A Musing Artful Meanders

Growth and learning...

2008-04-16T03:46:55Z

The Art of Making Paste Papers

I am learning all the time.
The tombstone will be my diploma.

-Eartha Kitt
Working with children; sharing the learning process at its very beginning is an education and delight unto itself. So fresh and full of promise and discovery.

Holding the pencil strangely really helps

I've spent the last week with a wonderful group of young students in the

Getting ready to paint

studio. It's fun, it's satisfying. What unique ideas they come up with: young & old; naive and sophisticated. Growth is visible, tangible and exciting.
We worked with paint in a variety of ways, both watercolor and acrylic, and also worked with combed and stamped paste papers. My first time doing that, so it truly was a learning experience for me as well.

Now I am eager for an immersion into color.
Both on the canvas, and in the world. Spring is just barely beginning to awaken in Vermont. I know the azaleas and cherries are blooming a few hours south of here, but we still have snow in the shadows in our woodland home.
Spring travels north 16 miles a day.

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The powerful tides of cyber-change

2008-04-08T21:14:50Z

They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
-Andy Warhol
This is such a fascinating process, Alyson Stanfield's brilliant Blog tour...
It's a book promotion, but also an education. I have enjoyed and learned so much reading the queries and responses that are being posted on the various blogs. Todays was on http://pocketfullofcolors.blogspot.com, the blog of Robin Maria Pedrero, a Florida artist who paints imagery with powerful pastel colors.
I already have Alyson's book,and it is a terrific, informative resource for the artist trying to figure out how to step forward in the world. There's a link to where you can get her book on my blog.
To travel along on the blog tour, go to http://www.artbizblog.com and sign up!
Pretty amazing how the world becomes more and more connected through cyber space.

Close Window

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Milky Way

2008-03-31T21:29:00Z

Flight I Milky Way

Explore.
Dream.
Discover.
-Mark Twain

What a brilliant man!

Pouring liquid colors, dark on light, luminous and translucent onto dark opaques, with interjections of texture, roughness, sparkle and energy.
It is quite a thrilling and entertaining exploration... Then comes the opportunity to juxtapose the details of life's complexity. Is it okay to have this much fun when I am working?
It's a good thing to have some flowing fun, and to labor less agonizingly every once in a while. My puritanical fore-mothers might not approve, but oh well...
I'm going for it, especially on this dismally gray New England day.
Brandon is ever-so quiet, hunkering down in glowering hibernation mode, yearning for the first green shoot to emerge from the dingy snowbanks.
Spring happens.
Eventually.

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Carson, New Mexico, March 2008

2008-03-31T03:45:57Z

Carson, New Mexico, 87517

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars—on stars-- where no human race is
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

-Robert Frost

It's so hard to explain how Carson draws me.
Even explaining it to myself is difficult. A place of simplicity for me, of vastness and survival. It doesn't frighten me, as Frost suggests. I am full of serenity when I am there, saturated by the scent of the sage; reveling in the brilliant light which illuminates the desert's excruciating demands, exquisite details and challenges. I'm challenged to look inward, and to be completely present in the moment.
It's a huge relief.
So much simpler than real life.
Me estira mi querencia... a phrase I learned in Paraguay. I am drawn, stretched and elongated in spirit towards that which I love... These vistas emerge in my art here in New England, 1500 miles away, 38 years after living there.
In this photo, taken in March I am painting in my front patio there... if that's what one can call a circle of eroded walls sprouting overgrown sage, russian thistle and grama grass.
The painting was not much, but it is the first I've done there in ever so long.

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Marlboro Arts Spring 2008

2008-03-20T21:54:08Z

Marlboro booth

The Paradise City Arts show at Marlboro was beautiful. A fascinating collection of beautiful work in every medium. I was so pleased to be included. The clientele was very appreciative of the quality, originality and diversity of the art as well.
I had put off making new covers for my booth grids, and then had trouble finding enough fabric. Thank goodness two knowledgeable friends helped me organize the sewing project and sewed and pinned many yards of the 47 that had to be assembled! Thanks so much to Karen Schneider and her friend Diane... It would have been an all nighter instead of a home at 3 am morning.
Then it was off to set up the show, and be there for the next 3 days...
An excellent time, in an excellent location, meeting excellent artists. Great response to the work as well.
Then, after arriving home in Vermont on Sunday evening late, I discovered on Monday morning that I was leaving for New Mexico that afternoon instead of Tuesday as I had thought. Forget unpacking!
Catch the plane!

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Dreamweaver Daze Part II

2008-03-09T19:24:26Z

The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

or if you choose to see the world through the eyes of my favorite comic cynic:

Life is like a sewer.
What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
-Tom Lehrer

Comparable thought, different metaphor.
It's been a week since I struggled with the indecision as to whether I should attempt to undertake an online course. It was NOT easy getting going. The good news is I seem to be swimming rather than sinking. http://www.petemyers.net is the current result, and I'm pretty pleased with it for a starting project. There is much to be done, but at least now that I'm over the first hurdle of understanding how to make it look the way I want it to- at least sort of.

Meanwhile, there are still two commissions in process, and I am VERY EXCITED about some new breakthroughs with surface treatment on the canvas. And the Marlboro, Massachussetts show is next weekend. We'll be setting up on Thursday, and I'm there until Sunday. Long days in the booth chatting with lots of people. At least I hope that's how it will be!

At least life isn't boring.

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Leaping into an Artful Event: Celebrating the Effort

2008-03-05T03:06:45Z

I don't wait for moods.
You accomplish nothing if you do that.
Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.
- Pearl Buck

Pete in the Framing studio

Hanging a new show is a demanding process, and this one was doubly, triply, astonishingly intense.
Uncommon View, Photos by John Peterson Myers renewed a standard of accomplishment for us in the gallery and frame shop. Pete arrived on Saturday February 24. By Friday the 29th- Leap Day 2008, we had framed nearly 60 of his fabulous photos, and hung 33 of them all beautifully. The others will be hung in Charlottesville for his opening this Friday night at the Mudhouse.
All of this took place between his lectures at Middlebury, Green Mountain and Castleton Colleges on environmental health. Jim steadfastly kept the matting and framing process going at an amazing and exacting pace. He is a perfectionist with a great sense of subtle color. Pete and I would jump on board when we returned from the hallowed halls of academia, matting, cutting the glass, cleaning the pieces, assembling, etc into the night. Pete emerged from this process as an excellent framer as well, having traveled from Charlottesville with his matt cutter in the back seat. Precision suits him.

The opening was well attended with a crowd of people arriving from Shelburne, Poultney, Ripton and all the mountain nooks and crannies in between. It was a gathering of wonderful thinkers, and articulate do-ers. Much fun, and amazing conversation.

A corner of the show... there were lots more

In the photo with the three of us you can't see all the red dots... for those uninitiated in the ways of the art world, red dots denote sales... one form of public validation of the work. It was a success in every way...

Pearl Buck speaks to the reality that an artist can't wait for the muse to murmur in their ear. We must leap into the creative act, and persevere.

And for some reason we do.

And yet, we can't forget how important it is to take the time to celebrate the effort.

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Dreamweaver Daze

2008-03-05T02:45:11Z


Learning is not compulsory...
Neither is survival.: -W. Edwards Deming

I am two days into a month of taking an online Dreamweaver course.
I know I can do this, even though it isn't the way I want to spend my time right now. Or at all. I have finally come to the conclusion that it's essential to have the knowledge of how to do this myself rather than try to explain it to someone, or wait until someone who knows how to do it has time for me.
HOWEVER... It is quite daunting to be reading pages and ever more complex pages of a foreign tongue... Fortunately ultimately it will be an intuitive process, or at least that is the reputation of the program. Meanwhile I am very focused.

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Uncommon Views, Photos by Pete Myers

2008-02-18T02:35:45Z

Please join us at the opening Liza Myers Gallery 22 Center St. Brandon Vermont

The first law of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
- Aldo Leopold

We're about to have a fabulous event at the gallery.

Pete Myers,

    The first-ever exhibition of photography by JP (Pete) Myers, renowned environmental scientist and highly published photographer. Pete will be at the opening from 5-7 on February 29th.
    Myers' photographs of the natural world have been published in such highly respected journals as Smithsonian Magazine, Audubon Magazine and Natural History. Birds, insects, flowers and dewdrops all shimmer with life. Through his camera lens we have an insightful, exquisite and intimate view of nature.

I think Aldo Leopold would see his work as a celebration of "all the parts."
    His bio is as stunning as his photos.
Here are just a few tidbits:
    Pete is founder, CEO and chief scientist of Environmental Health Sciences which publishes EnvironmentalHealthNews.org DailyClimate.org and OurStolenFuture.org. In 1996 he co-authored Our Stolen Future, a book that helped revolutionize the science of environmental health.
    Pete's photos will be available at the gallery on an on-going basis, but to meet the artist, join us on Feb 29!
    I have to admit I am inflicted with acute lens-envy when I see the amazing photos that Pete produces. Lens-envy and an overwhelming appreciation of the complexity and beauty of the biosphere.
    I also must add that Pete is one of my four amazing scientist brothers.
    In my sibling group there are four PhD's and two women. : )
    The women are artists... myself with a pigment and a brush or clay, my sister with magnificent gardens. All of my brothers take great photos, many of which can be seen at the University of Michigan's Animal Diversity website, which was initiated by my eldest brother Phil Myers, long ago when the web was young. There you can find photos by Phil, Pete and Roger Myers.

They also celebrate "all the parts."

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Size does make a difference...

2008-02-14T19:43:44Z

Marsh Nest acrylic, 30" x 40"

I hope if dogs take over the the world

and they choose a king,
they don't just go by size

because I bet there are some Chihuahuas
with some good ideas.
-Deep thoughts by Jack Handy

Sometimes it is seems just right to be ridiculous.
When I see this painting on the web it is teeny. There isn't the sense of mystery that you get when you see it 30" x 40", and you can't see the shadows on the eggs... I'd like to do it 5' x 8', the way I see a nest when I come upon its tangled grasses in a marsh. Huge, intricate and full of the future.

It is scary how much time I can spend on the web sites and blogging.
Time to get back to my easel.

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