Still Working

DonorsChoose!

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 01:04:00 +0000

http://www.donorschoose.org/CMSArt

Not moving after all

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 16:49:00 +0000

Well, I didn't like Wordpress, so I'm back to this one. I had to imbed this video of Bansky's now-vanished piece in the Village somewhere, so back to work here.

Moving -- gradually

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Sat, 10 May 2008 13:51:00 +0000

I'm shifting my blog over to Wordpress, although it will take a little while to get things like my blogroll transferred. For the time being, I'll post both places. The address is http://bettycbowen.wordpress.com, and that's where the link on my website will go.

I like Blogger just fine, but I need to be able to quickly update my classroom blog - instructions for projects, etc., and my school blocks Blogger, but not Wordpress. So, its easier to have them both in one place.

see you over there!

A sounding board

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:50:00 +0000

I don't really know what a "sounding board" is, but I know it is important for artists to have at least one. Somebody who has known our work for a long long time, and whose aesthetic judgement is solid and trusted. In my case, that would be Mary Dryburgh Gustafson. I just wanted to share a shapshot Mary sent to show me one of her new paintings. I don't know the title, but it is the black crow on the yellow ground, an homage to Baskin's crow. Mary (the tall woman) has worked with images of crows off and on for 20 years or so. We visited this weekend and talked about the art we are working on (and not working on) and she was feeling like she wasn't getting anything done. I encouraged her to do a series of relief prints. Mary's woodcuts are always very powerful things, and she hasn't been doing enough of them lately (in my opinion). We also discussed how I am apparently unable to successfully work in black and white, which is her strong suit. After seeing this crow image however, I think she can add yellow.

Where is she?

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 16:50:00 +0000

I've begun making a mosaic for the backsplash of my newly remodeled kitchen-in-progress. I think it will be pretty close to the picture in my mind, eventually. The large spaces will be filled with tile I've started making at the Lachenmyer Art Center here in Cushing, under the patient guidance of Art Center director Rob Smith (who is currently having a solo show at the Ponca City Art Center).

This 5 x 5 box mosaic was my practice piece. It will be given to the Tulsa Artists Coalition fundraiser the 5 x 5, which is May 5, 5:55 p.m., where it will sell for $55. The 5 x 5 is quite an experience, and worth standing in line for.

Verticality

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 01:24:00 +0000

The weekend flew by, I don't have my new web page published yet, but here are a couple of the paintings I'll be adding. The green one was in my show at the Tulsa Artists Coalition last March, and the red one "Rising" is new. These photos were just snapped where the paintings are hanging, so they are cropped slightly.

New Paintings

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:43:00 +0000

It has been a busy week or so, the whole-house remodel is still coming along, the new windows are in my studio, the bathroom has walls. Soon I hope to be back to work, but for now I can finish up a few small things.

We spent the weekend in Austin, and I joined both "Women and Their Work" non-profit gallery, and Women Printmakers of Austin, both of which offer an online portfolio. I'll get my work on the Oklahoma Visual Artists Coalition portfolio soon, I sent it in last year and they lost it (they are usually very efficient, no harm done).

In the next few days I'll be putting up about six 10" x 30" paintings on my web site. These work well in those weird narrow spaces of a room where a little piece wouldn't be quite right. I also really like working with this shaped format. This is a snapshot of one of those paintings, I'll have a better picture of it for the website. The colors are warm and fun, and it is not as linear as a lot of my other work.

And now

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 01:02:00 +0000

This is what my studio looks like now. The shop sink is being plumbed, and the new windows come tomorrow. In a few days the wall to the left will have a new door added, so in a way I am gradually losing wall space, but the light is going to be great. There are so many things to plan and organize. I think I will paint it white or a very very light yellow, with a blue-violet ceiling. I paint with those colors a lot, and think I would be happy and productive surrounded by that combination.

New Studio

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 19:36:00 +0000

This morning "Promote your ar t" classmate Jerry Cable wrote about the wonder of suddenly and unexpectedly finding the studio of his dreams. Our stories are very different, but I am also finding my studio. It is the room that was once the childhood bedroom I shared with my sister who now lives in Ohio. Here is a picture of my studio in those early days. The windows (there are four) look out onto the backyard and garden, and beyond there is a small pasture with horses. A few years ago a robin built a nest on the ledge of the window in the right of the photo, and my elderly mother and I got to watch the whole process up to the baby birds flying away.

Yes, that is a real fox stole around my sister's neck. I don't remember where it came from, but it definitely was a hand me down - and those are silk honeysuckle on my hat (loved that hat). The teapot played "you take the high road" when you picked it up. It is a little shocking how many of the objects in this photo I still have - the clock, the table, the teapot (not the fox!).

A new blog!

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 03:37:00 +0000

I have just started a new blog dedicated mostly to my Art II class. We've been working on clay animation, and my school will not allow me to access You Tube, and our software's tutorials are all there.....and the kids parents are expecting to be able to see their kids work on You Tube....So I'm going to use my blog as a way to handle all of that. And of course I will include some other artwork as we go, and pictures of field trips, etc.

An upside for THIS blog may be that I will focus more about my own art making here, and keep the school stuff over there.

Ms Bowen's Art Class Gallery

Looking back at 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 22:33:00 +0000

Ceramic artist and blogger Cynthia Guajardo recently suggested using this time to post about what the year was like for us art-wise.

Well, it was a good art year for me. In March I had a one-person show at the Tulsa Artists Coalition which was my most successful one person show ever. Besides selling half the show, the staff was great to work with and the whole experience was fun.

Then I took an online art marketing course from Alyson Stanfield which truly helped me make the most of the whole solo-show experience. Some of the participants have continued to keep in touch on a Yahoo group, and that has been very helpful and pleasant as well. With their help I started my website and this blog. I also subscribed to a rather expensive one-year experiment with TODL (Trade Only Design Library) as an art marketing tool. So far I've had no sales via TODL, but I have mailed over 1,000 postcards to people who have looked at my work there.

I also opened a small Etsy store, and have sold a few pieces there (and have bought even more!). In summer, besides the usual Art Camp here in Cushing, I taught a week of painting at Art Experience camp on the campus of NEO University in Tonkawa, Oklahoma. That was a good experience too. We focused on animals. Then in the fall I attended the photography workshop at Quartz Mountain I've mentioned before, and also taught a woodcut workshop at the Ponca City Art Center. All in all, I sold a record thirty seven pieces of art this year. Amazing.

So, what is this year going to bring? I don't know of course, but I do know I've finished one painting this first week of the year, so maybe it is off to a good start.

The photo I just posted isn't a painting, but a lovely bird's nest that was in the weeping willow that is now mostly cut down due to damage from the massive ice storm we endured a few weeks ago. It has a soft swirling form from the long narrow willow leaves, I've never seen a nest quite like it. There are mountains of tree branches piled in heaps in front of everybody's houses, and the birds have all moved in to those warm sheltered places. I'm pretty concerned that they will soon be building nests there which will all be destroyed by the time the city is finally able to haul the mess away.

My one print

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 02:24:00 +0000

At the Quartz Mountain workshop with Luther Smith, I focused on trying to make one good print. This was a pretty good idea because my allergies made it inadvisable to do much walking around outside and taking pictures. I learned a lot, and this is the best print I got, from our field trip to the town of Mangum, OK. My scan of it loses all the details in the shadows that I tried to hard to maintain, but you get the general idea. I called it checks because of the repeating pattern of squares in the bench, the tiles on the ground and the wall, and also in the shadow.

Back from the mountain

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 14:15:00 +0000

I'm back after a four day workshop at the Fall Art Institutes at Quartz Mountain. While I was there I realized it was my eleventh year to go to the mountain for one reason or another, starting as a writing student in 1979 - the summer of my senior year in high school. I was a camp counselor 3 years after college, and have since been to seven of the fall adult workshops. So, from the days of sitting on bales of straw, to before the fire, to after the fire when the dining hall was a tent, and now a few years in the beautiful new facilities shown here. This year I took a very good course in intermediate darkroom with Luther Smith, (assisted by Konrad Eek) where I mostly concentrated on print quality. I really enjoyed learning to use filters. Maybe I'll post my best photo later in the week.

This second picture shows one of the two entrances to the darkroom - just to the right you can see the large deck overlooking the lake. Working in all this natural beauty is one of the main things that make these workshops so important to my life as an artist. The third snapshot was taken between the studio pavilion and lodge.

One of my student's families has begun a large vineyard not far from Quartz, and since his mom is our high school art teacher, and also at the workshop, we stopped there on the way back and took pictures for him to work from in class. One of his classmates liked the picture of the deer skull hung from the fence, and is working with it.

some6th grade weavings

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 14:41:00 +0000

Finished

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 01:39:00 +0000

A few days ago I posted the unfinished version of this painting, and over the long weekend we had, I finally have it just where I like it. It has been a very agreeable painting to work with. Some pictures seem to work against me until they finally let me get them where I want them to be, and others seem happy to go along with whatever I want to try. It is 30" x 30" on a cradled panel that is 2" deep, and painted in acrylic.

I'm not supposed to have favorites...

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:57:00 +0000

...but I stop and look at this new piece of student art every time I go past the display case. I photographed it in front of a painting of mine so it could have a sky for a background.

I think it is wonderful, a winged golden man captured just at the moment he touches back to earth. It is about 8" tall, and made from wire, newspaper & masking tape, plaster gauze, and paint. And a piece of wood.
It is by Zach, an 8th grader in my Art II class.

back to this one

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 14:06:00 +0000

Putting an unfinished painting on the wall is risky business, because I can get attached to it the way it is, but it sure is easier than storing them! This one is going to get some work today.

This painting is an image I have worked with four times now, from my sketchbook to a small painting to this larger unfinished piece, to a woodcut.

Allergy season is upon us, and I spent part of yesterday at our local Festival in the Park in the Oklahoma wind, and the rest of it trying to get ready for a garage sale and taking things to storage, so the dust and pollen did double duty. Staying indoors and painting is probably a good idea. I already had one day of school with no voice, and thankfully my students treated me kindly. We accomplished a lot with hand gestures and notes.

New Painting

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 01:35:00 +0000

Here is my latest painting, it is 30" x 30" on a cradled panel. It was photographed before being hung, and I will have a better photo of it later. It was commissioned by a family for their mother's birthday gift to go in her newly redecorated living room. I developed the design after talking with her about some of her own ideas, then surprised her with it this weekend.

Working in my small studio space, these 30" x 30" panels have seemed large, but seeing this painting on her enormous walls made them look really small!

Back to Work

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 13:01:00 +0000

Summer went fast, but fall commitments are suddenly picking up.

The "Suite Oklahoma II" printmaking portfolio is complete and has been displayed at ArtsSpace Ponca City, and opens today at Milagros print studio in OKC. It is also available for viewing by appointment at the Lachenmeyer Art Center in Cushing. It is a portfolio of work by...I think*... 18 printmakers across Oklahoma, including me. Hopefully it will be available for online viewing at some point. *we are still waiting on one print to be finished -- not mine!

Last summer 3 friends and I visited Italy thanks to a fellowship from Fund for Teachers. In two weeks we open an exhibit of art that was made in reference to that experience. It will be a mix of photographs, including a couple of my pinhole photos, some jewelry made with Murano beads, a couple of serigraphs, a large woodcut, and maybe a painting or two (if I get them finished!)

I am still working on emptying my childhood home in preparation for a major remodel. Yesterday I finally worked up the courage to "process" my mother's dresser drawer, which was pretty painful but ok in the end. I'm going to make that room my studio.

Slipping away

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 17:38:00 +0000

Summer is really slipping away, between art camp and traveling. Art camp was a great success. The first group of kids was perhaps my most engaged and enthusiastic ever. The second week, well, I really wondered about them at first. Seated in front of paper and piles of crayons, all twelve of them just sat there. My helpers and I told them they could draw while we waited for everybody to arrive, and nobody bothered. I thought "oh dear, a week of this?" Who could imagine a dozen third graders with no interest in coloring? I suggested they do something with their names.....so a few wrote their names, and that was it.

As it turned out, these kids had great imaginations and remarkably long attention spans, they just weren't into drawing. I asked them to choose an animal, and I made them a wire armature of it and had it waiting for them the next morning - the wire is too stiff for little hands - then they built up the bodies with newsprint and tape, and we covered them with plaster gauze and painted them. I was amazed with their ideas and the fact that they happily spent an entire morning on this one project.

It never fails to interest me that classes of kids have a kind of groupthink.

printing on clay

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 02:08:00 +0000

I am a printmaker, not a potter, but have occasionally considered the possibilities of using my carved woodblocks to press into clay (after they have been editioned of course).

Just in the past week I have been thinking about it more, probably thanks to potter Cynthia Guajardo writing about the subject on her blog . No doubt she will come up with some lovely things for her etsy shop, so I'll be keeping track of her experiments and progress.

Then, on the always fun design blog Decor8, I read about the potter Nathan William and his collection that is impressed with vintage Indian woodblocks, then layers of glazes. The effect is very mysterious and textile-like. This Terracotta Sugar Jar is an example of his work from his Esty shop hijackedceramics.

I'm thinking more along the lines of using my old woodblocks to make my own mosaic tiles, something simple like that. I start week 2 of Art Camp tomorrow, and we'll start off with clay and paper mache (because it is raining daily, and that way things will have all week to dry!), so maybe I'll try something out. If so, I'll put up a picture.

testing

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 00:13:00 +0000

While taking a break from clearing things out of the family home, I've taken a couple of entertaining "personality tests". The first was on HGTV.com, a "Style" test - I came out "Eccentric with a touch of sweet", and then my "Personal DNA" report was that I am a "Respectful Creator".

both tests are fun and free.

Marc3

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 02:40:00 +0000

Much to my surprise I discovered today that my work appeared on the website Marc3. I don't know how it got there, and don't know much about the site because I do not read Spanish. Maybe once school starts again one of my students can read more about it for me. In any event, it is a very handsome site and I like the other art that is displayed there so I'm happy! It is like being in a group show except lots more people see the art.

I discovered it when it turned up as a "referring link" on StatCounter.

Art Camp starts tomorrow, and as usual I'll have second graders. My first year of doing art camp they whipped through my entire weeks' curriculum the first day!!! But I'm an old hand at it now, they only scare me a little. (Glitter fingerpaint is key----in Cyan, Magenta and Yellow, and they discover color mixing on their own, it is pretty fun) Hopefully I'll have to pictures to post.

Women in Art

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 00:57:00 +0000

Thanks to Judy Decker on the artsednet list for directing me to this wonderful thing.

part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Betty C. Bowen) — Wed, 30 May 2007 19:42:00 +0000

The photos in this post and the one below are from this semester's Middle School students. We wove functional bags (the boys don't like me to call them purses) in the 6th grade (some are photographed with flaps open) and the 7-8th graders went completely crazy making sculptural figures from wire, masking tape and newspaper. I'll add more of those tomorrow, my school computer has no way to rotate images. (hard as that is to believe!) The bag to the right shows blending, egyptian knot, vertical stripes, and joining (the triangle), all required patterns, but of course they can make those patterns do whatever they want. This boy created his own pattern, using the yellow black and green in a very interesting way between the stripes and the triangle. I especially like the skull bag. The red eyes are a nice touch.

As for the figures below, there is a Sumo champion and a moment of drama between a smurf and a giant caterpillar that is attacking the smurf's toadstool home.