The Importance of Castles in The Air

Apparently there is an idiom for daydreaming awake of what our heart envisions with disregard for our minds...for having unrealistic desires, or plans that appear so impractical that they will never work, illusory, or a futile flight of fancy, it is what we tend to call Castles in the Air/ Sky. And often it comes to us prefixed with, 'DO NOT...build castles in the air...' but can you imagine what the world would be if anyone had ever refrained from the impossible dream?

So today as a necessary component to being 'a creative' (self-defined noun) I post about the dreaming: big and small of mine...the thinking with my heart and not my head:

sandblasted glass block- Think With Your Head NOT Your Heart Fool..by m.diaz photo by VINCENT THFOIN Branching out: A spiral staircase leads to a tree house in Rambouillet Forest, France Etsy Seller Book of Art Our Secret Harbor Digital Art by Aimee Stewart featured in this months Somerset Digital Art Burning Man Festival SculptureBurning Man Festival Sculpture

Desert festival: For one week out of the year a portion of the desert is transformed into a thriving diverse city known as Black Rock City for the spectacular Burning Man festival in northern Nevada

Cirque De Soleil O Poseidon Under Sea Resort An unlikely surrogate mom... True Love Among the Mundane Rubbish by Kumi Yamashita and Tim Noble + Sue Webster Trashy Shadow Art

Updated Glasswork Portfolio

Hey there folks! It's been in baby steps I'm sure, but slowly I've been updating my Glass Art portfolio. All the portfolio's are in need of clean-up, re-organization and re-clarification since I hurriedly posted something up two years ago when I first started my blog. I would love for folks to click on the portfolio and check it out!

My Alice glass illustration and block by marisol diaz

I still have more to upload and rearrange. I have made a distinction between glass 'art' and glass 'sketches' as the first is more about pieces I feel are more resolved with clear intention and the latter is about products that emerge out of the process of learning and experimenting.

Wooly Willy magnet toy

Many of you have asked about the techniques. When illustrating, I work with ground glass called frit. It can be ground into different consistencies - coarse to powdery. Much like one would play with a 'Wooly Willy' magnet toy and push around the crushed magnets to draw Willy's hair or mustache, I push around the glass frit to illustrate. After each layer of glass has a frit drawing on it - it then gets fired, usually into one singular block of glass. Such is the case with the 'Alice' above. Often time there is great depth to these illustrations that is almost impossible to capture in a photograph head on. So please check out my glass art gallery!

Well, I hope you have all had a beautiful day!

-

Ciao Amarettogirl

Two New Inspiring Art Books

Hunt & Gather by Tina Ziegler NYCI bought these two books, Hunt & Gather and Illustration Now! Vol.3 as Birthday gifts for my hub and we LOVE them! They are VERY inspiring.

One thing I like to tell my students and remind myself of, is that we don't live in bubble. It is so great, if you are able, to go to galleries, contemporary museums and see publications of what is currently happening in the art world and have your pulse on what your contemporaries are toiling with.

I often think that (unless you live in Brooklyn) or other up and coming 'art' communities many of us creatives today live the opposite of Monet's Giverny, isolated.

Not really by Monet's choice, Giverny turned into thriving artist colony where writers, dancers, painters and creatives of the time collected to live, breathe and make around eachother. These two books help me feel connected and a part of something bigger in the art world that is still breathing and living.

Jason Jackeno featured in Hunt & Gather Tina Ziegler

This book has a beautiful coffee-table spread of images of new contemporary artists that work in a variety of styles.

This striking collection of surrealism, pop art, illustration, collage, graphic design and mixed media represents many of today's most boundary-pushing artists. Aspects of this collection are dark, at times macabre, but these images are complemented by arrestingly playful pieces, and accompanied by first-person texts that shed light on how and why these individuals make their art.

- from Hunt & Gather website Illustration Now!3 Ed Julius Wiedemann

Illustration Now! 3 is another great book. I love to see illustration work because it is my first love. I have affairs with glass, but illustration is my life mate.

From magazines and newspapers to ads, websites, album covers, and even mobile phone wallpaper, illustration is a crucial element in visual communication today. With unlimited creative possibilities, illustration is as unbound as imagination itself; whether it's a simple pencil drawing, an ornate airbrushed painting, or a computer-generated image, an illustration speaks the international language of ideas.

- from Illustration Now!3 website Christina Drejenstam in Illustration Now!3

Well, the Driftwear Giveaway is still on.

I'm so excited that I am slowly, but surely, fixing up this site. I just updated the Glass Art portfolio!! I'm still not finished, check it out here and let me know what you think!

- Ciao Amarettogirl

Working with Glass

This is an image of one of the glass pieces I made this summer.

I have been having a deep love affair with glass for some time now...I'd have to say 12 years - wow! I've had an on and off again relationship, sometimes amorously lost in its grip and other times unable to come to terms with the cost of such an attraction. Glass is not a cheap interest. In addition, you need equipment, facilities that are just not as accesible on the east coast as they are on the west coast.

I have been to Pilchuck Glass school twice on scholarship. Pilchuck is in Seattle, WA. I've taken glass classes at Haystack in Deer Isle, Maine, Urban Glass in Brooklyn, NY, Peter's Valley Craft Center in Layton, NJ and Bullseye Glass, in Portland Oregon. I've blown, sand-casted, kiln-casted, lampworked, fused and slumped glass. For the longest, all I could afford to do when I got back home after a class, was strike up a small tank of Mapp gas and make beads. Beads that once upon a time, got annealed only by soaking in a tin of vermiculite. Then there was all my late nights with stained glass a medium that hot glass folks call cold glass connections. Mind you, the majority of the time, I'm a painter and an illustrator. So when I tumbled on the work of artist Catherine Newell, I thought what is this? Is it possible you can draw on glass? No, I don't mean with Pebeo glass paint- but with the glass itself?

I signed up for a class called Painting with Light taught by artist Tom Jacobs at Bullseye Glass. Lets just say, I am forever changed and I found a soul mate. No, not Tom (sorry Tom), but drawing on glass with frit (powdered, crushed and pulverized glass). I found what I could afford to do - and what I was meant to do with glass...finally.

Update on Monday, February 11, 2008 at 12:52PM by Amarettogirl

playing with layering I think that whenever you work with a specific medium (and since I am so varied in my interest) you have to ask yourself why? For example, why draw that on glass with glass?? Why not just do it on paper? What are the inherent qualities of that particular medium that makes working in it so necessary? In addition, I've heard it said that glass is 'inherently' aesthetically pleasing and therefore any thing a person does in it - will always look good, even if its not. Well, that's a lot to process. I think I'm after the fragility, the refractory aspects and the transparency of the glass. In this follow-up I've posted a possible layering effect.