By kali, on January 27th, 2012
 Last May I took a driving trip through Andalucia with my husband. I took a lot of photos and when I got home I decided to turn them into an art journal. I’ve posted the results in a new gallery.
I gessoed some universal art paper, and then transferred some of the photo images with Golden gloss gel. Other pages I worked over with Distress Ink. When the initial prep was done, I drew, painted, collaged and wrote until I was satisfied. I finished some of the pages with an acrylic glaze and varnished others, depending on the media. Then I bound the book with a Zutter spiral binder and set it on my shelf.
I’m very happy with the way the images turned out. I’m less happy with my handwriting — I’ve never like it, since I was a kid. I’m thinking that the next book I do, I’ll use printed or transferred text. I also don’t like the plastic spiral binding as much as I would like a metal ring binding or a sewn binding, so I’ll try that for the next book as well.
By kali, on July 23rd, 2011
A few weeks ago I started a new series of paintings based on movement and intuition. It’s a new thing for me — painting from my gut instead of my eyes and my head. The truth is I think too much and I talk too much, and so I’m trying to just shut up and paint. That’s why I’m not going to talk much about these paintings, though I will explain my process a bit. They are all done on A3 Gerstaecker Universal recycled paper. In all cases I limited myself to 3 colors + black.
 "Gossips with Dog," Lascaux acrylics, Golden Fluid Acrylics, pencil, rubber resist, scrapers. Kali Tal 2011 In all cases I started by applying the Lascaux black right out of the squeeze bottle, listening to music, with my eyes closed. The goal was to get sweeping lines that matched my emotional state, and to keep them rhythmic. I let the black lines dry a bit (using a hairdryer to speed the process) and then went to work with a scraper to give them more of a sense of movement.
 "The Merman," Lascaux acrylics, Golden Fluid Acrylics, resist, scrapers. ©Kali Tal 2011 Then I turned off the music and studied the black lines. In some cases (the Gossips and the Merman above) the shapes immediately suggested the direction of the painting. I used resist to mask off the parts that I wanted to keep white before painting other shapes in color. Then I masked again. It’s a bit hard to see in the photos, but there is a lot of glazing to create the shading in each layer.
 "Heart / Hand," Lascaux acrylic, Golden Fluid Acrylics, resist, pencil. © Kali Tal 2011 In “Heart / Hand,” after masking off the white spaces, I dropped thinned Fluid Acrylic on the paper and blew it around with the hair dryer in order to create interesting patterns. I masked over parts of the glazing in each layer to create depth, and then then worked with pencil. It’s called “Heart / Hand” because viewing it with the golden trunk at the bottom of the page makes it look like a growing tree or a hand. But flip it 180 degrees and the trunk comes down like an aorta into the chambers of a heart.
 "Vicious Circle," Lascaux acrylics, Golden Fluid Acrylics, resist, pencil. © Kali Tal 2011 My emotional connection to “Vicious Circle” was very intense, and the wailing, tortured figure simply jumped off the page when I took a look at the way the black paint had dried. This is the most layered of all the abstracts and I used resist as a kind of negative paint, moving it around with both the toothed scraper and wooden chopsticks. Like the paint, the resist was added in succession, masking different colors in different textures.
All the paintings were created over about a week’s time, because each layer of glazing had to dry thoroughly. I found that if the paper was even the least little bit damp, it would stay wet after the resist was poured on, and rubbing the resist would also rub off the underlying paint. Though this is the very beginning of my experiment, I’m pleased with the results so far and I’m going to keep at it until I feel like I’ve taken this particular technique to its limit. The plan is to work on paper, and eventually “graduate” to canvas when I feel more in control of the process.
By kali, on April 28th, 2011
| June 4, 2011 | | 2:00 pm | to | 5:00 pm |
Fabrics aren’t just for sewing! You can make journal pages out of them, collage them into your journal pages, decorate them with paints, stamps or beads, and use interesting fabric patterns as a basis for your own designs. Dig through your fabric collection and bring your favorite scraps to class!
By kali, on February 8th, 2011
| March 5, 2011 | | 2:00 pm | to | 5:00 pm |
Create transfers from photocopies, to do direct transfers onto acrylic paint and gesso, and other methods of transferring images. Some of these techniques take multiple days, but most can be completed in just an hour or two. None require any previous experience.
Bring black & white photocopies of images that you would like to use in your journals. Do not bring inkjet or home laser-printed copies — they will not work the same way. You may also bring laser and inkjet printed color images, which we will also use in transfer. And don’t worry if you don’t have images! I will provide all materials.
Click here to sign up for this or other Art Journal Workshops.
By kali, on February 8th, 2011
| February 19, 2011 | | 2:00 pm | to | 5:00 pm |
Paint isn’t the only way to create a background image for an Art Journal page. In this class we’ll explore the art of collaging to create a surface for paint, ink, and other media.
If you already have paper images that you would like to use, please bring them to class. But because this is a workshop and we’re trying new techniques, I suggest that you don’t bring precious, one-of-a-kind items for your experimentation. And if you don’t have images or paper, don’t worry! All materials will be provided.
Click here to sign up for this, and other Art Journal Workshops.
By kali, on January 19th, 2011
| February 5, 2011 | | 2:00 pm | to | 5:00 pm |
In this workshop you’ll gain a familiarity with acrylic foundations that create texture. We’ll experiment with grainy and smooth pastes, and you’ll learn how to impress patterns into them to create wonderfully textured backgrounds for your journal pages. We’ll also work with resists, which are prevent the acrylic from staining certain parts of the paper, allowing you to keep color areas separate and bright.
By kali, on January 2nd, 2011
I first read “Burnt Norton” when I was about 15 years old, and it blew me away. My dad had read me the section of James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man about 4 or 5 years earlier, and that had become the standard I used to think of infinity and the incomprehensible nature of eternity. But “Burnt Norton” got me to thinking about time in human terms — what the passage of time felt like, and how, even though we lived at such a small scale in the greater scheme of things, we could still have a sense “time before” and “time after.” And as many times as I read this poem, over more decades than I care to think about, it never fails to move me. Even after I learned about Eliot’s lousy politics and prejudices, and I could no longer stomach “The Waste Land,” the Four Quartets, and “Burnt Norton” in particular remained a part of my internal landscape.
This is done on a black gesso background, with Painty pens for the rose, and Eddings metallic pens for the writing and flourishes.
By kali, on December 31st, 2010
I’ve been working on a series of art journal pages based on my favorite poems. “Tyger Tyger” was one of the first poems that ever captured my imagination, as a small child. My dad read it to me (and defined the word “symmetry” for me), and it was the first time that words ever evoked such striking visual images in my imagination. Back then tigers were magical and powerful symbols, and in my imagination they ruled the jungles of the world, inspiring fear and awe in animals and humans alike. Now the thought of them is coupled with a feeling of sadness for their impending extinction in the wild — there are less than 3200 tigers still living free — and the sense that the world is smaller and less magical than I’d hoped it would be.
Lots of background layering in this, including leopard-spotted tissue paper, metallic & neon paint. Tiger is collaged and over-painted. “FREE” is a 3-D stencil using Lascaux stucco medium.
By kali, on December 3rd, 2010
Before I moved to Berlin in 2005, I was pretty much a country & suburbs girl. I hadn’t lived in a city since I was a small child, and I thought I could never survive it. Don’t get me wrong — I love cities, when I’m visiting and can immerse myself in the music, sights, food and resources I find there. But I far prefer having space around me, and I’d never lived in an apartment and never wanted to, so Berlin was quite an adjustment. Although I enjoyed my time there, I feel physically less stressed in the quiet of Marzili or Matte in Bern and I’m happy to be here.
When the city shows up in my dreams, as it often does, it’s a site of confrontation and intensity, and sometimes bad things happen there. Berlin always seemed to be under construction, and so construction equipmnent shows up as part of the city-dream image — which, in the case of this particular journal, is also probably influenced by my Berlin studio-mate Paula Ross, who loves images of cranes, in particular.
First I used texturing agents to create the underling structer. The first layers of paint are a bright riot of color — the lights and business of city nights. Then I used a foam roller with windows cut into it to create the black pattern. The paper that’s collaged onto the page looks to me a lot like the “rolladen” that pull down over shop windows at night. Over that I created slashes of “graffiti” with paint and pen. Finally I made a gesso transfer, which I attached to the page with matte medium. There’s varnish over the whole page, because city nights always seem slick and shiny to me.
By kali, on November 29th, 2010
Another journal I keep going is devoted to political doodles and sketches. Here’s an entry responding to the Obama administration’s failure to honor his promises about repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the military. Every time I think about this issue, I get really angry that Republicans can continue to deny American soldiers their basic human right to be and to love who they please. And I get just as angry at Democrats for not standing on principle and pushing through reform while they still have a majority in both houses and control of the executive office.
This particular journal is small format, and I tend to scribble in it rather than to paint. “I Want To Ask” is done in Caron D’Ache Neocolor I & II, and some random markers & gel pens. I’ve collaged in some images and text.
“Minarets Are Scary” refers to the Swiss referendum to ban the building of minarets — a really dopey idea that most people thought wouldn’t pass. But pass it did, by a large majority, and it’s clear that a lot of so-called liberal Swiss who swore they wouldn’t vote for it actually did.
This page is primarily collage, based on a Swiss tourist add, with a hand-drawn minaret and some collaged girls in hand-drawn Swiss traditional garb.
|
To view my jewelry and beadwork…
2008-2009 Catalog By Assemblage Art by...
|
Last May I took a driving trip through Andalucia with my husband. I took a lot of photos and when I got home I decided to turn them into an art journal. I’ve posted the results in a new gallery.
