blog – Page 23 – Deidre Adams

Pros and cons of formal art training

It was just about this time two years ago that I decided I wanted to go back to school and get a BFA. I had been making art for some time, more or less self taught except for a couple of drawing and painting classes I had taken as electives while working on other degrees, along with my coursework in graphic design. I was pretty happy with what I was doing – lots of photography, as I had done ever since my parents gave me my first camera as a child, some watercolor painting here and there, as well as my growing body of work in art quilts. I had taken several workshops in the fiber world, covering such things as improvisational piecing, fabric dyeing, machine stitching, etc. But I felt that something was missing.

So in late December of 2005, I was just spending a little time looking around on the Internet, and on a whim I decided to check out the art program at Metro State, the school at which I had earned my previous degree, Computer Information Systems & Management Science, in 1990. And once I saw that I already had most of the core classes and would only need the art classes, I decided to take the plunge and register for the upcoming spring semester. And that was it – I was a student again.

I’ve noticed that there is something of a controversy surrounding this topic. Some will say that a formal art education stifles creativity, or forces you to fit into a predetermined mold. Some art school graduates seem to feel that their experience was perhaps negative in some ways, while many self-taught artists wear the label like a badge of honor. My feeling is that you have to do what’s right for your own particular situation. For me, there have been both good and bad things about every class I’ve taken so far. While some of them seemed rather tedious or overlapped other classes from the past, I’ve learned something from each one, and the discipline provided from having to turn things in on a regular basis has forced me to go faster than I might do on my own.

I took my first watercolor class way back in 1986 when I was working on an AS in business at the local community college. Then I took Painting I in 1998, but it was on an audit basis, and so it doesn’t count for my new requirements and I had to take it again in the spring of 2007. But I didn’t go in thinking I already knew everything, and it turns out I learned a lot about how to paint, and how to see, as much from just doing it as anything else.

Here’s the results of the first assignment in that class:

Mike’s Cash Store
24 x 36 inches ©2006

The assignment was to copy a photograph in black and white to learn to see value. Here’s the photo I started with:

This is an abandoned storefront in Velarde, New Mexico. I drive by this place a couple of times a year on my way to Albuquerque to visit family. I’ve always wondered what the story is here. What happened on the day the owners finally decided to give up and shut the place down? Why is that chair just sitting there as though someone got up for a quick second to go get something out back, but will be coming back any minute?

To make the copy, you draw a grid on your photo, then you draw a proportionally enlarged grid on your canvas. It’s easier to figure out where everything goes when all you are responsible for is one square at a time, and you’re not just lost at sea on a huge blank surface. The photo had a bit of distortion in the perspective, which I tried to straighten out a little in the painting, but it’s obvious that it’s not perfect in a lot of places – the back of the chair really stands out as much too wide and strangely angled.

We were not allowed to use any black out of the tube; it had to be mixed from ultramarine blue & burnt sienna. If you didn’t make enough the first time and had to mix up more, it was challenging to get the new batch to match the temperature of the original one. This assignment was great practice in working with value (it’s all relative, baby!) and in reproducing textures. I had a lot of trouble with the bricks and and the weathered plywood. But it was also fun, and came out not too bad, I think.

January 15th, 2008|Painting, School|2 Comments

Façade Series

Façade IV: Chrome Oxide
39 x 60 inches

Here is the finished version of the piece I wrote about on Jan. 3. This series is inspired by walls of old buildings which have been painted over numerous times, with the top layers wearing away to reveal what lies beneath; sometimes there’s also graffiti, and all of it blends together to form a rich visual texture. My process in painting these is somewhat analogous to what these walls undergo. I add various elements, then subtract parts of them by adding more layers, while the layers of paint are affected by the physical texture of the underlying support — in my case, it’s fabric and stitching.

This leads into what’s been an ongoing dilemma for me: how to categorize this work. I’ve been calling them “mixed media textiles” because I don’t want to use the dreaded “q” word, and they’re more than paintings. “Quilts” suffer a bad rap in the art world; no matter how serious the artist nor how important the work, the medium is considered a “craft” and is therefore inferior to painting. Thanks to the efforts of many artists in the field and organizations such as SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates, Inc.), some progress has been made toward overcoming this image, but the battle isn’t won yet.

Façade IV: Chrome Oxide (detail)

January 9th, 2008|Work in progress|Comments Off

Exhibit at Tallyn’s Reach Library

Today was the 4th meeting of my fiber study design group. This group started last August when I was asked to teach a class in design for a group of artists who know one another through various groups and workshops, and who all work in different mediums. I had developed the outline for this design class over a year ago when I was asked to teach by some members of our local art quilt guild, the Front Range Contemporary Quilters. I had been thinking about how quilters and fiber artists often progress in their development by taking lots of workshops and learning from one another. These workshops tend to be mainly focused on techniques, so they know how to use materials and follow a process, but they often have no background in basic principles of design and composition. I knew I didn’t want to just teach yet another technique, so I developed a design class instead. Last August was the third time I have taught it.

The class was originally intended to be 2 days, but this group enjoyed learning about design so much, they wanted to continue on with more study. Each time, I give them homework exercises which they have a couple of months to complete before the next meeting. In today’s class, we looked at what every one had done with the homework, and the results are really amazing. They are all so creative and the different solutions everyone comes up with are truly inspiring. Unfortunately, being new to blogging, I completely forgot to take pictures to include here, even though I had asked them early on if I could. Next time I won’t forget!

Anyway, the house we met at is very close to a local library where some of my work is currently on display, so I went there after class to get a shot of the exhibit wall. This exhibit, at the Tallyn’s Reach Library, is part of the City of Aurora’s 2007-2008 Art in Public Places program. More of my work is on display at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library. Starting March 1, the work leaves the libraries and moves to the Aurora Municipal Center.

January 5th, 2008|Exhibitions|Comments Off