Easter Redwood Spirit

Happy Easter you-all!

We took a break from the workshop a couple of days ago and visited a nearby town, forest and marsh.

This time it was the little town of Crescent City, their nearby wetlands and the Jedediah Smith State and National Park.

We had a beautiful sunny day and a rainy, foggy day as is very much the way things are here on the northern California coast in the spring..

Tanya in the rain.

Tanya loves to photograph flowers and she found some new specimens for her photo collection.

I was looking for a "spirit of the redwoods" to use for the workshop and found a burl which is definitely right for the job:

Redwood Spirit. (Tanya photo)

I snapped this photo which shows the huge size of this mysterious redwood burl face.

Have a good Easter and a happy and productive Spring!

Tomasito and Tanya

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Statuettes

Hello again.

Here are the finished statuettes of Brer Rabbit and the tar baby from the Uncle Remus stories.

The portrait of Walt Disney with the shelf-frame for these characters will be ready in a few days.

You may recognize several of the books behind the statuettes.

"Earthprobe" is a book I wrote after a round-the-world backpacking adventure I made some forty years ago--and don't time fly?--which is now available in a new paperback edition geeked by my fascinating and talented wife, Tanya. (Click this link: Amazon  NOW to check it out, heh, heh).(It's a good read.)

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Andy Warhol

Hello.

Andy Warhol.

An American artist in every way.

New York was his long-tine home and his talent as a commercial artist bloomed into a downtown factory situation producing his own unusual brand of product.

He wanted fame and got more than his predicted fifteen minutes thereof along with all the perks and problems of same.

Though physically gone, he is certainly not forgotten. He is a present strong influence on most American artists and seemingly many artists world wide.

From shoe ads to Campbell soup cans and the mass produced celebrity portraits to his signature dress, unique behavior and peculiar movies, Andy Warhol was one of the great artists and personalities of the twentieth century.

When he did his Campbell Soup cans he said; "Everyone thought it was a joke." --a joke which is now worth millions at the Guggenheim, and he remarked that since we are now dealing with "consumer reality"--"In art, anything goes."

I made the below sketch of Andy Warhol from one of his you-tube biographies:

 

 

 "Everyone thought it was a joke"

 Andy Warhol

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Uncle Remus

Hello.

Another rainy afternoon here in Eureka, CA.

Since.  it was sunny this morning I took the opportunity to work on some papier mache projects

It will take them a little longer to dry for the next step, but as Paul Klee is supposed to have said: "Nothing about art is quick."

Above is my colored pencil sketch of Mr. Baskett as Uncle Remus, the star of the Walt Disney film "Song of the South" which I probably first enjoyed as a teen-ager in one of those long gone but not quite forgotten "passion pits",  a drive-in movie theater in Albuquerque.

The film is memorable as a historic piece and you may now see it on U Tube which may or may not be as much fun as going to the drive-in.

I have mounted this sketch in a papier mache frame with a shelf for displaying three of the characters from the original Uncle Remus stories which mom read to us little kids before TV or Walt Disney feature movies. I am making these figures from salt dough--a cheap and very good art medium.

So far I have made Brer Rabbit and the famous "Tar Baby" and will soon make Brer Rabbit's nemesis, Brer Fox.

Here are the unfinished  Rabbit and the Tar Baby (with the rest of my creative workshop junk):

The crafty fox will appear soon, I hope, and I will show you the complete Remus set.

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Juan Miro Finished

Hello.

My Miro portrait sketch you saw in this blog a couple of weeks ago is now finished as a mosaic of recycled magazine picture collage and included into a papier mache frame. This treatment gives it a satisfying (to me!) coherence which I hope you will enjoy.

Here is my original pencil sketch:

Miro was such an interesting and original artist.

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1.  

Around the Workshop

Hello you--all.

There are some other pieces here in the workshop which I would like to show you:

Well, this can only be called my dharma frog. I made the mask a few years ago and it is still around.

When I want to entertain kids I put it on and have them sing "I'm a Lonely Frog" with me while strumming my ukelele.

 Behind the frog are two big pieces--one of president Obama and one of the dharma wheel surrounded  by remarkable telescopic views of some of the wonders of space, while under the frog is a cardboard box mounted portrait of Senator John Boehner surrounded by blue papier mache magazine colors.

And, of course, very nearby: my ukelele.

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Work in Progress

Hello again.

I thought you might like to see some of the work now in progress in my workshop:

Desk pen and pencil caddy with face. 

I am using both papier mache and salt and flour dough in the construction of these caddies. They will be colored with recycled magazine paper color, latex base paint and  acrylic finishing color and varnish.

Exuberant female nude figure on a beach.

 Made with iron-wire armature, recycled  newspaper and magazine page color, the figure is about 12 inches high mounted on a cardboard and papier mache frame of about 18X24 inches.

This three-dimensional figure is diorama-style posed against a two dimensional beach scene.

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Vincent Van Gogh

Hello.

Another angle of our Home Gallery:

Tanya, the baker of great bread and my papier mache mask of Vincent Van.

When I made this mask back when we were living in Redding (very hot, dry climate--good for curing  papier mache...) I felt I had made a break-through with the medium. It seemed more plastic in my hands and I was able to mold it far better than I ever had before and I was beginning to see how leaving areas of newsprint and so forth visible, that is, unpainted, could make a more interesting artistic statement.

I have always liked poor Vincent and have appreciated his struggle to be an artist. He is definitely one of the first on my list of modern-day artists, so I was happy that this portrait mask seemed a creative break-through for me.

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At Home

Hello again.

The weather here in Eureka, California has been pretty cold, for this time of year--nothing like snow or even parka-cold, but rainy, foggy and coat and cap time for sure.

Not the best climate for papier mache work, but very nice for the old redwood trees nearby which have been living near here for thousands of years and it is wonderful to be able to visit them often.

I have been able to spend more time in our fairly  roomy and warm apartment with my art work and I am awfully glad to be able to do it!

Here is what my current apartment wall exhibition looks like. I like to look at the things and often change them to better suit my fancy--so all the objects here are "works in progress!

Oh yes, our bicycle is a part of the exhibition since if it was outdoors it would soon rust away!

I have not been called to my substitute teacher's aide work very often since the first of the year so I have had the pleasure of taking more  time to enjoy myself with art.

And isn't it good to spend time at home "working" full time at what you love?

Tanya and I have been baking our own bread--Tanya has a method of making natural sourdough bread--not from traditional "starter", but growing her own yeast. I don't know how she does it, but it makes great  bread--and , of course  in this apartment it becomes edible art!

Ahh! "Bread angle" toast and coffee for breakfast!

May all of you be happy too!

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Work Station

Here is my work station.

The wooden table is in the living room of our apartment where it gets pretty good natural light from a big window even on the often overcast days of the Eureka winter.

On the sunniest side of the table is my seven bowl "pond".

Since this town apartment has no natural stream or lake nearby--I have my own little  waterway.

Nice, isn't it?

Thanks for stopping by again.

Tomasito

My Work Table.

My Watercourse.

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Juan Miro

Yesterday I mentioned the famous Spanish artist Juan Miro (1893-1983) as an example of an artist who repeated himself over and over with great success.

No small part of his success, I believe, was his good fortune to be a young artist in Paris during the time of tremendous artistic ferment between the world wars.

Ernest Hemingway, who already had a huge international reputation and who loved Spain, bought one of his early paintings and called him the artist which most typified the spirit of Spain.

Art critic Eve Bosch called Miro "A genius. One of the great painters of the 20th century." and he certainly left his mark on the world of western art though he himself declared he was out to destroy (classical) painting.

He certainly was driven and compulsive in his odd style and limited number of images--as I mentioned in connection with my Special Ed student's work in yesterday's blog.

I am happy to add his portrait (below) to my own drawings of the great artists of my time.

Juan Miro. (c.1938)

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Special Ed Drawing

Probably the most outstanding artistic experience I have had as a substitute teacher's aide for Special Education children took place when I was closely monitoring a boy of about 13 years of age who can not talk but who can follow some simple directions, walk, eat and generally take care of himself.

One iof the main academic goals for this child is to get him to write his own name in block letters--a skill which he cannot do though I helped him practice for perhaps fifteen minutes every morning for several months.

I accidentally discovered something artistic which he could do however and which delighted him to do.

If I would place a sheet of paper on his desk, he would draw one long line down the middle of the page and then decorate the page with small dashes of lines on both sides of the central line. He never tired of this exercise and I enjoyed helping him do it.When he would cover a page with little dashes, I would place another sheet of paper in front of him and he would start all over again with the central line and the dashes. To make it more artistic, I would put down colored paper and change the color of his felt-tip pen for variety, but he never tired of doing it.

Of course, since he could not talk and seemed ,to live mainly in his own world, I could not guess the meaning of his drawing.

This compulsive behavior is not so very odd, for an artist, by the way.

I have recently looked into some of the paintings by the famous Spanish painter, Juan Miro, who made  name for himself painting basically the same bizarre symbolic paintings for most of his very long career. He loved to include a stylized ladder, for example, in many of his paintings and painted it again and again and again from his earliest drawings to his last works as an old man.

The artist.

His work.

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Special Ed Aide

I have been working most recently as a substitute teacher's aide in Special  Education classes--mostly in public school classrooms for kids in the elementary grades.

It has been good work for me. I feel helpful and feel like I am doing something which I can do which needs to be done--and, of course, it is a paying job which is also handy.

I like working with kids, especially in these classrooms, where there is a responsible professional teacher in charge and usually other adult help for discipline and care,

I have been able to help a little bit in their art projects which is the area of "education" I am most interested in at this time--though most of my work day is spent in other odd duties as needed.

Some of the kids are pretty well coordinated and are able to draw and color a bit and enjoy a variety of craft projects but many are not able to do very much or really understand very well the purpose of their artistic activities.

Here is an example of one of my fifteen-year old student's work:

And here is my sketch of the same student with his adult aide:

 

As you see--this student is not very coordinated with his use of crayons, but he does like the one-on-one help from his adult aide and seems quite pleased with his artistic creation.

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Paul Klee

Paul Klee.

When I was a college student at Midland College, a Lutheran school in Fremont, Nebraska in the l950's,  I discovered this Swiss/German artist and studied everything he had created available to me in the art department of Midland's little library.

Klee's poetic and whimsical style really caught my imagination at this formative period in my life.

Heavily influenced by Klee, I drew and painted a lot of small pictures based on Shakespeare and other poetic themes

I wrote to the Paul Klee Stifung in Basel, I think it was,  asking for information about the artist and they, probably hoping I was a rich American, sent me a beautiful color catalog of Klee's work--free.

My artist aunt, Nila Clayton, was working for Disney at the time  helping create the Small World exhibition at Disneyland which was perhaps also influenced by Klee's artistic style though he had died in 1940-- a refugee from Nazi Germany in Switzerland.

Some years later, as an itinerant traveler and artist  in Switzerland, I traded watercolor paintings for room and board at the hotel Grand Vareina in Klosters and visited the art museum in Berne where I saw several of Klee's original paintings

I have been figuratively bumping into Klee on and off all my adult life--"So blau wie schnee, so Paul wie Klee"--in Hesse's "Journey to the East" and so forth-- and  feel in him a kindred spirit--though I am far from being the serious and rather driven intellectual of his Teutonic type.

Here is my portrait of this 20th Century artist:

Paul Klee (1879-1940)

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Walt Disney

Hello.

Continuing with the portraits I have recently made of some of the well-known artists of our day, I present today probably the best known of them all: Walt Disney.

Disney started as an artist---that is with a pen in his hand--but his real talent seems to have been recognizing opportunity and being willing to risk everything on what he thought would be a good, creative move--founded on the latest artistic technology, moving pictures.

That he was a success is apparent by his direct legacy, the huge Disney Corporation which, many years after his death  controls most of the video entertainment of the Western World and which influences world culture at almost every level.

Materials available on his life story show him to have been keenly interested in his business activities, a tireless worker who hired the best artistic talent available to anyone in America, and a person who was sincerely interested in giving expression to the cultural values he held dear.

That he was also lucky and born in the right place at the right time is also obvious--but his fame and fortune were certainly dependent on his own personal drive and skill in working with other creative, and often egotistic people. He was apparently a generally healthy, happily married family man and was very fortunate to have had a very skillful, talented and totally supportive younger brother--a regular "Theo" to his more fortunate "Vincent".

People who worked for him and knew him intimately admit that he was one of the best story tellers they ever met, and it is as a wonderful story-teller that most of us who grew up in his time know him best from his movies and television programs.

Walt Disney (about 1945)

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Creative Workshop

Hello again.

My "Creative Workshop" is not just a place. 

I move around far too frequently for that. 

And it is not composed of just certain regular workers, friends or contributors because sometimes people drop by and work with me or us for a little while and then leave and I never see them again.

Some of my fellow Creative Workshop people are my students which I see on a regular, even daily, basis for a semester or a year and then they go on to other teachers or work and very few keep in touch for any length of time.

So my "Creative Workshop" seem to be more of a state of mind.

I keep plugging along because I like art and I like to be "creative" because that's the way I like to be.

Today I will show you a sketch I made of myself and a photograph of a very young artist that came to our Creative Workshop once or twice when we were meeting in the activities room of an old people's home in Escondido, CA:

 Me, Tomasito.

A good beginning.

That's all for today.

Thanks for dropping by.

Tomasito

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