Art In A Vacuum or Creative Community?

To feel like you're not creating art in a vacuum, it's important to connect to a creative community. Besides the connecting we do online through social media activity, where many of the people we meet are in far-flung places, I find it's gratifying to build local relationships with other artists, cultural support groups, universities, schools, museums and art supply stores.

Utrecht/Blick in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has been my local art supply store since they opened. I spend many hours in the store perusing on an almost weekly basis and have gotten to know well the store manager, Serafima, and her staff. Before Serafima became manager, I became friends with the previous store manager, Corinna, who is now in the Miami store. I have offered my time to both of them and done many art demonstrations over the years in their stores.

A few days ago I found myself heading to Miami to drop my daughter off for the day. Rather than take the long drive back home and have to return round-trip again later, I decided to stay in Miami and brought some art supplies along in the car to be sure my time waiting would be productive. I am always mesmerized by "public" painters, so thought a plein air painting session would be fun.

That afternoon I had the option to go to the beautiful Fairchild Gardens to paint, or, I thought, what about seeing if Corinna at the Miami Utrecht/Blick would allow me to set up a table inside the store to paint in the comfort of air-conditioning and share my painting passion with her customers? She and her staff graciously invited me in, so I spent a delightful afternoon with them sketching in Pastels, playing with Oils, and sharing my knowledge and techniques with their curious customers.

 Painting in Blick Miami store with dry pastels.

Dry pastel sketch on mixed media paper.

Abstraction of above photo with dry pastel on mixed media paper.

Starting another dry pastel painting on ArtSpectrum colourfix pastel paper.

I highly recommend if you haven't already taken the opportunity to make art in public places that you give it a try. Take a look in your community for potential art-friendly locations - restaurants, hotels, a local art guild, art supply stores, area art-walks or any place that would like to bring interest to their customers. Get creative and think outside the box! 

Then, simply ask. Don't take a "no" as a personal rejection, just keep trying. In the mean time, practice painting or drawing in front of people by setting up outside in a park or on a bench along a public road with lots of foot traffic. In no time, you'll become great at painting and talking about it at the same time in front of strangers... and may even find some fans! Be brave, put yourself out there, build relationships and experience how enriching your creative community can be.

HAPPY ARTING!  Tristina  :D

On The Bench - Asian Inspired Art

Here's what's on my art table today. In process for an article I'm working on to submit to my favorite mixed-media magazine. What's on your art table?

Love Charcoal!

There's just something about the messiness and feel of holding a charcoal stick in my hand that I love! Maybe the smokey smell too of the vine charcoal...

Recently I picked up a large stick of charcoal at my local Utrecht art supply store and decided to turn it to making a quick Zentangle(tm) sketch using some of the designs found in the new Zentangle 6 book.

Love the smudgy property of the charcoal and used a damp paper towel to smudge in places to get some depth and accents going. After creating this work I found anything that touched it or that it touched ended up with charcoal on it, so 2 coats of workable spray fixative were used to seal in the charcoal.

I find that whenever I am working on an art project, it inspires my 12 year old daughter to work on a project of her own. Here is what she recently created when we were Art Making:

If you get up close at the top of her page, you can see in green the names of famous Creatives like Walt Disney, Einstein, Martin Luther King, Thomas Edison, etc. Very cool!

So in the famous words of a young Creative, "Dream Big, Be Creative, Walk Among the Stars!" ;) Tristina