Open Studio - Painting

Sunday, in Orient, an open painting studio was enjoyed by 6 artists. The live model, Tiffany supplied beautiful costumes and poses for the painters.

The next open painting studio takes place on Sunday, Oct. 25

10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Live model

Members: $35 per day

Non-members: $45 per day

Location: Orient School

To reserve your place contact: gloriart@hughes.net OR call Gloria at 675-1915

Some artists used oil paints while others used acrylic and even water color. The 6 hour studio was greatly enjoyed by all -
Rachel Hill
Gary Belcher
Gloria de los Santos
Susan Hoyt
Charlene Payton-Holt
Shelly Kalua Graham

Birthday - Art Party at the Gallery

How cool it would be for kids to have a birthday party making art! well, Megan did just that when she turned 10 in September.

she had two friends show up to experience Lifecasting with her. The girls casted their hands in plaster. After a week of curing the plaster hands can be painted. they will be perfect for setting on a dresser to hold rings, etc.

Megan's mom showed up at the gallery early to decorate the classroom.

After the girls arrived from school they spent time in the classroom they spent time discovering all the treats and talking. when they were ready, Artist, Shelly Kalua Graham explained lifecasting and helped the girls create a mold of their right hand.

Megan and Shelly made molds on guests hands

Then Megan sat in the chair and her birthday guests had to work together to make a mold of Megan's right hand using their left hands!








The girls kept exclaiming, "This is cool."
"This is so fun!"

After letting their hands sit in the molds until everything was set gave the girls a chance to wear the mold, use their left hands for eating and drinking and they spent more time talking.

Then their hands were carefully extracted from the molds and the plaster was mixed. The first batch of plaster was a bust and it had to be remixed then poured into the mold while the mold was shaken. the shaking was to help minimize bubbles in the final cast.

More people showed up for cake and icecream and the girls went to the classroom for some goodies.

After cake and icecream the girls were ready to de-mold the final cast of their hands.

The de-molding process had to be done very carefully so the final plaster hand.

Happy - artful birthday Megan!

Classes starting Oct. 6

Classes will be starting the 2nd week of October. Please see the website for details.
www.newaarts.org

Grand Opening

Thank you to all who came out to enjoy the art, food and music.

The ribbon cutting at 3:30 0n Sept 17 was fun. Colville City Mayor, Richard Nichols, was in attendance along with some council members.

The Colville Chamber of Commerce attended to give us an official ribbon cutting - thank you.

The silent auction was awesome. Thank you to all of our donors.

Borderland Blues Band played some mellow music everyone enjoyed.

Artist Charlene Payton-Holt produced drawings of the band that she sold then donated to the gallery. Thank you.

Founders of the 2002 Colville Arts Foundation, Jeanne Eichler and Jane Koelle attended to give us their blessing - thank you.

Participating artists really made the evening happen.

Breaking through expectations of Perfection

In the pursuit of perfection we put an enormous amount of pressure on ourselves. Artists often work through frustrations with their work. Realizing what may seem like a mistake in a drawing, painting or collage can actually be a wonderful surprise that makes a piece of art truly wonderful.

For beginning art students or those who have been too afraid to start making art because they think they "can barely draw stick figures," there is good news. The imperfections in your creative expressions aren't really imperfections. If you step back, let go of your expectations, and look at your piece with new eyes you may actually see the unexpected "imperfection" actually takes the piece in a fun direction.

We need to have more fun.

No more tears in drawing class when the elephant doesn't look like a photograph. Individual interpretation or individual style comes from learning to embrace the little bits of our creative self expression that comes from ourselves.

Dry those tears art students and give yourselves permission to make something imperfect, something unexpected and something uniquely you. That's what art can do for all of us--let us make something that is not born of our crazy need to be perfect.

Call to Artists

Being a professional artist means "workin' it."
Northeastern WA Arts is here to help you work it.

August 15 we move into a new building!
The new building will house a cooperative gallery for fine arts and crafts.

If you are interested in being serious about your art work give us a call: 509-936-1527

Summer Classes - Batik

This week is the fourth week of summer classes and we have had so much fun working with students of all ages.

Hula is turning out to be quite a workout.
Batik is consistently challenging and intriguing. We learn new techniques and solutions.

Drawing and painting classes are progressing and we are ready to begin our next four week round of classes.

Come see what we're up to. I know, I know, the summer schedule is gone from the website because it was hacked. It will be up ASAP.

I was able to attend the Lavender festival. What fun it was, seeing the passion of the event planners and how many artists, artisans and generally creative people.

Carol, thank you for the invitation!

Website is Down

Last week our website stopped working. Apparently the server it is hosted on was viciously hacked!

Please stay tuned for a new and improved website. Please note, however, we are changing our name form Colville Arts Foundation to a more inclusive one. We hope to reach out to Ferry, Stevens and Pend Orielle counties. There are so many talented artists out there whose art needs a home.

We believe the time is right to help create community where art is vital and appreciated.

Join us!

Value of Art

Art has value as a product, a process, and as a means of expression. Creating art, as a process, helps us learn valuable lessons that can us through life.

As an art instructor I've seen students experience many "ah-ha" moments as they work through their preconceived ideas of art, their self expectations, the artistic process and the final product of their artistic endeavors.

One high school senior, when faced with the opportunity to work with acrylic paint was intrigued by the physical properties of the paint. As I helped other students work on their individual paintings I kept one eye on Jay. He never put any paint on his canvas but rather wanted to feel the paint. He used his paint brush to put a dab of green paint on his index finger. Setting the paintbrush down, he proceeded to squish the paint between his finger and his thumb. Soon he was adding blue, red and yellow to his palette. Next Jay started mixing colors and soon had the palms of his hands painted in red, yellow and green areas. I quickly grabbed a large piece of newsprint and said, "Here Jay, make prints with your hands on this paper." I smiled as I turned to help another student. When I looked back, Jay was smearing blue paint on the paper with his fingers. "I'm finger painting," he said triumphantly.
"Weren't you ever allowed to use paint before?" I asked
"No, my mom didn't want me to get my clothes dirty," he replied. "This is really fun."

I couldn't help but shake my head at how so many of us, as parents, don't realize what we are doing when we try to do our very best for our kids. Jay was so enamored by the paint that by the time class was over he had painted his arms clear up to his elbows and he had a huge smile on his face.

What was it Jay found in the process of art making? He certainly wasn't focused on the product! I never got a chance to ask Jay what he took away from the experience but I hope he connected with his natural curiosity and found that it was fun. I'm glad we could provide Jay with a safe environment with which to gain his experience and I hope he uses his natural curiosity in his work as an adult.

Kaylee, an 11 year old, came to me as quite a perfectionist. Everything had to be in its place and it had to be the same place every time. This concept is not completely foreign to me but I'm happy if I can just find a place to put things in a somewhat organized fashion.

I remember attending a women's fair once in northern California where the key not speaker asked, "how many of you have a junk drawer at home?" The entire audience of women all raised our hands.
"How many of you have more than one junk drawer?" We all looked around while many of us sheepishly put our hands up.
"How many of you have more than two junk drawers?" Hands continued to go up, one of which was mine.
"Don't worry," she said, "creative people have multiple junk drawers. In fact, I'm so creative I never have to put anything back in the same place twice."

Well, Kaylee was raised differently. I have no intention of undoing her good upbringing but she did share an insight with us after class this week.

"Remember when I made a glob of wax on my dolphins? I was upset because I had spilled my wax but you told me it looked like the dolphin was blowing a bubble. Now I like it. I learned that it is just like life. You might make a mistake but you have to just keep going and make the best of it that you can."

Wow, such profound thought out of a such a young person. What an important lesson for someone who is very hard on herself. Perhaps she will relax when her brother makes mistakes too!

Doodling and the Color Wheel in Batik

It turns out doodling is not easy for everyone.

Being able to doodle random patterns and then expound upon them is a lesson in freeing your mind. If you are a perfectionist doodling is counter intuitive. Yet, the randomness of doodling may help with memory as one study in the UK suggests (http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-1/Take-Note-3A-Doodling-Can-Help-Memory--38053-1/).

Not all of us have been allowed to doodle while in school or church or while hanging out with boring adults-- so we spend our time trying to be quiet, holding still, and generally being miserable.

Yet, we should all have permission to doodle. Even Bill Gates of Microsoft has been known to doodle. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4220473.stm)

This week in batik class we learned how to make the color wheel by mixing dyes. As you can see we did not have a true blue so we could not make a true violet. Nevertheless, making a color wheel with dye is a bit of a guessing game - counting out the drops of yellow and adding one drop of blue to make green.

We certainly enjoyed the lesson and the review of the color wheel.

With out new knowledge about making so many new colors we will move on to advanced doodling in class next week.

I am looking forward to expanding my experience with wax resist. When the next 4 week session begins in two weeks we will try our hand at working on silk instead of cotton. We anticipate the colors being more vibrant after rinsing.

Joy of Being Alive

The 4th of July was a beautiful, hot, summer day. I spent it on the river with my family swimming, boating and kite boarding.

We like to take all of our stuff out to the little island that is only an island when the water is high by Old Kettle Falls. At one point we heard a cry for help. My husband, Roland, had noticed some teenagers heading from shore to the little island. He knows the island is further away than it looks and you can no longer walk to the island.

We quickly took our little boat toward the teenager's cry for help and found one boy exhausted. Fortunately for him his friend was able to hold him up for while. It took some time to get the boys into the boat because the one was just so utterly exhausted. After taking the boys back to shore the four of us sat in the boat just relishing the moment of all being alive. The sun was shining, the water was sparkling, and everyone was breathing - in - out - in - out. What a tremendous feeling. After a few minutes the exhausted boy was finally able to raise his head to look at Roland.

"You saved my life."
"Yes, you have the blessing of another day," Roland said.
"Thank you."

It was a moment I won't soon forget and this grateful feeling I have will, no doubt, be transferred to my art. But how does one express gratitude in painting, drawing or a piece of batik? I'm not sure what gratitude and joy will look like but I know it will be there in every piece.

Week 2 Batik

Batik was a blast this week - where were you Sophia?

We did a two color process this week. First we dyed 100% cotton cloth yellow and let it dry. Then in class we created a "doodle" design with the wax and our tjanting tools.






We had some art books to work from for ideas as well as drafting tools. We put the waxed cloth in the refrigerator to cool off and then wadded it to crack the wax. When we applied the dark dye to the fabric it seeped through the cracks in the wax - very cool effect.


Instead of washing the wax out this week we ironed it out. It's a different finish, rather stiff, but with a fuller body finish. The left over wax in the fabric gives it more of a sheen.

I've included some pics of the finished pieces from class. IT WAS FASCINATING and FUN!

Thank you Sylvia for a great class. It's always
fun to experiment and especially to doodle. I didn't realize how relaxing making a doodle could be.

I suppose it's on equal footing with daydreaming!

I'll see all the batik artists in class next week!

Art In The Park Tomorrow!

Kettle falls hosts the ART In The Park tomorrow - Saturday, June 27 from 10 am - 6 pm. There will be art, crafts, entertainment and fun. The belly dancing troupe will be performing in the Happy Dell Park at 2 p.m.

Colville Arts Foundation will be on hand to do face painting for those who are adventurous at heart. Artist, Shelly Kalua Graham, will be volunteering her time to promote the arts and provide some fun for kids with butterflies, monsters and even dolphins.

Summer Arts

This summers art program is beginning to look like the community education program we used to have in Colville. Students pay a $27 membership fee and then attend a lesson for $2/lesson.

Today, for example, hula students learned the 13 letters of the Hawaiian alphabet and the pronunciation of the letters. They also learned to sing the first verse of Pearly Shells in the Hawaiian language. Three hula steps, the kahalo, ka'o and ami were practiced until legs were burning and everyone was breathing hard. Adding the hand interpretation to the steps and words was the final mind challenging piece.

Hula meets Thursday mornings in the CJH Annex building at 10:30 through August 13.

Later in the afternoon, from 3:30-5:30 students worked in Acrylic paints to express their ideas regarding how they feel about paint.

Member Art Supply Store!

The Colville Arts Foundation has long wanted to supply foundation members with more affordable, quality art supplies. We finally have our relationships in place and have placed our first order for supplies.

We believe this idea of buying wholesale and passing most of the savings on to our members is a win-win relationship. CAF is provided with an ongoing fundraiser and members get the supplies they need at a "membership" price.

What is the cost of membership? $35 per year.

Most of our member art supplies will be through orders. Members can shop on the following site: http://www.c2f.com/
The prices members see are retail. They simply write down the stock number and email us a request and we get a price back to them. Members pay for their items then wait for member orders to reach $100 wholesale at which time the order is sent in.

On the calendar you can figure the last week of each month is when we will send in orders. The turn around time is about 4-5 business days. Our first order came promptly.

For our first order we were able to secure some fun items that will make great gifts. The mini easel acrylic set is retail $19.99 but members pay only $11. This little easel set is perfect for tabletop work and I'm excited to start using mine.

The item we have on special is a 3 pack of 10"x20" Canvas Board. This retails for $13.50 but the member special price is $4 during June and July until they are gone. We have a very limited number of these boards but if you would like one stop by soon before the summer art studio students snap them up!

Batik Art Introduction

Batik in Colville?!

Sure, why not. Our instructor, Sylvia, learned about batik on a trip to Malaysia. She is a wonderful teacher and has a lot to share with budding batik artists.

Batik is an involved process but the outcome can be stunningly beautiful.

This introductory project requires 100% cotton fabric.

After treating the fabric in a mixture of water PH Up we let the fabric dry.

Step 1: Choose a picture to trace onto the 12"x12" fabric.

This student chose a coloring book image of dolphins downloaded from the web to trace. The student was very happy with the image and it proved to be just about right for a 10 year old.

Step 2: Stretch the fabric onto a frame. We used little hooks on rubber bands but for younger students prefer thumb tacks straight into the wood.



Step 3: Use a tjanting tool with melted batik wax to apply wax to the traced picture lines. The wax must soak through so you can see it on both sides of the fabric. If it doesn't soak through flip the fabric over and apply the wax to the back of the picture.



The trick here is to keep the wax from making blobs on the fabric. The magic is in the wax, it's makeup and the temperature. We used some batik wax the instructor brought from Malaysia but when it runs out we will have to test other wax options. This wax has some resin in it to make it yellow and it crackles nicely when dry.

Step 4: Applying the dye



With cotton fabric it helps to moisten the fabric before applying the dye with a paintbrush. It runs better when the fabric is moist and looks more like a water color painting.

Dye is prepared using urea. This humectant helps the dye fuse with the fabric. Without using it our finished product is washed out.


The first example above is washed out while the one next to it is vibrant.

For a complete set of instructions - just ASK!
The process is involved and requires chemical treatments.

Below are some pictures of this week's batik artists.





Stop in at 218 N Oak Street on Tuesday evenings at 5:45 p.m. to see what's going on with our summer art studio and try your hand at batik art.

Food Bank Bag Panels

Artists and students who attended the Open House to sign up for summer class participated in a community art project benefiting people who utilize the Food Bank.

Eco-friendly shopping bags will be constructed from old blue jeans and the art panels will be sewed to the bags. In the past blue jean shopping bags have been popular with Food Bank patrons.

There are still some panels left to decorate if you would like to participate! Below are some examples of the art panels created during the open house.