Lost Cave Paintings of Saint Paul for the WARM Mentor-Protege Show

Women's Art Resources of Minnesota (WARM)'s Mentor-Protege Show is fast approaching. I have plotted and planned for months, and finally have taken gesso in hand to begin.

The Plan

THE PROJECT 

The project will be an installation of an excavation of some of the Lost Cave Paintings of Saint Paul. I began making these paintings in 2012 after watching Paul Boecher demonstrate using gesso* on board at the Northstar Water Media Society's Art-on-a-Line. A piece of his gesso-on-paper looked like fresco, and my mind went immediately to "cave wall."

Since mid-2012, I've made more than 150 large and small cave paintings, and dozens of "friends of the cave" Pandas who inhabit the Hidden Bamboo Forest of Saint Paul.

* A Word About Gesso: In the modern era, gesso is an acrylic medium as thick as Greek yogurt that artists use to make surfaces either smooth or bumpy. I make textured cave walls with white gesso that I tint with watercolors for small works or acrylic paints for large ones. Historic gesso was made with rabbit skin glue and minerals. I am glad to be a 21st century artist who can skip boiling rabbits and simply buy gesso at Wet Paint or at Dick Blick.

The Flamingo's Last Outing:
Northern Spark at the Vine Arts Center

MEET THE FLAMINGO 

This 5-foot flamingo has lived in my downstairs bathroom for more than 15 years. I took the paper design to a lumber yard where the staff kindly (without laughing) cut out the bird, made a dozen sets of book ends, and 20 8-inch rounds from the plywood that I purchased.

Flamingo with Magenta-
Tinted Gesso

In the original plan for the bird, I would have covered the body with beads, mosaic-tiled the legs, and created a stained-glass-shard-mosaic for the grass and weeds. Fortunately, it was a flexible plan, and I was very happy with some-beads-and-paint. All of the other flamingo pieces in the bathroom miss their Big Birdy Buddy.

The flamingo's body is now covered with tinted pink gesso, and the weeds are covered with weed-colored-and-textured gesso.

THE CAVE WALLS 

The five aluminum boards (cut and primed with great skill by Jason Najarak), are now a taupe/gray that is a mixture of white gesso and an astonishing amount of acrylic paint. I used sepia, chrome yellow, chrome orange, phalo blue, violet, metallic bronze and gold, venetian red and probably a few more. Each panel is slightly different from the others.

NEXT STEPS

1. Create the templates for the creatures. I have gone into my archive for my favorite images. The original elephant works well on a 5"x7" tiny painting. Making him into a 20"x40"paper template will use all of my cut and paste skills.

2. Paint the creatures, including the dozens of frogs and hummingbirds which will be part of the continuity for the panels.

3. Print and install the maps for the back of the piece. Because this will be free-standing in the middle of the room, it can't have an unsightly "naked" back. I will cover it with maps of Old Saint Paul made from electronic files from the the Ramsey County Historical Society Library in the basement of the Landmark Center in downtown Saint Paul.

4.  Print the "Visit Very Old Saint Paul" postcards for the postcard rack.

Susan Gainen at the Saint Paul Art Crawl: October 4-6, 2013

Gold & Brown Jungle Cat
From Hyperspace

Join flocks of  whimsical small friends and exciting geometric abstract nanoscapes at the Saint Paul Art Crawl. I will be in the Lowertown Lofts Apartments, 240 5th Street East, Saint Paul, MN 55101.

Art Crawl Hours:

Friday October 4 (6 to 10 pm)
Saturday October 5 (noon to 8 pm)
Sunday October 6 (noon to 5 pm)

Lowertown Lofts Apartments are a short stroll from the Saint Paul Farmers' Market. If you are a late market shopper, you can drop right in on Saturday and Sunday.

Ax-Man Gizmo 10th Gear
Juried in to Tieton 10x10x10 Show

Small Friends from Hyperspace

Come and see the Small Friends from Hyperspace that I have made with TerraSkin, a tree-free paper that I found at Wet Paint in Saint Paul. TerraSkin is made from 76% calcium carbonate, and paint puddles and dries instead of being absorbed as with traditional watercolor paper. One look at the dried puddles and it was clear that Hyperspace had come to Saint Paul.

The Hyperspace friends include a large flock of Hummingbirds, a few Hippos, a Safe, Skein, Sore, String or Team of Ducks (those are the collective nouns for ducks in the air, which I believe should include Hyperspace), and more.

Who? Me?

Other new work:

Color Block #1

• Some (not all) of the Ax-Man Gizmo paintings are on blank note cards;
• A parliament of watercolor and Lost Cave Painting of Saint Paul owls ("parliament" is the collective noun for owls); 
• A new family of cats whose Prime Directive is to say "Who me?" when found to have made mischief;
• Cats celebrating Halloween;
• New excavations from The Lost Cave Paintings of Saint Paul;
• New abstract cards (Color Block #1);
• Autographed copies of  Meet the LLLamas at a special Art Crawl price;
• and lots, lots more!

And favorites, too!

Wild Parrots of Saint Paul
Lost Cave Paintings of Saint Paul
and original nanoscapes.

See you at the Art Crawl!!  I will be painting!

If you miss the Art Crawl, drop by The Art Shoppe at Midtown Global Market to see more of my work.

Puzzle Maker's Choice: jigsaw, tile saw or paint brush?

Puzzle Pieces Work in Progress

I understand the addictive quality of working out a jigsaw puzzle, and have myself uttered the plaintive cry "Just one more!" when my parents were trying to call me to dinner or send me to bed.

There are no jigsaw puzzles in my house today: Too much space is devoted to painting, and Max the Kitten, who has already walked into wet gesso and spilled water onto a nearly-finished painting, would be drawn to puzzle pieces like a moth to a flame.

Having a "no puzzle policy" hasn't kept me from making puzzles, though. Typical puzzle maker's tools are either jig saws or (for the really ambitious) tile saws, however, my puzzle-making tool is a paint brush.

This work-in-progress puzzle is made with a 6H pencil and a Raphael Martora Sable #0 brush that I bought at Wet Paint in Saint Paul, MN.

Further reading: 11 Reasons To Do Jigsaw Puzzles

New Stone Paper: Terraskin™

During my last visit to Wet Paint, I bought a new-to-me bright-white paper called Terraskin™ which is made from 80% calcium carbonate and 20% high density polyethylene (a binding agent.) Neither trees nor water are used to make it. The manufacturer politely warns that it will begin to degrade if exposed to direct sunlight and moisture for six to nine months, but if kept indoors (my plan) it will be fine. It comes in three thicknesses, and I bought the thickest. A 16-point 25x35 sheet was $6.85.

Stone #1
Pencil & Watercolor
5x7"  $20.00

Unlike Yupo™, which is also tree-free, but is 100% synthetic, Terraskin™  is very smooth and buttery. I have never warmed up to Yupo, and find Terraskin™, very soft and friendly to touch and to work with. 

It is very pencil-friendly, and takes watercolor beautifully. After finishing my painting, I hesitated to touch it because the little watercolor puddles looked shiny and wet. Nope.They were dry. 

I am looking forward to drawing and painting on this surface. 

Stained Glass Cat: progress report

First color

September 6

Friends and fans of nanoscapes may remember the Fractured Glass paintings that I made in 2010, and that there was a magical moment in each painting when the loops and whirls began to come together inside the image. It has happened again with the Stained Glass Cat.

Throughout this work, I have used a new brush: a #1 Rafael 8408 Martre Kolinsky Sable France which I purchased from Wet Paint in St. Paul, MN. It holds a lot of paint and gives me a lot of control, too. 

Stained Glass Cat is 15x22 and painted on 300# Fabriano Extra White paper. When complete, the Stained Glass Cat will join her family in the small friends website.

Fractured Glass Meets Kaleidoscopes: Day 8 (with a respectful tour of origami)

When Wet Paint in St. Paul has a sidewalk sale, I do my best to get there. Last year I snagged my easel; this morning I found a treasure trove of Schmincke Horadam watercolor tubes, and some beautiful watercolor paper. Waiting to pay, I saw some origami papers and kits, and began to think about how many triangles I saw in their designs. Might there be a kinship between origami and Fractured Glass?

It took no time at all to find Robert J. Lang and his breathtakingly origami masterpieces on the web. A physicist and engineer, Lang has been doing origami for 40 years, and he is one of the pioneers of the cross-disciplinary work between origami and math.  Yesterday, I admitted to being inspired  by solid geometry. Today I am inspired by origami, which takes a one-dimensional piece of paper and goes straight to three dimensions.


Peter's Snowflake, is part of Robert J. Lang's collection of Geometrics & Tesselations. 
At the end of the eighth day, the finish line was in sight.  On the morning of the ninth day, I have a flock of new colors in hand...