Anita Collins, Eclectix Interview 14

The lovely Anita

“When I sculpted a girl, she was so cute I couldn’t bring myself to slaughter her. Later – on a new piece, I went for it. The right element popped in when the time was right.” 

Kush by Anita Collins

Anita (also known as Sleetwealth) creates indescribably realistic, fantastically impossible and hauntingly beautiful sculptures. The flesh of her beings have sumptuous, luminous and sweaty skin textures, making them human and vulnerable. Some have the remains of a white powder, hinting of forgotten stage makeup or shroud residue. Her coloring is subtle yet punchy, strong where it needs to be and fading to realism elsewhere, emotions flow – lips wetted and eyes tearing up. The elegant arrangement and added touches of decor, tattered fabrics and jewelry are artfully and tastefully edited. These are poetic works, tactile souls that ache – with a dash of art nouveau and well loved ghosts. Anita is a master at what she does and it shows-   she’s at the top of her class and a huge favorite of mine. You may remember some of her works from Eclectix’s  “All Dolled Up” exhibit. We are proud to have this chance to share some Anita with you…

Eternal Dreamer - Anita Collins

Can you tell us where you were born and a little history about your childhood?  I was born in Maryland,but my earliest memories are of the attic space of a Chinese embassy we rented in DC. What did you do up there? I usually was stringing necklaces out of colorful resistors, playing with a rubber sloth toy or watching the street from a tiny window at the top of the house.

Anita Collins

Where do you live now? And how do you feel your environment affects your art? I live in a tiny mountain community outside of Bakersfield, CA. Famous for a woman’s prison and windmills. It’s beautiful in a desolate way. I suppose you can see it in my art – the feral, sparse and apocalyptic overtones of this land.

Flame & Ash by Anita Collins

Is there an event or experience that helped form who you are today? Loneliness , isolation, closeness with nature. And a hunger for reading about things outside my own reality. I made my friends and I have a vivid imaginary world.

Leadwings - Anita Collins

What was first piece of art that you remember creating? The media? It started so early I don’t remember my first but, at age 10, I made a doll of wire, cloth and string. I called him “Mr Broken” – he had bandages round his head and a cast on his arm. Do you have a pic of him? I no longer have him nor did I get any pictures. My mom kept some of my odd fruit and vegetable people. Made from snips of cloth and stuffed with toilet paper.

Alice by Anita Collins

What generally inspires you to create a piece? The human body- its strengths and base weaknesses. Its crude decaying matter and its spirit, will and light. Worn materials of any kind spark me.

Ron Mueck's art

If there was an artist, dead or alive, that you could spend 24 hours with; who would it be and what would you do? Just one?!!! OMG hard!! Like asking which food would I like to eat the rest of my life! It would be great to meet a figurative sculptor like Ron Mueck. (above) Watch him work, pick his brain, etc. And I’ve always wanted to visit the crazy studio of someone that’s just crammed with good stuff !

Flying Yeti by Anita Collins

What materials, specific brand of paint/glue/pencil do you prefer to use? A favorite? And why?  Genesis heat set oils. because I love oil paint and it allows me to paint spontaneous layers with a heat gun.

Colorless World by Anita Collins

Is there a technique, procedure or tip that you have discovered, you could pass onto other artists?  I think it’s helpful to be open to all mediums and crafts. The knowledge inspires improvisation.

Lambsy Divey by Anita Collins

What is your favorite word? “Peace” because the word itself is relaxing and makes me visualize. Any favorite songs or musicians that you listen to while you work? I sometimes listen to the Silent Hill Homecoming, Coleen, Antenne, some ambient-like stuff, but I most often like to work in the wee hours with silence.

Rene Lalique's dragonfly pin

If you could pick one piece of art to own, out of the world’s museums, personal collections and galleries, what would it be? Rene Lalique’s dragonfly pin (above) or any jewelry designed by Lalique.

Scarlet and Matilda by Anita Collins

Of all the exhibits and shows you have been in, are there a few that stand out in your mind as far as the overall quality of work? Abnormals Gallery in Berlin. New nude photography. No boundaries! (Link to gallery)

Unigirl Song by Anita Collins

Of all your works, what is your own personal favorite? What was the thought or vision behind the work and why is it your favorite? Unigirl Song (above).  I had this vision of a girl with her head split open and all the ornate designs inside. When I sculpted a girl she was so cute I couldn’t bring myself to slaughter her. Later- on a new piece, I went for it. The right element popped in when the time was right. A unicorn horn forcing its way out of the fissure.

Arctic Mermaid by Anita Collins

What is your biggest dream or fantasy?  My biggest dream would be to find the portal that goes to the other side, create an anchor so I can go back and forth between places, but I’d probably end up staying there most of the time.

Lolirott by Anita Collins

Last words?  Bloom where you are planted, go through doors that open…

For more Anita…

Her Blog: Sleetwealth  –  On DeviantArt: Sleetwealth -  On FaceBook

LINK to the current Eclectix website – art news & exhibit listings

(This entry was  originally posted on 11/28/10 and transferred here –  as we are discontinuing our other blog site)

El Cerrito Art, 34th Annual Show and Sale

Floral Mandala by Barbara Rockhold

Previewed the local El Cerrito Art Association’s 34th Show before the opening reception tonight. A large show full of all different media, styles and eclectic emotions. Lots of traditional realist imagery, some very masterful, a sprinkling of satisfying non-traditional with a few Eclectix artists in the mix as well. Definitely worth a long walk thru and some are worthy of extended ponders. Favorite picks from the exhibit preview are below, just a few, there were so many. With the photography and the watercolors, getting pictures was mostly impossible due to the framed glass reflections, hence my picks are unfortunately edited… 

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If you live locally try to make it out, the exhibit is only 3 days long, ending October 3rd. Help support your local artists, most the art is for sale at really great  prices.

For more infoclick here.

LINK to the current Eclectix website – art news & exhibit listings

(This entry was  originally posted on 10/1/10 and transferred here –  as we are discontinuing our other blog site)

A Step-by-Step Art Shack From Laurie Hassold, “Bone Hut” Progress Shots

The completed "Bone Hut" sculpture

Laurie Hassold fashions unbelievable assemblage sculptures of organically inspired creatures. She is a wonderfully rare original artist, full of energy and an art professor to boot. To view some previous works exhibited at Eclectix in the AllGurlz show, click here.

Artist Hassold at work on a piece, Credit:The OC Art Blog

Below is a peek at her new work  the “Bone Hut” ( formerly “Fossil Grotto”) and a slideshow of detailed step-by-step shots of it’s evolution. It will be on exhibit in the upcoming Art Shack show in Laguna Beach. Laurie graciously consented to a  little interview with Eclectix.

What materials did you use to create this piece? Bones, steel, resin and clay …

What is your personal vision, the thoughts behind Bone Hut?  There are implications of global warming, post consumerism, and the predatory nature of evolution which resonate as one’s eye meanders through this dwelling. Constructed of remains and human detritus of post-human extinction, the cave seems to be turning into some sort of altar, which may contain an item preserved from the former culture that hints at the appearance of the new occupants. This piece also explores dualities of Dead/Alive, Order/Chaos, Mind/Body. I’ve also started looking at it as an elaborate container for nothingness–obsessive ornamentation as an insecure, compulsive activity to validate one’s own existence. Ironically, all the neurotic layering in my work often ends up feeling incomplete to me–and ultimately the frenetic activity feels more like suffocation and death. This piece has given me new awareness into my process and the underlying motivation for my work, in that I feel the contrast between the empty interior and the overwrought exterior has become the message. It’s like an abandoned husk that once nourished some sort of life, but now stands dormant in a state of mute erosion. Of course, as a “husk” it has potential to become a dwelling for some new life form. In a way, it’s like a painter confronting the void of the white canvas–that limitless potential is as much about creativity and life, as it is about emptiness and death.

The hollow deadness of the thing gives me the same feeling I get when I go to the desert. My favorite spot is a dry lake bed in Anza-Borrego surrounded by the mountains… At full moon the dry cracked mud turns silvery gray and the black silhouettes of the surrounding mountains give you the feeling you’re being watched by some hulking timeless beings while standing in a bowl of moonlit sugar! There is no sound but the wind and if you lay on your back and stare up into the night sky riddled with stars, you start to feel like you are actually leaving your body and dissolving into the environment. For some reason I’ve always dug that feeling–of being insignificant in the face of nature. It transports me and literally incinerates my petty human problems.

Any fun/interesting/frustrating/mishaps/tidbits that occurred while making the piece? I started receiving gifts of little dead things…a dead rat from my cat Ninkie, a dead bird from a student at Orange Coast College, a dead mouse from a student at Santa Ana College, and many beef and pig rib bones from an IVC student who worked at Lucille’s BBQ!  Also–an amazing artist and now friend, Sarah Perry, whose exquisite bone sculptures have been a huge inspiration to me, invited me out to her 5 acre property in the Antelope Valley. When she beguilingly suggested I bring a huge “tub”, I knew I was in for a very interesting day. She had me fill my tub with all sorts of bones from all of the dead animals strewn about her property in various states of decay! While cutting apart and drilling through these bovine leg bones that were to become the “legs” for my piece, I discovered that the decomposition process was not quite complete– which was pretty stinky!

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More on the “Bone Hut”: The installation includes simulated “glow worm drips” like the ones found in Waitomo Cave in New Zealand.  You’ve probably heard about these fascinating critters, but if not, they secrete these gorgeous glowing strands of saliva which suspend from the ceiling of the cave and attract moths.  The moths fly into the strands and get stuck and then are reeled back up to the worms who eat them alive–yummie!  Also…I’ve placed a sort of relic inside the cave which has filigree spider-like legs and sports an adorned human brain.  If the cave was built with fossils from post-human extinction species, it is possible the bones of those species were much larger than human, so the preserved human brain in the center references scale.

The Art Shack exhibit runs June 13th-Oct. 3rd, 2010 at the Laguna Art Museum

Related Links:

The OC Art Blog: Sneak Peak at new artwork- artist Laurie Hassold

EclectixArt: A Look a Laurie Hassold’s Art

A Flicker Set on Art Shacks -

YouTube video of the artists and art at Art Shack.

(This entry was  originally posted on 5/20/10 and transferred here –  as we are discontinuing our other blog site)

Kristen Cuming’s Sweet JellyBelly Mona Lisa

“ The more I … slow down to enjoy each step, the more satisfying the final product will be. ”

Copyright Kristen Cumings, 2010

Kristen has shown her emotive art with Eclectix over the years and when I got wind of her JellyBelly escapades I asked her to share the sticky details with us. Kindly, she consented and gave us this in-depth look at the process of re-working Mona in sugar. 

How did this project come about?  The Mona Lisa project was commissioned by Jelly Belly for their collection. I’m not sure if they are planning on using it for a specific event, but I’m guessing it will eventually go in the visitor center at their factory. I have wanted to do Mona since I started working for them, so it was really exciting when they said they wanted to do it. I started working with them around June 2009. The first project was for the California State Fair “It’s a Candy Nation” exhibit. It was a portrait of a grizzly bear and I worked on it during the weekends in the exhibit at the fair. I also did a cupcake a couple of months ago and then the Mona Lisa.

Base sketch, Mona 1

Can you tell us a little about the process?  When I first started looking at the Mona Lisa with the idea of doing it in jelly beans, my main concern was that the original is so faded and dark it would be difficult to render in such a colorful medium. It was hard to see what exactly was going on in the background.  The sky is very age-yellowed and much of the shadows in her clothing looked extremely dark. I looked at some images online of the piece that people had digitally “restored” for some ideas.

It was an easy choice to make the sky blue but with her clothing and the background- I squinted a lot at the original and made my own choices about what would look good. The biggest deviation from the original was to crop out the darkest area at the bottom, making the figure larger on the picture plane. Because the beans are a fixed size, you can really only go so small – before it is impossible to make facial features come out right. I wanted to make sure she was big enough that I could do that.

Mona 2

What size is the piece?  She ended up being four feet by six feet.  I also changed the color of the drapery that goes over her shoulder for the sake of clarity. I wasn’t sure I could make clear in beans what was going on with all of those folds, so I made the shoulder drapery a gold color instead of matching it to the original color of her bodice.

Can you give a little step-by-step here?

1. First I have the framed board made at The Hardwood Resource, which is a local business in Martinez. I learned the hard way on my first piece that the frame had to be part of the piece to start out with, instead of adding it later. For the first piece I just glued the beans right to the board and ended up having to build a tape and cardboard wall around the entire piece to contain the resin sealant. It didn’t contain it entirely and there were bumpy resin bits that had to be sanded off the edges before it was framed. Fortunately the guys were very patient in doing what it took to get the piece framed well and advised me that it would be a good idea to frame the board before putting the beans on from now on.

 2. Once I get the framed board, I gesso the board on both sides.

 3. After that dries I do a charcoal drawing on the board, to get the correct values. I spray fixative over that.

4. I do a loose under painting in acrylics, usually mixing the paint to match the colors of the beans.  Sometimes I will mix it slightly lighter or darker than the beans are, especially if it is a color that doesn’t come in a big range of values in the beans.  For example, I never match the blue of the sky in the underpainting exactly to Sour Blueberry (usually the dominant sky color), because there aren’t a lot of different blues and even the effect of a slightly different blue peeking out from underneath makes the sky more lively.

Mona 3

5. Once the paint dries, I get my Krylon Spray Adhesive and begin gluing on the beans. I usually choose a palette of 25-30 colors of beans per piece. In small containers, I line them up, from light to dark on a table, to make them easier to grab. I generally work with 5-7 colors at one time, then put them aside and load up the table with a different set as I move onto a different section of the piece.  I tend to keep the colors separate, but sometimes it makes sense to make four or five mixes ranging from light to dark in areas where I am using a bunch of different colors together, like when I am trying to create the look of a light area blending smoothly into a darker shadowed area. For sections like these I use three or four light, three or four medium, and three or four dark beans and make a range of mixes from lightest to darkest. I did this for Mona Lisa’s face. The mixes make it easier to break up hard lines that would form if I just use one light color, one medium color, and one dark color. For the Mona Lisa I started gluing the beans at the bottom and worked my way up. It is easier because each row of beans supports the one above it.

Mona 4

 6. After the beans are all on, I lay the piece flat and mix a two-part resin, which I pour on and spread around with sponge brushes.  This part is always nerve-wracking, because you have to pour exactly the same amount of liquid from two different bottles, mix in one bucket, pour the whole thing into another bucket and mix again, and hope you got it mixed well enough. Then going over each inch to make sure that every bean is sealed but that there are no puddles…it just isn’t my favorite part. So far it has hardened just fine.

Mona 5

Have you had any specific problems with the jelly beans?  It took me some trial-and-error to find a glue that would work with the support in an upright position.  I didn’t want to work with the support horizontal to the floor because my studio ceilings aren’t high enough for me to get far enough above it to be able to tell if it is working. I have to be able to step at least eight to ten feet back. Most of the glues I tried first were water-based and tended to dissolve the outer coating of the beans. I’d glue a section on, think it was working fine, then come back later to find the beans had all fallen off onto the floor, leaving a sticky residue behind that had to be scrubbed off and dried before I could try again.  Eventually I found the Krylon Spray Adhesive, which works great.  It was a little sketchy sometimes at the fair last summer, as it was very hot and the glue took longer to dry. If it got too hot it softened and beans fell off. I always lost several beans between my weekend work sessions.

Another issue was adequate ventilation in my studio for working with the spray adhesive for hours at a time. I ended up getting a good respirator because it was too cold to work with the door and windows open and I started to get headaches and nausea after working for a couple of hours. I thought I was just getting the flu but finally realized that the illness coincided with my work sessions and invested in the respirator. I’m actually pretty thankful I came out of that as well as I did. : )  I haven’t been that concerned about safety in the past because I usually work in acrylics but after the adhesive scare I am rigorous about paying attention to the safety precautions on all of my supplies. I want to be able to do this for a long time.

Mona 6

Did you learn anything new as far as your technique?
I learned that the more I study the subject, the better my foundational drawing and painting are and the easier the project will be. In some of my earlier projects, both in painting and in the bean mosaics, I’ve been so excited to get to the main event that I rush through the initial steps and often have to backtrack and fix things that aren’t quite right. What the Mona Lisa emphasized is- that these initial preparatory steps are a very important part of the process. The more I accept that and slow down to enjoy each step, the more satisfying the final product will be.

Final Mona

LINK to Kristen’s website for her current art and events.

The original Mona Lisa by da Vinci

 

(This entry was  originally posted on 4/15/10 and transferred here –  as we are discontinuing our other blog site)