CartaBella

l'Artista Blog

July 27, 2008
by Bonnie Porter
1 Comment


MONDAY MONTAGE: WARM-UPS. With any project we endeavor, we can benefit greatly from making an effort to get off to a good start. I’m finding that an appropriate kick-start seems to help me generate better work.

No matter what kind of painting project I’m starting, I like to paint a piece of fresh fruit first. Like a musician or an athlete, artists also do warm-up exercises.

Sketching and/or painting seasonal fruits offers me endless variations on a theme. Painting a single pear, for example, before I move over to my easel, is a great way to experiment with elements of design and color techniques. Later it can be recycled as a thank-you card—IF it turned out good! Otherwise I’ll turn it over and try another piece of fruit on the back!

This week it’s Southern Peaches. I can smell them sitting in the blue pottery bowl in front of me. Small rectangles of 140 lb. paper torn and ready. Paint box open, jam jar filled with water, and brushes in hand. Golden yellows and rosy pigments combine to create a peachy keen glow.

In the process of painting a peach or an apple, I usually get inspiration for my current project. Just by experimenting with a new color triad, or practicing contour drawing, my creative juices start flowing. The enthusiasm generated by this initial process seems to energize me for tackling the larger project at hand.

And once the mental wheels are turning, I’m able to concentrate on the more complicated elements of a larger painting. What helps you think and work more creatively? What resources do you draw on to get a fresh point of view . . . ? What kind of warm-up exercises help you get going . . . ?

July 20, 2008
by Bonnie Porter
Comments Off on

MONDAY MONTAGE: Why blog?
I’ve been journaling since the 6th grade. And making scrapbooks and paper crafts since I was six years old.

This web-journal will be an extension of that tradition.

I want it to be topic focused, just like my personal journals. Instead of keeping a daily diary, for many years now I’ve been in the habit of numbering the pages in my fabric covered blank books. Then, as the days of my life unfold, I add notations, tape in clippings, make sketches, etc. These are organized by topics and themes related to the current issues and activities going on in my life. Each journal covers approx. 6-12 mos. Information retrieval is easier this way. But in all honesty I rarely refer to my “back issues” because I’m so involved in the present and planning projects for the future!

I envision my blog as a coffee bar squeezed into my tiny studio. A way to enlarge this room of my own, in a place where I can stimulate an exchange of ideas, projects and experiences. And toss my questions and concerns to friends, like P & N, who are listening. Listening with their mugs in one hand and making notes to share with me with their other hand.

Initially, I’ll publish a post just once a week. So please consider visiting me at least once a week! Voila! Welcome to MONDAY MONTAGE!

July 14, 2008
by Bonnie Porter
Comments Off on

MONDAY MONTAGE: Painting sunflowers is a guaranteed happy painting project. With kids AND with adults. We all seem to enjoy splashing thick yellow pigment on a canvas as much as Van Gogh did. And I love the Italian word for sunflower. Girasole means “turn towards the sun.”

Today in Art Camp we looked closely at a bunch of real sunflowers. The children were surprised to see the ridges on both the petals and the stems. And a closer look at the brown center is always fascinating. We wanted to get Vincent’s impasto effect so we mixed flower and salt with orange tempera paint and water. Amelia noticed that VanGogh’s orange was more of a red-orange so Cameron added some red to our impasto concoction, which Sarah accurately dubbed goopy paint!

Then we went to the drawing board. Despite my repeated attempts to draw their attention to the actual shape of sunflower petals, most of the children sketched out their impression of large flower petals. Rounded tips. Not pointy like real sunflowers. Their preconceived idea, their mental picture of a sunflower, took precedence over the actual flower they had observed just minutes beforehand.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the results of expressive artwork created by children from their imagination, during our “Free Paint” sessions. But I also want to teach them the value of observation, of drawing realistically.

Are observation and imagination integral to any creative process? Can there be imagination without observation? Does one take precedence over the other in the created order? These are some of the questions running through my mind tonight. Questions I’ll be taking to the Word in the morning.

July 3, 2008
by Bonnie Porter
Comments Off on

Confronted with the Empty Nest, my friend VJ realized she needed, as she describes it, “a place to perch”! And she found it in the Smoky Mountains.

She invited our book group to gather there for our July meeting, extending it from our usual two hour sessions at Barnes & Noble to two days in her mountain home. So five of the eight of us were able to pack up all of our worries and woes and leave them behind in Atlanta for a mid-summer retreat.

We kept to our primary agenda, discussing LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL, by Thomas Wolfe, and touring his home/museum in Asheville. But rest assured a lot of other Important Stuff got packed into those delightful two days. Sharing each other’s personal stories and passionate pursuits was more entertaining than the artsy movie, LADIES IN LAVENDER, which we viewed together late one night.

A life in books is our common denominator. We swapped books, titles of books and movies, book reviews, and snatched up the latest fliers at the local independent bookstore.
But similar to the Quilting Bees of another era, we also managed to share about “other” favorite things, as well as to unload some burdens. As it turned out, our very personal stories were interwoven into these lively discussions.

Perched together on the mountain top, gathered on VJ’s deck with coffee mugs in hand, I savored the aroma of these friends who always offer me comfort and acceptance. Including a depth of relationship which the characters in Wolfe’s novel, as well as many “characters” in my life today, searched for and never found.

Just back from that retreat and so ready to move forward . . . .

June 30, 2008
by Bonnie Porter
Comments Off on

A LA CARTE. Intended to include this quote, yesterday, from Wolfe’s novel: (p167-68, Scribner Paperback 1995 edition), keeping in mind he wrote this when he was in his twenties, in the 1920’s.
” ___And the air will be filled with warm-throated plum-dropping bird-notes. He was almost twelve. He was done with childhood. As that Spring ripened he felt entirely, for the first time, the full delight of loneliness. Sheeted in his thin nightgown, he stood in darkness by the orchard window of the back room at Gant’s, drinking the sweet air down, exulting in his isolation in darkness, hearing the strange wail of the whistle going west.”

“The prison walls of self had closed entirely round; he was walled completely by the esymplastic power of his imagination—he had learned by now to project mechanically, before the world, an acceptable counterfeit of himself which would protect him from intrusion. . . .”

And as I looked at the publisher’s info page I noticed, for the first time, the subtitle of LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL: A Story of the Buried Life.

Poignant.
Interested in wading through this prosaic novel? Be sure to have a dictionary in hand, or your laptop dictionary at the ready. And let me know what you think of it!

June 29, 2008
by Bonnie Porter
Comments Off on

A La Carte is being launched on Sunday! I’ll be making spontaneous entries, not daily. Not a set day of the week. Like my watercolors, a bit loose and free flowing.

Current thread running through my mind is the interface of Pastor Horne’s sermon this morning [Wk. two of new series—Objections to Christianity: Injustice and Oppression] and my book group’s selection for this month [Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe].

Horne’s “haupt punkt” was that the root of injustice isn’t Christianity. It is the human heart. In fact, every particular religious group is guilty of injustice [ref. Tim Keller, The Reason for God, p. 56]. He pointed out that the God-Man, Jesus Christ, is at the heart of Christianity, proclaiming Good News to the poor and offering redemption for every heart of stone. Universally we are destitute, hopeless.

Living here in East Cobb I am surrounded by the illusion of prosperity, propriety and popularity. At first, as I was reading Wolfe’s depiction of people struggling with loneliness and isolation, people who are violent and vulgar, I found myself feeling a bit smug, repulsed by his characters. Them. They. Not I. Me. Us. We’re not like that.

Then, discussing it over dinner w/Dan last night, I realized that Wolfe is actually profiling me and my peers in 2008. If we’re honest, under our veneer, we’re as crass as the people Wolfe evokes so keenly from personal experience with people, and observations of people, in his Asheville, NC “world” in 1928. After our redemption “in Christ” our transformation evokes a sweet fragrance, a sharp contrast to the stench and filth of our unredeemed state.

And I’m left wondering, with our web of ties in contemporary culture (blogs, email, cell phones, FaceBook, etc.), are we not just as familiar with loneliness and isolation as the characters in a piece of fiction written 80 years ago. . . ?

To be continued. These are my thoughts tonight. I’m still processing. And I still need to finish reading the book since our group is headed to Asheville for a two day retreat. Our discussions at B&N usually last two hours. No telling how long this one will be!