Suze’s Art News September 2022

Suze’s Art News September 2022

“Art ought to be a troublesome thing, and one of my reasons for painting representationally is that this makes for much more troublesome pictures.”  David Park (posted on the wall above his paintings in the Oakland Museum of California.)

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Carbon is a show at The Vestibule gallery in Seattle. I hung one of my burned tree paintings on the wall and installed a “fire pit” on the floor below it. The stone circle contains objects evoking the top carbon-emitting sectors: energy production, transportation, and agriculture, with a chunk of concrete for the built environment as one member of the ring of stones. There is an opening/performance 9/10 starting at 6 pm that I will attend.

Carved Out, Varnished watercolor on torn paper, 52”H x 10”W (shown rotated)

Fire pit, installation, ~30” in diameter (that is a gas pump handle, not a pistol!)

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I’m happy to be in Lynn Hanson Gallery’s annual ICON show again with both a burned tree painting and a bark beetle book. There is a Seattle reception there 2-4 pm, also on 9/10, that I plan to attend.

Left top and bottom: Bark Beetle Book Volume XXXIII: Hyphae Half-round log, handmade and commercial papers, abaca fiber; 14”H x 6”W x 8”D plus. extended fibers
Right: Twisted, Varnished watercolor on torn paper, 52H x 21”W

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I gave a virtual talk for The Bug Society (aka “Scarabs”) in July and have several coming up: Seattle’s Book Arts Guild at 7pm on 9/8, and, together with Lorena Williams, “Wildfire in Beloved Places” on 9/15 for the Wildling Museum’s Fire & Ice exhibit.

The Magnitude of the Problem, digitally printed on fabric in three layers: solid, transparent (left, seen from the front,) and text on black (right, seen from back). The text is Lorena Williams’ story of visiting the threatened Mariposa Grove.
(In the background is one of Amiko Matsuo’s innovative Phos-Chek paintings.)

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I had the pleasure of being a resident at the Mineral School in early August. I finished two new burned tree paintings and still managed to get out to nearby Mount Rainier for hikes and seven small landscape paintings.

Patrol Cabin at Lake George, The Mountain from Mineral Lake and The Mountain from High Rock, all watercolor on 11” x 15” paper

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In June I gave an in-person talk in Twisp, WA, as a 2022  Mary Kiesau Community Fellowship recipient. In September-October I will be heading back to the Methow Valley to begin my listening project: to community members, naturalists, and activists about the 2021 fires. I will also explore the burns themselves. I expect hearing from the people most involved and affected to influence my future artwork.

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“Art that Matters to the Planet” continues at the Roger Tory Peterson Institute in upstate New York, and “Environmental Impact II” will move from Michigan to Southeast Missouri State University.

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At the end of October, I’ll be installing the Magnitude of the Problem painting in the Shunpike Storefront window at Mercer and Terry Streets in South Lake Union, Seattle, where it will be until the end of January 2023.

Here it is during my Six-fold Increase exhibit at Plasteel in July-August.

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After that I’m looking forward to a quiet spell into early 2023 where I can focus creating on new work!

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Suze’s Art News July 2022

Coming up very soon and somewhat later …

Six-Fold Increase: I’ll show burned tree paintings, including a number of new ones and the 21.5-foot Magnitude of the Problem, at Plasteel Frames & Gallery in the Design Center in July-August. There will be an opening reception July 14 from 5 – 8 pm. (Seattle WA)

Larger than Life, varnished watercolor on torn paper, 51.5”H x 28”W; 2022
(Shown rotated)

Carbon: The Vestibule Gallery is assembling a topical exhibit for September; I will be showing both a burned tree painting and a small installation about carbon emissions. (Seattle WA)

Carved Out, varnished watercolor on torn paper, 51.5”H x 10”W; 2022.
(Shown rotated)

Kirkland Arts Center will be showing 3 of my bark beetle books as part of The Truth is Out There August 24 – October 29, with a reception August 26, 6-8 pm, including the recent collaboration with composer Aldo Daniel Rivera Rentería, who composed a short suite for “What the Beetles Sang.” Listen to it here! (Kirkland WA)

Bark Beetle Book Volume 39, Laser-engraved log slices with Douglas Fir pole beetle galleries (Scolytus monticolae), antique wooden violin clamps

Art that Matters to the Planet is an exhibit at the Roger Tory Peterson Institute July 27– October 30. I assumed they would pick one of my submissions and they asked for six: three burned trees and three bark beetle books! (Jamestown NY)

In Magnuson Park there is a second annual plein air festival. I have two paintings in the exhibit (second floor of the administration building) and will give a demonstration outside the Building 30 front door at noon on July 2. (Seattle WA)

South Park Crane, watercolor on paper, 11” x 15”

The Anacortes Arts Festival juried show has again chosen some of my burned trees, including the complex Deep Creek Triplet and the recent Montana Sandblasted. The Festival runs August 5-7 but the juried gallery opens July 30. However, I will be at a Mineral School residency then and not present for the reception. (Anacortes WA)

Deep Creek Triplet with detail view, 51.5”H x 31”W; varnished watercolor on laser-cut polypropylene, 2021.

The Puget Sound Book Artists’ annual membership exhibit includes What the Beetles Wrote and Below the Bark, in which I used padded fabric printed with my painting of Ponderosa bark as a metaphor for the structure of trees. The show is currently on at the Collins Library, University of Puget Sound, until August 5 (Tacoma WA).

Bark Beetle Volume 38: Ponderosa branch, sticks, custom printed fabric, quilt batting, embroidery, grommets, screws, magnets. 12″ x 19″ long fully open, ~3.75″ diameter closed

Science Stories, a traveling book arts show curated by Lucia Harrison, will be opening at Whitman College’s  Penrose Library in August, then travels to The Evergreen State College January-March 2023. (Walla Walla, WA then Olympia WA)

Bark Beetle Volume 34: Resource Competition Branch with galleries; “blue-stained” dimensional lumber, laser-cut Baltic birch plywood, with laser print transfers, Kevlar thread. 5″H x 12.75″W x 4″D.

Based on a remark by entomologist Kenneth Raffa, that both humans and beetles
like to make their homes from wood, thus we are competing for the same resource.
This video about the book shows its morph from beetle-galleried-branch to dimensional lumber.

Also current, The Wildling Museum continues Fire and Ice until September 26. My co-collaborator Lorena Williams and I will be doing an online talk September 15. The registration link isn’t posted yet but check in mid-August. (Solvang CA and everywhere).

The State of the Forest grove of fabric trees, which has been touring with Environmental Impact II since 2019 just opened at Northwest Michigan College. It will go on to two more stops before finishing at the Detroit Zoo in 2023. (Traverse City MI)

In other news, I’m looking forward to a brief residency, postponed from 2020, that is a joint project of Parks Canada, the Alpine Club of Canada and the Revelstoke Visual Arts Centre in July — and likewise at the aforementioned Mineral School in early August. In September/October I am truly excited to begin my stay in the Methow Valley for the Mary Kiesau Community Fellowship.

The online ecology magazine terrain.org featured my burned tree paintings in June.

My head is spinning — I’ll report back how it all turns out!

Collaboration also = Inspiration

A while ago I wrote a post equating iteration with inspiration, but I have an additional candidate.

My friend Ellie Mathews of The North Press recently wrote a post about the pleasures of collaboration, based on a project we worked on together– one of my bark beetle book series, with a poem by Canadian poet Murray Reiss.

Bark Beetle Book Volume XXXVII: Emergency Brake

In the back-and-forth process of ideas and versions, she suggested I paint a portrait of some Ponderosa bark in the absence of any available locally. I did so and the suggestion continues to bear fruit (cones?) …

First I used it printed on fabric for the cover of a book earlier this winter:

Bark Beetle Book Volume XXXVIII: Below the Bark
The padded fabric is a “quilt” cover on the wood, with beetle galleries visible through the “title window,” as if it were a school paper in a folder.

More recently I’ve been working with a young composer on the East Coast, Aldo Daniel Rivera Renteria; I was referred to him by the office manager of the laser cutters I usually work with, Laser Fremont in Seattle. I wanted to do something with these mysterious wooden clamps we found:

Volume XXXIX: What the Beetles Sang

They turned out to be violin clamps. If you’re out in the country in Norway, you make your own folk violin, doesn’t everybody?!? I knew of book forms in India that use large wood screws to hold sheets of painted wood in boxes, so I felt totally legit using them as a binding.

I asked around for music composition apps because it seemed necessary to reference the musical antecedents, but soon realized even if I could put notes on a stave, I was no composer or arranger. Aldo Daniel Rivera Renteria and I had a bunch of Zoom meetings. He wrote two pieces for me, a longer improvisation (Conversation, Improvisation No. 6 | Wood and Metal – YouTube) and a shorter composition (What the Beetles Sang | Bark Beetles Book Vol. 39 – YouTube).

I once again used the Ponderosa bark painting for a folio that contains the score, both a handwritten page (laser cut on the inside wood pages) and the “typeset” formal score:

Bark Beetle Book Volume XL: The Orchestration of Climate
The cover is printed paper over book boards, the inside wood pages were laser-engraved with some of Aldo’s handwritten notation,
and the separate stitched folio is the formal score.

It was a thrill to work with Aldo whose skills are so different than my own! Every collaboration, to date with with foresters, entomologists, poets, papermakers, letterpress printers and now a composer takes me down new creative paths – talk about a gift that keeps on giving!

Suze’s Art News June 2020

Oh my, how the world has changed! I want to acknowledge that we all are experiencing dislocation and distress – some much, much more than others – as a lame introduction to reporting my art endeavors.

I’m reminded of the scene at the end of Casablanca where Bogart says to Bacall, “I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three [one] little people [person, i.e., me] don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world….”

My bean count: residencies cancelled or postponed — three; individual pieces of artwork sitting in shuttered exhibit spaces out there in the world — 72; upcoming exhibits cancelled — two; and one cancelled watercolor workshop on a San Juan river trip for Great Old Broads for Wilderness. And no doubt more to come….

….but at least I can’t take it personally!

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My pandemic project gave me deep focus for the first 41 days. This blog post gives greater detail.

As yet untitled, 6 of 7 panels of varnished watercolor on torn paper, 22 feet by widths from 42” – 49”. I have no place large enough to photograph it all together!

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I’m deeply honored to receive a MadArt Artist Relief grant. I plan to use it to extend opportunities for artists less fortunate than me. While not up there yet, the 3-minute application video I created should be viewable on their vimeo page soon.

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Besides the Kirkland Arts Center People’s Choice Award that prompted the big tree pandemic project in the first place, one of my artist books received an award at Northern Arizona University’s “May You Live in Interesting Times” book arts exhibit. (Little did they know how soon their title’s wish would be granted!)

The Narrows, watercolor on paper, 32” x 14”

I also received a small award in the Northwest Watercolor Society’s recent virtual membership exhibit. I was supposed to be the speaker for March, but the meeting was cancelled. Instead I created a short online talk, still viewable here.

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Urban Moonset, watercolor on paper, 11″ x 15″, begun as a demo for my last Gage workshop

I am still planning to teach a landscape workshop for Gage Academy June 13 and 20. (Sign up soon!) Portions are almost certain to be online, but I am hoping our city and county guidelines will permit small outdoor groups to paint in parks if masked and distanced. The irony of trying to paint plein air landscapes indoors online has not escaped me!

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In my neighborhood a Seattle Opera tenor has been giving small street concerts for the duration. When I listen, I can feel a collective human spirit expressed through art. I’m reminded that while occasions can be upended, indeed vita brevis, ars longa….

 

 

 

 

Plein air peut-être?

Notes from an article originally written for the Northwest Watercolor Society’s June 2020 newsletter with tips that may be useful to others

Most likely you know that plein air means outdoors in French (literally “full air”). It refers to the tradition begun by the Impressionists of going outside to paint from life. It was the invention of small, ready-made, soft-metal, portable paint tubes that made it possible. Peut-être is French for “might be,” or “maybe.”

Little will bring more freshness – and challenge! – to your work quite as much as painting outdoors from life. From Thomas Moran to David Hockney, whenever I see an exhibit that pairs artists’ large studio paintings with their preparatory studies, I always love the studies. They may be smaller, less grandiose and less accurate—but they are so much more direct, personal and free.

I also find that it’s something I have to practice regularly; it’s more like a sport: you can’t expect to score a win if you don’t practice. For many years I have participated in an annual plein air competition in late fall, so I am highly motivated to “train” all summer.

And since this kind of painting is honestly one of the harder things to do, you have to be easy on yourself.

Just as last summer, a group of us are still planning to go outside to paint once a week.   Depending on the state and local orders in force at the time, it might have to be 6-feet-apart, masked and gloved. Or separate in our home gardens with a video meeting afterwards.

Suze at Gasworks Park in 2019 (James McFarlane photo)

 

This year there is so much we can’t assume: the parking lots of some city parks are still off limits to parking. Restrooms may not be open. Restaurants, if open, may be only open for take-out. Besides the painting gear outlined below, add masks, gloves and hand-sanitizer to your kit.  We are planning to maintain a sign-in sheet should there be any need for future contact tracing (and will not be used for any other purpose).

Here are some of the tips and practices I have found helpful:

Painting gear:

• Lightweight folding easel and several sheets of paper that fit on it. Some people bring lightweight folding chairs and paint on a board in their laps, but I like standing because my arm is freer. Some people work in small sketchbook; my preference is separate quarter-sheets.
• Small closing palette that fits on my easel shelf, with my go-to landscape colors in it (always in the same order so I don’t have to hunt for a pigment)
• Several favorite brushes – I can get away with only a 1-inch flat, two sizes of rounds and a rigger
• A camera – I always take a photo between the end of my pencil sketch and starting to paint. Rarely do I ever refer back to it, but just taking the photo allows me to paint more freely knowing I have a backup if something unforeseen occurs. (Yes, there was that time they turned the sprinklers on me at Gasworks when I was only half-finished : – )
• Water cups that fit on my easel
• A filled water bottle with a carabiner on its handle; I can clip it and/or my backpack the easel for extra stability if it’s breezy.
• A pencil case with pencil, pencil sharpener, white vinyl and kneaded erasers, clips to hold my paper to my easel’s board, a Swiss Army knife, pen, and a few business cards
• A quick snack like some almonds, a piece of fruit or a granola bar. We may go for lunch afterwards if there’s a quorum and a convenient spot, but sometimes I need a boost before well before then.
• Travel mug – that way you can’t stick your brush in your beverage.
• Sun screen

And now:

• Hand sanitizer, mask, gloves

Clothing:

• Cathy Gill so rightly says, “First the artist must be comfortable.” Dress in layers you can put on or take off, depending on the weather. I always have a spare lightweight jacket and warm hat with me, as I get cold easily standing still whatever the temperature. Sometimes I’ll wear long underwear if it’s less than 60 degrees and breezy, as well as fingerless wool gloves.
• Sun hat with a big brim that shades your eyes and covers the back of your neck. I don’t like to wear sunglasses because they distort my color perception, so that hat is really important. Picking a location where your board and paper are in the shade and not reflecting glare into your eyes helps too.
• As it gets warmer, one of my layers is a big white long sleeved shirt, so I only have to put the sun-goo on my hands and face.

Useful practices:

• I like to walk around a little and review possible subjects before I settle on a particular one. This is one reason it’s nice to have an easy way to carry your stuff: I use a backpack; some folks have rolling carriers.
• If possible, orient your paper and board 90 degrees to the scene you’re painting. That way you’ll be reacting to your painting at least as much as to reality.
• Especially early and late in the shoulder seasons, reverse the usual light-to-dark watercolor practice and paint the shadows first because they’ll be changing the fastest. You can also do a quick value sketch to fix the darks before they’re changed positions.
• I always ask myself, “why is this going to be a painting and not a photograph,” another reminder that I need not be a slave to the reality in front of me. Or, as my colleague Spike Ress once said to me, “you can lie…”

I can’t tell you how much I hope to see you out there, because it means I’ll be able to get out there too!

Suze Woolf

Art in the Time of Coronavirus, or, “The Big Tree”

It will not surprise you to hear I made myself a massive, hunker-down, shelter-in-place project, now nearly three-quarters completed.

In January I received the people’s choice award at a local juried show. One option for the award is an exhibit on a large wall above the checkout counter at a nearby public library. Before the lockdown went into effect, I made it over there to check out the space. One side of the wall is 24 feet wide, with about 6 feet of vertical space. There is also a smaller wall on the other side of a central doorway.

I’ve always meant to try one of my burned tree paintings on the lengthwise axis of a roll of watercolor paper — but been intimidated by the time commitment required. With my beloved wilderness off-limits, I knew I needed something demanding to do.

When completed it will be 22 feet long (not quite an entire roll  of 30 feet : -) Since I don’t have room to work on something that big in my studio, I’m doing it in sections that will hang abutted. I figure if John Grade’s immense Middle Fork sculpture was created in sections, I can do it, too.

I’ll mount them so they can be hung either vertically or horizontally, though I expect most venues will need it to be horizontal.

Panels 1-6: I don’t have enough floor space in the largest room I have to lay them out!

Two friends independently dubbed it “Water Lilies of the Anthropocene.” While it’s nowhere near the size of Monet’s largest water lily paintings, it’s the largest of my 12-year preoccupation with wildland fires, as their remains increase in frequency and severity in our warming climate. The library is excited about it and plans to do some programming around it. I’m excited because lots of people will see it — whenever we can visit libraries once again.

I’ve just starting panel 7 of 7, at ~18.5 feet now. Between that and varnishing and mounting, I think it will take another 3-4 weeks. The animation at the top of this post represents 28 painting days, with 7 panel prep days as well.

We have all had plans and dreams interrupted by the virus. I wish us all good health, an easing of the stresses and strictures, and a chance to show what we’ve been working on during this pandemic siege.

UPDATE May 1, 2020:

The painting portion is finally finished (there’s still varnishing, creating shaped boards to mount them on and mounting them to do).

My photos don’t quite do it justice — it is too large to lay out in any contiguous space in my studio, so each panel has been photographed separately and digitally composited. The color-matching across panels is more accurate in the painting than in these photos.

“The Big Tree,” Watercolor on torn paper, 49″ x 262″ (21’10”)

It’s fun to see it in its possible vertical orientation, too. One thing that surprised me: the panels also look surprisingly meaningful as separate side-by-side pieces.

Proposed window display of 5 of 7 panels, side-by-side orientation

Any suggestion for a title welcome!

UPDATE October 1, 2020:

Panel 2 of what I finally decided to call The Magnitude of the Problem has been accepted into the Northwest Watercolor Society’s 80th Annual International Exhibit (online this pandemic year).  It will be viewable beginning the evening of October 27.

UPDATE July 2022

The painting was on display in the Kirkland Public Library October of 2021 to January of 2022. I was thrilled by how much the library was involved – we created an all-ages reading list and together author Lorenda Williams and forestry professor David L. Peterson and I gave a virtual talk.

The Magnitude of the Problem at the Kirkland Public Library

Then a fabric version of the painting was created with Arisa Brown‘s help and a new story by Lorena, featuring the threat to the Mariposa Grove. It has been on display at the Wildling Museum in Solvang, California, and we’ll be giving a virtual talk for it on September 15.

The fabric version at The Wildling Museum

With stories by Lorena Williams; Phos-Chek artwork by Amiko Matsui in background

Currently the original painting is in a solo show at Plasteel Frames and Gallery in Seattle. I am equally thrilled by how it looks wrapped around an inside corner.

Next up will be a large window display through Shunpike’s Storefront program October 2022-January 2023.

Willowtail for the Third Time

I recently completed a third visit to Willowtail Springs Nature Preserve near Mancos, Colorado. (See also Colorado-Utah-Colorado and Willowtail Springs Residency.) It was a very productive time for me: I was able to complete three of my individual portraits of burned trees in relatively few but long and intense days, compared to what it takes me at home.

Winter Rim (above Playa Summer Lake, Oregon), watercolor on torn paper, 52″ x 16″W

Telegraph Canyon, a Zion tree (watercolor on torn paper, 52″H x 13″W

Goodell Creek Cedar (North Cascades), watercolor on torn paper, 52″H x 43″W

The cedar on the right is the largest burned tree I’ve done yet; at its base it’s nearly as wide as it’s tall, and presents a raft of new storage and presentation problems to solve : – ).

I did a few hikes in the Lizard Head Wilderness with its first few inches of snow, and managed to start a few small landscapes from those hikes as well. I got together with my collaborator Lorena Willams, who wrote the stories that appear in the “State of the Forest” installation now on tour.

While there, I wrote this short essay on the value of their residency program:

What is the value of an artist residency to an artist?

It is the opportunity to think and work surrounded by peace and beauty — with very little distraction.[1] Like any traveler, being in a new or less familiar place is refreshing and liberating; seeing new sights can literally change a point of view. For an artist, this can result in fixed ideas or long-term directions being altered or upended or in others a renewed commitment to a body of work.

For me, three visits to Willowtail have been primarily the latter. I have two bodies of work relevant to its southwest Colorado environment – an eleven-year series of large paintings of individual burned trees and a three-year series of artist books about bark beetles, using the wood and bark of their target trees as medium. Since these are preoccupations for much of the region, I found not only a personal welcome but professional interest in the work.

What is the impact of the residency on the artist and more widely?

Something I have experienced in every residency is some surprise I could not have predicted. Two years ago, Willowtail received a Winifred Johnson Clive Foundation grant to foster a collaboration. I was paired together with Durango author and wildland firefighter Lorena Williams, enriching and deepening the burned tree body of work. Her stories, together with my paintings, have resulted in several exhibitions not only in traditional art venues, like galleries and museums,[2] but also in downtown storefronts[3] and community centers.[4]

Some 30 of these paintings have been digitally printed on three layers of fabric: a transparent, a solid and a black or black-plus-text layer with Lorena’s stories on half of them. This installation, called “State of the Forest,” is currently touring regional art and science museums around the U.S. and Canada for the next 2.5 years.[5]

Why do you come back to Willowtail?

I’ve already mentioned peace and beauty. The quirky décor, living conscientiously on the land, and facilitation in the local art community are also appreciated. But more importantly, Peggy and Lee Cloy offer something unusual in the artist residency world: deep personal interest. In large programs an artist can feel a bit  like a transfer student in an overcrowded high school. Here the sense of belief and support of the specific individual’s endeavor is appreciative, consistent and tangible.

[1] By my estimate, I am ~200-250% more productive than in my own studio.

[2] Plasteel Gallery, Seattle; Arnica Gallery, Kamloops BC; Lake Country Gallery, Vernon BC; US Botanical Museum, Washington DC; Museum of Northwest Art, La Conner WA; San Juan Islands Museum of Art, Friday Harbor, WA; Kirkland Arts Center, Kirkland WA; Green River College, WA; Seattle City Hall, WA and others.

[3] Shunpike Storefront grant, amazon HQ Republican Street windows, Seattle; summer 2018. See https://storefrontsseattle.com/ near the end of the page.

[4] “Conversations through the Smoke” toured small towns in Idaho as part of a University of Idaho/US Forest Service community fire resiliency campaign. https://www.nrfirescience.org/event/conversations-through-smoke-traveling-art-exhibition

[5] The itinerary is here: https://www.davidjwagnerllc.com/Environmental_Impact-Sequel.html

 

Eating my Vegetables

It began in one of the workshops I’ve been teaching at Gage Academy in Seattle. It’s a big jump to go from learning about the paints to doing a landscape, even from a photo, so I’m always looking for ways to bridge that gap. One day I brought in a few items out of my fridge. I asked each person to pick one, place it on a white sheet of paper and point a small desk lamp at it. Then I gave a demo:

Class kale, watercolor on paper, 11″ x 7.5″

There’s something humble and unassuming about some leaves of kale.

I’m fond of saying that often people draw the Platonic “class” of an object instead of the “instance” that is there in front of them.

Or, as fellow vegetable-loving painter/instructor Lisa Goren says, “I always use chard for my teaching. I use it because, unlike flowers, [students] don’t have as fixed an idea of what it looks like in their heads. So I think they look more carefully and are more focused on the task rather than the outcome.”

Swiss chard, watercolor on paper, 11″ x 15″

Our correspondence about this shared pedagogy made me think hard about why I am finding painting vegetables so liberating.

There are relatively few examples of “Great Vegetable Works from Art History”—whereas try to paint sunflowers and a whole famous field’s worth is glaring at you!

Red leaf lettuce, watercolor on paper, 15″ x 11

It’s hard to get to over-invested in painting a vegetable—compared to, say, a beautiful landscape you’re sentimental about. Since you don’t have so many hopes and expectations attached to it, you paint more freely and the results are fresh. (Mind you, they still require careful observation!)

Long radishes, watercolor on paper, 11″ x 15″

Or maybe it’s a jolie laide or underdog thing? Even in the foodie world they’re usually not the star of the meal…

Artichokes, watercolor on paper, 11″ x 15″

Perhaps it’s also my own semi-conscious interest in getting people to look at what isn’t conventionally considered “art worthy.”

Plus I get to eat them afterwards… Or at least most of them:

Pulmonaria lobarium, watercolor on paper, 11″ x15″. Lungwort lichen is a vegetable to the deer and moose that browse on it!

Update: this page on my website has more of the series.

[Note: a number of these small paintings were in a solo exhibit at the Food Art Collection opening July 14, 2019. Rather than traditional framing and glazing–which just didn’t feel right when I hope they end up in people’s kitchens–they are mounted on panels and coated with epoxy–so the spatters from frying up those potatoes can be wiped off!]

 

 

Suze’s Art News June 2019

(This is the most recent newsletter update I sent to my mailing list. Sign up if you’d like to receive it in your inbox!) Hello, it’s been a while. This is an overdue update of everything happening now and a look back at events past. 2018-2019 has been a whirlwind and I am excited to share that with all of you. Thanks for your interest! Workshops “Watercolor on the Move: Practical Plein Air” Gage Academy Workshops July 20-21 Saturday-Sunday 9:30 A.M. – 4:30 P.M. For those in the Seattle area, I will be teaching watercolor once again at Gage Academy. Sign up for the workshop if you’d like to learn more about how I go about doing plein air — painting outdoors from life. Top: Zion Light, watercolor on paper, 11″ x 15″ (sold); Bottom: The Three Little Pigs (Gasworks) watercolor on paper, 11″ x 15″

Upcoming Shows Davenport Cellars, Woodinville WA June 5 – early September 2019 The theme is “beautiful and disturbing landscapes,” scenic views of the public lands contrasted with burned-over landscapes. Top: Frisco Again, watercolor on paper 11″ x 15″ Bottom: The Landscape of Fire (rotated) 52″ x 15″ Puget Sound Book Arts (PSBA) Annual Member Exhibit  June 6- July 31, 2019 University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA Collins Library Two of my bark beetle books are on display. Top, Volume XXIV: What the Beetles Wrote Bottom: Volume XXI: The Curve of Loss Food Art Collection, Seattle The quiet existentialism of discrete fruits and vegetables July 14th, 2019 Opening 1-3 P.M. In July I will be showcasing something new, a series of vegetable paintings. I began them as class demonstrations and soon realized that the process of trying to free up my students’ work was freeing up mine. Apropos to none of my other work, but enjoyable and satisfying. Come see what we serve up at the opening! (See this meditation on why here.) Top: Swiss Chard, watercolor on paper, 11″ x 15″ Bottom: Long radishes, watercolor on paper, 11″ x 15″ (sold) Anacortes Arts Festival  July 27 – August 4th, 2019 Opening July 27 The annual juried exhibit; this year Joanna Sykes is the juror. Three of my bark beetle books will be on display. (Recipient of the T Bailey Corporate Award) Top: Bark Beetle Book Volume XXV: Outbreak Bottom: Bark Beetle Book Volume X: Encyclopedia Beetletainia State of the Forest Installation in Environmental Impact Sequel James Museum, St Petersburg, FL August – November 2019 This is the first stop on a touring exhibit that focuses on the environmental impact of climate change. Thirty of my burned tree portraits will be suspended, in floating fabric media to evoke the fragility of forests. Fourteen of them have Lorena Williams‘ fire stories printed on the back layer of the set. I look forward to presenting my work in this way. Top: State of the Forest, 10 of a 30 tree installation. Bottom: Detail of the three layers for each tree, black, solid print and transparent print (Jonathan T. Bishop photos) Slash & Burn Seattle City Hall September 5 – November 5, 2019 If you missed this repeat exhibit at Green River College earlier in the year, “Slash & Burn” will be presented again at Seattle City Hall. I’ve contributed several burned tree portraits and bark beetle books. Top: Okanagan Iridescence, varnished watercolor on torn paper, 52″H x 20″ (rotated) Bottom: Bark beetle book Volume XII: Buprestid Katakana Columbia City Gallery 20th Anniversary Book Arts Exhibit: The Book as Art: The Page and Beyond Seattle, WA September – November, 2019 This show will focus on finely crafted books that explore a variety of structures and books that can challenge traditional notions of a book and page. All Stitched Up University of Puget Sound Collins Library Tacoma, WA September 3 – December 11, 2019 A recent bark beetle book will be exhibited. Volume XXII, Scolytid Lifecycle   Willowtail Residency Willowtail Springs Nature Preserve Mancos, Colorado In late October I make my way back to Mancos, Colorado, for my fourth return to Willowtail Springs Nature Preserve. I’ll have an opportunity to work with author Lorena Williams on the stories that accompany the State of the Forest installation above.Zion Centennial “100 Objects – 100 Images” Zion Plein Air Invitational Zion National Park, Utah November 6-10, 2019 I am honored to be invited out for my 8th season during the Centennial of Zion National Park and Zion Plein Air Invitational. The Centennial will be celebrated through the art and history of this magical place via the exhibition “100 Objects – 100 Images”, beginning September 15th, continuing through and during the traditional plein air week. I look forward to sharing more as the year goes by so stay tuned for more details.“Word | Image | Object” July 2019 – January 2020 An artist book exhibit organized by Abcedarian Gallery in the main Denver Public Library. My small beetle-chewed branch books contain Melinda Mueller poetry about bark beetles. Bark beetle book Volume XIX: Poetry Sticks A Long Overdue Recap of 2018 and Previous Events Bellevue Art Museum “Making our Mark” (Pratt instructors’ exhibit) “Re: Acclimating” Kirkland Arts Center “So Sew“ The Vestibule group show “Unrestricted: An exploration of artist books” Port Angeles Fine Arts Center “The Intersection of Art & Math” Schack Art Center, Everett Playa Summer Lake Art/Science Integration residency Anacortes Arts Festival juried show Shunpike Storefronts “State of the Forest” “Like Mother, Like Daughter” Aljoya Thornton Place Purchase Award, City of Seattle Mighty Tieton’s annual “10x10x10” “Conversations through the Smoke” in rural Idaho Capitol Reef National Park residency 3- weekend workshops at Gage Academy Zion Plein Air Invitational “Pacific Northwest Fine Arts Competition“ at Phinney Neighborhood Association, 2019 “Slash and Burn” Green River College, Auburn WA, 2019 “Like Mother Like Daughter” North Seattle College, 2019 I am honored to have been chosen as one of three finalists by the Oregon Arts Commission for an installation at Oregon State University, 2019. Museum of Northwest Art’s climate exhibit “Surge” As part of my display I created this video: Thank you, friends and followers, for seeing me through another year, and I hope to catch you at home and out in my travels.

Iteration = Inspiration

My respected colleague Iskra Johnson recently posed a question in her blog, “Who Is Your Muse?” in which she tags her mother as an ongoing source of inspiration.

I found myself thinking of my inspiration as coming from multiple gods rather than a single muse—that is, each work in a series builds on the previous one. When I worked with a team of program managers and software developers, at the end of every project we held a post mortem in hopes of gaining even better results on the next project. While every project had different parameters — context, deadline, team members, audience and so on — one finding was always the same: “I wish we had/allowed/planned for more time at the end so we could make more than only “must-do” fixes.  We didn’t know we’d have these better ideas until we saw the first (alpha), second (beta), third (final or release) version…”

The practice of iteration is sorely underrated. Defining imagination as an ability to envision that which doesn’t yet exist, most people — even artists — have less imagination than they think do. But the great thing about the self-directed practice of fine art is that you can keep iterating, if you acknowledge it as your muse

Seeing how the last creation came out is often the prompt for the next idea… 

Sometimes those ideas never seem to stop! Below you see my third artist book made from bark-beetle damaged wood and my twenty-fifth…. This video explains some of my inspiration, process and collaborations.

Bark Beetle Book Vol. III: Bug Ruts. Pine-beetle-bored bark in epoxy resin, laser-cut iron-oxide dyed felt pages, wire-edge bound with wooden “worry” beads. 9.25″L x 5″W x 2.5″H plus strings

Bark Beetle Book Vol. XXV: What the Beetles Wrote. Wood with mountain pine beetle galleries, hand-made paper-cast from mountain pine beetle and other beetle galleries; iron-oxide dyed non-woven viscose book cloth. 11″H x 9.5″W x 7.5″D