Common Ground on the Hill

I attended Common Ground on the Hill, a summer "art camp" at McDaniel College in Westminster, MD, this past week.  For completing three classes per day for the past five days and 100 hours of work outside of class, I will receive 3 graduate credits.  The three classes I took were Watercolor Painting, Photoshop, and Manga (Japanes cartooning).  I felt the most success at Watercolor, because it was very like work I am doing in my studio with wet-in-wet acrylics on paper.  The teacher, Ellen Elmes, was great, and taught me a lot.  We started with the concept of "home", and Ellen encouraged me to think beyond my initial ideas and to develop symbols for them.  We worked through a process approach, where you don't fully design the work ahead of time, but develop it one stage or layer at a time.  My art is included.  It's entitled "The Number 5", and it contains images important to me as symbols of my childhood.

The Gettysburg Festival was great. About 17 of us painted for the 10 days of the festival. I painted threed days myself, and completed 2 paintings. "View from Sachs Covered Bridge" is pioctured here. Started on Monday

21, it was a sweltering day, so immediately looked for a shady view of the bridge. When I walked through the dark tunnel of the bridge itself, I noticed the lattice-like sides and the diamond patterns through which one could view the world outside. The fisherman ouside through one of the diamond shapes sealed it for me. I painted this scene using acrylics on watercolor paper from about 9 am until 1:30 pm, and finished it at home on June 26, the day before our art show at the Historic Gettysburg Railroad Station.

Frederick Barnstormers Create Amazing Plein Air Work

Yesterday, June 19, was the date of the Barnstormers tour, a local event hosted by the Frederick County Landmarks Foundation. Each year the barns in a different part of Frederick County are selected for visitors to tour. The tour fees collected support the FCLF's efforts to preserve the barns, a vestige of our county's agricultural heritage.

Artists are also invited to paint images of the barns en plein air (in the open air). People touring the barns can see the artists in action, and can see the completed paintings at an exhibition at the end of the tour. Yesterday's tour was of the barns close to Frederick City, and the exhibition was at the Schifferstadt Architectural Museum, which is right in Frederick at the Rosemomt Ave. exit of Rt. 15.

Each artist is assigned to a barn which he/she paints a picture of. I was assigned to a unique structure because for the first time the Barnstormers Tour featured a building which was NOT a barn, but a mill. Kelley's Mill sits right next to the Cersville Mansion at the intersection of Rt. 26 and Rt. 194 in Walkersville. Upon arrival at 8:30 am yesterday, I was met by one of the vultures which inhabit the building's top floor. I was immediately struck by all the detail (read junk) in a corner of a garage-like structure attached at a right angle to the mill itself. I focused on this corner because it reminded me of a painting I had created in the alley behind my dad's antique shop in Kensington back in the 70's.

I drew lightly on Arches Watercolor block paper, and then I sprayed the paper with water. I dripped, and spattered very wet acrylic paint. I watched the paint spread, run together, and eventually dry before repeating this procedure. Once I had established some of the local color in this unique and very loose way, I began drawing structural elements and foliage with color Sharpies. The last step was to draw the vultures, one of which I saw at the beginning, and others which came to visit during the middle of my painting session. I worked on this painting from 8:30 am until 1:30 pm.

We had a lot of people touring the barns - not so many at the exhibition. Other artists I know who were there included Deborah Lovelace Richardson, Harry Richardson, Linda Zvolenski, Anne Gibson Snyder, and Donna Timm. My painting is entitled "Vulture's Roost - Kelly's Mill".