8th Graders

Last week I was a guest at West Middle School in Brentwood, where I gave an instructional printmaking workshop to 8th grade art students. We experimented with tools and materials for gel printmaking with great results! Students produced beautiful prints as they played with color combinations, stencils, and drawing. They combined colors and played with patterned stencils, they drew picutres using rubber tipped blending tools that I have for clay hand building. Much of what they’ve created can stand alone as an abstract texture print, but could also be repurposed into new pieces such as mosaics of a mural or backgrounds of collage and larger pieces. I believe the most interesting productions are yet to come.

Thank you to Ms. Claudia Genna, BOCES Arts in Education and to the Brentwood Union Free School District.

Mandevilla Mornings

In the summer, my sister and mother have gardens around their porches. They set out sizable planters with mandevilla, rosemary, and grasses. I’ve spent many mornings at their homes watching the morning light hit and the wind blow through them.

I’ve been drawing these flowering mandevilla vines, and they capture my attention with showy blooms and endless roping. I consider the trellis they grow upon, and how they depend on that structure within to pop their florals to the sun.

First sketches and tracing the drawing onto Yupo.

Caught, 2024
watercolor on yupo

 

One day, I realized the metaphor of inner strength that the trellis could represent, and I started sketching figures within the plants to take their place. Sometimes twisted and bound inside, they create the necessary base for blossoms to thrive.

Sometimes I get caught up in everything and feel the need to untangle myself, and it isn’t always possible without breaking a few ties. But it always feels important to balance pruning for future blooms and letting the vines take over for a while.

Grown, 2024
watercolor on yupo

Mermaids

It’s a subject known throughout the world, in all ancient civilizations, and discredited only by modern society—the power of the siren call, the half-human and half-sea creature guiding people to their demise. This phenomenon exists, tied to adventure, mystery, ocean, song, and also to the divine feminine.

 

My brush guides me, conjuring images from the pools of color and water. And sometimes I wonder why mermaids remain firmly entrenched in our collective consciousness, yet we dismiss their existence as mere myths.

Every day that I am in my studio, a mermaid appears. This pose contains a few examples, and here are more sketches and paintings.

My Song

Below are the illustration, text, and collage artwork inspired by a piece of art in the African collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

My Song

The sun is warming my skin,
And wet greens surround me.
My soul finds peace here,
I don’t speak—I listen.

I sit quietly among the chattering oaks,
The breezy willows,
The clicking switchgrass,
And the swaying cattails.

I watch the raindrops gently fall on each leaf.
They collect into tiny pools,
Trickle and travel the veins,
Then quickly dance to the ground.

After long contemplation  
That centers my spirit, 
I return to my village.
And I howl from my heart—I sing. 

To purchase the booklet or art prints, please visit the shop page.

Autumn Birds

Lately I’ve been painting the neighborhood birds in our area. There have been many visitors passing through Long Island this Autumn, as well as some that stay all year. I love to hear them singing, and some are more pleasant to listen to than others! But all are great to see, flying around our trees and shrubs and flowers that have gone to seed. I’ve planted a decent amount this past Spring that are known to attract birds, and I’m witnessing the benefits from my studio window.

Bluebird, watercolor on paper

Wren, watercolor on paper

Finch, watercolor on paper

Robin, watercolor on paper

Warbler, watercolor on paper

Gardens

I’m thinking of adding more to my garden series while Spring blooms all around us in New York. The series contains oil paintings and drawings with pastels and watercolors on paper. The artwork depicted what I saw within the gardens- the colors, the light reflected on form, and the kinetic energy that they manifested within themselves. These are gardens that I painted that began within my old home of the East Village, and they continued onward to Brooklyn, where I envisioned the energy within the concrete yards of Clinton Hill.

Below are some of the pastel drawings of the garden series. I switched from pastel to watercolor and attempted to capture the brightness and beauty of the colors that I saw and felt while I focused in on little details of nature that grew within our very urban landscape.

The Carousel

I used to love spinning rides when I was a child and teenager, and now they make me nauseous! At the Prospect Park Carousel in Brooklyn, I would often take my daughter, and the same operators would say hello and give us some extra turns on the ride. I would grin and bear it, as she would ride the largest horses, close her eyes, and pretend to fly to the clouds!

After my son was born, we came a few times again, but my son had a different opinion about the ride. He liked to sit in the sleigh and grip himself until the ride was over. Eventually, they both seemed to be happy with one riding the carousel while the other ran around with a ball on the nearby lawn!

In 2017, I participated in the Connective Project, to celebrate Prospect Park’s 150th Anniversary, organized by the Prospect Park Alliance and created by AREA4. The community was asked to submit artwork, photos, and memories of the park, and all submissions were printed and transformed into pinwheels, then designed in an organic layout throughout the park. I thought of the carousel, and what it meant to me, and I drew a few ideas. I created two digital composites and submitted those along with a photo of my daughter enjoying the ride. They can all be seen in this post, as well as an image by Amanda Gentile of the exhibition.

To learn more about the project, please visit connectiveproject.com.

The Connective Project, on view in the Prospect Park Rose Garden from July 7-17. Copyright Amanda Gentile https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/