Happy 2012, dear readers.

- Emily Dickinson

“Pollination can be defined in so many ways: literally, emotionally, metaphorically, politically or poetically. I chose each artist for his or her unique vision and ability to use encaustic to express it. I looked for artists whose work speaks to movement, change, storytelling and reformation… Laura Tyler uses flower parts, the essence of pollen itself, combined and reconfigured to convey a sense of rebirth.”

- Gregory Wright

You’re warmly invited to check out the show on Beekeeper Day. I will be there with Gregory Wright and Tony Lulek, President of the Norfolk County Beekeeper Association and will present my documentary, Sister Bee. We’ll talk about about art, wax and the bee.

Beekeeper Day
Saturday, November 19th from noon to 4:00 pm
Brush Art Gallery and Studios
256 Market Street
Lowell, MA

LINKS:
Pollination: Beyond the Garden, Gregory Wright’s curator’s statement
At Long Last, Pollination, opening night by Nancy Natale
Driving directions, Brush Art Gallery and Studios
Brush exhibit is the bee’s knees, Lowell Sun
Lowell art gallery exhibit explores Pollination, Encore
Sister Bee

LINKS:
Manifest – a minimal theme with a literary look and feel.
Neue Themes – four boxy themes, ideal for artists who use the grid.
Space – a highly readable, typography driven theme.

Come on by!

My downtown Boulder painting studio will be open to the public from noon to 6:00 pm this Saturday and Sunday October 8th and 9th. You’re so invited to stop by and say hello.

LINKS:
Meet my new neighbor, Sarah Kinn.
Check out the details on my Events page.

Comb Object, Flying Geese hanging at GoCA’s HIVE exhibition in Colorado Springs through October 6th.

The dark comb on the left was made in the brood chamber, the deep part of the hive where the queen lays eggs and nurse bees raise the young up to adulthood. It took years to earn its smooth, resinous patina.

The materials are bee comb, wood, twine and wax

The light comb on the right was made in a honey super and took just a few days to make. The bees made the negative space. The gaps are passages through which they walked and were not cut or otherwise shaped by me.

Negative space

Here you can see the wood frame in which the bees did their building. It’s a little over an inch wide.

Side view, Comb Object, Flying Geese

A sphere of wax weights the bottom.

Bottom half, Comb Object, Flying Geese

Here’s a closeup of the wax sphere and its shadow. It’s interesting how the shapes work together, the triangle, the hex and the sphere, don’t you think?

Sphere and shadow, Comb Object, Flying Geese

Here it is in installation.

Comb Object, Flying Geese and 100 paintings by Laura Tyler

Links:
HIVE, official site
“Beauty and the Bee,” interview and article by Helen Wolt

One hundred paintings, encaustic and ink on panel, 5″ x 4″

Edie Adelstein reviewed the show on for the Colorado Springs Independent. You can read her thoughts in the captions below.

“Laura Tyler’s encaustic pieces, 100 in all, gradually reveal an incredible level of depth and technique.”

“Outwardly abstract shapes in green, deep blue and magenta hint at a bee’s compound vision of the world — …”

“…glimpses of leaves, petals and water that buzz by”

“In a theme that jives with the idea of community and colony, the works, though individually fragmented, all together link…”

- Edie Adelstein

Feeling grateful. It’s a big show and there’s a lot more to see. I’ll post images of the comb objects and the other artists’ works later this week.

Links:
Review: HIVE by Edie Adelstein
HIVE, official site

Since, as Carr states below, hyperlinks reduce comprehension I’m trying something new. Instead of offering links within the body of each post, I’ll be listing them at the end. Let me know what you think.

Links:
“The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains”

Northwest corner, Rembrandt Yard Gallery

It was brave of Karen to invite me to show with her before we’d ever met but I’m so glad she did. Even though our paintings show different things we share an approach and it’s been a joy getting to know her.

Girl with the Steel Nose Ring by Karen Conduff, oil on canvas, (left)

We played with weight and light while balancing Karen’s epic portraits against my abstract botanicals. My favorite pairings (above and below)…

Reservoir and Sailing, encaustic and ink on panel

Karen’s, The Freidaphile, a Freida-esque portrait of Boulder’s Jan Kleinbord, is on the left below while a grid of my dandelion paintings is on the right. (I didn’t know this until the show, but Jan Kleinbord really does dress up like Frieda Kahlo for art presentations at local schools.)

From the entrance looking in, Rembrandt Yard Gallery, Boulder, CO

Karen is inspired by the way light falls on form, while I’m into shapes, especially edges.

From left to right starting at the top, Hawlike, The Sisters, No Detail Unlovely, Fluffy, Lick, Present, Rethinking the Fossil Record, The Way We’re Made, and Good Morning!

Some paintings seemed to ask for grids while others called for pairings or rows. (This row was particularly tricky to light.)

Lilac row, nine encaustic paintings

North wall, Rembrandt Yard Gallery, Boulder, CO

I like thinking about color as punctuation.

East facing pillar, Rembrandt Yard Gallery, Boulder, CO

The painting on the left below was drawn from a maple key (for some reason the maple shapes all ended up having a shield-like quality) while the one on the right was drawn from a dandelion.

Regal! and Anther, encaustic and ink on panel

West facing pillar, Rembrandt Yard Gallery, Boulder, CO

From left to right starting at the top, The Way We Stand, White Flag of Courage, Reflecting Tool, Spitting Image, 1989, See How We Lean Together, Soothsayer, Kewpie, and With Longing

Circle of Life by Karen Conduff, oil on canvas, (left)

Ox and Pancake, encaustic and ink on panel

Southwest corner, Rembrandt Yard Gallery, Boulder, CO

From top to bottom, It’s Hard to Say, Pickle and Walking Stick

The One You Want, encaustic and ink on panel, 22″ x 16″

The way we stand, you can see we have grown up this way together, out of the same soil, with the same rains, leaning in the same way toward the sun. See how we lean together in the same direction. How the dead limbs of one of us rest in the branches of another. How those branches have grown around the limbs. How the two are inseparable.

- Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature

Links:
Karen Conduff
Rembrandt Yard Gallery
Susan Griffin

Light and breezy, Studio 108 in Boulder, Colorado

My biggest challenge teaching-wise these last few years has been finding a consistently available, big-enough studio with reliable electricity. (My personal painting studio is too small for classes bigger than two or three.)

Artists at work, Studio 108, Boulder, Colorado

You can take Beginning Encaustic here on Friday, July 15th.

Thanks to Lisa McDonough for the tip and to John Horner for the warm welcome.

A collaboration between myself, Coalition4Bees and Alchemy of Movement Dance Studio.

The way we stand, you can see we have grown up this way together, out of the same soil, with the same rains, leaning in the same way toward the sun.

- Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature

Out of the Same Soil
New Paintings by Laura Tyler and Karen Conduff
Opening reception, Thursday, June 23rd from 5:30 – 7:30 pm
Rembrandt Yard Gallery
1301 Spruce Street
Boulder, Colorado

Bleeding heart, Boulder, Colorado

I just took Botany for the Botanical Illustrator at the Denver Botanic Gardens. The vocabulary was gobsmacking. (Did you know, for example, that the female part of a plant where pollen enters the flower is known as the stigma?)

My new favorite word is “inflorescence,” rhyming, as it does, with the other “-ence” words that refer to processes or states of being.

Luminescence, incandescence, effervescence, inflorescence . . .

Catmint, Boulder, Colorado

Now I can say, “Look at the inflorescence!” when talking about a garden and mean the whole unfurling of it. Not just the flowers but whole damned shebang. Like it’s a holiday or something.

It’s decided. I’m taking Monday off for the Inflorescence.

He is a letter to everyone. You open it.
It says, Live.

- Rumi

Douris’ school cup, detail, Staatliche Museen, Berlin

According to the Classical Art Research Centre this is a rare image depicting “boys at school.” The seated figure is an older boy showing a younger one how to hold a wax tablet and stylus.

Bottom half of Douris’ school cup, 28.4cm diameter

Wax tablets were made by pouring a thin layer of melted wax into a raised-edge frame often made of wood but sometimes made of metal or ivory.

Birth certificate on a wax tablet, 128 AD

Don’t you wish you had one of these to noodle around with at home? More inspiring wax tablet images here.

Thank you, Johanna Drucker.