Penland Bound and New Blog

My attention has been focused lately on preparations for the eight week concentration I'm teaching at Penland School of Crafts.  Our class meets this coming Sunday, September 21, and we will work together with encaustic and mixed media until November 15.  I have set up a separate blog titled Mixing Media with Encaustic and the purpose of this blog is to provide a portal for notes, images for inspiration, design ideas, videos and pictures of our produced work.  Check it out!  The first blog post will appear on Sunday, with a new post scheduled for each weekday throughout.

Meanwhile......I've been making work in my studio, most of the work is still in progress. I have a few more panels planned to explore some stereotypical characters. I made a small pile of enameled copper disks in a metals class where we were working with watercolor enamels, and I am drawing inspiration from that work.

More to do..........Fireworks

Just a start on Calculator.

Suspicious

Transformations

Since my last post I have attended a two week session at Penland School of Crafts in the metals studio, seen my work hang at Mica Gallery in Bakersville NC, delivered a successful large commissioned work to satisfied customers, made great headway at plans for the 8 week concentration I will teach at Penland September 21 to November 14 (read more here) and become a grandmother! 

I'll provide pictures of the commissioned triptych later as it has yet to be installed.  I titled the work Stonesthrow and the work looks great in the home. I am so pleased with the results of this large undertaking, I can't wait to show you the installation view.

While at Penland the end of May and first week of June, plans for the concentration class started to really come together.  The class will have the opportunity to work in encaustic and mixed media on several surfaces, including paper, wood, bisque-fired clay and slate.  Students will make tiles or small panels in the clay studio and complete the work in the encaustic studio - something I've longed to do myself.  If you are interested in encaustic collage and mixed media work, this class promises to be something special! The eight week concentration affords instructors and students the chance to collaborate and experiment with merging materials. I have a plan for forged iron in a series of my work, and I can see the possibility of teaming with the wood studio to build assembled wood and found object supports for paintings.

I got news of my new grandmother role on my last day at Penland. I am so pleased that my son and wife have welcomed a newborn baby boy into their home and will finalize their adoption soon.  Named Wells Robert, he has already stolen our hearts.  Long awaited joy may be the very best.

I made the above piece last year without any consideration at all for a baby boy named Wells - and now it seems prophetic.  Titled Play Sleep, it now belongs to Wells.