The second half is about artists residencies, and that’s the panel I will be part of. Anne Bothwell from KERA Art and Seek will be the moderator with Dennis Nance from the Lawndale Art Center, Heyd Fontent and Cassandra Emswiler from CentralTrak, and myself from La Reunion TX addressing topics such as What types of artist residencies are there, How to find a good fit for your medium, and a few inside tips.

Each year the Texas Association of Museums conference (TAM) has an official theme, this year it was Navigating the Raising Waters of Change. And then there is the theme that develops as the attendees converse.  Last year it was “Yes, Our budgets and staff have been cut back, but we are optimistic about finding new ways to deal with it”.  (TAM post 2011)

As the 2012 Texas Association of Museum conference in San Antonio progressed, it became clear that those strong hearted souls from 2011 were feeling the toll of yet more cut backs, lay offs and reduced funding.

For some reason beyond my comprehension. Texas supports the elimination of all funding for the arts. Texas supports deep cuts in funding of public education and public programs. Texas also supports reducing the taxable write off of donations.

Eliminating funding for the arts will not only get rid of that non-profit museum down the street that only shows conceptual installations involving string and hot glue, it will also close the doors of the hundreds  historic museums in small towns across Texas.

With the cut backs in art funding, most museums, big and small, have turned to developing their educational departments as a way to make ends meet. Now, with education funding under the gun, museums, libraries, community centers and historic sites are wondering where to turn next…

Perhaps the community! Perhaps they can fill that financial gap with donations?!  Unfortunately the taxable write off for donations made to non-profits has been reduced yet again. This reduction has persuaded the community to hold off on giving away their hard earned money.

Last Option: Raise the ticket price for admission.


Result: The community cries foul! This museum is an elitist institution that thinks its to good for people like me!!! So the doors shut.

Fortunately, most art museums are high security structures that can easily be converted into prisons. With all the cuts in education and public programing, we’ll be needing a lot of those real soon.

The Texas Association of Museum (TAM) conference starts on Tuesday. This year the 5 day conference is being held down by the River Walk in San Antonio.

I’ll be part of the NTAAC session Conservation Roundtable. There will be 5 art conservators sitting at 5 roundtables. Each conservator will be addressing questions that pertains to their field of expertise:

Paper- Tish Brewer – the Center for Art Conservation, Dallas TX
Paintings- Anne Zanikos – Anne Zanikos Art Conservation, San Antonio TX
Textiles- Melanie Sanford – Textile Preservation Services of Texas, Dallas TX
Photographs- Corinne Dune – DBA Photogragh and Paper Conservation Services, San Marcos TX
Furniture- Brad Ford Smith - Studio Six Art Conservation, Dallas TX

Very excited to be on the panel with this group of art conservators.

Anyway, I am still blogging on my old blog site for the time being. Here’s the link in case you got transferred over to this new blog site.

Above are some small elements of a wall sculpture I am working on. More on that and all the other art rambling soon.

While teaching the Drawing Fundamentals class at CAC I used several books to help demonstrate the various elements of drawing. Since then a few people have asked for a list of those books, so here they are.

The War of Art, Steven Pressfield
Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain, Betty Edwards
Cezanne and Pissarro Pioneering Modern Painting,  Joachim Pissarro
Cezanne In The Studio Still Life In Watercolors, Carol Armstrong
The Paintings Of Jakuchu, Money L. Hickman
Impressionist And The City Pissarro’s Series Paintings, Richard R. Brettell
Vincent van Gogh Drawings and Watercolors, DMA publication 1967
An American Pulse: Lithographs of George Wesley Bellows, San Diego Museum of Art publication 1999
The Art Of Drawing, Bernard Chaet
American Drawing The 20th Centery, Paul Cummings
Daumier 1808-1879, National Gallery Of Canada publication 1999
Matisse Drawings and Sculpture, Prestel

In the studio there is that moment when a painting finally comes together to form a complete idea.

For six weeks we have been focusing on drawing by breaking the practice of drawing down to it’s basic elements; contour line, mass, mark making, negative space, relationships, gesture and composition.

For this last class of Drawing Fundamentals, we are taking all those elements and applying them to a larger scale view. This shifting from still life to landscape tends to bring about a regression of drawing skills, but all the drawing elements apply in the same way. The objects in the landscape are the same as the fruit in the still life. Apply the elements to flatten your view of the world, all the objects will become a flat pattern which is transferred onto the page like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Ceramic Class Room

Of course the trick is to stop thinking in 3D. You know the bucket is round, but in a drawing its a rectangle with curved ends.

When drawing landscapes you do need to acknowledgment the horizon line. The line that marks the separation of seeing the tops of objects and seeing the bottoms of objects. In the drawing of the Ceramic Class Room, you can see the tops of the buckets on the floor, but you can’t see the tops of the objects on the top shelf.

This horizon line is your grounding straight line. All lines angle off of this line. Angling more as you look higher up or lower down. It tells you what the angle of perspective should be for all the other flat shapes.

Sorry, that’s probably more confusing than it is enlightening. That’s the nature of perspective. You just have to be there and do it to understand it.

Anyway, This was the last day of class and my last day to teach Drawing Fundaments. A Big Thank you to the Creative Arts Center for this opportunity to fill in while the instructor was recuperating. I really enjoyed the experience of getting back to the fundaments of drawing.

Next week: I’ll blog about something new.

The scribble allows you to react and respond to the subject intuitively. You make decisions about composition before you have had time to think about composition. The scribble involves your whole body, not just your fingers.

So, tonight, working from one large still life, we drew like devils. Starting out with several one minute drawings, then 2 minutes drawings, then 5 minutes, and finally finishing the night with a 30 minute drawing. Here’s a montage from the class.

I spent a crisp Sunday morning at La Reunion TX with the filmmaker Mark Birnbaum. You might recall previous posting about his videos on this blog.

He was there shooting footage for a short film that will highlight the natural setting of LRTX.

Here’s a quick snapshot of a wall installation in the mud and plaster stage.

My sketchbook is getting filled with drawings of elongated forms that often have knobs, forks, and horns. I am turning some of these into small ceramic sculptures that will eventually be installed as a random scattering on a wall.

In the photo above, in the bottom left corner is an oil clay model on a 5″X 7″ MDF panel. The white block next to it is a plaster mold cast from one of the oil clay models. Above that, to the left is a plaster mold filled with clay. Next, shows the extra clay cleared away from the mold surface. On the blue board are the clay sculptures after being removed from the molds.

From here the sculptures go into the kiln to be bisque fired, then glazed, and then high fired. The ones that survive this torturous trial will become part of a large wall installation.