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| John Ribble's Pastel Demo |
Tamara kept pushing me to enter the
WRAP (Wisconsin Regional Art Program) events. Many artist at our
High Street Gallery coop are actively involved with the
WRAA (Wisconsin Regional Artistss Association)
On February, I went as Tamara's guest to the Prairie du Sac workshop to see what was it all about.
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| John Ribble's Nude |
John Ribble, who teaches Graphic Design and Illustration at MATC, was the juror and started the morning with a demonstration of his plein air work with pastels. He travels with his easel and many boxes of fantastic pastel colors that helps him quickly capture the moment of a scene that changes lighting and feel constantly.
The colors I use for clay have not been as plentiful or predictable as a box of pastels. Always surprising and having a life of their own...
The afternoon had John's critique of the entries. I was skeptical about the process; but was surprised by how he approached each piece giving great feedback regarding composition and use of media, very thoughtful feedback that could be applied to the artist's work. Both Bev Larson and Gail McCoy from our
High Street went home with State Exhibit awards.
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| Tower Series |
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| Going Home |
I was hooked on the experience and entered two pieces to the Madison workshop that represent my main languages: Going Home, which is like my native spanish and the Tower Series, architectural side which came later like my acquired english.
This time,
Yueh-Mei Cheng, professor of Studio Arts and Illustration at Finlandia University was the presenter and juror.
Inspirational...with very a formal training in traditional brush painting from Taiwan related how by attending a native american pow-wow her work changed, became more meditative and spiritual, and absolutely different than her structured training. Definitely not afraid to explore new things, seeing how far they will go...a very adventurous walk to the wild side...
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| Yueh-Mei Cheng's An abundant harvest |
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Yueh-Mei Cheng's
Clarity of Emptiness |
She also showed some of her students work, told their stories and how she pushed them to explore further...really compelling...taking classes with Yueh-Mei would probably be an amazing experience.
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Tamara and winning piece
Embracing Nature |
Tamara and Gail McCoy won State Exhibits awards at this workshop.
"Going Home" won one too, exciting!
Months later...I got an invitation to show the winning piece at the Annual Conference. I worked a bit on the hanging system of the piece and send it back.
Much later I received another letter announcing that "Going Home" got the Catherine Hundt Award. Very Thrilling.
September 23rd was an evening of celebration with awards to the Statewide Teen Art Mentor Program, and the
Tiny Treasures fundraiser.
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| New Museum of Wisconsin Art |
Next day was the State Art Conference. The morning began with a talk by Tom Lidtke, director of the
Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend. He talked about the collection and the plans for the new building designed by
HGA. Definitely a good plan for one of our SOFUN trips we do with Meredith and Lynn who lives there...
Jessie Eisner-Keyle was the juror. I loved her storytelling of her work. There were so many awards given (65!) that I guess there was no time for critiques. I was moved to Jessie's comment on her blog
Used Cameras
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Madame Gardener
by Claire Mangasarian |
Definitely this was a nice pat on the back for me and also for Meredith, my teacher, mentor and collaboration partner.
And..I went home with my favorite
Tiny Treasure: Madame Gardener by Claire Mangasarian.
The fun of two people working with just a general idea and no limitations is great, but...some challenges arise that add to the excitement, like when scales of the parts do not relate. 
Always our dynamics are interesting. Meredith works very fast and I...don't! 
