Artist grade materials in the craft world...building a bridge

On the heels of the CHA winter show in California, I have been thinking more about the arduous process of building a bridge between the craft and the fine art world. When did they become such separate entities?

I'm too tired to get into researching that particular question, but more to the point, how to begin to knit them back together? I have long toyed with the idea of writing an acrylic based craft book, and that may eventually come to fruition as I'm full of ideas. I would just have to be careful not to turn the thing into a big rant on the validity of being a successful craftsperson, regardless of the end product. It seems that to assign function to a work of art inevitably reduces it's monetary and artistic value. If you hang it on a wall, it costs thousands, but if it has a useful purpose it's relegated to the $68.95 bracket.

Does this seem wrong to you?

Perhaps it's the fault of the big box retailers, who spend more energy promoting the economical craft brand materials than fine art materials, that many crafters and artisans are unaccustomed to working with and understanding the merits of working with quality materials.

Its true in all fields, quality materials yield quality results. The foundation of the work holds up the end product. It's just common sense.

More on this later....

Getting Crafty

Registration is open for the CHA winter convention and trade show, coming up later this month in Anaheim, California. I, for one, am looking forward to spending some time in the sun!

The CHA show is not just about craft, there are a large number of fine art materials manufacturers and distributors exhibiting, giving workshops and offering great in-booth demonstrations and make-and-takes.

I will be on hand at the Jack Richeson & Co. booth, giving demos and talking up some Tri-Art acrylic products, including Liquids, Mediums and Spectral Colour. I will also be giving a workshop on Jan. 26th on "Acrylic Bling", focusing on the dazzling showstopping Interference, Iridescent, Spectral colour as well as a couple of my favorites: Liquid Mirror and Micaceous Iron Oxide.

On more book related assignments, I will be at the Watson-Guptill and the Barnes & Noble booths intermittently during the show.

Show dates & hours:

Sun., Jan 24 10am - 6pm
Mon., Jan 25 9am - 5:30pm
Tues., Jan 26 9am - 5:30pm
Wed., Jan 27 9am - 2pm

At the Anaheim Convention Center.

10 Best Art Books of the '00s

An ENORMOUS and ECSTATIC thank you to Marion Boddy-Evans at About.com: Painting for placing my first book, The New Acrylics, at NUMBER 6 in this list!

flattered and thrilled. Thank you, thank you!

Thinking about mediums and liquids...and about how they are the perfect complements to one another.

A drop of colour in a clear gel can create magic. The way it disperses into the thick, viscous pools of self leveling gel, or feathers into gloss gel, the character of the colour drawn out into displaying it's vibrant undertone and deep mass tones.

The transparency of gloss mediums is an ideal playground for colours to play and develop in.

I'm working on complex paintings, but am being struck again and again by the beauty in the simplest of brush strokes.

Art is pretty fun.

Buried bling, shinning from the depths of a glaze in a textured surface. Detail from a painting.

Blingy Bits

Holidays approaching, the first real snowfall and suddenly I want the blingy bits. Sparkle, shine, shimmer, all the seduction of those points of light. I am making custom gels and liquid mediums, bringing in those flashy additives that sink into the self-leveling gel like jewels, crest the gel waves and are stars in pools of liquid acrylic. There is so much fun stuff available out there to add to acrylic mediums. Add more light to your world. Bring on the BLING!

Making marks

Rediscovering, uncovering, redefining my expression through making marks. I find the road rather bumpy. So I proceed with some basic tools. My fingers, words, textures.

At points I find those little areas that work, that sing. Little seeds. Beginnings.

Marketing and promotional art taking up too much space in my studio and in my head. Producing the books, as a friend in the business said, is the least of the work. Promoting them is the long, hard slog. I am learning this truth, and it is humbling...though somehow exciting. Now, to find the head space and clarity of mind to produce a different kind of work too, one mark at a time.