A New Show: Pathways & Passages

About a year ago, I was invited to have a show along with my artist friend Nancy Eng, at Borland Gallery in Silverton. The gallery is part of the Silverton Arts Association, a long time artist organization in the quaint community of Silverton, which is located about 20 minutes east of Salem. Nancy had the idea for the theme of our show, Pathways & Passages, which was easy to translate into abstract landscapes and non-representational work.

Last week I stopped by the gallery for one last look before we hang next week.

I finished my pieces last week, and this week I have been doing the tedious, but necessary, work of assigning inventory numbers, giving them all titles, signing and pricing them, taking photos, and then packaging everything for transport.

Here’s a preview of some of the pieces that will be in the show. They range in size from 6×6 inches up to 30×60 inches, with lots of pieces in between.

“History Racing Past,” plaster, oil, and cold wax by Dayna J. Collins.

“A Glimmer of Understanding Took Hold,” plaster, oil, and cold wax, by Dayna J. Collins.

“The Thrill of Discovery,” plaster, oil, and cold wax, by Dayna J. Collins.

“Memory Had Vanished,” plaster, oil, and cold wax, by Dayna J. Collins.

“A Moment of Stillness,” plaster, oil, and cold wax, by Dayna J. Collins.

“The Garden Seemed Enchanted,” plaster, oil, and cold wax by Dayna J. Collins.

“Along the Shore,” plaster, oil, and cold wax, by Dayna J. Collins.

“Symbiotic Relationship,” plaster, oil, and cold wax, by Dayna J. Collins.

“Looking Backward in Time,” plaster, oil, and cold wax, by Dayna J. Collins.

The opening reception is Friday, August 4th, from 6-9 pm. If you can’t make it then, a great weekend to visit would be the weekend of August 19 and 20, when the Silverton Fine Arts Festival is going on. The gallery will be open, and the festival will be taking place at the same location, nestled in the woods of the historic Coolidge-McClaine Park on the banks of Silver Creek.

ART BLOX

Who doesn’t love little art? I sure do. The Art Studios at Mission Mill recently had the opportunity to host Mary Lou Zeek’s wonderful refurbished cigarette machine, which she transformed into a vending machine of small art blocks (the size of a pack of cigarettes). The machine, ART BLOX: Small Art for Everyone, used to be in Mary Lou’s wonderful downtown gallery space, but since the gallery closed, the machine makes appearances only on special occasions or by invitation. We invited and the machine was delivered last Thursday.

Mary Lou showed me the quirks of the vintage machine.

Mary Lou and Dayna with the ART BLOX machine outside the studio of Max Marbles.

Last Thursday night was our quarterly Art After Dark and Open Studios. The upstairs studios were open, refreshments were served, and art was displayed throughout the space. But downstairs was the ART BLOX machine, which was hoppin’ throughout the evening, where we sold the small blocks of art for $10 each.

Dayna Collins sold ART BLOX tokens throughout the evening.

Lois Stark waves her hands at the machine in the hopes of getting the perfect block.

Roger Hull randomly pulled a lever and the machine dispensed an original piece of art by Bonnie Hull.

A happy guest received a Bonnie Hull original.

This little girl hugged the machine because she said she “loves it.”

An original art block created by Nancy Eng.

Katy Vigland who created blocks for the machine, stops by to purchase blocks.

James O’Shea photographs the process of purchasing an ART BLOX.

Cheryl Creel goes in for a second block.

Dennis Creel gets into the ART BLOX stance.

A sampling of the blocks we received:

A big thank you to Mary Lou and Alan Zeek for the use of the machine and for the many artists who created and contributed blocks. The proceeds from the sale of the blocks, almonst $800 worth, will be going to an artist relief fund in Salem.

Art Camp in the Woods

I recently went with four members of my Salem Art Group to make art in the woods. This is my kind of camping. The cabin belongs to the family of Katy, one of our members, and is located along the Metolius River in Camp Sherman, which is located in Central Oregon. This is an annual trip, where we do five basic things: eat, art, read, walk, and laugh. Repeat.

We arrived on Sunday and got set up to make art outside under the trees. My goal was to get layers of oil and cold wax onto boards in preparation for an upcoming show. Mission accomplished.

In the evenings (and the mornings, and sometimes in the afternoon), we all created little art journals, which Bonnie had made for us. One night we even worked outside by candlelight.

There was lots of creative food preparation and dining on the deck.

There were a couple of wildflower walks.

There was lots of sketching.

And lots of outdoor painting.

Here are the pages of my completed journal, which I titled By the River: A Make Do Journal. My title reflects that I had no art journaling supplies along with me, so the pages were created using what I could forage either from outside, the junk drawer at the cabin, or from my fellow artists who planned ahead much better than I did. It was fun having to make do.

What a restful, peaceful, energizing four days.

A Painting Intensive With Pat Wheeler

I was invited to join six seasoned artists at Stacey’s fantastic studio in North Portland painting alongside Pat Wheeler. I thought about it for about 30 seconds before replying with a big juicy YES. Pat is the artist I learned the plaster process from at Oregon College of Art and Craft in 2010; I continued to take her five-day workshop for the opportunity to be in her presence and soak up her process and positive energy. When I stopped taking her workshop, I still visited Pat whenever she was teaching in Oregon, either at OCAC or at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology and I view this lovely woman as one of my mentors.

The invited artists had all taken Pat’s class several times and we were all experienced working with the materials. The goal of this painting intensive was not only to work alongside Pat, but to also share our own techniques and how we had morphed the process to make it our own.

We started off by painting our boards. I like to activate my boards initially with writing and marks as a way to begin and to fight the blank canvas.

The next step is applying plaster, aka joint compound, or the fancy terminology: limestone clay. It is applied with putty knives and allows all kinds of marks, patterns, and texture to be incorporated as it is being applied.

Once the plaster is dry, it is time to sand.

And then the fun begins, applying washes of color. More drying. More sanding. More paint. GO.

And always more writing and mark making.

This was the process throughout the week, repeated again and again, everyone going at their own pace.

Of course, there was lots of sharing of ideas and techniques.

Here is one of the boards that was deemed completed, so I sealed it with a layer of cold wax, buffed it, and called it finished: “Cracks in the Sidewalk,” 30×30 inches. The beautiful little bundle in the niche was created as gift from Pat.

Quarterly Open Studios

The artists at the Art Studios at Mission Mill decided at the end of last year that they wanted to host quarterly Open Studios rather than monthly events. I personally liked having them monthly, but they did seem to roll around rather quickly. Our quarterly event, under the umbrella of Art After Dark, will be held this Thursday, April 13, from 6-8 pm (a change from our old time of 5-7 pm). Studio A, where I hang out, has been converted to my Special Project Studio, where I am working on a big mixed media and collage project titled: What’s Your Story, Real or Imagined: Telling Stories through Black and White Photos. I started this project last year, but it has been evolving and morphing into something bigger than I earlier anticipated. I still have my two walls of black and white photos, which have expanded and taken over more real estate.

I recently had the opportunity to sort through a couple dozen boxes and three chests of family photos and ephemera and somehow I managed to find room in my compact corner space for piles and mounds of paper, 3-D bits, and photos.

I’ll be doing an Artist in Residence at the Salem Art Association Annex in the fall, so for now, my ideas are percolating as I spend time in this special studio. I’ll be sharing more about my fall project a bit later, but it includes a panel discussion, two weeks of working in a spacious light-filled studio, and will culminate in a one-day workshop I’ll be teaching. In the meantime, come see my newest acquisitions and hear more about my project on Thursday night.

ART AFTER DARK

The Art Studios at Mission Mill are located at the Willamette Heritage Center, across from Willamette University on 12th Street and across from the Amtrak Train Station on Mill Street. All of the second floor studios will be open, Carol Green will be demonstrating a Polaroid emulsion lift process (“The World Through Polaroid Imagining”), and Bonnie Hull is bringing her instant camera and will be taking curated photos ($1, please bring exact change). There will be new art on the communal walls and all of the artists will be serving refreshments. On the first floor, Max Marbles, the bookbinder, will be open, the Eco Hub is featuring student artwork honoring nature, and you can meet the newest tenants: award-winning photographer Frank Barnett and his wife, 3D artist and writer, Mart Soloman. It’s going to be a splendid night!

Intro to Drawing

In all my years of painting and making art, I’ve never taken a good old fashioned drawing class. I’ve never been taught about using sighting sticks, measuring perspectives, figuring out a base unit of measure, drawing negative spaces, or learning about the six elements of light. I’ve never had a particularly strong desire to sketch, although I have always kept visual journals for recording ideas and inspiration. I’ve sketched out concepts, played with color combinations, and have always loved experimenting with compositions. So when my artist friend Heidi posted on Facebook last December that she had a couple of spaces open in her Introduction to Drawing class at our local community college, it caught my attention. And I decided to jump in and take a formal drawing class. . . . . and it kind of kicked my butt.

The class met twice a week from 6:00-9:00 pm. I went the first night and got the syllabus, learned everyone’s name (there were about 15 of us), and got excited about the list of supplies, because, well, I love art supplies. The next day I went to the art store and meticulously searched for the various numbered pencils (8B, 6B, 4B, 2B, HB, 2H), vine and compressed charcoal, a kneaded rubber eraser AND a Staedtler Mars plastic eraser, a blending stump (I’ve always wondered what those crazy things were used for), a large pad of newsprint as well as a pad of nice drawing paper, a journal for drawing exercises, other miscellaneous supplies, and a tote for carrying all of my supplies back and forth. On our first night we were assigned a flat file locker for storing our paper and supplies; I felt like a real student.

Besides being in class six hours a week, Heidi warned us that drawing assignments outside of class would take us six to seven hours a week, which meant that I would be devoting 12-13 hours a week drawing. Immersion seemed to be a good way to learn the basics and become familiar with learning how to draw. I already owned the text for the class, the drawing Bible by Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Throughout the early chapters Betty kept saying how easy it is to learn to draw. I disagree.

Here’s how the class went. We were given our assignments on Wednesday. We would show up at class on Monday and everyone would put their journals on the table, displaying the homework we had done. Heidi would review each drawing, commenting on what had been done correctly (“I believe you, I believe you,” she would say as she carefully looked at our lines and measurements), and what needed more work. We then had the opportunity to go home and make corrections before bringing our journal back on Wednesday for final review and grading by Heidi, each student meeting privately for this portion of the review.

Class time was spent learning new concepts and then drawing. Heidi would set up a still life, adding crazy things to make it more challenging, then we would do our best to apply the concepts and draw what we saw from our perspective in the classroom. Students often worked in pairs doing peer reviews of each others work. It required setting aside ego and being brave. DIGRESSION: The “closet” where the still life objects were stored, well, that made me a bit weak in the knees. Here’s a look inside the closet just because I love this sort of thing:

One evening, there was a young man kind of hanging around in the classroom. He disappeared into a small side closet and when he emerged wearing a tank top and shorts, Heidi announced we would be doing gesture drawing and we had a LIVE MODEL. Okay, now we’re talking.

We did a series of one-minute gesture drawings, and for each one, our model changed position. What I drew wasn’t particularly great, but I sure had fun experimenting. And with only a minute (then two minutes) to draw, there was no time for being judgmental. I could do quick gesture drawings all night. And we did.

The six elements of light. Who knew. Highlight, light, shadow, core of shadow, reflected light, cast shadow. Did you know there are a LOT of You Tube videos on drawing the shadows of an egg?

I’m not going to share a lot of my drawings, but I’ll share a few pages from my journal. The following are still lifes we set up at home and illustrate using the skills of sighting, basic unit of measuring, the use of light and shadows, drawing negative shapes, varying values – just about everything we have been working on for the past six weeks.

What I learned in class besides the concepts? Learning to see, to quiet my brain and train my eye to draw what it sees, not what my brain thinks something should look like, which is basically drawing from the right side of my brain rather than the left side. It is a lot harder than it sounds, especially since my left brain is pretty strong willed and stubborn. I was grateful to have Heidi as my teacher and guide. She has been patient, creative, and inventive in how she taught all of these techniques, and she was funny, which goes a long ways when learning something challenging and tedious.

And now I’m ready to get back to something I know: painting.

Big News: I’m teaching oil and cold wax at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology!

I began painting about 12 years ago, primarily in acrylic and occasionally in some form of mixed media. In 2012 I took a class that changed my painting life. The class was Abstract Oil Painting with Oil and Cold with Allen Cox and the class was held at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. It wasn’t my first class there, but it was when I learned to paint using cold wax medium, Galkyd, and oil paint, all mixed together into a glorious luminous concoction that was spread using palette and putty knives. It was also the first time I really figured out how to use oil paint sticks. I was hooked.

Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. It is a magical place located in the woods at Cascade Head on the Oregon Coast. This explains what Sitka is about:
Founded in 1970, the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology fosters creativity, intellectual inquiry and education. By helping others discover more about their core creative selves and their connections to nature, the Sitka Center works to fulfill its mission of expanding the relationships between art, nature and humanity.

The Sitka Center offers workshops, residencies and community events, while maintaining a facility appropriate to its needs in harmony with its inspirational coastal environment near Cascade Head and the Salmon River estuary. Literally a center at the edge – where land meets sky, saltwater meets freshwater – the Sitka Center is a place where a diverse group of people and ideas converge, co-mingle and depart transformed.

Our Workshop Program (May through September) provides people of all levels the transformative and joyful experience of making art and exploring their connections to nature. We offer over 100 one- to five-day intensives on drawing, painting, music, nature, woodworking, encaustics, food, sculpture, fiber arts, kayaking, jewelry, metal work, photography, printmaking, and writing. Professional artists and ecology experts guide the instruction in one of the Center’s five studios or outdoors in the natural environment of Cascade Head and Salmon River estuary. The annual workshop catalog is available in print and online in February each year.

Which leads me to the heart of my news: I’m teaching an oil and cold wax class at Sitka next summer! Pinch me. It has been a dream for a long time. I’ve taken some amazing classes at Sitka, had fabulous teachers, hiked to the top of Cascade Head, roamed in the woods surrounding the Center, and made art that is hanging in several homes.

My class is called Abstracted Waterlines in Oil and Cold Wax. In determining the theme for my class, I wanted to incorporate the landscape as inspiration, so using the ocean, river, and estuary as a jumping off point, we will take where water meets land and abstract it into a series of compositions.

The class is scheduled for June 5-8 (four full days) and will be held in Boyden. Pinch me again. I’ve taken all of my classes in that large wood lined studio and to have the privilege to teach in that sacred place, well, I’m a bit verklempt. The cost for the four-day class is $400, with a materials fee of $20 (I bring and share a lot of supplies).

Registration doesn’t open until February, 2017, (February for members, but you can join for as little as $50 and have the opportunity to register in February), and registration for everyone opens in March (the Sitka website has all of the dates listed). The dates of my class (June 5-8, 2017) have now been confirmed.

In the class we’ll be working on several boards at the same time, along with working on Arches Oil Paper (or if you prefer, you can work exclusively on the miracle known as Arches Oil Paper). We will experiment with working in layers, building texture, scraping away, and then doing it all over again.

We will work intuitively and abstractly, exploring texture, layers, composition and design, and use of color through oil paint and pigment sticks. We’ll also work with various forms of mark-making, adding energy and interest through the use of lines and marks. The layers dry quickly and clean up is done with baby or mineral oil. You will complete several pieces during the four days and go home with several starts. The class is designed for all levels of expertise and no prior experience is needed.

I’m sharing all of this now so you have time to mark your calendars, maybe ask for the class as a holiday gift, or perhaps get a couple of friends rounded up to rent a house in Lincoln City, Pacific City, or one of the vacation homes right at Cascade Head.

Please contact me if you have any questions about the class, mediums, or the process. My e-mail is: dayna@alleyartstudio.com

What’s Your Story, Real or Imagined: Telling Stories Through Black & White Photos

I’m excited to share a project that I’ve been working on for many months. Someone recently asked me where the idea came from and I realized it has actually been in the works for years. I told them: It has been inside me for a long time and most of my mixed media art has been leading up to this special project, although I didn’t know it at the time.

It was 2007 when I created a class called Itty Bitty Pretties. It involved creating little tiny mini collages on 1-1/2 x 1-1/2 inch squares: a background, a cut out black and white photograph, a word, and finally, an assemblage piece; each one represented a different family member. Here is 64.

It has been inside me for a long time and most of my mixed media art has been leading up to this special project, although I didn’t know it at the time.

Jump ahead to 2012, when I started creating mixed media collages on playing and flash cards. During the summer of that year I lived on a boat at the Portland Waterfront for 29 days; I created a card for each day I was there.

In the fall of 2015, I made a travel journal in the style of my current project, creating about 60 pre painted pages, which I embellished throughout the 40 days I was gone.

At the beginning of this year, I started to lay the framework for an idea to take all of these past projects and incorporate them into a new one. It gets a bit blurry about the timing. I remember working on page backgrounds when we went to Arizona in February, where I slathered paint and created texture using plaster and gesso, always writing and embedding text into the wet paint and over the dry plaster.

I remember returning to my studio and beginning the process of gathering textiles, ephemera, and little found objects to eventually incorporate into my collage pieces. I also began gathering dozens of black and white photographs, mostly of strangers.

In May of this year, I went on an art retreat with my Portland Art Collective, where I spent three days composing and auditioning layouts.

After returning from the retreat, I continued building my collages and gave them a name, What’s your Story, Real or Imagined: Telling Stories Through Black & White Photos. My collection of ephemera expanded, as did my obsession with black and white photographs.

I continued building my collages and gave them a name, What’s your Story, Real or Imagined: Telling Stories Through Black & White Photos. My collection of ephemera expanded, as did my obsession with black and white photographs.

These are a sampling of my mixed media collages and all are a work in progress. When I’m at my studio, I am continually digging through my bits and auditioning that one more thing to add another layer of interest and mystery.

My plan is to continue working on these pages and in the fall of 2017, I’ll be offering a workshop at Salem Art Association’s Art Annex in conjunction with a collaborative history project, which is in the works.

Art for Everyone: An Affordable College Art Textbook

Over a year ago, I was invited to submit art to be used in a college textbook being published by Chemeketa Community College. The book was being put together by the Chemeketa art faculty in response to the steady rise of textbook prices. The textbook being used for ART 101 had risen to $214. For the past year, a beta version of the faculty-produced textbook was used by students. During the year, the textbook was revised, edited, and fine tuned.

The college recently published the first edition of the textbook, Art for Everyone, and it is available for only $28. To celebrate the launch of this beautiful book, artists who submitted art to the textbook were invited by the art faculty at Chemeketa Community College to participate in an art exhibit at the Gretchen Schuette Art Gallery, located in the heart of the campus.

The reception was held on Wednesday, November 2nd in the afternoon so students would be able to attend. There was a steady stream of visitors, students, and artists, with introductions and the story behind the book shared with everyone present. Here I am standing in front of my piece, The Essence of a Thing, which appeared in the chapter titled Nonrepresentational Approaches, in a subsection on Color Field Painting.

A few photos from the afternoon reception . . . .

The other piece I had in the book (but not in the show), was Freedom in the Silence, which appeared in the chapter titled Formal Elements: Value and Color; my art was featured in the section on Complementary Color Schemes.

Painting for Pleasure, Seriously

At the end of October, I had the pleasure to take a five-day workshop with William Park, a Portland artist. For five days we had morning demos, then the luxury of painting the rest of the day.

In the afternoon Bill would share artists he loves and we would have chats about the love of painting and the challenge of keeping fear out of our process and paintings.

On the first morning, we did a nice warm up exercise of making marks and adding paint. Simple, yet profound in the ability to jump start our week.

The demos Bill did were primarily in acrylics, but I had brought my oil paints and a gallon of cold wax; there were eleven of us in class and a couple other people were painting in oils, so it was a mixed bag and we were encouraged to explore and do whatever we wanted.

Bill made the rounds throughout the day, spending time with each artist for as long as they needed. Here he is with my friend Katy, who also took the class.

For the first couple of days, I just laid down paint in order to get some early bright layers to respond to in later days. No fear, just the joy of painting and playing with color.