The real spirit of Christmas

 Miranda & Charlotte, 9"x12" oil on panel

Its almost a guarantee I will get a Christmas commission request each year, but after moving and only having a short time left until I leave for school, I was going to pass this time. But, I could not resist giving in to my friends' Wendy, Miranda and Charlotte. This is a family of the sweetest dispositions and most sincere intentions. Miranda and Wendy are some wonderful women living with sincere intention in their lives- choosing to include little Charlotte into their family and raise a child with an open heart and mind, ah, truly inspirational!  So, I hope I did them justice in this little Madonna with Child-esque Christmas painting of Charlotte as a newborn and her introspective, loving mother. (And, by the way, the painting was carried through with secret finesse by Wendy, Charlotte's other wonderful mother!) 

Black Sheep Vineyard 2015

             
Here is the 2nd official linoleum print I completed for Black Sheep. It was a good opportunity to expand my printing skills! Plus, I enjoyed working in the Artists Image Resource studio in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The Power of Beauty Conference

I was very excited when my friend let me know about this conference because 1. I'm not a philosopher, but a practicing artist interested in philosophy, as well as beauty  (as all artists should be) and 2. my favorite living philosopher from England -Roger Scruton- was the plenary speaker! I had never submitted a paper to a conference before, so it really helped determine I am on the right track when it was accepted. It was a grand opportunity and learning experience....I think I shall do another sometime :)

 read my full paper here:   The Local Artist's Work of Becoming a "Window to Beauty"


 link to the webpage describing the Conference:  Power of Beauty Conference website

from Ireland to Scotland....

It was an amazing week spent at the Cill Rialaig Residency in County Kerry. The place is so amazingly beautiful- magical and full of atmosphere! The Irish were all friendly and kind, too. I found so much inspiration.

Ballycarberry Castle

Sun rise at Residency

Sketching in the Highlands

The University!

The sublime Skelligs

And, it was really good to visit Edinburgh and see the wonderful city where I will be living while I attend graduate school next year. I'm ready! 

Power of Beauty Conference

In October, I will be attending the "Power of Beauty" Conference at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. Roger Scruton will be the plenary speaker. The topic will be "Beauty and Desecration." This is the   abstract I submitted:

The Local Artist’s Work of Becoming a Window to Beauty

Melanie D. Steffl Thompson

“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful.  Beauty is God’s handwriting….”

Written by Reverend C. Kingsley in 1848, the simplicity of the message was very powerful.  Unfortunately, popular Western culture excludes contemplation.  Contemporary lifestyle brushes aside higher ideals and chooses unsatisfactory temporary vices.  Achieving values necessary for contentment, such as stillness and beauty, become impossible.  Most chances to appreciate beauty now are lost even before considered.

But great beauty exists everywhere, and has always been with the world. Traditionally, Artists responsibly took up the work to convey Her presence.  The widespread fogginess of self- satisfaction now blankets nobler aspirations.  Artists lost sight of their own perceptual abilities to translate communications between their selves and the natural world. The lack of this potential is particularly evident in the Ohio Valley.

  The Ohio Valley has not been well known as a place of inspiration.  The local antipathy towards Art and Beauty is frequent and dis-functioning for mature Artistic work.  Whether in the form of creative minds, youth, or natural resources, the Ohio Valley has an unfortunate history of “sending away.” If the land here were nourished, instead of being abused, perhaps this would positively reflect in a brighter future.  It is a place of Beauty here, always ready to inspire, but a new core strength needs to be formed before Artists can properly place Art in everyday life.

Specifically, this paper reflects on why and how the Beauty and Art of the Ohio Valley is affected by local choice.  As an Artist from here, I reflect on the underlying negativity that leads to the debilitation of mature creative work.  Interviews and the artwork of local and transplanted Artists supplement the importance of forming a new cultural ideology.  Many do not see the inherent beauty and inspiration of the Ohio Valley, but it is my wish that the inclusion of somewhere small can make a contribution to the World.

“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful. Beauty is God’s hand-writing—a way-side sacrament; welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower, and thank for it Him, the fountain of all loveliness, and drink it in, simply and earnestly, with all your eyes; it is a charmed draught, a cup of blessing.”  -Rev. C. Kingsley

University of Edinburgh

 I am pleased to announce that beginning fall of 2015, I will begin my MFA studies in Contemporary Art Practice at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. YES!

Self-Evaluated Artist Statement

Everyone I know has a phone that can capture, distill, refine and enhance any situation into an impressive image.  If this is so, then why would the (relatively) slow human-processed image have any contemporary relevance? While I cannot answer this question universally, I can answer it through myself.

“On reflecting why I make the Art that I do”

I was raised without artistic influence, training or discipline. My parents were not equipped to deal with the energy, intense passions and difficult personality of a developing artist. Additionally, growing up in a rural place with a history and future of mining and industry, who thinks about personal and community betterment in the forms of the intellectual or cultural? No one for all I’ve learned. That’s okay, I understand it is safer to follow social standards than to start asking questions. Questions sometimes lead to doors that people find easier to keep closed.

But I had questions, and I wanted answers. Without the resource of a safe place to ask these questions, I turned to the outdoors and let my imagination take over. I made meagre attempts to express myself utilizing all I had- a pencil and paper.  Life was frustrating, I was frustrated. As I got older, I hoped that I would be able to search for those answers when I left home. I earned my BFA in Drawing (all that I knew) but I still did not have the developed skills I needed to make my work more effective.  I moved to the West Coast, and yet there was more I had to know. So, I went back to my childhood home to get my answers.

I had gained a little influence and training. Not enough, but I knew I had something. Yet, it had almost been harder living back at home the second time around. My questions had become more specific and directed. I had to earn it, but I finally figured out that I have a love and belief in life and an urgent need to express myself about it, not just for myself, but for everyone.  In a way, I had begun to learn how to become a “life experience distiller and interpreter”. Life can be simple or it can be difficult or it can be both. It’s frequently riddled with all that confusion, ugliness and sorrow I always had trouble understanding. But when I make my work, I keep all of this in mind, I connect the frustration with the beauty. Because I have learned that we need all of it. It is who I am and who we all are, and it is my job to open up the discussions about this.

I don’t try to make abstract or complicated work. Life already hands us that. I don’t even adhere to contemporary ideals on what “good” art is.  I’m not playing any games to try to advance myself with popularity or financially.  No, instead I have decided to develop some ability to make recognizable imagery.  To emulate the likeness of nature (whether in a tree or a human) is a form of admiration. I don’t want my viewers confused at what they are looking at. I want to give them the little head start I missed out on. However, I am not interested in handing out answers either. I don’t assume to have anyone’s answer.

As impressive as the images of our devices get, they do not process multitudes of experiences into an attempt to help other humans. Our western culture has so much now, it’s beginning to clog our minds and (eventually) it will our souls. We need (and desire) the convolutions of life. Because without them, we will never find the satisfaction of our work. It’s my job to think about all of it, and transcend.  My human processed Art and Images will be those doorways to help the viewer find their own questions.

May Show

"Dreamtime with my Familiar" oil on panel, 16x20

 I have a small show up at Wintersville Center for Music and Art (musicandart.com) this month. A special thanks to my friend Gerald VanScyoc for making this happen.

Learning to Etch

Study #1

Study #2

Last month I took the opportunity to work at the awesome Pittsburgh print shop

Artists Image Resource ( http://www.artistsimageresource.org/ ). I have always wanted to learn how to etch, so thanks to them, I got started on this. I am looking forward to spending more time utilizing that important resource and making more etchings! 

My idea started from a painting that I re-did out of my "Romania" series.  The new image is a combination of two very influential places I have experienced. One, the Pacific Northwest, where my husband is from and I have lived for a number of years, and secondly, from the memory of my time during a residency in Transylvania.

Meeting Nuhlimkilaka (The Bringer of Confusion)
Oil on panel, 16x20

New painting complete

"Inner contemplation 2014" Oil on linen, 24x30"

A short film, with friends

What happens when you don't separate your recyclables properly? Find out! My friend James Wodarcyk's first film- and my first time acting! Enjoy!

THE SEPARATOR

My painting is in this issue of DirtyChai, and there's some good reads here, too!

http://www.dirtychaimag.com/

Heartwood

(for my nephew, so he may hear someday, too)

Exposed

and gaping

an elliptical of perfect shock

in slow surprise to feel cold air

move inside

where once was protected,

a cambium womb.

In the hush of

late winter

stirs the source of life

pulsing through the woods

loud enough to hear for

those who listen

except

I don’t always remember

all presence here.

Or staccatos in the air

mohawks

and maniacal laughter

beats with great blows

to the head:

a wondrous orchestration to search within.

And in my heart

I wonder if the

same opening could be made

with song:

melody and harmony,

keeping time all the way

through the wooden layers.

 

Review- Rokni Haerizadeh

While visiting the Carnegie Art Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I encountered work which unexpectedly caught my attention. The work was physically small, mostly sheets of paper placed along a stone balustrade used for transitioning between the larger exhibits. Stepping out from white roomfuls of modern works which barely roused a glance, my brain was triggered into life by these still media images with paintings on them. In the dark marble space full of echoes, laying on narrow, long tables were some of the most stimulating images I had seen.

            ‘The Royal Wedding, ’ and other works by Rokni Haerizadeh, an Iranian-born Artist now in exile in Dubai, are a collection of mass-media imagery on printed papers, books and video. The pieces all represented scenes of the power of those in control of the media and what they wish viewers to see.  Some of it was violently uncomfortable and depicted news reports of uprisings, political affairs, and socio-political propaganda. The Artist added paint (or digital paint) to alter the scenes turning them into something representing pages from a grotesque modern fable. Anthropomorphic animal heads, parts and faces cover over each human head and other select parts. Distorted and unrealistic, the animal features transform the recognizable features into something resembling a non-mask.  Bold colors, repetitive and solid, create something slightly skewed from the original scene. This blanketing distortion of key focal points ironically exposes the deeper issues than what is seen at first glance. It allows an eerie perception of insight into the event and what the original story says is happening.  The transformation of the media reports turns the individuals represented in them into characters from a play with a suggestive moral- “Do not believe everything you see or are told!”

            The visually dynamic form of alteration immediately sets itself aside from passive political satire.  It is common now that violence and oppression in media is so often seen that it tends to induce a numb state.  The insidious nature of the authoritative power figure, once supposed to be esteemed, is reduced to a demonic persona through the vision of animal/human creatures .  Rokni Haerizadeh’s works on the media coverage of “important” events are an exposure of the true nature of oppressors.  Hidden agendas come alive in a new way.  Acted out by the morphed forms that viewers can feel less subjective towards, but still recognize as figures to learn from.  What has been forgotten by proliferation of mass media is re-awakened, stirred into a new life form.  These works by Haerizadeh are the stories of humans re-told without any of the gilding, the fairy tales in their original form. They are a formula for truth.

Painting accepted into Sacred Art Festival

One of the seemingly never-ending jobs of an Artist nowadays is the endless search, apply, accept/reject of work. I have had a number of rejections, its just part of it, but I am happy to say this one was accepted.

"Mamika" (mother)- accepted to the Springfield Liturgical and Sacred Arts Exhibition in May

I came across the "Liturgical and Sacred Arts" festival in Springfield, Illinois, in one of Ben's Clay Times magazines.  So, being completely fascinated with sacred art and the essential role it plays in life, I thought this piece that I had made previously seemed to fit this theme perfectly, and indeed it did! Maybe I will even try to attend the festival, it must be very interesting....

CILL RAILAIG RESIDENCY!

The stone homes that have been converted into the Residency overlook the Atlantic

In October, Ben and I will both be attending the Cill Railaig Residency in County Kerry, Ireland. Previously, I had the chance for a very solitary residency in Maine (2009) and a very life-changing one  in Romania (2011.) This opportunity marks the beginning of a new direction we are heading for together.  I am hoping to focus on some printmaking when I wont be daydreaming away over the ocean, and Ben will be finding sacred materials and spaces to influence his pottery/history/writing. Afterwards, we will get to do a little more sightseeing that we missed in our last visit to Ireland- and some pub visiting in Dublin! Later, we will jump on over to Edinburgh, Scotland,  where I will be visiting some Universities in the hopes of some future Master’s work.  It should be a great beginning for this next chapter of life!

Steffl Bier

Dad and Emily model two of the eight silkscreen prints I made from the beer with our family name!