Upcoming PONCHO Lecture

This week at Seattle's Pratt Fine Arts Center, the 2009-10 PONCHO Artists-in-Residence & Gregory M. Robinson Pathways Scholars will present slides and discuss how they've been affected by their scholarship year. The presenters are Adele Eustis, Crista Matteson, Arun Sharma, Pete Singleton, and myself. I've had the opportunity to get to know some of the others this year, and I can't wait to see what they've come up with!

The talk takes place on Thursday, September 16, from 6:30 to 8pm, at 1902 S Main St in Seattle.

The PONCHO/Pathways show is on view at the Pratt Gallery in the Tashiro Kaplan Building (306 S Washington St, Ste 102) through October 1. A piece from each artist is also on display in Pratt's main building.

Upcoming Fall into Art Class

Next week I'll be teaching a 4 hour class on textured metal as part of Pratt's beginner-friendly Fall into Art series. Students will leave this fun, fast-paced class with a striking one-of-a-kind bracelet.

Fall into Art: Textured Metal Bracelets
Wednesday 15 September 2010, 6-10pm
Pratt Fine Arts Center, Seattle WA

details and registration information

Figure Sculpting

Last month I took at 4-session figure sculpting class at Pratt with Jeanne Ferraro. Ferraro is a Seattle artist and teacher who works in media ranging from clay, iron, and hot glass to charcoal, pencil and pastel.

Although I've been doing figurative work for a while now, I learned a great deal! During the first session we agreed on a pose and set to work building stick figure armatures out of plumbing pipes and twisted wire; because the wire is so flexible, limbs can be repositioned even after they're covered in clay. Putting on the first layer of clay was hugely fun and involved spanking the lumps with a chunk of wood until they took on some degree of form.

Then, the hard part: aiming for accuracy. We spent the better part of three classes circling the model like sharks, squinting as we measured parts of her body against our developing forms, carving off bits here and adding blobs of new clay there.

And before any of us were quite ready, we were done. Four sessions is not a lot of time! Some of my classmates will continue to work on their sculptures, and a few might even take molds and copy their forms in more lasting materials like resin or bronze. Mine is gracefully disintegrating on the deck.