This is a platform for sharing the art work, ideas and information about artists we at ART YARD admire. This may include teaching artists, board members, participating artists and students, friends, and artists whose work has inspired ART YARD lessons.
Sarah Gumgumji is the Program Manager for CREATE. Members are welcome to leave comments, ideas and suggestions in the posts. If there is someone you would like to see highlighted, please email us at .
CREATE Artist Interview: 3/25/2021
ART YARD Interview with ART YARD Board Member
In this strange time of quarantine I think we have all faced unexpected challenges.
What are your stories of unexpected challenges? How did you work through the situation? What kept you focused? How did things turn out in the end?
In particular, how did your art making feature in the challenge, action or result?
An art related unexpected challenge for me came from a museum in Greece!
The Copelouzos Family Art Museum in Athens, Greece has invited me to participate in an upcoming international art project called 35x35. Invited artists have been asked to make a 35x 55 centimeter piece which will become a print book and then becomes part of the museum’s permanent collection. All of this sounds great, right?!
They sent a prepared canvas packed in a very elegant box, not unlike a book box for a rare book:
35x35 centimeters is just an inch and change over a foot square. This detail paired with the timing of the project propelled my decision to paint a version of my current series, similarly sized, Magical Things From Quarantine.
Here’s where the next twist comes in to this story... It has been a very long time since I’ve worked on canvas. And I will admit this turned into quite big challenge for me. My excellent and beloved Schmincke watercolor just rested on the surface sort of blobby and inelegant. My usual method of building up layers of color led to disasters of smudged grimy color. I had several moments during the painting when I feared the piece was destined to be a flop.
Here is an image from the first layers of color:
Then, eee gads!, things started to get messy. Adding a layer of blue to start the shadow of the plate looked more like a messy bruise.
Finally I managed to finish Magical Things From Quarantine Purple Potato Salad on Turkish Tablecloth, painted on the seventh week of stay-in-orders, for Copelouzos Family Art Museum’s 35x35 art project.