artwanderings

I’m a Scavenger

artwanderings — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 21:15:47 +0000

My sketchbook, I’m a Scavenger, can now be viewed in its entirety on the Art House Coop website. Check it out at:

http://www.arthousecoop.com/library/404#page-slide_1

I am planning to create another sketchbook for the 2012 Tour… in between all the others I am working on.

collecting ephemera from the forest

artwanderings — Thu, 05 May 2011 15:28:11 +0000

I have a collector’s mindset. I think most artists share this wonderful affliction. It all started with office supplies. I love coloured pens and pencils, yellow-pink-blue-purple highlighters, and markers. I could never get enough of those multi-coloured stickies. To this day, I always feel a little bit surprised that those square, yellow (boring) stickies still fill the aisles.

And art supplies… Paint of all types and colours, brushes, paper, stamps and stamp-pads, markers, glue sticks, pastels, crayons, paper, canvas and sketchbooks. Sketchbooks are my latest lure… wherever I went I would seek out the sketchbooks. Friends started to give me sketchbooks. I now have a really nice collection. And I do use them.

I also collect stuff that doesn’t appear to be useful to anyone but me. It all started on my canoe trips. Most lakes are connected by a portage, and during those slow, arduous treks, with a heavy pack on my back, I would spend the time taking in the surroundings. I love the boreal forest, especially in the Canadian Shield country of northern Ontario. The rotted out shells of birchbark resting on the forest floor were like found treasure for me. There was something both beautiful and fragile about these relics. I would pick one up, strap it to my pack, fiercely protect it from the campfire that night, and somehow find a way to bring it home. It was a bit of an obsession… I just kept on collecting birchbark. The birchbark sometimes made it into my paintings, but for the most part, it acted as a muse for me in the studio. For a while I created paintings using the birchbark.

I also made amulets for the forest. Smaller shells of birchbark became bracelets and rings. I imagined these as magical totems that could take one back to the forest.

This past year, I made drawings of all my collected birchbark, and I think I am now ready to send them back to the forest. The book of drawings is part of the Art House Co-op Sketchbook Project. You can find out more about this project at http://www.arthousecoop.com/sketchbookproject2011.

I wonder what I will collect next.

why I draw trees

artwanderings — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 22:58:25 +0000

I didn’t always draw trees. When I started to explore my interest in the natural world, I spent a lot of time drawing everything around me. A couple of years ago, I took a fine arts course called “Representations of Nature”. We explored artmaking using the themes of the four elements of nature: earth, water, fire and air.

I spent about four months drawing and painting the sky. I live in an apartment that faces east, and nearly every day I was greeted with an amazing sunrise. I made many drawings and paintings of the sky. I created a photo time-lapse series of the sunrises I experienced. And I made an artist’s book dedicated to the sky.

Here is a painting I made during that time, inspired by the spectacular sunrises of Autumn.

Eventually, I returned to Earth, and began to consider the world around me. I am a hiker and canoe camper, and I love spending time in the forest. The forest became the muse for my artmaking, and I began to focus on the trees around me. At the same time I was thinking about the trees, I found myself drawn to collecting ephemera from the forest floor. I just loved the birchbark and brought it back to my studio space.

One of my first forest-inspired pieces was a painting on a piece of birchbark.

And, that’s really how it started. Stay tuned for more on my tree-inspired art.

howtodrawatree

artwanderings — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 20:20:02 +0000

My st(art) residency began with the exhbition of howtodrawatree, a correspondence mailart project that I started while attending the Alberta College of Art + Design. I was mentored by one of the best, Chuck Stake. We participated in a mailart project with the Sisters on Sojourn in Califonia, and the rest is history! The project is simple…

Consider the definition:

draw
v. To pull; to attract; to take in; to take out; to draw lots; to get information from; to finish a contest with neither side winning; to require a certain depth of water in which to float; to produce a picture or diagram by making marks on a surface; to formulate; to write out for encashment; to search for game; to make one’s way; to infuse (The Oxford Paperback Dictionary)

Submissions should be no larger than 8-1/2” x 11”.

Please mail to June Hills, 808 – 1718 – 14 Avenue NW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, T2N 4Y7

All submissions will be displayed on www.junehills.com/howtodrawatree
Artworks will not be returned and become the property of the How to Draw a Tree Project.
Additional exhibitions will be communicated to participating artists on www.junehills.com.

Here are a few of the submissions… check out the rest on my website at www.junehills.com.

let’s start with st(art)

artwanderings — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 19:53:43 +0000

I’m hanging in my little studio at Art Central in downtown Calgary. The studio is sponsored by CAAF (the Calgary Allied Arts Foundation), and I’m their resident artist this month. Check out CAAF at http://www.caafonline.org/.

St[art] @ Art Central, the first studio space to be offered by CAAF, has been offered since July of 2006. Residencies in the space are offered on a one-month or two-month basis depending on programming requirements submitted by the artist. Although not large in size, it offers residents an excellent opportunity to work on small-scale pieces. At the same time, it provides them the opportunity to connect with other artists as well as members of the public on an ongoing basis. First Thursday a monthly event in downtown Calgary offers the residents an excellent opportunity to stage their own exhibition and to gain crucial exposure. Since its inception, st[art] has seen the number of applicants for the space exceed programming availability.