w y l y a s t l e yw a x i n g
Posted on October 24, 2012
I first experienced encaustic up close several years ago at a Bell Town gallery called i Capolovori. I was magnetically drawn to an 8′ tall black and white photo covered in milky wax. The impulse to feel the surface was nearly impossible to contain. I wanted to lick it.
p a i n t p o t s
I am sad that I cannot remember the artist’s name and i Capolovori is no longer there, but I think about that piece often. What was the magic all about? The photograph was a young, tall man in a black trench coat. Or maybe not – that’s how I remember it – but I do remember that it was the glossy near opacity that made the figure really intriguing. It gave him a story. I felt like he could be observing me from his side of some frosted membrane. Kinda Matrix.
Ever since that first encounter so many years ago, I’ve paid special attention to encaustic work. Seattle artists, Nichole Dement and Stephanie Hargrave, are two of my favorites to see. Last week I finally had the chance to play with encaustic myself. My friend, artist Kevin Piepel, invited me and another artist friend, Terra Holcomb, to his studio for an afternoon of exploration. I took several small boards covered in fabric and other items to play with.
wax shellac cloth & beads
I could go on and on about the materials themselves – wax, damar, shellac, pigments – but the application was downright thrilling. I covered, encased, colored, engraved, flamed, joined and was joyfully lost in the process for hours.
I am spending this week covering more boards so I can take them to Kevin’s studio next week. I will use these in a piece I am making as part of a show about the Dust Bowl, migration, Okies, place and dirt.
k e v i n
If you are in the Seattle area and would like to play with encaustic yourself, Kevin offers one-on-one and group workshops. He is incredibly knowledgeable, affordable and generous. You may contact him directly at kpiepel@comcast.net.
Thank you for visiting.
n o
Posted on October 9, 2012
I am honored to be one of twenty women artists who will participate in A K Mimi Allin‘s No-No Girls performance piece at Seattle Art Museum this evening. The event is part of the opening ceremony for the incredibly exciting and important Elles: Pomidou show which opens tomorrow at SAM.
a k mimi allin
Directly from Marisa C. Sánchez, Associate Curator, Modern & Contemporary Art – SAM:
“Elles: Pompidou is a landmark exhibition of more than 130 works of art made by 75 women artists from 1907 to 2007. Organized by the Centre Pompidou in Paris, home to the Musée National d’Art Moderne—one of the largest collections of modern and contemporary art in Europe—this exhibition is an unforgettable visual experience that will challenge visitors’ assumptions about art of the past century. This ambitious survey of daring painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, video, and installation by innovative women artists offers a fresh perspective on a history of modern and contemporary art. With vision, humor, sensuality and ambiguity, these women represent the major movements in modern art—from abstraction to contemporary concerns, including identity politics.”
In preparation of and as a requirement for participation as a No-No Girl, Mimi and artist Vanessa Dewolf led us through some exercises to help us begin to engage with and experience No as we say it/feel it. The exercises were powerful and showed me specifically where different experiences of No reside in my body. We did a little writing after we did each exercise. Here are some thoughts I had:
Minute Number One: Even standing so close, I could not see her. I could hear her – I knew it was “no,” but not her specific no. I could only hear my own. I could feel her closeness- but not her body. I could feel the wall with my fingers. I could feel a wall of fear in saying No.
Minute Number Two: I felt the no with my finger. I felt the know with my voice. That power of the know came from the vibration of the No.
I was encouraged and even excited that in three short exercises I leapfrogged over some very tangible fear and began to open up to the experience of No in myself and in the presence of so many women – artists – of women I deeply respect and admire.
I am looking forward to tonight – to my experience of being a No-No Girl. I anticipate feeling afraid. And exhilarated. Alive.
More tomorrow.
Thank you for visiting.
f a l l
Posted on September 25, 2012
Well, I turned around and found fall outside my door. Spring was just here – right here! – fat with time and good light to work on all those upcoming projects. Those “upcoming” summer projects – the classes to create and teach, the school to set up, the house guests to make room for and enjoy, the ton of rocks to felt and arrange, the artist residency to wrap up, the piles of costumes to design and sew, all that stuff – it’s all done. Miraculously done.
Now I am combing through photos taken by friends and fellow artists, Erin Shafkind, Stephen Roxborough, and others, and making selections on what to put into the self-published book that I am making to document this summer’s work. I love this part. The reviewing and remembering. Here are a couple images:
From The Passing (photo by stephen roxborough)
k a i r o s (detail)
I also love the clean slate – the fresh start. I cleared out the studio and I’m geared up for the next project. Projects. I started work on some mechanical costuming elements that I’ve been carrying around in my mind for a long time. I am also firing up another yearlong project. One day at a time? Maybe. One thing at a time? Impossible.
Thanks for visiting.
k a i r o s
Posted on August 20, 2012
This coming Friday morning I am heading to Smoke Farm in Arlington, WA. I will assemble dozens upon dozens of scarlet stones into a snaky sketch on a cobbled jetty. I collected the stones (with tremendous help from Scott Schuldt – thank you!) over three visits this summer. I dragged them home, felted them into their bright, new
merino skins and cannot wait to share them with the Lo-Fi Festival goers this weekend.
For those who have never been to Smoke Farm, it serves many populations, but for my interests I can say that it’s nothing shy of Heaven. It’s my Happy Place. What I love specifically about Smoke Farm is the loafing shed where artists of every medium gather to work, eat, plan, plot and do nothing. I love the gigantic tree house, the tree swing, the meadow, the long stretch of the cold and clear Stillguamish River that flows steadily through. I love the abactors’ hideout, the long galley kitchen, the cabins, the vegetable patch and the fireside conversations/debates. When I spend time at Smoke Farm, I spend good time. Every experience there is a significant deposit in my creative stash.
Lo-Fi is a mostly annual festival held in August on the farm. This will be my second year to be a participating artist. In coming up with a project for this year’s theme, Farm Time, I thought immediately of the rocks that are EVERYWHERE on the farm but particularly of those that make up the rocky beaches and jetties. Rocks are the perfect measure of geologic time, of course, and could say so much about the farm in those terms, but what about the time spent there – life time?
r o c k s k e t c h
To engage in rock play on the beach is surely one of the most ancient of human pastimes. Standing at any water’s edge, we are profoundly compelled to engage with the rocks. We build with rocks, use them to dig, skip them and listen for the bloops different sizes make in the water. This is quality time. This is Kairos – the kind of time for which I named my piece. Wikipedia says this:
The ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos and kairos. While the former refers to chronological or sequential time, the latter signifies a time in between, a moment of indeterminate time in which something special happens. What the special something is depends on who is using the word. While chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative nature.[1]
Just by being at the beach (and for me especially at Smoke Farm) and playing with her rocks, challenges get resolved, questions get answers, sadness is released and shifted, triumph is celebrated and humbled. Weariness is deposited and joy springs up. It’s this kind of time I am interested in spending at the farm.
I hope you’ll join us if you can. I’d love to spend some time with you.
-Wyly
tie one on
Posted on August 13, 2012
I have had amazing experiences teaching/facilitating at Gage Academy this summer. I normally work with very young people and have enjoyed engaging with older kids who identify as artists and bring lots of experience of their own to the studio.
The first workshop was a weeklong class in Kinetic Sculpture. In the mornings I had middle school aged kids and after lunch high schoolers. Most students tackled design issues around physics, materials and aesthetic with considerable grace and turned out some elegant works. A few students chose not to engage with the assignments and did their own thing. That’s certainly allowable. Disappointing, but okay. I was not allowed to photograph inside the studio, but this automata was one of the three projects I taught:
We also made mobiles and a gear project where the kids got to incorporate drawings into the project. Most of these kids named drawing as their preferred medium and therefore the gear project was the most popular.
On Fridays in August I am facilitating a Teen Art Studio at Gage’s Capitol Hill location. TAS hires professional artists to come into Gage on weekend evenings to share information and projects based on a given theme or process. In August I am showing kids images, giving history and sharing processes on how to make guerilla art. We are using yarn, fabric and hand-made felt and other materials. I just taught the kids to crochet and we put our pieces together in a single tag
y a r n b o m b
and yarn bombed a stairwell at Gage. We’ll see how long it lasts…
Next week we will talk about style and aesthetic in terms of designing a motif that students will then use to develop an individual, sewn tag. I will encourage them to take their tags out in the world and photograph them. With their permission, I’ll post their images here next week.
-Thanks for visiting.
e s s e n t i a l
Posted on April 22, 2012
When I think about shells and the sea, farms and alleys don’t generally spring to mind – but today I drew with some shells in the alley behind my house and I thought about the farm. I thought about how the shells are like the rocks I am collecting from the farm. I thought about “place” and “placement” and collecting and carrying places inside and outside ourselves.
s o r t e d
I also thought about a conversation I had with a friend last week about an artist that had some dirt delivered all the way from Korea to use in an installation. We discussed whether or not it was essential to the work that the dirt come from Korea – did it have to be Korean. I have continued to think about it and have concluded that yes – it was essential.
a l l e y
I came to know that it was essential today while sketching with shells I collected on the Kitsap Peninsula this week. First of all, they aren’t just some shells. It took hours of concerted effort to collect the shells. I only wanted the whitest ones and they couldn’t have any chips in them. Then I had to get them home. Today I cleaned them, brushed them with a wire brush and sorted them by size. After all this selecting, sorting and handling and placing, I have come to really know these shells. As I said, these shells aren’t simply Just Shells. I didn’t randomly select them. I hunted for them. These shells are a measure of my time, of where I have been. They say something about my values and aesthetic. These shells tell a story that only they could tell. I feel certain that the Korean artist’s dirt has a similar tale and is thus essential to the work. Yes. It had to come from Korea.
Thank you for visiting.
s p r i n g
Posted on April 10, 2012
It’s been five months since I started going to the farm. I began this yearlong adventure last November with nothing specific in mind – no predetermined objective other than just being at the farm and noticing. I wanted to start out simply being there and to see what organically bubbled up and make work around that. I thought that was what I had been doing. However, what I saw there, what I felt there this time, surprised me.
a with alpacas
I took my children to the farm for the first time yesterday. It happened to be Easter and the farmers were not there. My mom was along, too, and the four of us had the entire place to ourselves. It was gloriously sunny and warm and A, my oldest daughter, fell in love with the place instantly and especially with the alpacas. Not surprising. My youngest was mostly interested in roaming and in daring herself to touch the electric fences and in playing in the mud.
It was great to see all of the animals. Most all were there except I didn’t find Ellie the dog or the puppies. I didn’t see Engage, the cat, either, and there were fewer baby pigs, but it seemed like everyone else was there plus some. I counted 13 lambs. Their fearless approach, their tiny wooly bodies and their leggy agility just about sent me over the moon. 
In comparison, the “baby” pigs now seem huge. Just enormous compared to only a month ago. The boar and the sow were in separate pens and all the pig pens were in different places. I am sure there is an interesting story there.
While I didn’t do any work this time, farm or art, I did get to simply be at the farm – the thing I originally set out to do. I think this was actually the first time I really just watched and experienced the farm as a very distinct place. I think that I have been coming to the farm with an agenda – a self-imposed pressure to have a clear knowing about what I am doing there. I want to exude confidence so the farmers will believe it’s okay to have me there in their most intimate space. I want the people who are cheering me on, namely my family and my funding grantor, to believe the time spent at the farm and in my studio is a sound investment. To that end I intellectualize and think about how I can make a big splash – how I can go big and therefore prove that what I am doing has real value. Yesterday, while watching the animals, my children and my mother just be in the space opened my eyes. 
Walking among the new plants and listening, listening, listening – I experienced a shift – a new beginning. I experienced a springtime and feel like my time both at the farm and in my studio will now be very, very different.
Thank you for visiting.
Rox
Posted on February 18, 2012
m e a n d e r i n g
d r i f t w o o d #1
r o c k s k e t c h # 1
Excellent Company
Posted on February 7, 2012
This past Saturday was one of those rare and miraculous NW winter days where the weather and light join forces to show off their most enchanting stuff. The morning was crisp and white frosty but unfolded into a short-sleeve, shoes off affair that everyone in Seattle is still talking about days later. It was a perfect day to be at the farm.
m i m i & e g g
I had the additional pleasure of having artist Mimi Allin along with me this time. I met Mimi in Fremont, we grabbed coffee from my favorite place then started south around 7:15 AM. For the hour + ride to Orting I luxuriated in hearing about Mimi’s thoughts/actions about her current/next work. Her musings are poetry and listening to her is a magic carpet ride. I answered many questions about my own processes and thoughts around this farm work. Being deeply considered and listened to by a discerning and compassionate artist had a galvanizing effect on previously loose ideas. I felt renewed and celebratory in the fact I get to do this work at all. Being with Mimi is like that.
Once we got to the farm we visited with Ken (Carrie was at an organic farming event in CA) then took off to meet the animals. I gave Mimi a fairly quick tour then we separated. Ken left for Tacoma then it was just us and all the animals. I built myself a nest in the sun and dove in.
The morning was filled with photographing a sold piece, finishing a new piece and gathering rocks. Lots and lots and lots of
s t o n e s
rocks. Ellie the dog kept me company while I gathered and sorted the piles that I will ultimately felt and use to “draw” in the field. I did a quick sketch with a few rocks on this trip and, well, more on that later.
I experienced death on the farm for the first time this trip. A sheep and a turkey died recently (couple days ago? last week?) and they tied the animals’ feet together and strung them up individually in a tree by the brook. I first saw and photographed them from across the brook then walked the plank footbridge to where they hung. I will not spell out the details here, but will say it was a truly haunting experience to get close to these animals as they hung there in silence. I felt like running away. I felt like crying. I felt like the animals were infected and that I might get sick if I got too close. I was surprised by how big and overwhelming these feelings were.
Ken told us the animals were out there almost first thing. I guess he knew that it could be troubling for the uninitiated. He 
explained that the animals were now bait for coyotes. There is a real coyote problem – for all the farmers. There is a $50 bounty on coyotes. Ken said that some friends of his were going to come out that night, in the bright moonlight, and try to shoot a coyote – not for the bounty, but as a measure of balance.
From where I am today, I do not believe I could dress and string up the sheep (its mid-section was wrapped in burlap and it was bleeding). I could possibly tie and hang the turkey. I could not shoot a coyote. I don’t have the gun skills nor the stomach for it. Or maybe I do. I did wish that I was staying overnight so that I could sit in the blind with the men. I had a lot of questions and wanted to see a coyote. Maybe it will come up again and I’ll see where I am then.
Mid-afternoon Mimi called her old friend (and new friend to me), artist Stephen Roxborough, to come join us at the farm. He had mentioned some time ago that he would like to visit the farm and possibly take some photos. He drove down and did just that. It was wonderful to share the farm and the rest of the glorious day with people who appreciated the farm and the work I was doing there. Thank you, Stephen and Mimi.
Once the sun started down and our work space fell into shadows, we packed it in and called it a day. We said our good-byes to the animals (Mimi is head over heels in love with the pigs) and to Ken and his friend, Bill.
Can’t wait to do it again.
Thanks for visiting.
w y l y a s t l e y 