Our very own Bob Evans is giving a fascinating photography talk today Sunday June 11th, 2023 at 2pm!
It’s entitled “A Snapshot In Time: A Photographic Display of Northbridge Past and Present”.
It’s held at the Northbridge Town Hall, 7 Main Street, Whitinsville.
Swing on by and learn more about our region’s history along with photography!
Talented artist Bonnie Frederico offers small-class art classes in the comfort of her Grafton studio! Bonnie is offering classes in oil painting, pastels, and colored pencil. She provides hands-on advice and mentoring!
Here are just a few of her paintings to show her style. Click on any image for the full-proportion version.
One of Bonnie’s popular paintings is of a gorgeous bluebird –
Bonnie has done a number of step-by-step video workshops on painting for the BVAA over the years. This one is of the Grafton Gazebo in winter –
Bonnie also did a video workshop on painting a rural Grafton barway (fence gate)-
Here’s Bonnie’s website to view more of her artwork and to sign up for courses:
https://www.sellarshop.com/
Scott Nelson is an incredibly talented artist based in Millbury, Massachusetts. He has published a number of children’s books and teaches classes in illustrating and publishing children’s books. He also is well known for his beautiful watercolor and acrylic paintings.
Scott’s latest classes at the Worcester Art Museum have openings.
He is teaching classes in:
Scott highly recommends the drawing class to everyone, to create a foundation for their projects.
https://www.worcesterart.org/classes/adult-classes/
Here’s a few samples of Scott’s images (click on one for full proportions):
Here are a trio of videos where Scott walks us through creating beautiful outdoor sketches, as well as a tour of his studio:
For more about Scott Nelson and his art:
Libia Goncalves is an incredibly talented artist. She has chosen to focus her creative energies on mentoring the next generation of artists. From her Milford studio, she offers art classes for small groups of students, helping them learn skills in drawing, painting, composition, color, and more.
Libia offers her classes in both English and Spanish. Her studio’s name is DColorex.
Here are just a few of the talented students Libia works with:
A few of Libia’s own works:
Here’s a video Libia created of how to create a crayon-resist watercolor castle:
For more information, contact Libia:
Sue Dion is an amazingly talented artist with a studio in Uxbridge, Massachusetts. Sue has sold her artwork around the world. She is known for her loose style with abstracts, florals, and landscapes. She primarily works in acrylics and watercolors.
Here are just a few samples of Sue’s works. Click on one to see it at its full proportions.
Sue teaches classes both in person at her Uxbridge studio and also on line. Here are links to explore Sue’s offerings.
Sue Dion on Mastrius for personal mentorship:
https://www.mastrius.com/sue-dion-mentorship/
Sue Dion website:
https://www.suedionart.com/
Sue Dion’s art courses at the Worcester Art Museum:
https://www.worcesterart.org/classes/adult-classes/summer-session/
Sue Dion on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@suedionart
Here’s a video of a workshop Sue presented for the BVAA on color hue and chroma:
Sue Dion takes us on a personalized tour of her framing shop and art studio in Uxbridge, Massachusetts! Sue teaches small semi-private courses in person as well as online with the Worcester Art Museum. She provides personalized mentorships. Sue even does paint nights!
Be sure to follow Sue Dion on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/@suedionart
For more information about Sue’s workshops visit:
Experienced talented artist Bev Tinklenberg offers watercolor painting classes from her home studio in Whitinsville, Massachusetts. Bev teaches small-sized classes on Thursday and Friday. She provides quite a lot of personal feedback.
For more information, contact Bev at
ktinklenberg@gmail.com
Here are a few examples of Bev’s work. Click on any image to see it in its full proportions.
A virtual tour of Bev’s art studio:
Bev doing a watercolor value study –
Sketching and Drawing basic supplies with Bev –
For more information, contact Bev at
ktinklenberg@gmail.com
Talented artist Bonnie Frederico is offering oil painting classes from her home studio in Grafton, Massachusetts. Bonnie has several days of the week available, so contact Bonnie to find out which days might work best for your schedule.
Here’s an example of one of Bonnie’s paintings. This painting portrays a rural barway in Grafton.
For more examples of Bonnie’s artwork, and for contact information, visit her website:
Here are a few workshops Bonnie has done for the BVAA!
Joanne and Mike Zeis have photos included in “Interconnected: A Fiber Show” — a juried exhibition at the Mary Cosgrove Dolphin Gallery at Worcester State University. The show will open on February 2, 2023 and runs through March 18, 2023.
Artists were asked to consider “fiber” broadly, and Mike expects to see a great variety of wall-mounted and free-standing works that, as the organizers put it, “…allow the viewer to experience [fiber] in new ways.”
Mike’s photos show fabric in early and late stages—one shot is of a supply of wool ready to be fed into an industrial loom. The other shows a fragment of torn curtain in an abandoned mansion. Joanne’s photo was taken in guest room at an abandoned spa in Sharon Springs, NY. She says, “Rain and sun hitting this mattress (and traditional sheets) made their own little ecosystem.”
The opening and reception are on Thursday, Feb 2, 2023, from 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm. The Dolphin Gallery is in the first floor of WSU’s Ghosh Science and Tech Center at 486 Chandler Street in Worcester. Regular gallery hours are Thursdays and Fridays from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm, Saturdays from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm, or by appointment.
When I stopped by the Open Sky Community Art Gallery last Saturday to pick up my ”Doll Heads” contribution to the 2022 Macabre Art Show Pop-up, Lisa said that quite a few people at the reception wondered how I made the photo. I gave her a brief explanation and showed her some of the steps I had taken. She asked me to share my process, so here are some photos and commentary about the basic steps.
The photo was printed on tea-bag paper, salvaged after I made sun tea last summer. Somewhere I had heard about using tea-bag paper for printing and art projects, and in the summer of 2021, I checked out a few how-to videos on YouTube. Of course there were a variety of techniques and applications, and, while all of the artists/crafters produced fine-looking results, I did not see an immediate application.
Nonetheless, I started salvaging tea bags. Tea bags are really a folded paper tube with a crimped seal along the length of the tube, and a single staple at the top holding the whole thing together.
I removed the staple, but one can cut just below the staple and save some steps. At first, I worried that flecks of tea would attach themselves to the paper, so while the tea bags were still damp, I removed the tea and rinsed the remaining leaves off of the paper. The result was a very thin but sturdy fine-grained sheet, with an evenly-distributed hint of tea stain.
With the next batch, I left the tea bags intact until they dried completely. When I unfolded the dried tea bags and removed the tea, I saw areas of deep stain, broad areas of light stain, and a few unstained areas. I felt these would be more appropriate for what I had in mind.
When the call went out for pieces for the BVAA Macabre 2022 pop-up display, I figured I would give tea bags a try. I knew my printer would not feed this lightweight paper, so I had to attach the unfolded and flattened-out tea bag to a carrier sheet with masking tape, as I did a few years ago when I was printing on rice paper. The assembly fed through the printer without a problem. When I removed the tape to free the paper, I saw that the paper is so thin that ink had sprayed through the fibers onto the carrier sheet. “Sharing” the ink with the carrier sheet diminished the density of the image on the tea bag sheet itself.
So for my photo, I needed to attach the tea-bag paper to the carrier sheet permanently with spray adhesive (I used 3M 77). Also, it’s more manageable to print the entire image in a single pass instead of on separate sheets that then would need to be matched up. Teabag paper measures 3 ¼” by 6″, so I needed glue four sheets down to reproduce the photo. If you know they’re there, you can spot the seams in the finished print.
The photo was taken at a vendor’s booth at the Oddities Flea Market in Brooklyn NY in December 2019. The vendor said that they are molds for doll heads that she found on a visit to Germany. If I remember right, she wanted $60 each. I left her collection intact. An event space isn’t ideal for taking pictures, mainly because of poor lighting. So most of the Photoshop work on this photo was to straighten the lines and adjust brightness and contrast. My non-tea bag image is in color (link below), but I converted the photo to black and white for the tea-bag print so the color would not distract from the grunginess of the tea stains.
One of many YouTube videos about printing on or with tea bags: https://youtu.be/j0_BrpC95BA
Link to the “standard” version of the Doll Head photo: https://flic.kr/p/2mkHk9w
Info about the Oddities Flea Market: https://theodditiesfleamarket.com/events
Ask with any questions!