Convention demo, Elmira Habibullah

I feel really bad about this... we spelled her last name wrong on her name tag... (we missed one of the L's).

Elmira is a young artist (I think mid 20's?) who was born in Iran and moved to Canada a couple of years ago. She's at a Vancouver University finishing up her degree, and she paints in a traditional Turkish style, which she was taught by a master in Iran. You can check out her website for more work, but here's the stuff she bought and demonstrated with at the convention.

She also gave another demo on a traditional Italian technique (you can see it on her website), but I wasn't able to make it into that demo...

Oh, and we also had a 'People's Choice' award, and out of everything displayed, she won... second or third prize (I feel bad I can't remember that...)

That piece is here:

Convention demo, Agnes Zoni

Because I had a LOT of responsibility as:

Vice Chair, Display Head, Registrations, Commercial Registrations, and generally, the person who ran around everywhere, and drove to pick things up, made/printed signs and any necessary documents, including typing up speeches, etc...

(and yes, this kinda all killed my arm/back... I was very, very careful)

I didn't sign up for any of the workshops at the convention, and I only made it into four of the demos.

The ones I did get to were really good.

The first was the French-Canadian artist Agnes Zoni. She hand-makes these amazing masks, based on the traditional Venetian masks, and all sorts of other things. The demo she gave was on how she makes the masks, which is different than how more porcelain artists work, 'cause in general, you just buy the piece you want to paint on, like buying a canvas... but she throws porcelain on the wheel and makes vase-like shapes (which is hard enough), then she slices them vertically with a wire tool, and makes two masks out of the two sides. This way, every one of her masks is different, because she doesn't use a mould.

Unfortunately, I can't find a web site for her, but here are the photos I took during the seminar, and some of her finished (for sale) work:

 Agnes CAREFULLY transported this piece of green (unfired, and not dry) porcelain on the plane to use as a demo piece by wrapping it in damp paper towels, and I think, praying a heck of a lot that her suitcase wouldn't get thrown around and squished.

 Some her tools/etc that she uses for texture.

 She's pretty clever in her craftsmanship... she finds interesting buttons/etc, presses them into porcelain, and turns them into moulds to add as little accessories/etc.

 With some added accessories...

 In here she was actually cutting away pieces of the porcelain to give it a more interesting shape, and playing with the positioning of the porcelain cord.

 Here's what some of her completed work looks like, PLEASE click on the picture to see them at full size, the texture of the lustres she used were AMAZING!

 I'm not really big on gifts, so my parents told me, if I saw something I wanted, to buy it and they'd give it to me for my birthday... so I chose these three little cat masks! ...aren't they soooooo cute?

 I need to take them in to get properly mounted, which Agnes cleverly considered, as you can see from the way the back is built...

 She also made these really neat pendants. They aren't painted (except for the gold, and obviously she added the fresh water pearls later), she used coloured clay slip (really liquify clay, like what I made the maple leaves out of) and rolled it together with white porcelain.

Again, such a clever lady, the back of the pendants had a pin, if you wanted to stick it on your shirt, but also had a clay backing for you to thread a necklace through them! It's really neat how just those little extra touches make them so much more interesting.

AND, she was such a kind, lovely lady, she gave me this blank one for free (seriously, it was super sweet and absolutely unnecessary... and I was so happy).

Convention prep stuff

Y'know, I pulled up iPhoto to put up this post... and realize I was so crazy busy AT the convention, that I hardly took any pictures at all!!!

Well, here's what I have:

This is some of the prep stuff, all the gift bags needed to be chosen, bought, stickers made up and stuck to the fronts, then all the stuff inside had to be gathered and then individually stuffed... our theme for the convention was 'A Splash of Colour', so everything was primarily black and while with an occasionally shocking 'splash' of colour (hence the blinding pink tissue paper).

All of this stuff was prepped and stored in the basement at my painting mentor's heritage house.

 Lanyards had to be made up individually... so, a name tag on the front, then the correct tickets for everything had to be stuffed inside. So, there were the individual gala dinner tickets with names and what they chose to eat, tickets for any workshops they signed up for, tickets for demos, and tickets for raffles. I think I checked these about six different times...

We also had separate lanyards for people just coming for the day.

 We also had tons of boxes and bags of stuff you might not think of, but had to be done. The box on the left are small gifts individually wrapped to put be each place setting at the gala dinner, and the bags (only three showing) were the gifts for each of the Featured Artists, who were giving the workshops.

We also had gifts for every single person who gave a demo, and I think there was a total of 34 demos...

 Since all the demos and workshops needed turpentine and alcohol, and those can't be transported on airplanes, we had to individually bottle up and mark enough for every room

And again, almost every demo needed a clean piece of porcelain for the teacher, and every workshop needed one for the teacher, and extras in case students hadn't brought their own.

...this picture is actually of pieces for the raffle. We photographed every piece and wrapped it up so nothing would get broken.

And I'm not going to bother posting pictures of the program I put together. Let's just say it took a VERY long time and turned out amazing.

...and since it was me, I included several funny things, like this cartoon I found online:

...and this list, which no one non-local will get:

YOU KNOW YOU’RE FROM THE FRASER VALLEY IF YOU…

• Feel guilty throwing aluminum cans or paper in the trash.

• Know more than 10 ways to order coffee, and can taste the difference between Starbucks, Second Cup, and Tim Horton's. 

• Know the difference between Chinook, Coho and Sockeye salmon.

• Can pronounce Coquihalla, Tsawwassen, Osoyoos, Ucluelet, and Esquimalt.

• Obey all traffic laws except ‘keep right except to pass.’

• Know that finding parking will take longer than it did to drive to your destination

• Hear someone is “doing the Grind”, you know they are hiking, not hitting the books.

• You know the mountains are located north. In fact, you use them to get your bearings when lost.

• A nice day means it’s not raining no matter how cold or cloudy it is. A beautiful day means you can see the mountains.

• You know that West Vancouver, Vancouver West, the West End, and the West Side are different places.

• You hate the Calgary Flames, but not as much as the Toronto Leafs.

• Rent and housing prices make you cringe.

• You know people who are legally adults, but can only drive with one passenger in the car and a 0.0 blood alcohol level.

• Have no concept of humidity without precipitation.

• Deciding where to eat is a matter of deciding what type of food you’re in the mood for: Japanese, Chinese, Mexican, Italian, etc.

• You consider anything below 5 degrees as freezing, and over 20 degrees as roasting.

• You’ll always refer to ‘The Telus World of Science’ as ‘Science World’.

• Say, “the mountain is out” when it’s a pretty day and you can actually see it.

• The concept of skiing, golfing, and sailing in the same day does not seem impossible to you.

• You become greatly offended when someone mistakes you as American. However, you take even more time to argue that you’re from the west coast and not the east.

Walkies

I'll post stuff about the painting convention soon, but I realized I forgot to put up pictures of this great park I take Eva to (sporadically, as my back/etc allows).

Since I moved in January, I'm now further out in the Greater Vancouver valley, in Langley, so no seawall or Jericho beach walkies anymore.

There are two great parks within easy driving distance though, one called Derby Reach, which is right on the Fraser River, and the other is Tynehead Park, which I'm going to post pictures from.

Both parks have large off-leash areas for Eva to sniff around at her leisure, and both have trails (where she must stay on leash) through very natural forested areas.

I like Tynehead better, even though it's a farther drive. The off-leash area is bigger and it's not just a big flat field, there are hills and the path winds through clusters of trees and bushes. There's also a water fountain (for people, AND one for dogs) right at the entrance so it's easy to re-fill the doggy-water-bottle.

The trails are nicer too, they weave up and down, over wooden bridges that criss-cross the Serpentine River, and there are several loops you can take if you only want to walk 1km, or 4km, or even 8km.

It's very similar to where I grew up, my neighbours had about 16 acres of forested land that I played in as a child, and walking through Tynehead is like reliving those years of clambering through gullies, streams, scampering up trees, and hiding in tree trunks so large, a grown man could stand inside, stretch his arms, and never touch the sides.

Usually I don't take my phone with me while I'm walking, but two months or so ago, I did since it's was a nice day and I wanted to take pictures.

 This flower is a salmonberry flower. The season for the berries is near its end, but I have been gorging myself whenever I get the chance. It's the first spring berry, followed by huckleberries and thimbleberries, all very tasty wild PNW berries, which are in season now, and the wild blackberries (these are tiny, about 1/4 the size of the blackberries you'd get in a store, and grow on the ground in a low, creeping vine, not in the huge bushes -> those are an invasive species) are just starting to ripen.

 This is a wild cherry, the earliest flowering tree, which blooms slightly before the ornamental species. There's a closeup of the flowers below. They are dropping their fruit now, and they're tasty, but sour. They are so plentiful that bears have come into the area (there are warning signs up everywhere) and you can see their poop full of cherry pits on the trails.

 So cute, a little local squirrel that people have (obviously) been feeding so it's super tame. I'm glad Eva was leashed because as soon as she saw it, she went crazy!

 Wild bleeding hearts. I love these. Only a couple of blooms in this picture as it was a little too early.

And this! This is wild ginger that carpets the forest floor in green.

 The next few pictures are just random shots taken from the trails to give you an idea of what it's like to walk around in.

 Here's one of the bit stumps. I think these are all old-growth cedar, which would have been a couple hundred years old before they were cut down, or fell down, or whatever happened.

 This stump is a nurse stump -> which means other trees start growing on it, and as it decomposes, it fertilizes them.

Just a different part of the park. There is a trail through this, and it's like walking through a tunnel. Very cool.

Secret project

Okay, the convention is over, and now we're into the seminars... I'm going to post a few pics of the 'secret non-painting-project' I was worked on for the convention, and I'll post more of the actual displayed work/etc at the convention when I have time (as in, maybe not happen until June 3rd, when the final seminar is over and the artists have been taken to the airport).

So, I was making little porcelain maple leafs, right? Well, I started with new-growth maple branches/leaves, twist ties, cutters, and plastic twine:

 Please click on the pictures to see them at a larger size.

Can you guess? I made masks! There was a big gala dinner at the end of the convention, with a 'Phantom of the Opera' theme, so of course, everyone was supposed to dress up and wear a mask.

I've never done something like this before, but I've always had good spacial skills (perhaps it off-sets the dyslexia?) I can imagine something three-dimensional, and disassemble/reassemble it in my head even before I start working.

I created three different ones, just in case I broke/ruined one (or two, knowing me), so I wanted to make sure I had a spare.

To make these involved a lot of trial and error. Quickly, I realized I could only work for an hour or so, leave the twist ties on, and let it dry overnight, or over a couple nights before I could weave more twigs/branches into these. You'll also notice I removed all the leaves from the branches. That was the first learning phase. Trying to weave the branches with the leaves on quickly shredded the leaves and left clumps of them caught between, which was ugly and made it harder to work.


When the branches were relatively dried enough that I could remove some of the twist ties, step two looked like this:

 Sorry that first one is upside-down...

The green twine was used to bend them into shape -> since I didn't want them flat, I wanted them to curve around the face properly. The last four pictures are of the same mask at various bending-stages as this one was the most... expansive? (It was kinda shaped like a clover -> since I've got Irish heritage). It's also the only one I didn't finish.

This bending process took another couple of days, but by that, I still mean I worked on them for only about an hour or so, then had to leave them to dry. So it wasn't as time-consuming as it may seem. I worked on them in the evenings, usually after I'd been doing convention stuff all day.



I never actually took pictures during stage three... mostly 'cause the convention had already started, and I was literally coming back and working on them around 8pm at night after being up @ 5am and running around like crazy all day.

Step three involved resin. You basically have these two bottle and you mix equal parts into a plastic cup, then whip/mix it for a couple of minutes until it starts getting warm and sticky.

Then I used a paintbrush to coat the entire thing. Since there were still twist ties on many parts of the masks holding them together, I coated them over two days/evenings and let them dry in between. I then added real maple leaves and coated them in resin.

Stage four, I added the porcelain leaves and copper wire as accents. I did this... literally Friday night  (the day before the dinner) at around 11pm, and I was so exhausted that I finished one, threw some porcelain leaves randomly on the second mask, and abandoned the third (which is why I never finished it).

Here's what the first one looked like:

An added (and unseen) bonus of using resin was, because to dry it, I had to hang them (otherwise, if I set them down, they would have dried to whatever surface I laid them on), was gravity pulled the resin into the branch tips and created these shimmery little beads that caught the light and sparkled.

This is the mask I wore to the gala banquet dinner on Saturday (the final official day of the convention).

The second mask I finished (but didn't wear) ended up like this:

Since this was the second one I made, the weaving is a lot more complex than the first one, so here are some zoomed-in pictures where you can see the details better.

 This is the underside of the mask (the part that lays against the forehead). You can see the leaves are starting to turn brown because I didn't coat the backside of these leaves... I ran out of time.


In the end, I feel my first attempt at making a mask out of trees/leaves was successful. I certainly learned a lot while I was working. If I'd had more time, and if my poor arm/shoulder had allowed for it, I would have liked to paint scenes (or something) on the porcelain leaves.

In the end, the masks were meant to be ephemeral. Out of curiosity, I'm going to leave them on a shelf and see what happens to them... if they start to crack, or grow mould inside the resin (since I was sealing up a live leaf that is full of moisture). When they are at the state to be thrown away, I am going to remove the porcelain leaves and will most likely use them in a project in the future.