I did talk to a couple of the artists and was inspired by quite a few people's works…one woman referred to her work as ancestral…she said that what first inspired her was buying an old Muskoka chair…there are chips of paint missing, letting the history of the chair show through…the surprise of a past life spent as a red chair, an older still one spent being green…I was drawn to her paintings for a few reasons…the colours were yummy and the paintings were divided into, usually, 3 sections (I have a thing for odd numbers and 3 is one of my favorites)…they were made up of many layers of paint in all these different, wonderful colours and then parts were scraped away to show the colour below...a little piece of red, purple, or blue…like the chipped paint, the previous lives, the things in your life that go together to make you who you are…the many, many layers that come together to create the whole…each painting also had one, little picture – of a house or a tree, collaged on usually spanning over one of the junctures of the sections…the collaged on pictures were so little that you had to move in to get a good look at them…they are beautiful paintings.
Another woman also used thick, yummy colours of paint and collaged in various pieces of pictures…one had a canoe in it…you could just see part of the canoe…it was smeared into the painting with thick paint…another had 3 sections – in the top there was a landscape, then 3 shells and in the bottom section a leaf.
There were 2 glass artists…one did fused glass that he had added plant material to and some had a coloured canoe paddle, or a depiction of the Gatineau River, or a rock runner guy…like cave paintings…they were beautiful…mostly just using clear glass except for the few that had the coloured paddles or rivers in them. The other glass artist layered cut pieces together to create three dimensional scenes…she included wire, tiny figures, coloured foil…I have seen her work before on a studio tour and she had them in the window and all the edges of glass caught and played with the light…they are really beautiful…most of hers were about 6”x6” little scenes.
The other artist whose works I love was one that I am so glad to have come across again! I had seen her works before on a studio tour as well…she makes the most amazing cement (using all different kinds of cement) creations…wonderful bird baths that speak to me still after having seen them 2 years ago!...she puts things in the cement…lace, shells, ceramic balls, leaves that rot away leaving their fossil outlines. She also makes cement sculptures that I guess would sit on a table…sort of blocks ranging in size from 4”x10” to some 1’x2’ ones I saw a couple years ago on that studio tour…she doesn’t just do the cement sculptures though…she also paints and has taken up felting after a trip to New Zealand…this felting is intriguing…so many different things can be done with it…scarves, shawls, panels that are paintings with the felting…little dolls…the felting that this woman did were like collages…bits of things were incorporated into the pieces…bits of lace, a tie, a little beaded treasure…they were such fun to look at!
There were other artists as well – a couple making beautiful silver jewelry, a print artist who had some lovely prints…copper etchings…another thing I have never tried…a potter who does really pretty painting on her pieces, a few photographers and wood workers…it was a wonderful show…
I slept till noon today…had a lot of sleeping to catch up on…things have been a bit stressful and busy of late…so I needed a catch-up! Then went to the show…now I am sitting up in my studio typing this and painting my pottery hearts…one of them started to crack, so instead of firing them a second time (which might have made the crack larger) and glazing them, my pottery teacher suggested painting them with acrylics…that way I can get the rich, deep red I want too! These hearts are going into the mosaics. Now I have to clean up and we are going back out to the Gatineau Hills for dinner at Oma’s…some wonderful slow cooker chicken, black bean, corn and cream cheese creation that has me getting hungry just thinking about it! My younger is coming as well as Cariño…my younger is hoping to be able to have a luxurious bath session…Oma has the most amazing bathroom ever…both my girls love to go out just to take baths there!!! She has a huge bathroom with high ceilings, wonderful ‘woman art’ all around…a huge tub that has the jets that you can use bubbles with and all around the tub is a ledge with more woman art sculptures and candles…it is quite a heavenly spot…the whole rest of the house is absolutely beautiful too and sits up on a hill overlooking a lovely little lake…it is a piece of heaven on earth there…we love going out for visits! Our dogs get to come too and play with Oma’s Kenya…they get to go out and run around free…no leads…what a life!!!
A wonderful last day of AEDM…but I am going to miss it…I am going to keep going though…I now have a few friends and family who check in on me here…so I trust that will be incentive for me to keep blogging!
Here are the pottery hearts…they need another coat of paint yet…but this opens up new possibilities painting pottery instead of glazing! The girlfriend I went to the show with today also suggested my doing larger sculptural-type pottery pieces like my ‘thing’…maybe also combining pottery pieces and paintings…like mixed media diptychs or triptychs…hmmm…so many fun things to think about and try…
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