LAURA TYLER'S ART BLOG

Wow. This dinosaur skin fossil looks like honeycomb. I think it’s beautiful. You can click to see a larger image and read the story here.

The philosophy of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter, and is considered a form of physicalism. Fundamentally, all things are composed of material and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions; therefore, matter is the only substance.

Pigeon egg with hand and clover

Oh, man. I inhaled The American Painter Emma Dial this weekend. It’s a fantastic novel about a NYC artist’s assistant who paints the paintings dictated by her famous boss. It’s the best, most real depiction of painting I’ve had the pleasure of reading or seeing on film and it’s deliciously quotable, too…

There is nothing sexier than a well-drawn line…

I was trying to build my world around being a painter. I worked tirelessly, fantasizing about the picture I was making. all the pictures to come, and what it would be like when they took on another life out in the world, apart from me. I never doubted that painting was my future…

When we got stir-crazy we went to the bar. Irene and I spoke contemptuously of some of the bar’s denizens who wore painter’s clothes and had not made a thing in years, or the ones who hid out in graduate school rather than face the difficulty of earning a living and figuring out hot to build a life as an artist. There used to be loads of people like us around, young and old, artists working without much thought for the business side or the academic side… But I did not know them anymore and I felt, thinking of Michael’s studio where I painted five days a week, that I was missing out…

Cannot think of a better summer read for an artist.

Scott Macaulay of Filmmaker magazine has written a bit about film marketing that’s worth a read. His thoughts apply to all largish creative endeavors, not just films. Here are a few excerpts from his current Editor’s Note:

“We are all telling you that you must define your audience, aggregate them, get their email addresses, build a marketing plan and conform to a new orthodoxy that believes that it’s up to the filmmaker to drive the new model that will see a film arrive to audiences’ home screens, desktops and cell phones.

As the Labs progressed throughout the week, I found myself resisting a ‘one size fits all’ pattern of advice, urging each filmmaker to discover what might make their film stand-out in the marketplace and hone a strategy that was unique to them. There was one film, a beautifully executed, small relationship drama, that probably shouldn’t be hyping themselves through endless email blasts; the film will get into a great festival and audiences should feel like they’ve discovered it on their own… On the other hand, there was a powerful social-issue film that needs to target and reach out to audiences who will debate the movie’s topical concerns after the credits roll. Each of these filmmakers shouldn’t try to shoehorn their film into some new conventional wisdom. In other words, nobody knows anything – except, if he or she is very lucky, the filmmaker…”

You can read the whole thing here.

Something eerily beautiful. Asperatus clouds! Apparently, they’re new. You can read more at MailOnline.

“It is a bit like looking at the surface of a choppy sea from below.”

- Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society and namer of asperatus clouds.

How do bees construct wax comb so perfectly?

They use their bodies as measuring tools, sometimes holding hands, making great chains of bees.

The process is called “festooning” and it’s wonderful to see. In the picture below, you can see a small festoon has formed to measure the distance from bottom of comb to the edge of the frame.

Here it is again, close up.

I took this next picture by looking down into a hive after disturbing the measuring process by removing a frame.

The broken chain reformed immediately, taking into account the new distance between combs.

Though it’s easy to see them in action here, their way of thinking, their way of processing the information they get from festooning, is a mystery to me.

It’s an honor and a pleasure to announce that Sister Bee is screening at the Belfast Free Library on June 23rd as part of a series of bee events hosted by the Maine Farmland Trust.

Included in the festivities will be a showing of encaustic work by Belfast sculptor Beth Henderson, photographs by Michelle Olson from Caribou, and various educational displays. For more information about these events please contact the MFT Gallery Coordinator Anna Witholt Abaldo.

One of my favorite shapes is that of naturally drawn wax comb. It’s the edges that thrill me. They’re rounded, precise and have a beautiful way of approaching boundaries, sometimes touching edges and sometimes not, always with grace and intelligence.

Foundationless brood comb

It’s a shape I think about a lot, and one that occurs over and over again in my painting. Here it is in 2008.

“Elephant,” encaustic and ink on panel

And 2007.

“Haystack,” encaustic, colored pencil and watercolor on panel

And again…

“Mars,” encaustic on birch

Often, when people think about bee comb, hexagons come to mind (understandable so). But it’s roundness, I think, that best describes the shape of the bees.

Feral colony found in an owl house. Photo essay here.

Another inspiring slide show from the NYTimes.

Favorite quote?

“Nobody wants me to do anything, so I’m just doing what I want.”

–Liz Fallon, visual artist, Portland, Maine

There’s a new pastime taking shape in our household. Making beeswax soap! It’s a work in progress. We’re still tweaking the recipe, aiming for a simple beekeeper’s soap that’s nice on the skin while appealing to the bees’ gentler side.

Propolis, beeswax and honey soap

Bees are exquisitely tuned in to scent. Human body odor and the breath of humans and other mammals can trigger aggressive behavior. The scent of old stings on bee clothes and gloves can also rile ‘em up. Lemongrass is a turn on, similar chemically to a scent produced by the queen. We started using lemongrass mist around the hive about a year ago instead of smoke and they seem to find it fascinating. It calms them. Hopefully, hands washed with lemongrass soap will be calming too.

Soapmaking is fun once you get past the fear of lye. There’s something alchemical about it, watching oils and wax go from solid to liquid and back again. Beeswax, in all its forms, evokes alchemy, I think. There’s the process of its making. Sunlight to flower to nectar to bee to honey to wax. Artists who use wax in their work understand how beeswax, in particular, changes things. It adds a singular depth and a warm, lively sheen to every surface it coats. Goldenness.

A lavender soap flower

As Marge McLellan says in Sister Bee, “It’s all just so… beautiful!”

The Beginning Encaustic workshop at Creations Art Space has been rescheduled for Saturday, July 11th.

You can find out more and register here.

Curious about wax in Colorado? You’re invited to Beginning Encaustic at Creations Art Space in Boulder on Saturday. This class, at this location, is a lot of fun. Playful, exploratory and hands on. I love teaching it.

You can find out more and register here.

Color provokes a psychic vibration. Color hides a power still unknown but real, which acts on every part of the human body.

- Wassily Kandinsky

There’s a nice little community of encaustic painters forming on twitter. I joined back in January, totally skeptical, and am now totally hooked. You can find me there @LauraLovesLux & if you’re a painter or a beekeeper or just plain interesting, I’d be delighted to follow you. I like using it as a search engine (smarter, wittier than Google). It’s part oracle, part entertainment broadcast. The term “micro-blogging” doesn’t do it justice. You’ve got to invest some time, a few hours spread over a week or two, before the magic unfolds.

Lisa Sisley-Blinn has done the encaustic world a kindness by compiling a list of artists who tweet. (Thank you, Lisa!) Her blog’s worth checking out too. As is Lorraine Glessner’s who also tweets.

P.S. Bee people to follow… @AFBR (Florida beekeeper, posts photos of bee removals) and @bug_girl (cool links plus entomological snark).

“It’s spring fever… when you’ve got it, you want - oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want - but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”

- Mark Twain