Saturday was one of those occasions when you finally get to connect the blog persona with the actual person...
Seth Apter was in town to promote his new book, The Pulse of Mixed Media, Secrets and Passions of 100 Artists Revealed...and he brought along Donna Watson and Leslie Avon Miller to participate in his talk/demonstration...
Seth started his talk with a snippet from the book...if you give 100 artists the same set of art supplies and told them to create, you would get 100 different pieces of art...it is the soul of the artist that makes the difference...and given this small opportunity to see a part of these three artist souls, I sat in the audience, soaking it up...
After Seth talked about the book and how it evolved/grew/solidified into its current published form (with a second printing already underway), it was show & tell time...
First Donna talked about the influence of her Japanese heritage on her art...her use of rice papers as a basis for her textures in her work and the placement of the pieces that constitute each collage.
It was immensely gratifying to hear her talk about her design process. Donna's blog, layers, is one of my favorites...always informative, always inspirational...
Next was Leslie, demonstrating a small slice of her technique for building textures and making marks in her work. Leslie's art is all about the feel and flow of a piece - abstract but yet provocative...
Likewise Leslie's blog - textures, shapes and color, explores these same topics...I knew I liked Leslie's blog from the first time I visited...she has one of my favorite quotes (by Emerson) on her sidebar...
Last was Seth, demonstrating his texture technique as well as some masking tips...Seth's work is also about layering the textures...
with a strong influence of word/type/letter/number motifs
Last night I started reading The Pulse...and today I experimented with a few of the texture tips I picked up from Saturday's demo...I've always used paper layers and transfers in my work to give texture...I've never been much for using paint in the process other than a solid base coat...so it was time to try something new...
I laid down a piece of drywall tape on top of my gray board, painted on the surface with latex paint and pulled up the tape before the paint was dry...and then I immediately laid the tape onto the light blue boards and used my brayer to adhere the remaining paint on the tape surface to the board...I like that one process is the reverse of the other...
Yes, 100 different artists with 100 different perspectives...but all tied together by one collaborative artistic man...pick up a copy of The Pulse...you won't regret it...
