Here’s the monthly wrap up of everything going on at the studio…
Want to get the monthly email right in your inbox?
Join our safe subscribe monthly mailing list: Join or Update Your Preferences
the dirt
The Summer Class Schedule Has Arrived!!!
The much anticipated summer schedule of clay classes at Earth Art Studio is finally up on the website! There are clay classes for kids and adults so everyone has the opportunity to b cr8iv this summer! Classes are limited so sign up today to get a spot…
Create with Clay for Adults
May 9, 2017 – August 3, 2017
(no class the week of July 3rd)
Tuesdays 7 – 9pm and/or Thursdays 10am – 12pm
$150 punchcard good for 5 classes at the studio | materials included
Create with Clay Summer Workshops for Kids
Session I: Tuesday, Wednesday OR Thursday, 12:30 – 4, June 6th thru June 29th
Session II: Tuesday, Wednesday OR Thursday, 12:30 – 4, July 11th thru August 3rd
(no class the week of July 3rd)
$250/session | materials included | Ages 7+ | Max 4 students/class
No repeats on projects so you can sign up for multiple sessions and/or days
Save the Date: Annual Spring Studio Sale 2017
Mission Industrial Studios Open for Spring Sale
May 6th & 7th | 1 – 6 with evening art activities May 6th from 6 -9
Eleven artists in the Mission Industrial Studio complex will open their studios to the public for a weekend of creativity. The artists will have works on display for sale and will be available to discuss their process, some will offer demos and have hands-on activities for visitors.
The eleven artists include, Jamie Abbott, Lucia Bruer, Barbara Downs, Nora Dougherty, Sefla Joseph, Joey Kochlacs, Majio, Kirk Mc Neill, Stacey Pollard, Susan Wagner & Jenni Ward. These studios are typically only open during the county wide Open Studios Art Tour in October and some rarely open to the public, making this weekend event a unique opportunity for the public to visit the artists in their work space. The artists range in medium from painting, to glass, to metal, wood and clay, offering something for everyone’s artistic taste. This event hopes to offer a creative experience for both locals and visitors to the Santa Cruz area.
The studios are located on the westside of Santa Cruz on Mission St extension between Swift St. and Natural Bridges Dr. and will be open on May 6 & 7, 2017 from 1 – 6 on Saturday and Sunday with additional art events from 6 – 9 on Saturday evening.
Highlights planned for the event include Nora Dougherty’s work.shop. trailer, a mobile art gallery on location, a clay seed bomb making activity at Jenni Ward’s earth art studio, and Kirk Mc Neill’s large scale sculpture the Sharky-Go-Round on display. Food Trucks AGoGo will be onsite in the late afternoon on Saturday offering tasty local tacos along with live music from The Dooners. After the sun sets, art movies around a campfire with marshmallows will round out Saturday’s activities.
Inspiration through Exploration
If you follow along on my Instagram feed, you’ve seen a lot of my posts are from my explorations in nature. I truly believe that you need exploration for inspiration, and for me, hiking, road trips and time spent in nature is crucial to my inspiration of what I make in the studio. If you don’t follow my Instagram feed, here’s a few things you missed from our road trip from Santa Cruz to Portland for NCECA 2017.
Studio Visit: Kristen O’Neill
On our road trip to Portland last week, we were very focused on everything clay. And with a billion ceramic themed exhibitions happening concurrently with the NCECA conference, it was hard to imagine seeing anything but clay. But, we did take a side trip and visited my sister-in-law, Kristen O’Neill at her studio in Grants Pass Oregon.
There was no clay to be found in her studio, but there was lots of inspiration and color. Her work is bold, with broad brush stokes and no hesitance of movement, yet it’s calming and familiar with a soft earthy palette that makes you really feel a space. And as calming as her paintings are, I know that she rocks out hard core while getting the paint to the canvas, bringing them to life!
I love that we get to ‘talk art’ when we’re together whether it’s critiquing each others work, encouraging each others endeavors or just geeking out on the SEO status of our art websites. She’s also the Administrative Assistant/Volunteer Coordinator and head of the Open Studios Committee at the Grants Pass Art Museum so I got to take a private tour of the current exhibit with her. So lucky to have artists in the family!
“My paintings capture the emotional release, the beauty of the place, and allow you to reconnect to nature and experience your special place on a daily basis. Celebrate your love of nature! Stay close to it. Be able to show other people what you love, and perhaps inspire them to come on that next hike with you. Empower yourself and others.”
To purchase her work, visit her website: www.kristenoneillart.com
NCECA 2017: The Evocative Garden
The Evocative Garden happened in Portland and it was a beautiful show! I am so humbled to be included among this list of talented and creative artists. Thank you so much to everyone who came to the show, supported me from afar and shared my work with others- I’m forever grateful! Here are a few of my favorites (mostly detail shots) from The Evocative Garden exhibit from NCECA 2017 curated by Gail M Brown.
Studio is Closed for the Week
Just a reminder that the studio will be closed for the week of March 20th while we’re in Portland for NCECA 2017! Looking forward to seeing my Hive Installation along with the entire Evocative Garden exhibit at the Disjecta Contemporary Art Center. You can follow along on our art journey on Facebook or Instagram!
Clay classes will resume at the studio on March 28th, see you then!
Press: Local Santa Cruz
After all of these winter storms the driftwood collecting on the beaches is plentiful and inspiring! Local Santa Cruz recently did an article featuring artists that are creating with that driftwood and pieces from my Rock Candy Series were included. You can read the article, Local Driftwood Artwork here and shop for the few remaining pieces from this series here. Enjoy!
Call for Entries: Sculpture IS: 2017
Sculpture IS: 2017 Call for Entries:
The Pajaro Valley Arts Center invites you to participate in the Eleventh annual Sculpture IS: exhibition, taking place in the beautiful two-acre Sierra Azul Nursery demonstration gardens, located at 2660 East Lake Avenue, Watsonville, California. We have enjoyed ten critically and financially successful exhibits, and look forward to including your sculpture in our eleventh exhibit.
NCECA Blog: The Evocative Garden
I am so thrilled to be participating in the annual exhibit of the 2017 NCECA conference and I can’t wait to get up to Portland next week to see the exhibit in it’s entirety. The piece accepted for this show is my Hive Series Installation which is comprised of approximately 200 individual pieces that are nested together in a cluster to create a dynamic structure resembling an abstract hive. This piece was part of an In the Field installation in Nisene Marks State Park in 2015.
About the exhibit curated by Gail M Brown:
A breadth of implied and articulated dramas will be staged as a personally defined natural landscape or more formalized garden scenario. In works of ceramic sculpture, installation, object and vessel format, each participant will offer a new or recent work- some potent objects as-metaphors, with sub-text and, others as choreographed scenes with figuration or the figure/s implied in a verdant location, in vocabularies from nuanced realism to personal symbolism.
Each will be designed to reference an array of issues- nature’s fragility and sustainability, the wild and the tame, life’s appetites and dilemmas, conflict and resolution, the everlasting and the temporal- social and historic events, of the natural world and the human condition. Artists remind us that nature and the articulated garden, as context, stimulation and tactile allure, is a seductive, universal, ever present enticement.
The article below was first posted on the NCECA blog by Exhibitions Director Leigh Taylor Mickelson, photo credit to Lisa Conway.
The 2017 NCECA Annual is here!
Posted by Leigh Taylor Mickelson, Exhibitions Director
The highly anticipated NCECA Annual “The Evocative Garden,” curated by Gail M. Brown, opens this weekend, kicking off the 2017 NCECA conference “season” with a whirlwind of garden-centric delight and botanical wonder. The exhibition, held at Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, features five artists who were invited by the curator along with 29 artists who were selected from the call for entry.
Invited artists Megan Bogonovich, Jess Riva Cooper, Kim Dickey, Linda Sormin and Dirk Staschke set the tone for the exhibit which is indeed what the curator intended: “a breadth of implied and articulated dramas… staged as a personally defined natural landscapes or more formalized garden scenarios.” The exhibit offers variety in approach to the ceramic medium as well as in conceptual interpretation of the theme, and captures the imagination as spring slowly approaches.
Participating artists include Christopher Adams, JoAnn Axford, Lisa Marie Barber, Chris Berti, Megan Bogonovich, Jess Riva Cooper, Deirdre Daw, Audry Deal-McEver, Jennifer DePaolo, Kim Dickey, Caroline Earley, Carol Gouthro, Karen Gunderman, Dawn Holder, Cj Jilek, Chuck Johnson, Tsehai Johnson, Heather Kaplan, Paul Kotula, Annie Rhodes Lee, Nancy Lovendahl, Andrea Marquis, Lindsay Montgomery, Grace Nickel, Anne Drew Potter, Jessica Putnam-Phillips, Dori Schechtel Zanger, Linda Sormin, Dirk Staschke, Claudia Tarantino, Hirotsune Tashima, Colleen Toledano, Jenni Ward, Stan Welsh.
I’d like to give special thanks to Disjecta for hosting the exhibit, and a big shout-out to our On-Site Liaison Brett Binford who orchestrated the installation of the exhibit, beautifully I might add. A sneak peek of the exhibit can be seen here…
This not-to-be-missed exhibit is easy to reach via Portland’s Blue line. Hours during NCECA are Tuesday 10:30am-5:30pm; Wednesday – Saturday 10am-5pm. Or come to the reception on Thursday, March 23rd from 6-9pm to have the opportunity to meet the curator and the artists. I’ll see you there.
Leigh Taylor Mickelson, NCECA Exhibitions Director
Want to visit pre- or post-conference? Visit Disjecta Arts for gallery hours and details.