Winter Musings

It's hard to feel like it is winter when it is 85 degrees.  But such is the penalty (?!?) for living in the beautiful southwest.  The weather was weirdly warm in North Carolina where we spent the Christmas holidays with my brother in Charlotte.  I'm not complaining mind you!  I much prefer warm to cold, 110 degrees to snow and ice.

I've been working on diffused relief and monosilkscreen prints for my exhibition in May at Five15 Arts.  My imagery is more sea-related than swimmer, but I'm not ready to talk about it too much at this point - everything is still in process. With lots of work yet to do!

stARTup LA
The "girls" went on an art road trip to LA for few days the end of January to see the stARTup LA art fair in which my sister, Nancy Willis, and dear friend, Catherine Ruane, were participants.  Marlys, Diana and Carol and I spent the day at the art fair and the next day at the Aquarium of the Pacific and Long Beach Museum of Art.

Lipstick monotypes and oil painting by Nancy Willis

Carol and Catherine

Carol, Marlys and Diana

My favorite sister!  An inspiration always.

DIABLO PRINTMAKERS
The Diablo Printmakers is a group of ASU printmaking students and they put out a call for art for their first annual juried exhibition.  Marlys and I wanted to support the students' effort so we entered work and each had a piece was accepted by the Juror, Mary Hood, a printmaking professor at ASU.  Tonight was the opening reception at the Harry Wood Gallery and we were pleased with the quality of the work in the show.  Two other Arizona Print Group artists also had work accepted in this show and Chris Dawdy from Tucson won the first place award!

Our prints off in the distance

Mary Hood, Juror

Christine Dawdy, organza collagraph

PRINTMAKING CLASSES AT THE PHOENIX CENTER

There are 3 classes going on now, the Collagraph/Drypoint Class that Marlys Kubicek is teaching and I am teaching Solarplate Etching and 2 Color Reduction Relief.  I am happy to have some new students who have never made art before (or since high school) and some who have never done printmaking before.  It is an honor to expose them to joys of printmaking.  I have 5 week relief and solarplate classes starting in March.  When they are completed my classes no longer be held at the Xico facility.  I am not sure where I will be - either the Phoenix Center on Moreland or a new PCA facility near Bell and 7th Street.  Watch this space to see where I land!

Solarplate etching by Laura MacKay

Solarplate etching by Ed Dubrow

Marlys giving a demo on inking and wiping the collagraph