indicated that we might goof around with drawing some stuff. Once I got over there he says, “Oh, and Steve’s coming over also.” Steve is an artist friend of his that I’ve met a couple of times before. Okay, something felt like it was going to happen, but I didn’t know what.

Once Steve gets over there I’m looking at magazines, and those guys start getting out a bunch of paper and talking about something their apparently working on, and then Darrell looks over at me and says, “Okay, so the deal is we’re going to trade off and we’re each going to draw on these and kind of collaborate.”

I laughed a little nervously. “I can’t draw,” I said.
“What do you mean you can’t draw?”
“I haven’t drawn anything since high school.”
“You can do this stuff.”
“Um, okay.”

And so we did. Some hours later I was informed that we were going to color them as well.
“With what?” I asked.
“You brought your stuff! Pencils,” Darrel said.
“Um, okay.”

I went home at about 11pm. I’d been working on art with these guys for about six or seven hours all told. It was pretty wild, spending all that time just drawing and whatnot. At one point one of Darrel’s friends called, and he said, “Oh, we’re just hanging out here, making art.”

Really? That’s what we’re doing? Yeah. Yeah, I guess that *is* what we’re doing. Making art, not just screwing around, we’re making art. Woah. That’s kind of cool.

Darrel had me take one of the drawings home to work on by myself, so we’ll see how that goes. I think those guys are okay with what I was doing, but it was kind of scary trying to fit in and not worry about doing something really stupid. I’m pretty glad they asked me to work with them. This is the first time I’ve collaborated like that. It was nice to be included. Besides, I desperately needed the creative time. I’ve missed doing stuff with my hands. I love creating stuff that way.

That reminds me, Steve, who had seen one of my rolling ball sculptures, asked what I’d been doing with them lately. “I haven’t made any. Nothing. I’ve been too busy.”
“That’s not good at all,” he said.
“Yeah. Yeah, it sucks,” I said.
Damn, I miss that.

Squiggles – done!

Posted on by
8

I love finishing stuff! I so used to not be that person. It’s nice to not not be that person anymore…if that makes sense. I hope to finish something else this afternoon. (Yes, you will hear about it later. Why would I keep the art-y goodness away from the blog?!) Here’s the gallery on the whole thing. You can click on all these to enlarge them.

I finished it Saturday morning 3/21/09 at about 10:40am. I think I spent about two weeks of free moments here and there working on it. I’d guess a rough estimate of between fifteen and twenty hours in it. I don’t know if that’s bad or good time-wise. Regardless, I had a good time doing it. I hope I have some time to do stuff like this. I’ve already seen a friend of mine get out some of her old work that was a bit similar, stuff she did twenty years ago. It’s nice to spark interest in others. I’m kind of hoping she gets a little crazy and takes off on some new designs. This is the same person who I hope winds up making some custom marbles for me for my sculptures.

I’ve received a bunch of feedback from folks on this project. Thanks very much to you who have commented here, via email, or however. It’s nice to get a little reflection from others on this stuff I’m goofing with.

Stay creative, kids.

More with the colors

Posted on by
5

As I mentioned previously, I’ve been doing some experimenting, some playing around with drawing. The interest in colors first came out when I did some work with the Artist’s Way, one of my Artist Dates where I goofed around with crayons and markers. My friend Darryl inspired me to take it a step further when I saw some of his really awesome colored pencil abstracts. He then very generously moved me further towards carrying things out by giving me a bunch of colored pencils. I started, got really into it, bought some more, worked on it more, bought even more pencils, and now I have some additional progress to show you.

Fun stuff, huh? It’s kind of hard to do work like this, because part of my brain keeps telling me I’m screwing around and that this isn’t “real art.” This is the part of my brain that’s always telling me that, no matter what I’m doing creatively, it’s not valid for some reason or other. The reasons vary, but they’re generally along the lines of “You’re not good enough.” I realized last night that the fact I’ve managed to get so far along on this little project shows how much progress I’ve made in not letting that little voice get the best of me these days. In years past that voice was sufficient to keep me from even starting most projects.

It is almost scary to note that, after years and years and years of not allowing myself to do anything like this, I now have two complete rolling ball sculptures (soon as Tina finishes up that awesome base for the second one, anyway), I’ve written 86K words of a novel, and I’m able to finish little fun drawings like this one. This ability to finish things, this is – as far as my own personal growth goes – huge stuff. I’m extremely grateful for it. You know what happens when you become able to finish things? You finish them, then you can feel good about them, show them to other people, share your work, your self, your life. It’s incredibly powerful.

Something else kind of wild that has crept into this little exercise is what appears to be some kind of learning process. I thought I would just basically be scribbling on a piece of paper, goofing off with pencils, randomly assigning colors here and there with no cause or concern for the total outcome. Yeah, I think that went away when I left the first pencil. Not that I’m incapable of just letting myself go and not freaking out about the outcome (thought that’s harder to do when I’m really tired, so I try not to do this unless I’m rested), but I’ve noticed that I’ve been making conscious decisions about this apparent random display of color. Sometimes I’ve chosen colors that I think will go with each other well, other times I hope that they won’t match at all, that they will clash, or that they will blend almost seamlessly. I can’t really help it. It just happens. Sometimes I just go, “….ummm…I think this needs to go there,” and I don’t even know why, but I picked that color, even if I didn’t know the reason for it. When you’ve spent this much time away from embracing such things, having them come out at you is kind of scary. Exciting and fun, but also kind of scary. I didn’t know I thought of things in this way, that I had these preferences, or that I flat-out enjoyed the hell out of this stuff so much. It’s really fun!

Oh, and as for it being goofy and a waste of time? I had my stuff out with me last Saturday when I met up with some friends. One works as a graphics producer. She saw the drawing and said, “Oh, that’s cool. You should send that in to a company for a design. That would be good for, like, a border on a paper plate or something. They do that on spec. You send it in, and if they like it, they give you a thousand dollars and…” My eyes kind of glazed over after the words “give you a thousand dollars,” so I need to revisit this subject with her. Nothing at all may come of it, but I have at least learned from that short bit of conversation, that the world does reward creative people for their work. Not all the time, and not always equitably, but it does happen, and right now I sure could use any sort of income from all this output! You’ll be sure to hear about it if anything more happens.

In another small but significant bit of news, I finally went over to the welding shop yesterday after my dental visit and gave them that little gear and shaft that I need to have turned down. They said they couldn’t do it, but the great news was they were able to give me the name of a shop that could, and it turns out the shop opens at 7am and it’s kind of on my way to work. If they can do it, this place would be ideal, as I would be able to drop off and pick up things without having to lose time from my regular job. I hope to stop in there tomorrow and see what I can see. If this flies, then you’ll finally start seeing progress again on my motorized RBS! Woohoo!

Stay creative, folks. You will be rewarded.

Colors, colors, colors

Posted on by
5

I love color, lots and lots of color. I don’t think you’d ever know that by looking at me personally. I seem to kind of confine it to doing art work, at least for the time being. When I have the opportunity to exploit it, I do. Here’s a little something I’ve started working on that shows my tendencies to occasionally indulge in mucho color usage.

Exprimenting with colors and lines

Exprimenting with colors and lines


Fun stuff, huh? I started on this maybe a week or so ago. I started small – this is a little sheet of 5″x3″ notepad paper – because I just knew I’d wind up doing something rather ridiculously detailed, and if I didn’t do it small it would take an interminable amount of time to finish. Well, that and that fact that I’d seen someone else’s work like this, and his stuff was so awesome that doing anything larger than this seemed kind of impossible. What can I say, I guess sometimes it’s best to start small. It worked for the sculpture stuff, didn’t it?

I had some help on this. The guy, Darryl, whose work I’d seen, really is talented. So much so that I looked at his work and went, “Woah. Awesome! No way I can do that.” I couldn’t stop talking about it, though, and every time I saw Darryl I mentioned it to him. He responded by showing up a few times with examples of his work for me to see, and one time he added. “I have a few of the color pencils I used, some extras. I’ll bring them out some time.” A few weeks later he shows up with not five or six pencils like I’d assumed, but over fifteen! Tons of colors! I was very grateful. I thanked him profusely, took them home, and immediately almost immediately became afraid of them and put them in my drawer.

Darryl, the next several times I saw him, asked if I’d been working with my new pencils. For a while I told him I was really busy, which was partly true (see rolling ball sculpture posts), but after several more weeks I finally just said, “Man, you’re stuff is so cool I’m just afraid that mine is going to suck.” The next time I saw him he handed me a drawing of his and said, “Here. This is for inspiration.”

That pretty much did it. I put the drawing on my desk where I could see it every morning when I wrote. That action kept drawing on my mind and made me realize I needed to get the pencils out where I could USE them, so I got them out of the drawer. Not long after that I looked at one of the many note pads scattered about my house and said, “Okay, I can do this. I can do this if I start really small.”

Most of the work on the drawing has been done with me standing at my kitchen stove, pencils scattered all over the place. It’s nothing groundbreaking, no masterwork of hue and design and concept, but it is pretty fun, and what I learned in the Artist’s Way is that I need to pursue creative activities that make me feel good, no matter what the actual output is like. This may pass quickly, or morph into yet one more thing that sucks up my free time. Whatever the result, I need to follow my gut, which right now basically says, “Play around with squiggly lines and a bunch of different colors. You need to do that.”

Artist Date #7: Children’s Museum – Art Glass, Rhoads Sculpture, Comics

Posted on by
4

I’ve had my mind on the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis for quite some time.  They have a rolling ball sculpture there that was the genesis for all my sculpture madness at present, plus they have an exhibit on vintage comic books.  One or the other alone would have gotten me out of the house, but with both it was a sure thing that somewhere in this twelve weeks that is The Artist’s Way I would have found a way to make it there for an Artist Date.

When you first step into the main part of the Children’s Museum, you come face to face with this enormous art glass sculpture.  At 43 feet, the sheer size of it is impressive.  It’s the largest permanent installation of blown glass anywhere.  My friend works at the museum, and I joked with her once about how they clean the thing.  She replied rather seriously, “Oh, they have a crew that comes in and does it regularly.”

It weighs 18,000 pounds, and took over 14 days to install 4,800 pieces of glass to build it.  You can get some idea of the intricacy of the whole thing with this closeup.  An assembly photo at the site showed the blown glass pieces being slide onto metal stakes that protruded from a central metal column.  The scope of this project is astounding – makes me want to try something!  (Um, like maybe carving sixty pumpkins for Halloween?)

I’ve mentioned this in previous blogs, but my current (and quite possibly eternal) fascination with rolling ball sculpture was sparked by a trip I made to the Children’s Museum about five or so years ago.  I went with my nieces and their mom, my older sister.  It was really just a trip to have fun.  I didn’t have anything in mind, except I always personally liked the science exhibit.  My niece Abby was extremely excited that “We’re gonna make a boat!”  The boat turned out to be a few pieces of that styrofoam like they use for meat packing trays, and we taped it together with some straws.  I admire the mind of a child for thrilling in such simple pleasures.  Honestly, she made it seemed like we were about to construct a battle cruiser with working weaponry and a functional engine room. 

When we entered the area of battleship/foam raft construction my eyes came upon one of the most fantastic things I’d ever seen in my entire life:

The George Rhoads rolling ball sculpture, Science in Motion.  Incidentally, you won’t find any of that information readily available anywhere near the exhibit itself.  There is this:

But you have to look for that to find it.  I didn’t even notice it, and the sign next to the exhibit says that it’s a “Rube Goldberg ball machine” or something like that, and that it’s in operation thanks to…individuals or some company which escapes me.  I was actually bummed that it didn’t mention George or any of his other work.  That befuddles me somewhat.  He’s a pretty well-known kinetic sculptor.  (I found out what I know about it by doing multiple internet searches, and finally exchanging emails with one of Rhoads’ staff members.)

Be that as it may, at the time I wasn’t concerned quite so much with its origin.  I was more amazed that such a thing actually existed.  I hadn’t seen anything like it in recent memory, and it just reached out and grabbed 100% of my attention.  There was so much to it that appealed to me: 


1. Its inherent sense of fun and playfulness.  It said, “Behold!  I am a machine upon which much time was spent in construction so that I may perform the extremely important task of…being entertaining!  Woohoo, I am a machine for fun!  Watch me!  Play with me!”  Children need no encouragement whatsoever to grab and twist the knob that imparts action onto the long, pale blue screw lift for this portion of the sculpture.

2. The fact that such great care and attention to detail went into it.  Bending the wire alone had to have taken much patience and forethought.  Add to that the fact that certain moving elements of the sculpture required their own specific exacting calculations.  In the picture above, for instance, you can see a green wire basket to the left.  Notice the ball falling into it?  Notice also that there is a metal pad at the lower middle of the frame.  The ball has just finished leaving the track, bounced (with a fabulous *gong!* I might add) off of that square purple pad, and landed perfectly inside the wire basket.  Who spent time figuring all that out?!?!  To catch a moving ball?!  Brilliant!

3. The creativity.  Look below at the number of different elements the sculpture employs.  This sculpture is not just about balls rolling here and there on some fancifully bent rails.  Numerous different devices were created to manipulate the billiards in interesting ways.

A. Bell-ringing tipper arm: At the back of the sculpture you see the yellow bell.  Swinging away from it is a mallet on an arm, and at the top of the mallet arm we see that there is a billiard being carried from an upper track to a lower track by the arm.  Once it reaches the lower track it will fall free, the arm will swing back, and the bell will be rung.  A serious bell-ringing apparatus!

B. Ball-collecting tipping arm: As the billiards come in on the track at the upper left they fill a catchrail that is balanced so that it points upward on its fulcrum.  Once enough balls collect on the catchrail, however, the arm tips downward, emptying all five balls at once onto a lower track.  The result is a delightful train effect of balls chasing each other down the track.

C. Corkscrew: The balls chase each other from the catchrail and race down this corkscrew in a visual and auditory flurry.  Colors and noise!  Bring it!

D1. Music and Motion, Chimes: Here a set of flat, tuned metal chimes are suspended so that they form the base of the track for the balls.  If you look toward the right you can make out the blurred ball racing over them, and you’ll notice the chimes are hanging at angles as they are rung during its passage over them.

D2. Music and Motion, Wood Blocks: Here you can just make out a white billiard tripping the first of three forks that protrude up between the track rails into the path of the ball.  As a fork is pushed down, the sounding arm rocks back, after which it most naturally swings back and gives the wood block a satisfying little *thock*!  The mallet heads on the end of the sound arm?  Golf balls.  I love the use of so many different objects!

E. Interacivity: In both photos above you can see how portions of the sculpture can be manipulated by viewers.  In the first one a girl raises a ball that is caged in a chute of stout metal bars.  The billiards collect at the bottom, and they will not continue along that portion of the sculpture unless they are moved by hand.  Children have a great time lifting them to the next level and sending them on their way.

In the second photo there is a tilting green lift that is operated by a knob turned by hand.  As shown here the knob is being turned by a young boy and the lift has reached its full height and is realeasing a ball onto the track above it.

F. Displayed laws of physics: Newton’s law of motion is shown here.  Three balls remain at rest on this particular dip in the track.  When a new ball comes along at the left it smacks the other three, and the one to the right takes off, sending another ball along, but always leaving three behind.

F2. Motion and rest: This one is a harder to see, but in the rectangle there are no downward angles.  All rolling surfaces are tracks, though the corners have angled pieces to encourage a rolling ball to continue its journey.  The balls enter at the top and are forced to go either right or left by a wedge placed below the point of entry, and they zig-zag their way from the end to the middle where they drop down to the next level.  They don’t have a lot of momentum, so sometimes they end up coming to rest as you see two of them doing in the lower right corner.  Eventually one ball will come along that will have enough juice that it will smack a few around and send them down.  It’s a little unnerving to watch, because you want them all to go RIGHT NOW!  Doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid.  It’s a bit of lazy motion on this one, and patience is required.

G. Active track splitters: There are a number of active splitters on the track, and this pendulum is a very simple one.  One moving part.  Balls come along often enough that they keep the pendulum swinging.  It has a post at its top center point, seen just to the left of the arriving ball in this photo.  This ball will be prevented from rolling to the left by the post, and when the pendulum swings back it will tilt over and roll the ball to the left.

H. Track splitters without moving parts: How can you possibly make a ball choose a right or left course without using some machinery to guide it?  When the balls fall from the upper track, they aren’t forced to go one way or another.  The landing area is basically flat.  When the balls fall down they run into each other and are forced to go one direction or the other without employing any outside forces to direct them along a certain path.  Here you can see the striped ball is being forced off to the right by the presence of the green one already sitting below it.  I like this trick in particular, as it induces an action without adding any more machinery to the sculpture itself, simplicity of design in action.

I. Automation: I’m a gearhead for certain.  Nothing like having a little electrical motor powering up a chain lift!  The sculpture contains two separate runs, each with multiple tracks.  This run is completely motor-driven, so it will continue with its operation even if no one is around.  Its motion attracts people who can then activate the hand-powered run.

J. Track Variety: Not all of the track is made up of steel rail.  This portion incorporates pieces of metal U-channel down which the ball drops.  Not only is it fun to watch it change direction at sharp angles, there’s also plenty of thunking going on as it drops from one section to the next.

Here is a final end view of the sculpture.  It’s fully encased by plexiglass, which is a good thing, because kids pretty much just want to bang on it when they see it, which you gotta take as a good sign.  If they gave it the once over and walked away?  Not so good.  It’s nice to see people want to be a part of what they are seeing, even if it’s along the lines of “Hey!  Move!  Go!”  There was plenty of laughing, giggling, ogling and grabbing going on at the Rhoads sculpture. 

I just basically stared at it for over an hour.  I’m very grateful that such a source of inspiration is so readily available to me.  Even though some of the mystery was gone compared to the first time I saw it (now I know how some of the designs are accomplished), that doesn’t mean I enjoyed it any less.  I took away another completely new set of experiences that will surely provide inspiration and motivation for my future sculpting efforts.  I so can’t wait to get another one completed!

There was still some time left before the museum closed, so I headed over to the comics exhibit.  Along the way I swung by the merry-go-round and snapped some pics using a slow shutter speed.

I used to love to ride on this thing when I was a kid.  It used to be outside at a park that is not far from my house.  For many years there was a ring of concrete still in place at the park marking where it had been years ago.  I’m amazed that it survived and could be restored years later.  It makes me a little wistful for times past.  My dad has told me on a number of occasions about various amusment parks that used to be around the city.  We had roller coasters, boat rides, carousels.  He even has a few old photographs of some of the rides before they were torn down.  Kind of sad that we don’t have them anymore.  My city has obviously gone through many changes in its lifetime.

I had to stop off at the comics exhibit, seeing as how I spent a short period of time collecting them in grade school.  I was an X-Men fan, but you cannot deny the allure of a superhero of any stripe.  Since I’ve started fooling around with drawing again, I’m also interested in the art aspect of things.

Batman’s Batmobile has changed markedly over the years.  Personally, I’ve always been fond of the original, seeing as how it was a Barris custom creating, and I believe morphed from what was originally a Ford Thunderbird.  If memory serves, it was put on the dragstrip once, and it had so much metal in it from the customizing procedures, it managed a rather miserable elapsed time.  Guess that’s why the rocket was added in back.  My favorite feature on this latest edition is the set of Hoosier front tires.  That’s right, the Caped Crusader rides on tires straight outta the Heartland.

It’s the real cape!  The real one from the TV show!!!  Sweet!  If I put this thing on, I’d have to try and scale a wall or right some sort of wrongdoing.  Maybe I’d just hang out in the Batcave and let the Boy Wonder handle the tough stuff.

Unforunately, I arrived late, and they were shutting off the light tables for the Draw a Superhero activity.  No way!  I wanted to draw!  Oh well, maybe next time. 

The Artist’s Way talks about the need to “refill the well” of creativity by experiencing new things to spark your imagination.  Thanks to this trip, I certainly have a store of things to draw from the next time I sit down to create.

New Name Sign: Genevieve

Posted on by
2

I finished another name sign, this one by request for my bud Genevieve.  I actually finished it over a week ago, but I delayed revealing it here until she received it in the mail.  Observe the results of my toil:

The letters were colored with good ol’ Crayola markers (both Classic and Bold Colors, if you must know).  The outline of the words and the background were all done with Crayolas, but these were of the waxy variety.  These “old school” markers are often referred to as crayons.

That “G” was kind of fun, but took freakin’ forever.  I squiggled the red into it and immediately went, “Why did I do that?  There’s no way I’m going to color in all those little circles I just made.”  I decided to at least go around the squiggles with the dark blue, but almost immediately I started coloring them in anyway, couldn’t stop myself from doing it.  I think it ended up being a two-hour process.  Here’s to determination with magic markers!  (Shouldn’t this say something overwhelmingly positive about my attention to detail and ability to stick with a task?)

Now I have to draw a giant bee for Melissa.  It’s been decades since I last drew giant insects, and most of those were destroying tiny cities and shooting lazers from their antennae.  I’m not sure how this one will turn out!

Artist Date #5: Savage Grace

Posted on by
6

Saturday morning, and my heels have hardly cooled from my most recent Artist Date for week four from the previous night.  I’m talking with a group of friends, and someone speaks up.  He says, “A lot of you know that I lost a son in an automobile accident two years ago.  I won’t be able to make this event, but some friends of mine are involved in an art exhibit Monday night in Broad Ripple featuring paintings from women who are using art as a way to work through their grief after having lost their children.  The women will be there to speak about their paintings.  I just wanted to let anyone know who might want to attend.  It will be a pretty powerful showing.”

I believe that one of the key values in art is its ability to allow us to feel our feelings, to understand them and work through them, be they positive or negative.  I’ve come to realize that sort of expression as a healthy necessity in my life.  My problems are insignificant when compared to the loss of a child, but I deal with feelings constantly, as we all do, and sometimes I’m pretty terrible at it.  If I wanted to see some people really putting their feelings out there, if I wanted to know just how brave people could be in sharing of themselves, if I wanted to see the proof first hand that art is not just a plaything of children or something on the mantle to be dusted and quietly admired, if I wanted to see how art can heal and how it can help me and others, this would be the place for it.  Ground zero for healing through creativity.  There was no deliberation.  I was going.

I didn’t know anything about the event other than the location and the few details my friend had provided.  I was going into this a bit blind, but sure that I wanted to experience it.  I arrived and began to look at the exhibits.  Before I’d hardly taken in the work itself I was stopped by a quote by Valarie Millard-Combs posted near the closest drawing stating that hardly two years ago her son passed away at a very young age of a heart attack, and his son had passed away just one week following of a heart attack as well.  Another of his sons then passed away in an accident in his garage not one year after that.  Three young men in the space of a year.  I was amazed she was still standing upright, let alone doing art work.

I felt like I didn’t even deserve to be there.  I hadn’t been through an experience like of that sort.  I’d had losses in my life, yes, but none in such close proximity.  What would I do?  How the hell would I handle something like that?  Perhaps I would do what Valarie did, make drawings with walls in them, separating me from those I’d lost, or with my chest opened up for surgery to remove the pain that wouldn’t go away.  There was also one with four sections, one colored nearly completely black.  “That was all black at first, but then I didn’t want it to be that way.  I wanted to show that there was some color in there, somewhere,” she said, “that it wasn’t all blackness.  There might be a lot of black, but something could come through.  I took a scraper and physically scraped the black pastels away in spots so that I could add color.”

Did you ever draw or build something and then attack it physically so that it would show that you were feeling better?  Worse? 

Jaymie Gatewood had a similar story about one of her pieces that was composed of three red figures against a black background.  One of the attendees asked her about it.  What did it mean?  Why was it so red?

“I don’t know exactly who those figures are…partly me, partly Sara and Nathan?  I don’t know, but I remember being very angry when I did that one.  I kept adding red, more red.  I was physically mashing the color into the canvas.  It was a very physical experience on that one.” 

I went over and looked closely at the piece later on.  There were large chunks of oil pastel stuck against the canvas, ground right against it so that they were at least an eighth of an inch thick in places.  If you ran your hand over it you would feel the bumps.  Jaymie lost her son before he even reached school age.  Her daughter Sara died of cancer when she was just 23 years old.  “Very physical experience.”

I spoke with David Labrum, art therapist at St. Vincent’s Hospice about his work.  He said that those involved in the free program come in for two hours per week and create.  They are given materials, space, and time.  He said he does little if nothing to instruct them, and no previous art experience of any kind is necessary.  Each work is an individual piece created during that two hours.  “I never tell them when to to stop, and they seem to be finished at about the end of the two hours.  I just give them the tools and leave the room.  They are allowed to create what they want.”

There were others viewing the work who were in similar circumstances.  One mother attended who had lost a child to SIDS in the last couple of years.  Another family was in attendance that had lost a young child.  I was thinking about my parents, the rest of my family.

I left the gallery feeling rather drained, and fortunate to have my family and friends.  I’d originally planned to go to my parent’s place for dinner that night, but instead I’d been looking at art from mothers who didn’t have children to invite to dinner.

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed. 
“Hi, dad?  Hey, I was just calling you guys back to say hi.”

Artist Date #4: Harrison Gallery

Posted on by
2

Friday night in Indianapolis.  First Friday, to be exact.  This is the one night of every month when all the art galleries open up to visitors for the evening.  I’ve taken advantage of it on a number of occasions, but always with a group, or at least with one other friend.  I was planning to do the same this particular evening, but as the day arrived it was clear that I needed to make this my Artist Date or else I wasn’t going to have one this week.  Artist Dates are mandatory as prescribed by the Artist’s Way, as is the fact that you are supposed to undertake these dates on your own (or just you and your creative self, as the idea goes).  Since these dates have so far proven to be pretty awesome, I wasn’t about to mess with this one or give it up, so I called my friend and left what probably sounded like a very odd message (“I’ll see you there, but I can’t be there with you!”) and headed out.

I ended up spending my entire two hours at the Harrison Gallery down on 16th and Deleware.  No shortage of things to see and people to talk to!  (all pics clickable)

One of the first things I came across was this collection of brass light fixture pieces.  Honestly, I have no idea if it was supposed to “say something” the way it was arranged, but it gave me ideas.  I work with copper on my rolling ball sculptures, and will soon be incorporating brass into them (hopefully!).  I just kept staring at this things going, “Yeah, that would work.  I could…yeah, I could do that with it, couldn’t I?  Similar elements may turn up in my work at some point.

I was particularly excited about the Harrison this evening, as Todd Bracik, the sculptor I’d met at Masterpiece in a Day, was exhibiting some of his work there.  My conversation with him that day was a chief reason I’d even thought to hit First Friday this month.  It’s not uncommon that it slips by while I’m out playing a gig, so when he mentioned that he would be showing there I made a specific not to try and check it out.  These works all appeared to be of reclaimed steel.  They appeared to be clearcoated so that they wouldn’t rust.  I *think* this one was called “Blind Bend,” but my memory is bad, and I left my stupid notepad in the camera bag, which was left in the car.  (Somehow I achieved a Journalism major???)

The last of these two is titled “Burst.”  I really wish I’d had something on hand to write them down.  I’m not diggin the lighting in these photos much, either.  You’d think I’d have this camera stuff all figured out by now.  Aside from all that, though, I was really excited to see Todd’s work.  He uses found objects, generally of metal, but not always.  I like metal and the whole idea of recycling or making something pleasing out of what may have once been considered junk.  The whole idea of how much crap we throw away every day kind of freaks me out, so it’s nice to see someone making art out of what might just end up in a landfill otherwise.  There’s also welding and grinding involved with this type of art, which means flames and sparks, and, well, you gotta like that.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see Todd this time, though I did meet someone who was an old friend of his.  I had hoped to talk with him some more about his work, but maybe there will be opportunities for that at a later date.

My true medium!  Thinking of the name signs I’ve been doing, I had to snap this.  It was part of a fun exhibit of children’s works.  These were all done by Cora Hughey, and featured crayon, watercolor, and magic marker.  I imagine she’s a Crayola freak just as much as I am.

Fun little dress…

…with a pencil belt!  If  you’re a teacher during SATs, this thing would be perfect.  “Need a pencil, kid?  I got seventy.”

These little guys are so much fun!  They’re the creations of Jude Odell, a ceramics sculptor. 

Her detail and use of color always impress me.

I really, REALLY wanted to take this one home, but there was no affording it that evening.  The sharp lines and the absolute black of the figures against the white and bright green really catches your eye.

See what I mean about her use of color?  Isn’t that just the greatest?!  Shortly after I took this picture Jude returned to her studio from a visit elsewhere in the building.  I could not keep from telling her how much I enjoyed her work.  She has also done some projects with inner city school children painting bridges and retaining walls to beautify the neighborhoods.  We also kind of bonded over the turmoil and travails of trying to install shower inserts (“All those angles you have to line up, and there’s no room to move!”).  If she had a web site, I’d link to it for you here.  Her stuff is really gorgeous.  She’s had a room at the Harrison for a long time now.  Go give her some of your money.

As I was leaving I snapped one more picture of Jude’s work that was displayed outside her studio on the wall.  These are little tiles that she does.  I was only about five bucks short of being able to purchase one with the cash I had on hand.  Next time I’m definitely making a purchase.  I get a great sense of fun and positivity out of her work, and it never hurts to have that surrounding you in your home.  Which reminds me, she did say at one point in our conversation that she had done some darker, more moody work.  She said, “I got great compliments on it – but trying to sell it?”  People aren’t so apt to surround themselves with dark images, and at this point I’m happy to say I’m not either.

In addition to all that, Jude’s tiles gave me an idea on how I might want to approach some of my sculpture.  I certainly didn’t have several hundred dollars to spend on one of her larger pieces, but I had or could easily find 30 or 40 to spend on something smaller.  So I’m thinking.  I’m thinking about scale and size of work.  We’ll see what happens with that.  I’m not near selling anything yet, but it can’t hurt to have plans.

Hope you enjoyed my date with my creativity.  Eight more of these to go!