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Working in an artists community

artist easel with dried paint

When I happen to be the first to arrive at the studio that day, I’ll walk by artists’ studios, staying along the aisle and observing the shelves stocked with artwork in various stages of completion.

There’s a stillness to the place that is lit by the morning sun and shines on forms molded by hands, turned on a wheel, created with a brush, covered with wax or paint or glaze. Better than meditation, this brief but cherished moment puts life into perspective, all of it.

These forms are living entities imbued with grace, elegance, whimsy, irony, anger, lust, greed, sorrow. Once you know to look, it is a gratifying realm to see. Sometimes I forget to look, to pay attention, but then I know where to find it again.

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The journey of art

My fine art study was in painting and design. And I wonder why sometimes considering I spent more of my time in the foundry. It was a great experience – pouring bronze and iron, throwing pots and trying to maintain a reduction firing in my kiln. I enjoyed it all and saw so many possibilities for developing my artwork in all of these fields.

But I love color and painting composition, and photography; and computer graphics fascinated me, which helped facilitate employment after school.

Photography then was used for reference, and now the photograph is the thing. To compose what you’re seeing within the viewfinder in real time so that it conveys just what you’re experiencing at that moment is likely the hardest task I’ve tried creatively. And it is just this practice that I’ve learned to see again, or to say, continued the journey of art.