My sculpture decorates the CRCO website pages!

Look what I found when I was browsing today! The Conseil régional de la culture de l'Outaouais (think Council for the Arts in Ottawa, but on the Quebec side) has just launched their new and improved website. They have a series of images that cycle through as you browse through their pages. My Dragon is one such image - with the added bonus of having a clearly legible name tag! Most excellent. This has made my day.

Art on my head!

I keep forgetting that there are loads of people who haven't yet seen my new hairdo. I find it helps me embody artsyness!

I brought in a handful of autumn leaves to the colorist and the DVD of the movie "Amélie" to the hairstylist the get the colour and cut I was looking for and I'm thrilled that both of them were so delighted to do it for me, instead of trying to talk me out of it.

Here I am with my new Autumn leaves 'do. I love it! Thanks to Crystal and Kevin at the Fluid Colour Concept Salon in Ottawa for helping me realize my hair vision.

And a shot of me at work at Arthéna - a good view of the hairdo from the side - check out the bright orange stripe that frames my face:

Glass Beadmaking at the Haliburton School of the Arts

Every year since 1997 I've been driving to Haliburton, Ontario (a little village about an hour north of Peterborough and just on the southernmost border of Algonquin Park) for my week-long getaway at the Haliburton School of the Arts. Yes, going to Art school for six and a half hours a day, five days in a row is my idea of a vacation. I love it!

This year I was originally registered for a Business for Artists course. I was really looking forward to it as it was going to discuss tricks and tips for grant writing (my next thing to attack!). However, it got cancelled due to low registration. So I signed up for glass beadmaking instead and had a ball.

Glass beadmaking involves melting rods of differently coloured glass in the flame of a torch, winding the molten glass rods around a stainless steel stick and using the flame to make various shapes. Here's a shot of my work surface with the torch, some glass rods, shaping tools, stainless steel buckets of water for scrap and those stainless steel winding rods (the things that look like unlit sparklers – the gray stuff is called bead release and allows you to slip the bead off the winding rod once it has cooled down. Without bead release, you can't get the bead off and you end up with a nice plant stick – hee hee!


Here are my beads from the first day – looks like a bouquet, doesn't it? The red tips are so I can tell my beads from the beads of others. All the beads, once completed, go into a kiln (a really hot oven) to cool down slowly to room temperature to avoid thermal shock and cracking. Confusion and inadvertent bead theft can occur without the marking.


There are two main kinds of glass in bead making, commonly referred to as “soft glass” and “hard glass”. Melting temperature is lower for soft glass, and the colour you see in glass rod form is what you will get once you're done forming the bead in the torch. However, soft glass is more sensitive to changes in temperature (and more prone to cracking if you're not careful to keep it evenly warm while you're working).

The hard glass is called borosilicate glass and is the same stuff Pyrex bakeware and scientific test tubes are made with. It has a higher melt temperature and is much less prone to cracking because of uneven warming, so you can make more complicated things. My instructor, Brad Sherwood, makes these really cool glass marionettes out of this glass, with jointed jaws and limbs. The other cool thing about borosilicate glass is the colour variations you can get out of the glass by varying the heat applied to your bead.

Here is a beautiful pendant and matching tiny beads I made on my last day of class. Those tiny beads have fantastic swirls of colours and hints of metallic tinting. They didn't go into the kiln at all – their small size allowed me to prop them up on my tabletop to air cool with no ill effects. And I got all fancy when I was winding them on the stainless steel rods – instead of only one bead per rod, I wound four or five to each rod, creating quantities of beads in a very short time.


As you can see, I had great fun, as usual. I highly recommend this art school. Haliburton is able to attract excellent instuctors, and their course catalogue is large and varied. So go create!

Lisa's Wire Sculptures at Kempenfest 2009 - Barrie, Ontario

My first year at Kempenfest in Barrie, Ontario was enjoyable. Have you heard of this festival before? It's HUGE! Music, food, arts and crafts – you name it, they've got it. The arts and crafts booth numbered about 375 this year.

My general impressions – as usual, more crafts than art, so my sculptures were competing with things like goat soap and dog neckerchiefs (is that even a word? You know what I mean, yes?). I don't think it's an ideal venue for my work, but as a promotional show it's great – there's a constant stream of people coming through and I exhaused my business card reserves. I handed out over 400 business cards, by my estimate.

Reactions to my art – I placed my Dragon at one end of my display and my new turtle sculpture at the other end of the display. I was at a place where two paths converged into one, so I had great exposure, and lots of room for folks to admire the art.And admire they did! From my left, where the Dragon was, came my “WOW!” collection. It was all I heard as people caught sight of the Dragon. On the turtle side they used a few more words – usually “HAVE YOU SEEN THIS TURTLE?”- as they yelled down the aisle to their friends. My little Buzz Bugs got a laugh every time I told their story, my latest hedgehog caused many a change of direction as people on their way somewhere made a beeline to my table for a closer look. Many people mentioned my stuff was the most original and creative things they had seen.

Ah, if only all that translated into sales! Alas, my sister was my biggest customer (and only because she absolutely insisted on giving me her money, despite my protests). Apparently I wasn't alone in that respect – the custom cast iron gate maker in front of me had poor sales as well, and the cement garden sculpture maker commented it seemed to be a different crowd – his first day sales were nowhere near what they had been in previous years.

I will do Kempenfest again – it's a great bang of promotion for the buck, and you can only effectively guage shows when you do them more than once. People will be looking for me next year, I'm sure!

Exposition Renaissance

July 14, 2009

Sculpture installion for Exposition Renaissance at Centre Culturel Jacques Auger, Hull QC

Okay, so I have been chastened. I was supposed to deliver Interaction on Monday, July 13. Oops. I got a gruff call from Jeah-H. Guilmette, the president of the CSQ and the organizer of the show, asking where my sculpture was, the show is almost completely mounted and there's not much space left. Yipes! So I loaded it into the car (thankfully, another sculpture that fits in the Subaru) and made haste.

Jean-H. let me in and watched me unpack the monster fan I've been using to blow a wind that makes my lady look like a superhero. He looked critically at it as told me blunted it was ugly, it didn't compliment my sculpture, and should be replaced. So I tucked my tail between my legs and went to track down a new fan. I found a nifty new one at Giant Tiger (how convenient!) and went back home to get some wire and tools. I mounted it under the bike wheel and it looks great. The folks mounting the show even helped me with the ingenious power cord wrapping so it could be plugged in but the cord wouldn't be seen.


See the little fan just under the wheel between her feet? Much nicer. Jean-H. was right. Thank you! The new fan blows a gentler breeze. It looks subtle and ethereal. I like it.

Here's some photos of the room.


Here's a view from the far side of the room, facing my sculpture. See it – the tiny wire lady in the middle background? Behind the man with the balloon and the wooden “X”?

And here's a view of the room from where my sculpture is.



Opening night tomorrow from 5 to 7 pm. Will I see you there?

Recycl'Art 2009 in Montpellier QC

July 11, 2009

Opening day at Recycl'Art 2009 in Montpellier, QC

We were able to take the Subaru to this setup because the Window fits in the back. We were aiming to be there in time for me to attend the Conseil's annual general meeting at 11:30, but the rainy weather and last-minute packing delayed our arrival to 12:30, too late!

That's Jean-H., the president of the Conseil de la sculpture de Quebec.

We had lots of time for setup, though! So we pounded green T-stakes into the ground, using the cemetery as a backdrop and angling the piece so it would be visible on approach from the front of the gallery and the indoor displays. Here I am with the mounted Window. That's my comments box in my hands – I'll have to come back every now and again to check it's still dry and stocked with Sharpies.




After installation we had the afternoon to eat, visit with patrons and other artists and view the other sculptures on display. What an array of talent in the group of sculptors! This show gets better every year. There's more shots of the day here, but here's a little preview for you.



It's utterly amazing, I assure you. Come see.

Installing stained glass at Arthéna

July 9, 2009

Installing stained glass at Arthéna in Old Chelsea, QC

With my stained glass already packaged from its return from art09 in Toronto, I loaded it all in the car and was off the Arthéna on Thursday afternoon to hang it in the gallery.

I discovered the shop had acquired a new glass mosaic artist since my last visit, and two panels were already in the windows (including in the front window space I had plans to hang my panels in that you see as you first come in the door – too bad!). There were many other windows to hang my pieces in, however, and it looks great!

Here's the panels mounted in the other front window, deeper in the gallery. I like having the displays in front.

I hung two mirror-mounted pieces on the wall beside another large window, and the small and medium-sized squares on either side of the mosaic in the bow window facing the parking lot. Then I used the remaining window (conveniently on eye level with the entrance to Olivier, the soap shop behind the gallery) to display the framed and unframed vignettes. The Vignettes in the white frames hang down straight, with the frames hanging at a 45 degree angle. It's a nice visual when viewed from below.
I returned to pick up the large blue panel for repair (the solder had broken and a piece had slipped out of place) yesterday, and Capucine, the manager, told me she has received many positive comments about my stained glass. I think the larger pieces will encourage custom orders and bump the sales of the smaller, more affordable Vignettes and squares.

What do you think?