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Art Expo

With nearly a dozen area galleries participating, this self-directed tour will be a “Don’t Miss It” event. Sponsored by the Lincoln County Gallery Association.  Guest artists, art demonstrations and entertainment will be at some designated galleries. Even door prizes for some lucky tour participants.

Plan to spend the weekend in and about Lincoln County because ART EXPO happens Friday, Saturday and Sunday June 24, 25, 26.

All Art Expo! details available by contacting Marne’ at 257-7272 or pick up a brochure at participating galleries or the RRCA Office.

Any mailing of applications and payments should be done ASAP because of the limited spaces available.

RRCA Office Hours are Wed- Fri 10am – 3pm and limited hours on Saturdays during July. Please call ahead for the most accurate information. 257-7272

The strange thing is that the information I am looking for is, of course, there all the time and as present to one’s naked eye, so to speak, as it ever will be. But to get the essentials down there on my sheet of paper so that I can recover and see again what I have just seen, that is what I have to push towards. What it amounts to is that while drawing I am watching and simultaneously recording myself looking, discovering things that on the one hand are staring me in the face and on the other I have not yet really seen. It is this effort ‘to clarify’ that makes drawing particularly useful and it is in this way that I assimilate experience and find new ground.”

(Discovered a link to this article via TheCurator…original, full article can be accessed HERE)

I am a musician.

I’ve spent most of my life learning to play instruments and studying music – history, theory, composition, performance. A lifetime’s pursuit, the study of music is never complete.

Having a deep-rooted musical knowledge opens the door to experience music in a way that is almost indescribable. The best I can do is to liken it to a botanist’s appreciation of a leaf; every part of it has meaning to one who has learned how and of what a leaf is made.

To the “Average Harry” (I have a good friend Joe that resents his name’s use in such a generic manner. I don’t have any friends named Harry. Well, except for maybe Harry Potter) a leaf is pretty – perhaps, at times beautiful. To the botanist, the leaf is sublime; it is mystery. It is a treasure trove of wonders that both asks and answers questions about life and existence. It is so much more than a pretty color; it is the blade, the petiole, the veins, the margin, and the midrib.

In truth, I find leaves most marvelous when the colors change en masse each autumn. And, the botanist can certainly appreciate leaves this way. But like a master craftsmen, the botanist cannot help but want to get a close-up, in-depth view of even just single leaf, to study it and to marvel at it.

This is the way that I listen to music. Like most, I first hear the forest, yet I yearn to pore over each leaf and find the treasures it hides.

But a problem arises. Unlike the natural world, with all its complex systems of adaptation and perpetuation, music-making does not have a controlling force that squeezes from the raw materials an artifact of worth by default. Certainly some leaves are more interesting to certain leaf-lovers than others, but it is seems unlikely that there are leaves, which upon closer inspection, elicit a melancholy, “This leaf should never have been made. It’s a crappy leaf.”

Listening with a critical ear then, leaves me with a relatively small cross-section of “leaf music.” Usually I hear a tune on the web, iTunes, or . . . (dang it, what’s that thing that you have to put on a certain number to hear some music, otherwise it’s just static? Um. Radiator? Radial? Radiation? No, no. RADIO! That’s it!) radio, and quickly find that the particular piece of music is a forest without leaves. In the past, I would have made it a point to announce that I disdained said music and wished there were a filter for music that would create a forest of leaves for me to discover and revel in. Now I simply make a small point about it and move on. (And perhaps one day I’ll mature enough to not say anything at all and spare my friends and co-workers the verbiage.)

(Read the full article HERE)

“It was a brilliantly sunny autumn day in East Yorkshire, and the artist David Hockney was taking me for a drive through the countryside. “What it is I’m going to show you is an alleyway of trees,” he said in his gruff Yorkshire burr as he turned his open-topped Audi roadster off the one-lane road into an even narrower byway bordered by swaying beech, sycamore and ash trees. “When I moved up here, I recognized this is really very rare and beautiful.”

Because Mr. Hockney has been going deaf since his early 40s, he tends toward opinionated monologues, often delivered as he gesticulates with a cigarette. But at 72, even with hearing aids in both ears, he remains lively, gregarious and enthusiastic — especially when it comes to looking at the world, thinking about the world and making art out of what he sees.

As we drew close to the trees, he fretted over the sun’s position. “The lighting is made for going the other way,” he complained. Then he slowed down so we had time to appreciate each tree individually, and began issuing orders about how to look.

“Watch!” he called out. “The ash tree now comes in — look at the shape of it! And now then on the right, another tree. There’s a point where each one stands on its own. There. Now. It’s surrounded by sky. Now the next one, and it stands on its own. You see?” It was as though he were giving director’s notes.”

(This is an excerpt from an article found at NYtime.com…read the full article at: David Hockney’s Long Road Home)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf5otGNbkuc]

Dillard is a pilgrim of words as well as a pilgrim of strange natural terrains — she meanders through language with a strong faith that her destination will prove the journey necessary. “You write it all,” she says, “discovering it at the end of the line of words. The line of words is a fiber optic, flexible as wire; it illumines the path just before its fragile tip. You probe with it, delicate as a worm.” In the next sentence, with typical allusive humor, Dillard remarks, “Few sights are so absurd as that of an inchworm leading its dimwit life.”

During the writing of “Pilgrim,” Dillard would sit for hours to watch a praying mantis lay its egg, then return home to ruminate and expound on her observations, intertwining them with her readings of philosophy and science. She never shies away from nature’s gruesome brutalities — such as carnivores that devour their prey alive — but picks up on nature’s strange jests and trails after its beauties. Like Thoreau, to whom she is often compared, she sets about waking us “to mysteries, rumors of death, beauty, violence.” Her work is characterized by a precise poetic elegance, an intense interior passion, and a luminous depth that borders on mysticism: “I walk out; I see something, some event that would otherwise have been utterly missed or lost; or something sees me, some enormous power brushes me with its clean wing, and I resound like a beaten bell. I am an explorer, then, and I am also a stalker, or the instrument of the hunt itself.”

Born in Philadelphia, Dillard has led the kind of contemplative life that serves as an American academic’s ideal — winning a Guggenheim grant, teaching at Wesleyan University, living in the woods of Connecticut with her husband and child. She’s a versatile writer — her poetry, criticism, essays, and memoirs have all received critical acclaim. Her works include “Teaching a Stone to Talk,” “The Writing Life,” “An American Girlhood,” and most recently, a novel called “The Maytrees.”

(From ArtAndCulture.com)

Read more about Annie Dillard here…
AnnieDillard.com (official site, maintained my the artist herself)

A couple weeks ago I sat in on the introductory class for Art 101 at ENMU-Ruidoso.  Bruce DeFoor was instructor.  I am teaching the night version of the same class, so I wanted to watch Bruce in action. Bruce works at setting fears to rest in the hearts of students who all hold some degree of apprehension about what the next fifteen weeks hold for them.

He began by writing on the whiteboard: “Seeing 101”.  There were puzzled looks. He then began to explain that the essence of good drawing is learning how to truly see your subject.

I was so pleased to hear him speak in ways that resonate with my fundamental philosophy that drawing is a learned skill and that our job in learning or cultivating this skill is training ourselves to be always looking closer.

As I was doing some nature studies recently, I was distracted by my English Bulldog scuffling by the window in my living room.  He was tossing something in the air, completely absorbed in the tiny object.  I went closer and discovered his “toy” was a honeybee that he had successfully murdered and not dismembered. Instead of flushing the bee down the toilet, I impaled him on an Art Gum eraser and proceeded to examine him closely with a lighted magnifying glass. The next two hours were invested in recording what I observed at different angles, wholly absorbed in my study.  I discovered black shapes on his belly, perfectly round shapes carefully set on each section of his abdomen, a fine double hair on his tail end, and what appeared to be fur on his head. In looking at his head, I discovered three miniscule shiny black knobs between his eyes. In doing some research I learned he was actually a she – a female honeybee with her stinger still intact – and that the black knobs were simple eyes. I recorded this all in my journal.

“A waste of time” or “You should be painting”? Possibly. These are the voices that try to deter me from my task of learning to see. This past week I have been doing a highly detailed drawing of a piece of wood.  Each day I make a bit of progress, in no hurry to finish and with no prospect of a sale but with the firm conviction that I am making great progress in building a foundation for greater fluency and honesty in my art.

Marty Lane is 32-year resident of Ruidoso; her studio, Painted Surfaces: Looking Closer, is in Ruidoso Downs. Her primary medium for the past twelve years has been watercolor, in addition to other works and home décor in acrylic. Her loyalty through the years, however, has remained with drawing – seeing. She is currently enjoying the new challenges of teaching drawing and digital imaging classes at ENMU-Ruidoso.