Waterways Gets Down And Dirty

Des Plains River Mud Winter 09
watercolor, ink and mud on paper

Most of you know I enjoy fiddling around with media and here is my latest experiment. I dug some mud from the bank of the Des Plains River during a recent thaw and used lots of water, ink and color added. While it's all still wet, I tilted the paper up and down and back and forth. I really granulates very well and I imagine if I find a real concentrated area of clay, that will work well too. But collection of clay will have to wait until Leaky Cauldron's back on the water.

The other main advantage of using mud is that it's .....dirt cheap. (Sorry, I could not resist!)

These are small sketches but I'm going to be doing larger versions on 300lb paper.What I like about the format is that it suggests the ancient geology of the area. The ancient geology reads as much larger than the man made structures or even the vegetative growth. After making these, I've finally, and much to my relief have found a direction in which to move the project. You can bet I'll be writing about rock and land formation here soon.

But all this will have to wait until next month. I'm building an honest to goodness, all-grown-up web site for my work. The blog's been a bit quiet because I'm also working on some grant ideas for my police project as well. I'm also teaching a workshop next weekend. So, all good stuff, but I'm swamped.

If you'd like to see one other mud experiment, you can visit the Watermarks blog.

Waterways Project On Bed Rest

I used to handle most stress in my life by working and/or working out harder. I used to believe that restorative yoga was for wimps. Now, at mid life with my hormones shifting and working on challanging projects, restorative yoga seems like a wonderful idea. I've been gliding in to a supported child's pose all week and it has helped me tremendously. In the above book Yoga Nap, are lots of suppported poses that assit the body in calming or energizing. There is even a sequence of poses to use as a lullaby and works wonderfully to assist with getting the most out of your mattress time. (My friend Kelly calls that restless, sleeplessness riding the rotersiery.)

Attending yoga classes 2x a week remains my staple, but my home practice now involves using various pillows, straps and blocks (sounds kinky!) to hold poses long enough to feel muscles utterly melt into the mat.



The comfort of the sketchbook belongs squarely withing the confines of "creative bed rest".The above scrawls in my tiny moleskine may look like jibberish, but I'm feeling my way along into a new way of thinking about the Waterways Project. No one will be more suprised than I when the new work emerges.

Claudia's Show

My talented friend Claudia has gracously offered to share her paintings at the Police Gallery. You can commission a portrait from Claudia at her web site here


Thanks to the Chief Information Officer for our village, David Powers, you can see her show and all previous shows on the web site for the police department.

Oak Park Police Station Art Gallery

Comments on this show have ranged from " Best show yet" to "Creepy". I welcome this sort of controversy. I've also been hearing some comments that I need to look into seriously. All the artists who have agreed to show have been fully informed about the possible danger to their art work. But what I'm now concerned about is the safety of people: would some unruly suspect use the art work against an officer? This is something I need to ask about on my next visit to the station and gather more information before the next show goes up. I don't want to be blinded by my own enthusiasm for the project.

Police Department Residency: Light and Dark

Iteration
ink on paper
22" x 30"
Note: On both these drawings it's hard to see the small lettering. On the above drawing, the words are from the weekly police blotter from the Wednesday Journal. The words on the drawing below are explained later.

"Why handcuffs?" I ask myself. This second tool in my series "Tools of The Trade" for my artist residency at the Police Department is the most difficult yet. This particular tool is so beautiful from a design point of view and yet so full of danger and misery.

What I'm learning about myself is that making meaningful art is one of my largest motivations. It's the reason I'm willing to wade into some very murky waters with this project. I want to understand, with my limited view as a citizen , what officers of the law deal with every day. Getting my hands dirty with these cuff drawings I realized that I had to figure out a way to deal with the stress of making them: just as officers deal with the titanic stress of their jobs.

Useful things to bring into difficult projects:

Loving family and friends
Disciplined rest (more on this later)
Humor
Perspective
Glowingly wonderful self care
An imaginary community of others making thorny art

I find myself searching out other artists who are working on difficult issues too, like Jenny Holzer. Some of her work deals with people who have been unjustly incarcerated:the other side of law enforcement. (This Art 21 site is a gold mine,by the way.Some really interesting, meaningful and unusual work there.)


Strata (Work In Progress)
watercolor and ink on paper
22" x 30"

"Tools" in this series can mean a number of things: an attitude, a frame of reference, an idea or approach, a concept like community policing or a physical tool. Police officers are in the unusual position of traveling through all strata of society. The words on this drawing, acting like guy wires to stabilize the vertical forms, describe people from all walks of life. This drawing is a work in progress and I'll be moving in this direction for awhile.

While The Muse Is Napping

These are some gentle experiments from my sketchbook inspired by Tina Mammoser's latest project:Wave Mechanics. She has generously agreed to share her photos of the River Thaemes under creative commons. I'm using her photos as a jumping off point for messing around with ideas and media. Thanks Tina!

I'm playing with oil stick, ink on yuppo, ink and hardware gold, and watercolor and hardware store gold.

How do you wait while your Muse sleeps?


I've posted a link for the NOAA site for hydrology reports on the Des Plaines River on Watermarks if you'd care to check this out. If your country has such a service, please feel free to leave a link in the comments section of my Watermarks Post.

More Ink Experiments

Gold first, ink on top


ink first, gold on top


I've been fooling around a bit more with ink and this time I'm working with some gold paint. In Ann Blockley's book,
Watercolour Textures, I found a page dealing with watercolor and hardware store gold paint. This smelly,oil based paint is cheap and travels in an odd way through watery media.

For these two experiments, I'm using cold press paper, swiping a streak of plain water on the paper and dropping either ink first or gold paint first.

I'm still fiddling around with what direction to take with Waterways, trying to be patient and see what emerges. This weekend, Craig and I plan to see a watery destination and I'll be looking for flow.

The Police Department work progresses but I'm only happy with about every fourth drawing. Look for a couple of drawings soon, though my photographs of the work are truly awful.