6/52 Bird a week - With love

Here is another birdie piece that I managed to do while in San Miguel. It was a printing class and for this piece,  it involved etching in metal - a plate of zinc - and then using the etching to create the print. I entitled it "With love".

The drawing part was the challenging bit for me, as usual.  But just to add to that, it had to be drawn onto this sticky goo - a secret recipe of the teacher's - which was layered on the zinc.

Then the zinc was put in acid which etched into the metal where the drawing was - but the metal under the "goo" was protected. Here is the plate I made.

To make the print, the paper was moistened first as the lines in the plate were shallow, ink was applied to the plate and then mostly wiped off, and then it was put through the printing press.

Here is Gerardo - our teacher with his printing press!

And another new technique learned!

The "bird a week" is a challenge that myself and some other artists are doing this year - with the goal to create a different bird each week.  To see the birds others have done, please click on the links below:

Weekly Bird in the Hand

It's Saturday - back in Glen Ellen - and time for my weekly "bird in the hand" - the things I am grateful for:

My wax sculpture - soon to be bronze sculpture!

• Having the opportunity to have our 7 week "sabatical" in San Miguel - and having such a wonderful time
• Family who came to join us in San Miguel
• The teachers whom I took classes with - Rita, Rae, Gerardo, Keith, Kris - and all the fun, all the new things I learned and the inspiration their classes gave me
• The sunshine, flowers, food, colors, cobblestone streets, sunsets, rooftop gardens, burros, people of San Miguel
• The two lovely homes we got to stay in - thanks Dennis and Kathrin, and Jay
• New friends we made
• Cassie my friend, who stayed in our home while we were away to take care of Harold, my pet parrot.  Thanks soooo much Cassie
• Harold - for singing all day with me today to welcome me home
• All the ducks, herons and egrets that are on the pond today to welcome us back
• A wonderful birthday with many messages from friends all around the world
• John's brother's carers/doctors/nurses at the hospital in England

We've had a wonderful time away and hope to bring some of what we loved about that trip back into our daily lives.  Now I'm looking forward to getting back into everything here - especially both my art and my singing, which starts again tomorrow.

Life is good! :=D  Hope it is for you too. xxx

Time to go home....

We fly back to California today.  It seems very strange. We have been in San Miguel for 7 weeks and before we left, were both apprehensive about being away from home for so long.

But we have truly loved it.  San Miguel De Allende is a wonderful town.  We have always felt so safe here - and within a very short amount of time, felt "at home".

We've tried so many new things from different classes, to horse riding, to new places, to acupuncture, to new foods, to different types of tequila, to...... We've enjoyed gorgeous sunny weather and met some wonderful people.

It is sad that it is coming to an end, but I know it'll also feel good to be home and I'll get to see Harold my parrot again!

Don't be put off by all the bad press Mexico has - there are some real treasures of towns here - well worth exploring. 

The photos today are collages of a few of my favorites photos from this trip.  I hope you've enjoyed following along with our adventure!  Somehow, I think we'll be back :-D

Fragility - Edna Dickinson

As I went to Fabrica La Aurora today for  a class, I stopped in to see a new installation called "fragility" by Edna Dickinson.  She has created open fragile white procelain structures, built from multiple pieces with the idea of cellular growth and forms that build slowly, one piece at a time.  She includes broken pieces on the bases of the installation....It made me think of the fragility of nature.

I love the simplicity the white color gives to the pieces. What do you think?  I'm glad I'm not packing one up to bring home!!!

Burros

I've loved seeing all the burros working hard in San Miguel. They don't even get Sunday off as I saw these four this afternoon.  What sweeties!

Weekly Bird in the hand

Gosh, the week has gone quickly! Can't believe it's Saturday already and time for another "bird in the hand" - my list of things I'm grateful for this week.

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• Hospital staff that are taking care of my brother in law in England. Hope you improve quickly Robert.
• Being able to live in San Miguel for a few weeks and already bump into people we know. Then having the time to sit and chat with them over coffee or a meal.
• The joy of being in a class three times a week - like my sculpture one - and really feeling I am making progress.  
• Doing art and craft with other people. At home, it's just me alone in my studio working away.  I am really enjoying the interaction and being able to bounce ideas off others.
• New friends.
• Warm weather - especially grateful when I hear about bad weather elsewhere!

Hope you've had a good week.

The Sistine Chapel of San Miguel

My parents and I went out to El Santuario de Atotonilco at the weekend to see what is called "sistine chapel of San Miguel". The church is a place of pilgrimage and penitence and people travel from all over the country to pray and meditate here.

The building of the church began in 1740 and took more than 35 years to complete.  All the walls were painted by one local artist at that time - who worked there for 30 years!  I can't imagine working on one project for all that time!

The church is dedicated to Jesus of Nazareth and the priest and painter seemed to prefer the bloodier events to depict so there is a heavy focus on suffering and blood!

 

For centuries the church was then neglected until about 15 years ago when the World Monuments Fund added it to its list of "100 Most Endangered Monuments".  With money from American Express and the state, the building's facade and murals are now being restored.  The church is now designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The day we were there, there were two weddings taking place. It was lovely to see.

The restoration is still in progress, but you can get a real sense of all the work that has gone into it.  I still can't get over how one man would keep painting there for 30 years!  I get bored on one project after a week!!!

Another new class today - Encaustics

I'm keeping up with my New Year resolution of being more experimental and trying lots of new things! Today I took a class in encaustics at Fabrica de la Aurora - something I haven't done before and never really knew that much about.

My mum and I took the class together, taught by Rae Miller.  She is a delightful teacher and made the morning a real pleasure.

When you look at the pigments you can use - who could resist:

Such rich colors

We learnt how to apply the wax with pigment and resin to create different effects - working with textures or smooth, over-fusing or regular fusing, adding metal leaf, adding oil paints, etc etc.

It was fascinating and a good chance to just give it all a try.

 

Tomorrow, I'll show you one of the paintings I completed using the colors above.   I also did a quick painting at the end of the class which was for my "bird a week" challenge, so I'll show that on Friday.

I love giving all these new techniques and media a try!  This afternoon I had another class too - but more on that later......  You just can't keep me down!!! :-D

2/52 Bird a week - the girl with a bird nest in her hair

For the second week of the "bird a week" challenge, I sculpted a bird using clay.  He sits happily in a nest made of hair on the lady I sculpted.  This is my first clay sculpture ever.

For those of you who have followed my creation this past week, the lady now has her neck hollowed out (!) and I also gave some more attention to her eyes and hair, and added some eyebrows. 

I thought I would finish this sculpture off on Wednesday but I tried to "dress" the lady a little and didn't like the result.  So today is the end of the wet clay phase - hopefully -  and then the little lady and her bird get to dry out for a few weeks before firing. Fingers crossed they fire well....

If you are joining in the "bird a week" challenge - please add your link to your blog post or flickr photo below and then add the link list to your blog too.  If you haven't joined and would like to - please go to the flickr group. 

The girl with the bird nest in her hair

As I've been working on my clay sculpture, I wanted to bring a little bit more of myself into the piece - make it definitely a "Ruth" piece - and so, did you guess from yesterday's photo?  I purposely cut the top of the photo off but wondered if anyone would guess.....?

Yes, I made her hair into a nest and put a bird on top!  Now I feel it is a Ruth sculpture!!  What do you reckon?

I had a vague memory about a story from my childhood about a girl with a bird nest in her hair.  Did you ever read it?  The story goes that a little girl grew her hair long but then didn't want to brush it. You know how little girls' hair can get so tangled so that it hurts when you brush it? Well, that was the case with this girl.  So she told her mother she wasn't going to brush it.  The mother said she had to, otherwise birds would come and nest in her hair....

But the girl ignored her mother's warning and didn't brush her long hair.  Sure enough, as warned, little birds came and started nesting in her hair.  They were just tiny little songbirds to start with and so the girl actually quite liked it.  However, after a while, bigger and bigger birds came along and also wanted to nest and then it got quite painful.  The girl didn't like the big birds trying to nest in her hair - and so eventually, she had to admit that her mother was correct - and so, with her mother's help, got rid of the bird and began to brush her hair regularly.

And so, here is my sculpture now - with a little bird nesting in the top.

I also hollowed out her shoulder area, added eyebrows.....and in my next class I have to hollow out her neck, but then she'll be just about done and will need to be left to dry.

Hope you like how she is coming along.  I haven't thought of a name for her yet? Any ideas?  "Nest" is a girl's name apparently - it's Welsh - but I don't think that's right for her.  I'll have a think today and see what I come up with......

Sculpting class #2

I am afraid to say that the batteries on my phone had run out at my second sculpting class on Friday - so  I couldn't take any photos!  And it was so much fun - sorry you missed it! I'll describe what I did so you can follow along....

The above photo was how I left her after my first lesson.....From here, first of all, I took the pole out from her head which had been there for support. Then I worked a little on her sinuses as she said she was having trouble breathing.  Next came the addition of two little ears and then I moved on to perform brain surgery!  This involved slicing off the back of the little lady's head and scooping out the "brains"!  Cleaning it out really nicely!!!

I've often thought about frontal lobotomies and what 'interesting' surgeries they were, and here I was doing more than a lobotomy! My lady had been covered in plastic sheeting since the first lesson to keep the clay wet, so the surgery went smoothly!

After scooping out the inside of the head, I then put the back of the head back on, and gave my little lady some hair.  I decided to put her hair up.......and this shows how it is coming along - the little block is still under her chin to hold her head up while the clay isn't dry:

I had another class today but I'll save those photos until tomorrow, along with my little story....