Praeterita

If people go to Grand Rapids, Michigan, these days to see some art, it's usually to take in the DeVos-funded Art Prize that consumes the city every autumn. But by far the best art in the region is held at the Grand Rapids Art Museum. From the outside, the building does not look huge, but its three floors are currently displaying a refreshed hanging of works from its collections, and it's absolutely terrific. Every room has several great pieces. On this visit, I was pleased to see how many prints they were showing, starting with this woodcut by Ilya Schor . Next, a soft ground etching by Magdalena Abakanowicz :  Then a huge multicoloured woodcut by Susan Rothenberg : Now a bright lithograph by David Hockney : A screenprint by Jacob Lawrence : And finally, a lithograph by Alexander Calder , part of a small but excellent exhibition of prints in this medium: If any of these names are unfamiliar to you, I strongly recommend you follow the links from their names...

A few weeks ago I saw a show of work by Chicago artist Ahavani Mullen in the beautiful space of the Chicago Art Source on Clybourn. Her paintings are abstract collections of marks and skeins of paint which hover between texture and liquid space, like pools of water through which float branches, sand, stone, and slowly dissolving ink. In the photo above, you can also see her experiments in transferring the discoveries she's made in painting to three dimensions. Talking to the artist, we covered a range of topics: the process of painting; how a series of seemingly automatic gestures often arrives at the point where one large shape occupies the centre of the canvas/panel; how one knows when a painting is finished; artist's residencies such as the Vermont Studio Center; the importance of an artist having a studio. Mullen's work is extremely subtle, yet it catches the eye immediately and draws you in for a closer look. To see more of her work, here is her website .

I've just started teaching a 10-week Beginning Drawing class. I have taught short workshops in drawing before, but this is the first time I've taught a full semester long class in drawing. In preparing for the class, I had to consider the question: how does one teach drawing? "One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil." Balthus My answers, based on my own experience of learning in the classic, traditional manner: 1. Familiarise the students with the materials. 2. Set clear goals for what drawing is and isn't (e.g., not a photograph, though one can strive for realism; mistakes are acceptable;, etc.) 3. Start with simple objects, then work up to more complex objects and groupings. 4. Begin with soft pencil, then graduate to charcoal, conte, coloured pencils and pastels. 5. Give guidance, but don't stifle people's expressiveness. 6. Make most of the guidance about looking, and looking again, at the thing...

I took part in the open studio at the Cornelia Arts Building a few weeks ago. I sold the small clay statue shown in the photo above. But equally satisfying were the conversations I had with the sizeable number of visitors who passed through. Those visitors included a group who brought along their pet conure (a species of parrot). For this open studio, I tried something different. Instead of taping to the wall the standard information about the pieces on display (title, dimensions, price), I made museum-style wall texts that included a story about each painting, print, or sculpture. This didn't lead to any sales of the paintings (yet), but they caught people's attention.

One of my goals for 2019 is to make more ceramic pieces. I don't pretend to have any groundbreaking skills in the medium, but I do love manipulating the clay and seeing the final glaze-fired piece. Below is a set of photos taken at each stage of making a recent piece inspired by my paintings and prints from the last few years. This is the terracotta clay piece just after I made it: Then after it was bisque fired: And finally after it was glaze fired: Not sure about the colour, but I do love the high gloss effect of fired ceramic. For this one, I brushed on two layers of a reddish-orange glaze, two layers of black on the arch, and two drip layers of blue on the figure and base.

I recently finished teaching a five-week introduction to etching class. They were five talented and enthusiastic adult participants, all first-timers when it comes to etching, and they all produced interesting prints that used many of the available textures you get with copper plate intaglio. One of my favourites from the class was this image of mother and baby, made with line etching, a light aquatint, and drypoint. It has the feel of one of Mary Cassatt's prints. People ask me if teaching takes anything away from my studio art, and I reply: absolutely not! I love sharing the things that I have learned from 25 years of making art, and I love it even more when I see the discoveries people make. Plus, whatever particular art form I teach (printmaking, drawing, handmade books) invariably makes me find out something new about the medium, or spurs me to make something new for myself.

After writing a 1,000 word piece about Winslow Homer's eighteen month stay at an English fishing village, I have been writing a series of primers about other artists who made similar journeys. Links to the series here: Gauguin ; Manet ; John Marin ; JMW Turner ; Monet . In the final post in this series, I rate Winslow Homer himself. Winslow Homer, The Northeaster , oil on canvas, 1895 Who Winslow Homer (1836-1910), American landscape and marine painter. Coastal associatio n The coast of New England in the USA, and Cullercoats, in the north of England. First coastal visit Like several painters in this series, Homer was born near the sea (Boston, Massachussetts), spent much time inland or in big cities while building his career, then returned to the coast, this time that of Maine, in 1883. Reasons for visiting Homer had painted marine scenes before the 1880s, but it was his two year stay in Cullercoats, a tiny fishing cove on the northeast coast of England, t...