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| Modeling clay value pk |
As a kid, I loved playing with clay. About two years ago or so, I took a clay class taught by Nina Williams at the Art Center here in Grand Junction. She creates the most amazing minature clay things.
The classes were once a week over six or seven weeks for three or four hours or so. I enjoyed playing with the clay even moreso than I did as a kid!
The art projects in the class were so cool. The whole process, from squishy clay to shaping and molding to firing and glazing, was fascinating! ...
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| I made this in Nina's class. |
Then a few months ago, I took a Collage and Mixed Media class (also at the Art Center) from Gayle Gerson.
Gayle's pieces are so intricate and so detailed that its hard to take my eyes away from her art!
I discovered that I really enjoy working abstract, starting each one with a circle or circles. Not sure what it is I like about the circles, but I do.
The next two pictures (below) are of pieces I made while taking Gayle's class.
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| I made this while taking Gayle's class. |
And the best part of that class? My mom took it with me! That's the first time we've ever done anything like that together.
She usually arrived for class before I did and always saved the seat next to her. She always brought a treat of some kind. (I love brazil nuts, for example, so she would pull out a little jar with two or three brazil nuts and just set it in front of me and smile.) We shared gelso and paints and scissors and paper.
I learned so much about her through that class. Butterflies. Most of her pieces had butterflies in some form or another. Beautiful butterflies. And they were good! And she had the nicest brushes. Turns out, and I did not know this, she'd taken some art classes years ago. Who knew? (I wish I had a picture of one of her butterfly pieces to post here; I'll have to make a point of snapping a picture of one next time we're at their home.)
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| I made this collage in Gayle's class. |
"You want to do another art class together?" I asked, as she pulled a little jar with one, yes one, brazil nut out of her art bag and set it on the table in front of me. I took that as a confirmed yes.
"You pick this time," I said, enjoying the brazil nut, handing the empty jar back to her. She'll let me know which class she wants us to take when the Art Center posts their fall class lineup. I know, how cool is that?
Back to the clay. Recently, while working on a client story, I had the opportunity to interview
the art professor at Colorado Mesa University, Carolyn Quinn-Hensley, who teaches the animation-related art classes and runs the annual animation festival. The Animation Festival is May 4 in the University Center Ballroom. (The CMU Art Department's animation program is incredible.)
Carolyn referred me to several websites to look at the students' work as well as other sites to see behind the scenes of the animation process in general industry terms. Diligent writer that I am, of course I looked at all those sites and then some. My favorite were the claymation stopmotion mini movies.
I thought, hmmm... wouldn't it be fun to have claymation videos to go with my music tracks that are posted on my YouTube channel? Right now I just have a few photos from gigs showing while the music plays; that's all I have to go with the music tracks.
But my husband loves photography and could help with the shooting of the clay figures. Would be a fun art project and I could use lessons learned in the clay and collage/mixed media classes in the process.
So, that's my next art project plan. Probably take a year or so, but the best part of art is the process; a good creative outlet in between work projects.
I'm going to document progress here as we go along. Am busy the next few weeks bigtime, but after that I should have some free time to open up that box of clay already!
Here are links mentioned in this post:
http://www.youtube.com/krystynhartman
http://www.animationcmu.blogspot.com/
http://wallaceandgromit.com/
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