Alexandra Sheldon

Nice Textures

Alexandra SheldonComment
Example of miniatures cards (5x5")

Example of miniatures cards (5x5")

Dear Marsha,

Ok I need to catch up on two classes. I would have written this Friday morning but Charley Pearl had her yearly check up first thing in the morning and then I had to get to the studio to mix up over 50 colors for my Saturday workshop ("The Sky is the Limit").

Save packaging, like cracker, tea and cereal boxes. Save any weird packaging and open it up and unfold it. Collage this stuff down. I like to use it blank side up, another words so you don't see any words or colors. It can be stubborn to get flat but keep at it with your Matt medium and your scraper and it will get flat. Collage a bunch of different papers and packaging materials down to whatever size substrate (Bristol paper or cardstock - a good strong surface for collage). Do a couple of these and maybe even more. Lately I really encourage people to work in a series.

When you have a few of these then take sandpaper (I like a medium to rough sandpaper) and rough up the surface. Next: take an Xacto blade and score the surface of the collage. You can either do long drawing-type lines or slashes. Mix up a dark color. I had mixed up some really pretty darks: black and blue to make an indigo. Alizarin Crimson and Pthalo Blue to make a deep purple and my favorite: Sepia (any dark brown mixed with black). Water down the acrylic paint considerably and cover each collage with paint. Then wipe it off or use a brayer or a scraper. What is nice is that the paint will go into the Xacto marks and stay there and will also look cool on the sanded areas. I have these old letter presses and we played around with hammering marks and numbers and letters into the collages before putting on the dark washes. I also got out my cardboard letter stencils and letter stamps and we played with those. So far, what is created is a series of backgrounds. Now time to collage into them. Add grid elements. Stencil letters and numbers into the collages using paint. Start adding cut shapes and images. We began using some fabrics - I like to put a thin coat of medium down and gently pat the fabric down (I'm not so crazy about glue over fabric, I find it rigid looking although I have seen it work, like in Rauschenberg's combines).

Remember: If you do the dark washes then introduce light back into the pieces. Stencil pastel turquoise letters onto a sepia toned piece for a pop. Introduce grid elements like thin strips of paper in a light color, maybe the color of honey.

Lately, I have been handing out miniatures cards (5x5") in class. It can be fun to do a series of little pieces and then blow up the scale and do them bigger later. Do whatever it takes to relax and have fun.

To get ready for my sky workshop, I sat down and collected pictures of the sky in a stack of magazines and it was so totally fun. Today, during the workshop, I found myself using these little chunks of sky pictures in my collages along with my painted papers. Whatever floats your boat.  

Example of miniatures cards (5x5")

Example of miniatures cards (5x5")

Recently I spent the day teaching kids over at Maud Morgan Art Center and these two girls asked me, toward the end of the day, if they could make drawings and NOT take them home. So I said "Not only do you NOT have to take them home - you can rip them up and throw them away!" The girls got SO excited and they made drawings for the last 45 minutes of a very long vacation art day, drawing with gusto and enthusiasm, and then there were peels of giggles when they could rip up the art and throw it away. I learned something (as always do around kids): that it is tiring to always be so invested in the finished product and that what we are really after is a sense of freedom and abandon. So make stuff and see if you can have fun doing it, regardless of the finished object.

3 Steps Collage/Making a Soup/Tones

Alexandra SheldonComment

Dear Marsha,

Okay, so last night was our third class. Because everything is such a giant struggle right now with all the snow we only had four people. Last week (class#2) I had everyone paint (using acrylic paint watered down to the consistency of heavy cream) atmospheric grounds: painting creams and soft greens and browns (all colors, though subdued, like clouds, air, sky) on plain white sketch paper - doing that printing thing a little of folding the paper over on itself to make little veils of colors. We also did a small amount of transfers from magazines but subtly with the aim of making an atmospheric ground, a beautiful broth. I am making many comparisons to the metaphor of a big soup: you have the broth (atmospheric, light, color ground).  Next you add the stuff: peas, carrots, celery, pasta, beans: imagery, geometric shapes, structure, grids, abstract or not (doesn't matter - I treat abstraction and image-oriented material the same way). The last step is seasoning; salt and pepper, herbs perhaps: drips and splatters, painted dots, finishing touches.

Of course it can be absurd to assign to art-making a formula but we teachers do it all the time. Because it's so helpful to have some limitations. So I tell people to veer off if they get the urge. I notice that certain people love steps. Step 1.  Step 2.  Step 3. This week end I am doing a workshop called "3 Steps Collage" as a matter of fact.

Last night I talked at length about TONES. Way back in art school I used to have to do these black and white still life drawings where everything had to be different gradations of tone. The darkest black and the lightest white with all the shades of grey in between. And I'm not referring to that dreadful book. This exercise was really valuable because I learned that colors also have levels of tones. The art school exercise was done in black and white and grey to simplify the entire concept of tone. When we graduated to tonal studies in color we were reminded to imagine putting on special glasses that would render all color in black and white.  If a collage looks a little dead notice if all the colors have a similiar tone. Look at your piece and see if it has a variety of deep darks and bright lights, notice if it is atonal (this might not be dictionary correct but I'm thinking of 'atonal' as tones all similar and therefore creating a kind of sameness, flatness, deadness). From my days and years actually as a landscape and still life painter I remember well my searching for the darkest darks and lightest lights in my compositions. While making your collages see if they need more variety of tone. As with everything concerning art: there are no rules. You may want a pastel, soft piece, with no deep darks or bright lights. But lately I am noticing that there is often a sameness in people's colors and I think tone is the problem.

See you next week,
Alexandra

Fyfe DesignComment
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As twenty something offspring shoot off like morning glory vines, spiraling away, climbing toward the sun and away from us the parents, well, there is a great emptiness and sadness.  I am employing all the usual suspects: good food, yoga, teaching art and being connected to others, coconut sorbet, coffee (well can't be perfect) and probably most importantly - studio time.  I am going through my piles of painted papers and assembling quick collages that I think of as drawings.  I work on several at once.  I was questioning why I needed so many hours a day to get into the groove of making (a minimal of 4 hours really helps) but now I think I understand that this process is akin to being a jazz musician.  Now, I have never been a jazz musician but I would imagine that it helps to play A LOT to get into the improvisational pull of the music.  This is where I want to be: in a improvisational trance, letting go and allowing my intuition and body to take over. I want to let go.  I've seen it done, in Helen Frankenthalers stain paintings, in Matisse, in Lucien Freud.  They let go, they did not hold back.  I want a taste of this creative abandon. This is real rest from the mind, the past, the worry, and the grief that can be such an old habit. Yesterday I touched on a few moments of this freedom and I was able to celebrate that my youngest is having the time of his life with four companions in Athens.  By tapping into the universal flow of music & creativity that unites us all I could let go and sightsee in my own beautiful ruins.

Study in collage of that night

Fyfe DesignComment

On Tuesday night I drove to Harvard Square to go to my non meditation class (the leader Joel, says that if you are meditating you are working too hard - it's really about relaxing). I parked near the Commander Hotel and walked through the Cambridge Common.  It never ceases to amaze me that I live where I grew up.  As I walked I mumbled under my breath: here is my old stomping ground (where I cavorted as a thirteen year old on Saturdays and Sundays when there would be free concerts....) Tonight was one of those spring evenings when EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED, the sky filled with Zeppelin clouds and great cobalt blue and grey rain clouds. Some bright lighter blue out there too closer to the horizon and the fierce sun crackling through everything. The trees were starting to bud out and fan out their copper and bronze color which was all lit up against the sky.  I was taking mental notes: coppery mustard color against cobalt blue fudge color (Marion from the meeting said there was lavender in that blue color, she is a painter too and this helped me a lot because I was completely confused by that blue - just couldn't figure out what I was staring at).  The Harvard spire was a gleaming white lance reaching into the sky, the clouds were moving, the illuminated tree buds were like lacy jewelry.  I am trying to do something different these days with my inspiration.  The old patterns are that I get overwhelmed and feel grief that I am missing everything - that I'm not painting and capturing what is so gorgeous and I might throw in some added self-torture by thinking of artists like Sargent or Fairfield Porter who would just grab it and paint it. The new patterns I'm working on are this: get inspired, fill up on it, take mental note and work in the studio tomorrow on it (that lit up coppery mustard against the cobalt bruised and pregnant sky!). Go to your wonderful meeting Alexandra, the one that is teaching you so thoroughly to relax in the present, to love the present, to understand that the grief, the panic and the regret are the old habits.  I will do what I can, be filled up with awe and make a little painting about that night.  And even if it is just a study of two colors I will be grateful to Cambridge and to the Springtime.

Rip Up and Cut Down

Fyfe Design1 Comment

I am learning something from taking pictures of the work with my iPhone. I photograph parts of my pieces and always like the details better than the whole thing.  But it seems like the process requires making a bunch of stuff and then trying to simplify simplify and then simplify some more.  Lately, I have been working on some biggish pieces (big for me), @ 24"x28" but find that I have to rip them up and cut them down.  I constantly show people how they have made several collages in one and that there is too much going on.  Hence, I make a big emphasis on making a really strong background and often people will say: y'a know I think this is finished.  Because they have made a lovely space (all prepared like a garden plot ready for planting). It is visually more pleasing to have an underworked piece than an overworked one.  Many of us feel that the main story is still missing (even with that gorgeous background) and that there just isn't enough.  So how to fill up and whittle down?  How to have breath and space yet a piece strong enough to work?  Add onto this predicament another layer: the work that I personally want to do, that I dream of and chase speaks of something doubtful and sure, strong yet tentative, delicate but solid. I began making art and writing as a way to quietly and discreetly fit into my world.  When I try to work big and boldly it usually crashes and burns.  I might have to find my strength in the small, the delicate and the private places.  I began earnestly expressing myself writing as a teenager and even now my artwork instinctively stays on the same scale as books.  There is always this funny predicament: how to avoid clutter and overkill and how to get simplicity and strength. And how to be brave and expressive and feel safe enough to even do it.