Invitation to The Buzz – Bees and Beekeepers An Exhibit of Paintings by Mary Longe

Invitation to The Buzz – Bees and Beekeepers 

An Exhibit of Paintings by Mary Longe

Artist Reception Saturday June 29, 5:30 p.m. – 8 p.m.

Evanston, IL: The public is cordially invited to an exhibit of paintings in honor of bees and the people who tend them. Meet Deerfield, IL artist Mary Longe and see her art, Saturday June 29, 5:30 p.m. – 8 p.m. Chimera Loft, 2948 Central Street, Evanston, IL In keeping with the theme, Wild Blossom Meadery and Winery will provide tastings of mead, an alcoholic beverage created by fermenting honey with water, sometimes with various fruits, spices, grains, or hops. 

More than forty paintings are on display showing urban and rural settings with portraits of beekeepers actively tending hives, equipment, and bees. The paintings are done primarily en plein air (on site) with some painted from a photo source. Longe uses oils or watercolors.

The Buzz – Bees and Beekeepers Paintings by Mary Longe was conceived in counterpoint to the reports of the decline of bee populations and intensifying world hunger. “I like to eat, and I like to paint,” Longe Says. “Bringing awareness to the joy found in bees, what they provide, and the people who tend them is one way I use my art to inspire others to care too. I often paint outside. “En plein air” it’s called, like the French impressionists. Focusing on scenes of nature for hours helps me better understand and be grateful for gardens, flowers, trees and the energy in that moment. I realize that what looks green at a glance is so much more… like people, like life, like bees. Painting is creating a new perspective, conveying an atmosphere, telling a story and inviting the viewer to become its main character. I hope through The Buzz, viewers will find themselves appreciating the bees and their care takers and becoming part of the picture.“

Mary Longe is a visual artist working in oil and watercolor paints. Her works have been exhibited at the Palette and Chisel, Academy of Fine Arts, Chicago, as well as programs in Wilmette and Skokie, IL. For, 2018, two of Longe’s paintings hung as part of the Public Works of Art program in Deerfield, IL. Mary Longe manages the Plein Air Painters Chicago, and, produces a YouTube Chanel, My Art Dish, video chats with artists. 

Chimera Loft, LLCin Evanston, offers a performance space, art gallery, art exhibits, music and arts, spoken word, craft shows, and event space. Upcoming events can be found at their website. http://www.2948central.com

For more than two decades, Wild Blossom Meadery & Wineryhas been a fixture in Chicago, creating wine and mead using locally produced ingredients.  The meads produced at Wild Blossom Meadery & Winery are among the most sustainably produced beverages in the world. With more than 30 years of winemaking experience, Wild Blossom Meadery & Winery is the first winery in Chicago and the only producer of mead on the Northern Illinois Wine Trail. Being a mead producer, at Wild Blossom Meadery & Winery raises its own bees and collect its own honey. Wild Blossom Meadery/ Bev Art is also a source of education about wine and beer making. More information can be found on their website, http://www.wildblossommeadery.com

CONTACT: 

Mary Longe

Deerfield, IL

Mary.longe@gmail.com

http://marylonge.com

847.727.9279

Wild Blossom Meadery, Winery and Brewery 

9030 S Hermitage Ave, Chicago, IL 60620

Greg Fischer

greg@bev-art.com

(773) 840-4642

http://www.wildblossommeadery.com

Chimera Loft

Mel Winer

hwg2948@comcast.net 

http://www.2948central.com

Fundamentals of Drawing and Painting: A Course in Courage to Become an Artist

I’m struggling with a painting of a beekeeper in a field calming bees by smoking a hive. An 18”x24” panel sits on a wood easel I bought last year to bring my painting practice inside. Until then, I’d painted only outside, en plein air, except for classes, since 2014. This morning, I sit on the futon in the room I call, with a bit of self-suspicion, “my studio”, and look hard at it.

Twice I’ve scraped it and started over. I may do so again. Two days ago, I stood in the Milwaukee Art Museum looking at Winslow Homer’s paintings in awe of the people he painted in the English fishing village of Cullercoats. Setting aside my surprise that Homer is actually American, and that I wonder if he picked that particular village because of its perfect-for-an-artist name, today, I wonder if my beekeeper isn’t the same story as the woman standing on rocks, above a tumultuous sea, a sail in the background, knitting. We viewers look up at her. She stands in the very middle of the picture… a frequently mentioned no no done well. Horizontally, she takes up the painting, her arm outstretched pulling on yarn from a skein in her apron. The painting foreground is no larger than the bottom of her shoe to her calf; the space from the top of her head into the sky, is that length plus up to her knee.

I know now, that’s “the story.” It’s the placement, the emphasis Homer gave her in space. The fishermen on the boat are not the story, her knitting is what she does while they are away. Her skirt billows like the boat’s sail. She’s as much a cog in the fishing village life as they are.  Like Ginger Rogers dancing all the same steps backwards without Fred Astair’s acclaim from the masses, she knits standing. My beekeeper needs a story. How do I know that? How do I do that?

I confess, I probably wouldn’t have known that was the issue with my painting, nor would have looked at Homer’s as critically, till discussions recently in the Palette and Chisel’s Fundamentals in Drawing andPainting class. Unfortunately for me, yesterday was the last day of that class. It’s a series, like college classes where you take 101 and learn basics about shapes, color, drawing, and 102 and 103 where they build on those knowledge and skills, and offer an understanding of what it really takes to create a successful piece of art. Yesterday was graduation.

I’m certainly not saying that now that I have completed the class I know exactly how to create the story. At best, I know I need to tell one. I am also saying that the difference from when I began 101 in March of last year through completing 102 and 103 is as if Fred had found Ginger a year before suffering from vertigo and never having danced. 

Until last March, I’d been struggling to move from hobbist to artist. Bob Krajecki and Dale Popovich the instructors who’ve taught this class together for years, gave me steps, not the choreography. I’d taken many classes and workshops, had dozens of critiques, but still couldn’t create a painting that I could envision as successfully completed. Fundamentals gave me language about art and about my art. It’s given me check lists, both in notes and in my head of how to start a piece, how to develop it, what to look for to complete it, and how to self critique it.

This post is as much a thank you to Dale and Bob. Though I’ve learned tons from previous instructors, it wasn’t until I had this core structure, did the previous teachings make sense.

I am grateful I came to the class with experience in painting, critiques and hours outside painting landscapes and cityscapes in wind, sun, rain, snow and fog. Those experiences teed up many aha! moments in class.  I’d heartily recommend this program at the Palette and Chisel for anyone who comes to painting, without formal training, no matter if they prefer, oils, watercolors or pastels. I don’t recommend it for those who aren’t willing to do the exercises or have a tendency to defend their finished pieces, it’s a place to learn from every nuance, not turn out masterpieces.

I received an email on Saturday, that a painting of mine sold from a plein air competition in Northbrook, IL. Currently, I have two paintings hanging for a year as “public works of art” in my home village of Deerfield, IL. These are signs of acknowledgement of my development as an artist since I began the class. My palette knife is ready to begin the third scrape, and I with the help of Krajecki, Popovich and Homer, the beekeeper’s story is about to be retold.

+++  

The following posts are in chronological order from most recent to the beginning of my journey since 2014 when I began to view myself as artist. 

• How to Pack for Plein Air Painting
• 2017 - Progress on Becoming an Artist
• The Trail to the Cedarburg Plein Air Event
• Your Creativity - Early or Late in Life? Quick or Never Done? Malcolm Gladwell makes sense of it
• Unpacking The Evolution of Learning and Mastery of the Creative Acts
• Self Confidence and the Up Hill Climb of Learning a New Craft
• Dabbling Is My Creative Process 2015
• You Calling My Art a Hobby? 2014

The Trail to the Cedarburg Plein Air Event

Full Circle. In 2014 my friend Nancy and I left the Interurban Bike Trail to find facilities and coffee and rode into Cedarburg, WI. There were people at easels everywhere, painting the town, so to speak. I remember being fascinated by a guy painting a Vienna Beef umbrella, someone else doing a door of an iconic mill, and people along the river. I turned to Nancy and said, “I want to do that.”  Reading a banner over the main street, it was the first time, I learned the words, plein air, as in Plein Air Festival.

Retirement looming and the hours it brings, might have been the biggest catalyst, but I think the brightest sparks offered the opportunity to be outside, as long as I wanted,  doing something creative, alone with people.  I knew nothing about paints, painting or perspectivehat, but that didn’t deter me. I’d watched my friend Lynn go from knowing her sign to digging in and not only learning astrology, but becoming the Astrologer to Oprah’s astrologer.  My friend Veronica took a pastel class and within a couple years exhibited work. I knew I needed to buy a lot of paper, a few good brushes, some paint, and get humble. The learning curve would be steep.

Within a week or two, I found a one day class at Lill Street Art Center in Chicago, registered for a week-long class with watercolorist Tom Schaller at Madeline Island School of Art in the Apostle Islands. That's where I met Steve Puttich and learned that there was a group called the Plein Air Painters of Chicago. The first Saturday I could, I went to one of their paint outs to see the equipment used. It just happened to be at Montrose Harbor and Carl Judson, The Guerilla Painter was visiting with his truck of wares. Stephanie Wiedner introduced herself and encouraged me to meet people. I did and I was hooked.

Since then I’ve taken loads of other workshops at the Palette and Chisel and elsewhere. I've learned from Errol Jacobson and Stuart Fullerton. I've painted and painted and painted. I have more than 30 paintings and sketches of one single scene, in every season, at Fort Sheridan… none are good.  After a couple years of interminable humbleness and frustration with watercolors, a well respected artist, Tim Clark told me I needed basics. I didn't understand exactly what he meant, but I started back at the beginning.  Figure drawing to understand what I’m seeing, fundamentals to understand pigments and washes and lines. I switched to oils and a 7-week perspective class. Who knew there were algorithms to shadows? It's all helped.

I registered for the plein air event in Cedarburg as soon as the 2017 event was open. Two months prior, I called the event-runner to understand the consequences of quitting. At that time, I could’ve gotten my $60 entry fee back. I didn’t quit then. Twice, in the last month, in spite of losing my fee,  I made plans to do something instead of going to Cedarburg, but I rescheduled. A week or two back, I put in a sizable order for paint supplies but left the box unopened in the kitchen. Yesterday, I unwrapped them and added them to my working kit.

My car is packed to leave for Cedarburg Plein Air Event and I will leave in a little while. I wanted to take a couple minutes to reflect on getting to this point. I’m doing a lot of self talk and internal wheelin and dealin… you don’t have to submit anything, go have fun, no one has a masterpiece every time, meet people, there will be artists of all skill levels, the weather is going to be beautiful. Mostly, I’m eager to be there. I know someone will walk by me and say, “I wish I could do that” and I will assure them they can. 

A Poem - Tipping Point: Art

There is a moment, 

Especially on weekend mornings

When I've watched a video-demo or two, 

Scrolled through posts and pins on  
watercolor, sketching and plein air painting,

When (like having a running start) I
Just gotta get up and do it myself.

I go to the bathroom, pee, brush my teeth, maybe shower and line my eyes,

When, I have another idea.

I make espresso, grab a yogurt, add some walnuts, 

then see out the window a squirrel (yes, cliche’ all the way), hungrier than me. 

So, I take and toss the remaining nut shards

into a concrete valentine water dish beneath his tree. And,

With the last plop,

I notice the tiniest of scenes.

Two crooks in the tree

with a bark that reminds me of the worst of acne,

and snow that looks more like the kind that comes from spray cans

and all in a hint of winter shadow.

I grab my small Moleskine sketchbook

(because this is only to commemorate a very small scene),

my favorite Deluxe Micro Uni-ball pen

And put lines and more lines down.

Though in the time I’ve taken to finish the sketch,

write about the moment I was moved to sketch

but ate breakfast instead,

and saw a squirrel, fed it, and drew where I placed its food,

I never see the squirrel again. Yet,

I still feel pretty good about the morning.

Tipping Point: Art
Mary Longe
1/30/16

Have you gotten way-laid and eventually ended up exactly where you wanted to be?

Architectural Artifacts, Chicago and Painting Like Hemingway

When plein air is too cold in Chicago...

A couple Sundays back, I spent more than an hour wandering around Architectural Artifacts, an antiques warehouse on Chicago's north-side Ravenswood area (right by the El), where five-foot cheese burgers go to rest... on top of merry-go-round horses or counter from a jewelry store. Seriously, every few feet, I found myself reminded of grade school or the time we..... There are all kinds of items I said, what the hell? In one room, there were several high top tables standing at different heights - waste, neck sternum-tall with a round stainless surface on top of an industrial-sized slinky. You could press on it and it would go up or down - no hydraulics. They must have been used in some kind of manufacturing that a workman needed to maneuver from bottom to top on a big piece of something. If I only had room for one! (Gratefully, I don't.)

It took a lot of hunting to find a place where I could sit, lay out my brushes and paints where it would be convenient to me and out of the way of anyone else, and with a view I wanted to paint. Ok, that last point is moot - the place overwhelmed with possibility. What surprised me was the finding that once I sat still and narrowed my view, what I intended to paint went out of focus. Instead, saw angels - literally, angels on the bank work stand. Each of the four legs of the table held a different metal sculpture with opulent detail. I wonder how many people really saw them? I didn't until I sat nearly eye to eye with them, but they were at a stand up table. I wish I knew the thinking behind them... the interior designers consideration for telling the inner story of a bank... Here at the altar of commerce, I commend my money. The angel I looked at directly spread it's arms and wings, the one in the distance with flowing robes nearly took flight. The other two were behind lout of sight behind other furniture and artifacts.

To paint this, I sat on a black metal bench that had ridges creating a serpentine of Ss down the middle to outline where butts (small ones, by the way) should rest in a Brazilian ice cream parlor. Every two sections for seating, the designer placed a twelve-inch round on a pole to serve as a table. On one of those, I placed my watercolors and cup of water, and on my lap my Arches watercolor board.  (You know how every interest and hobby has it's efficiencies? For watercolor, Arches paper  company stacks high quality paper bound to a heavy hard cardboard - a rip-off note-pad of watercolor paper. The rubber binding in this case goes around all but an inch of the entire stack. No matter how much water one puts on the paper in the process of painting, the next page of the stack doesn't get wet. A miracle innovation! I carry a mini-Swiss army knife to gingerly remove a page from the deck to begin a new piece.)

You, as a reader, may already notice that I have trouble editing. I try to include too many thoughts, and too many words. This is a personality flaw and not confined to writing. My painting is the same. I wish I could include every hair, freckle, crack and dust-mite. I wish I could, but I also don't have the patience. There is way too much to say or paint. I want to paint like Hemingway's complete six-word story... "For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn."  Bam! What a word picture. Right?

Unfortunately, I've also learned from writing that the brilliance isn't in the words you first lay down, it's about the editing. This painting is hugely edited. There were many more things on the walls, hanging from the ceiling and on the table tops in view between the angels and me. 

My guess is that when I go back again, the items will be sold or moved and I won't be able to attempt the same view again,  though I'd like to do so. I will remind myself, no matter what I find, to narrow my focus to see more.

BTW, Architectural Artifacts is also an event space where I want to be invited... maybe throw a party. There's info to the event planner at the link above. 

Plane Air - November 2015

My business travel for the year is over. These sketches were done  earlier this week on my way to, from my hotel and on the way home from Dallas. It wasn't till I saw them together that I noticed that I instinctively chose a Fall palette. Now to fly somewhere where I will intuitively use brighter colors. 

Plane Air - Q1-into Q4 2015

Last year in preparation for retirement someday, I took a plein air watercolor class. Since then I paint in different urban or native locations and return to one place almost weekly to better understand seasons and try new techniques on what is now familiar. It made sense to me that my new life would include travel with someone or by myself and I'd want to be outside as much as possible,  

This year my travel schedule escalated with new responsibilities for facilitating health care executive roundtable events. In Spring I took a Sketchbook Skool class online which legitimized and empowered my sketching in public. In a quest to fulfill homework responsibilities, I quick sketched the seat across from me on the way out. No one complained. No one told me I couldn't.  I sketched another passenger on my way home and on the next flight out too. Voila'! a habit was born.  

Last night as I zipped away my sketchbook in its special Art Supplies pouch in prep for landing on a flight from Phoenix, the attendant stopped and asked if I was an artist. This, I've learned, is a trick question. I don't sell my work, which is 99% of the time the question behind the question. And, yet, yes I sketch and paint and make art. I clarified and said no to her, and clarified again, and said, yes to me. I am an artist in the making.

   

🆑

Webster - 400,000 Words that Frustrate My Word-Finding

I'm  unhinged by the magnitude and efficiency of the 1968 Unabridged, Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary. Did you know that there are twentysix columns of Un-words. One merely needs to look up what follows un and know that it's not that… Bam! Words that start with water fill more than two pages. Whoa. It's too bad the earth is running out of water when there are so many words associated with it. Will they be extinct?

I remember hearing on NPR that the word take has more meanings than any other. Unless I look at every page in Webster’s, I can’t say whether the comparison is true, so, I looked it up…online. Take indeed tops the list followed by break, turn and set. For take, the first entry in the ’68 dictionary is a verb that includes 55 meanings plus another column of terms used, such as, to take care or to take it lying down.  There’s a second take-verb relating to getting possession with 12 meanings, followed by a noun with six, relating to the process of taking. The 2015 online list indicates 127 meanings suggesting that in the ensuing years creativity in word making is down. By the way, only the game of Bridge used the term "take out" in '68. No chicken nor synonyms for murder, I guess. 

What a turn in vision Noah Webster took when he set the foundation for this book. It includes 157 pages of supplements including practical business mathematics and terms, air distances between cities, the history of the English language, forms of address, abbreviations, pages of signs and symbols and the history of Canada. It even spells out the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence.

In an attempt to speed the user's interface, (1968 interface, n, a surface that lies between two parts of matter or space and forms their common boundary); the book is constructed with black wells with letters along the edges. I learned from a brochure I found tucked between pages that these features are “stamped in gold” and called “thumb indexed.” They claim and I don’t disagree, that the book is “richly appointed throughout.” The paper is fine, thin and yellowed... both on purpose and now with its 47 years of age. The book is heavy with so many pages and so much information to offer. The description on the insert says its “Monumental- 2.304 pages”, and “Massive- weighs 11 pounds, 4 ounces, 11 inches high x 8 ½ inches wide”. It includes “400,000 word definitions, 2,132 illustrations, many in full color bound in handsome sturdy, buckram”. (I had to look it up. A coarse cotton, hemp, or linen cloth, stiffened with glue or a gluelike substance.)  

The insert includes, in the purchasers hand writing, a curly fine style that reminds me of my grandmother’s, that says, “ordered, 10/28/68 4.65/mo. 13.95 Total.  Seems a bargain now for this massive, monumental resource. That was fall of our senior year.  I remember chipping in coins from fifty or seventy-five cent an hour babysitting jobs to fill up our dad's cars to go to football games, Blazo’s or Big Boy. The gas at the Sunoco station cost around twenty-nine cents per gallon. I never would have purchased something so extravagant. It would take 28 hours of babysitting for me, and I had more critical purchases like 45s, Villager outfits, Sebago Mocs, Bonnie Bell and Monet earrings.

Watching TV one night, I sat Webster’s on my lap, leafed through and noticed an illustration of a zorapteran. Bored, I pulled out markers and colored it, then found other bugs in nearly every letter of the alphabet. I colored from back to front until an acarida. Since '68, publishers replaced engravings, the little pictures with photographic processes, (I learned from Wikipedia), but, it made me wonder how editors determined which words to represent. Pictures aid in understanding a concept. I could never conjure a halberd without the drawing. The little engravings aren't on every page making the information dense... intimidating… so much to know. The illustrations are a relief, a resting place for the eyes and the brain. I wonder whether the priority came from a layout decision or the information? By the way, the first illustration in the book is of an aardvark, already a cool word with its double-a beginning, the last a zoospore balancing out coolness with its double-o middle.

Though I access Thesaurus.com much more than the dictionary, I don’t learn nearly as much using it. I find my word, you know… the one… right… on the tip… of my tongue. I copy the word, X the webpage and edit my Word doc. Done. Each time, I am reminded that at this point in my life, words are precious. They don’t reliably show up for me. Use of Thesaurus.com is increasing. I get as frustrated with myself as I did with my mom when words don’t emerge when I need them. Word finding. It’s part of aging, I’m told. It must be a modern term, because it’s not in the ’68. It, however, doesn’t make me feel modern.

I so love this dictionary for helping me mind my Ps and Qs. 

Word. (as in, to flatter in 1968.)