No Separations

It would be impossible to separate art from life, wouldn't it? Sometimes my inspiration comes in the smallest of packages, some little fingers proudly displaying the infamous clay snowman smoking a pipe. I think the pipe was added after remembering my response to my daughter's recent addition to the dress up stash. Why do children inherently make snowman when given a lump of clay? They really do. It was put to the test today at the local school I teach at part-time. I gave 115 kids clay today and probably when I was given the option to make ANYTHING, probably 10% made the snowman.

If you've spent any time with me, you'll know that I am a passionate person. One of my passions is having a good cup of coffee and the other is paint and everything about it. When one of my students commented that my art studio smelled like paint and coffee, I kept trying to create a equation for myself from that. Maybe you have an idea.

When my daughter was first born, I floated through those first few months feeling like my body was somehow disconnected from my mind, my daily activity. The tiredness of late nights, breast feeding, constant everything and then no constant "nothing". Quiet and stillness vanished and I kept trying to find ways to reconnect with my life, my new life. At that time I created a series of artworks I titled the "Landscape Diaries". The works juxtaposed my personal journal writings including letters to my mother who had recently passed, small chapters on beginning motherhood, and ramblings with landscape images of a familiar place, a "home" to me, the areas of Frankfort & Prospect, Maine. These images sought to create connections, much of the idea I am exploring in a different way in my studio today.

Last summer I was drawn to an image in a magazine of a river. The river was moving through the landscape with great gentle force but at the same time with a willingness to go "off route". Maybe I was holding a paper mirror to myself of how I wanted to be. With the intense demands of the gallery over the summer, I yearned to meander. I even read the "Art of Nothing" and found that I needed to give myself a little permission to explore in my artistic pursuits in some new ways. I started working large on paper, and started to play with images that spoke to me metaphorically about the lack of connection we can all feel at times. Using images that originally were intended to exploit either the abundance or lack thereof water in their usual "places", I have abandoned this content to use the photographs to rather speak about the lack of the human connection with the earth. Perhaps we are all floating above it, ignoring its natural curvature and building perfectly geometric homes on quiet desert... so there you are. The original images are not places I have been or known and now my eyes move to Australia where the abundance of waters have created strange paradigms for our connections with the earth. These works will be in a show in the Blue Gallery at Bowdoin College in March.

Doors Are Opening

One quiet winter morning last year, I went for a leisurely walk to drop some packages off at the post office. On my way back and en route to pick up a cup of coffee at Slates and my studio, I came upon this door. I have looked at this photograph a lot since, not knowing why I was connecting with it.

This door is now the entryway to my new studio and for our home for Cerulean. The door looks quite a bit different now. The paint chips have been sanded off and a red door has emerged from this blue layer.

We never know at the time when we are being pointed a certain direction but we just have to be open to it.

Life As Usual

Someone once told me that it is believed that Americans are proud of how busy we are. Interesting thought. I never reflect on my busy-ness with a feeling of proudness but rather one of "have I again stretched myself a bit too thin?" Perhaps we all do this, but I do know that I fall victim of myself - I create activities when maybe I should just do simply...nothing. I like feeling accomplished, of crossing things off the list, and of contributing to the world - my community, my family.. This summer I picked up the book "The Art of Nothing" and what I pulled from it was to allow myself to meander (in my art practice). This new permission came to me while teaching a "Back To Basics" painting course this summer at Cerulean, among a delightful group of adults. They too were inspiration and I have found myself since creating a body of works that take a different view to landscape. I collected a large handful of magazine photographs of views from way above and have been way up there ever since. Images to come...
In the next ten days, I'll be preparing for and teaching an encaustics 2 day workshop at Cerulean and preparing for Cerulean's Annual Holiday Sale featuring all of our gallery artists opening on Wednesday, December 8th. Opening ceremonies with the artists on Friday, December 10th from 5 - 7 and Saturday, December 11th from 10-2...

1st Annual Studio Sale at Cerulean

Coming this Friday, October 29th from 5 - 8 PM 

is Cerulean's 1st Studio Sale featuring Artist-In-Residence Janna Civittolo & myself, come on by for hot cider and doughnuts ! Wear your costume and enter a drawing for a free artwork piece by Janna & Helene! We are also having our sale on Saturday from 11-3!

Showing Soon

For the past six years the fall has brought my work consistently to two different different events. Both of these events are great opportunities for different ranges of art collectors to view and select works at a very affordable price.

The "Teenie Tiny Art Show" at Three Graces Gallery in Portsmouth, NH has a wide selection of works both two and three dimensional works. Here is one of my six little acrylic works on paper, 5 X 5, mounted on panel for the sale price of 225. These works have similar titles within "Memories of Italy"...


At Merrill Auditorium on Friday, October 8, there will be a one evening art event called the "Black Frame Sale" . All works are sold for $200. and the show is a benefit for the Bayside Neighborhood Association. If many of you can remember, one of my first public studios was at Running With Scissors when it was located on Portland Street - across from Preble Street Resource Center. Its a great opportunity for me to encourage you to support an inner city neighborhood that has prospered as a result of this organization's efforts. Here is one of my three pieces from my BIRDWORKS series, "Looking Within" encaustic on panel, 10 X 10 inches and selling price of $200.

"From The Cotton Mill" Preparatory Drawing for Old Hallowell Day Painting

I came to Hallowell for the first time in the winter of 1979 from the suburbs of NYC with my parents and older brother in a yellow VW squareback. We were all a bit shocked by living in this small town and a rural state, but made a home for ourselves here quite quickly. The few years spent in Hallowell were marked by many "firsts" in a small child's life including a solitary walk to Boynton's for our family's milk and swedish fish. Hallowell has been my home at three different chapter's in my life, and the feeling of this special place, its charm, and a place to call "home" stays with me. You can learn more about my visual impressions of Hallowell if you come for a visit to my studio where you'll see some of the work I have been doing.

I am completely honored to be this years "Old Hallowell Day" Artist, and hope you are enjoying the image. It's quite funny to be in my shoes now, for when my little artist feet came to this town I remember fondly eating Ham Italian's from Boynton's on the back porch of the Harlow Gallery, where my Mom would gallery sit.

This drawing was done from a variety of photographs I took from the roof of the Cotton Mill in early Spring. And this is where I began....

Stop to Smell the Roses

Life never seems to slow down for me, my work as an artist, and the life shared with my little daughter & husband, but I still attempt to slow myself down. I think life does get too busy but we have to make a conscious choice to walk in the sunshine, to taste a cup of coffee and to look eye-to-eye with a loved one. Although I have had some extraordinary experiences in the last month, I am still happy to return and be home. I am fortunate - to have traveled to England with my dearest friend and to reunite with my English family warms my heart, and to close myself to purely focus on my professional development as an artist at a recent conference on Encaustics - and I will continue to count my blessings and stop to smell the roses. That is where the inspiration begins.

Artist Talk this Saturday at 3 PM!

Come on over to Cerulean this Saturday at 3 PM for an artist talk with me and Bill Duffy! Sweets and coffee included.....

Enough

Whenever I haven't been into my studio enough, I start feeling an artistic withdrawal. This hasn't been the case lately. I can't believe it but as I said to the family today, "I'm a little painted out." Yep, my need for a break from moving this wooden stick around with hair on the end, gobs of paint, finger nails filthy and stained, couldn't come at a better time. In one week from tomorrow I'll be getting onto the bus here in Augusta and heading to London. This trip will be part reunion, part artistic rejuvination, part vacation, part contact making but most importantly reconnecting and sharing time with one of my best friends in the world! I'll share more about this trip here when I return.

Anyhow, in the past month I have been juggling many creative endeavors including the painting to be featured for Old Hallowell Day, submitting my work to juried shows (and I will be in one at the Fairfield Art Council - near NYC) as part of the group I am in called New England Wax, finishing my encaustic and oil paintings for the show opening at Cerulean on Friday with photographer friend Bill Duffy called "Revisiting Old Haunts: From Dogtown to Frankfort" and painting a BIG mural for a neighbor. Now I have taken video of all of these projects and if I can get over my computer fears I will get these on shortly.

Even in the midst of complete chaos, I do find some time to locate some quiet. We walk a fair amount together in my little family here. Most recently on the ocean near a family home in Northport and in the trails behind our house which sweep along some beautiful and neglected apple orchards. Walking gets me to slow down and look a little more closely at the world. I have a bit more time to think, and not do. I look forward to doing this on my trip to England when I walk the banks of Cornwall, a really beautiful place....

Enjoy.

Moving Towards Abstraction

It may be said that you can find the abstract in my artworks, but forms are dually readable as tree, rock, etc. My interests as a painter rely heavily on basic ideas of rich surface and color, engaging composition, and tangible idea or source. Sometimes my hand moves away from the subject to make playful and gestural marks but I do come back to the form. When preparing to create my works for the Cerulean's current show "Unpinned: The Abstract Response", I found myself continuously making works that felt too contrived... and I had to leave a couple of paintings out on the way. Even with the deadline quickly approaching I found myself willing to start over, and so I did. In one manic evening I ripped apart some silkscreen prints I did a number of years ago out at Haystack and used them as a beginning to create these four little paintings on paper. Using gouache, watercolor, caran dache crayons and india ink I set to work and had a marvelous time. Here are the four images that resumed.

What are they? Mental landscape, physical landscape, kandiskism? Until this evening I did not
know. Now I am playing with the idea that they represent layers - possibly the complex and busy-ness I live on a day-to-day. Perhaps if I create some more at the end of May, they'll feel a little quieter.

Anyhow, I encourage you to come on down to Cerulean to see this show. Its really lovely and I am very pleased with all of the work we have done to improve and jazzy up our spaces. Show runs until May 8.

This Friday at Cerulean!!!!

Come on out this Friday for some lovely eye candy at Cerulean from 5 - 8 PM for "Unpinned: the Abstract Response"!

Response to "Cycles"

This week I focused most of my energies to finishing four works for a collaborative project titled "Paper Exchange" with the group New England Wax, which I have been a member of for two years now. The title/subject we were to toy with as each encaustic artist created four panels each 10 X 10 on 300 lb. paper was "Cycles". My response to this playful "assignment" brought me to new understandings of this luscious medium and time to bring back together my creative writing musings and my artworks. Enjoy the following works and creative writings still in progress. Artwork titles are: "Daily Burden" "Freeing the Lost Sock" "Fruits of Labor" "Freeing All Of The Lost Socks".

Some folks have asked me "Why do you write?" and quite simply it has always been a way of channeling my artistic thoughts to some coherence and even direction, my writing much informs or relates to my narrative artworks. Neither do I have desire to get published, nor am I searching for others to applaud it for its elegance or wit. I think my writing is really for - me, to feed, heal and another way to play.

Writings to come... they are giving me some trouble getting here...

Momentum

Its a well-known understanding that once you establish some momentum in anything you do, its easier to keep going. My studio work has a lot of energy now but its spread among many projects, maybe even too many. I have shared with you a collection of photographs that demonstrate what I have been doing lately including researching ideas and "places" for the upcoming Old Hallowell Day - which I am honored to be doing this year's painting for promotional activities, a small series of encaustic paintings on heavy paper titled "If I Only Knew What I Knew Now" for a project with the group New England Wax, more birds, and a series of paintings in both oil and encaustic featuring one of my favorite areas to paint - the blueberry barrens and glacial landscape of Frankfort / Prospect, Maine Show for a show at Cerulean with photographer Bill Duffy. Enjoy. And more to come soon!

3 Minute Artist Talk January 22 2010

Little Spaces

It seems that in my busy daily juggle I find little "spaces" to fill my creative side - whether its exploring books on the library shelves or listening to jazz music. These spaces help to balance my intense need to create but nothing replaces this act other than doing itself. This time of year for many marks its days with cleaning out our houses, setting resolutions for the year, and plans for yourself and your family. I add to this list my career goals which can seem a bit overwhelming but by writing them down seems to solidify them even without having to reexamine what they were in the first place. I do want to clean my studio, continue to organize and orient myself so I can locate things among my large art material collection, found objects, old photographs and fiber elements. However, this will have to wait a little longer. I need to get messy, put my ideas to paper, draw, turn on the wax and gather my creative juices for a productive and rich artistic year. I am excited to share with you via my blog what I have been up to. I have set some goals and as the time passes I will reveal how i am doing on them --- more to come! Anyhow, in my studio I am in the beginning stages of a few projects. One is a collaborative project with a group called New England Wax which I am a member of where we are doing a paper exchange project of four pieces. I am working on a series of paper encaustic pieces that plays off the quote, "If I only knew now what I knew then________." I am using views of domestic objects and their relationship to mundane household chores juxtaposed with childhood propos that symbolize play, freedom, and a place to escape to adventures. I am also pulling together another series that focuses on my continued fascination of the area of land located just North of Bucksport, Maine, the blueberry barrens of Frankfort, Prospect and Winterport. These works will take form in both encaustic and oil. And the last project I am beginning is a small works collection for beginning collectors of works on paper that are small in scale, and affordable in price. They will be examinations of my everyday - more to come. And of course, more BIRDWORKS to come too! By popular demand there will be more to see of these at the upcoming Teenie Tiny Show at Three Graces Gallery in Portsmouth, NH in mid-February. And if you haven't stopped by to Maine Cottage Furniture in Yarmouth lately, you'll now see more of my BIRDWORKS collection there. Happy New Year!

New Beginnings

Aren't we all pleased to have a new year to unfold and stretch into! I am for sure. Cleaning and sorting and planning. Here's a little piece on me for the University of Maine at Augusta's webpage. Enjoy! http://www.uma.maine.edu/helenefarrar.html

what inspires me?

This simple question thrown out to me by one of my Drawing I students last week surprisingly left me with no immediate answer. It would be simple to respond with just "everything" or just "anything" but that feels a little too... opaque, fake, pathetic? Or, though I have been making art a little too much like a machine lately, maybe I am just NOT inspired. How does one read that? When I was deep in graduate school (now almost five years ago) I was easily turned on to my graduate residencies, the air of artists and artist mentors sharing coffee and ideas, or coming back home to my books, writings, and even at that time the dialogue of my middle school art students, or the company of my old beloved studio mates at Running With Scissors in Portland. When I returned to Central Maine, I found myself in a quiet place for new artistic journeys in downtown Gardiner in a place called Artdogs. It was a delightful 'place" to be. I think I needed that quiet then for my life which became more of a rollercoaster ride shortly thereafter. Artdogs gave me some time, space (and love) for me to be where I am now. The artistic "core" and repertoire of its artists, the sneak peak into the practice of a private studio, and the opportunity to quietly play in my studio gave me fresh air. Life was much quieter then and eventful walks down to the A1-To-Go with my artdog Sophie for an afternoon cup of coffee and a walking loop to the stream cleared my head for daydreaming. My head needed that clearing for the cycles I have witnessed within my personal sphere can not go without mentioning, the completion of graduate school after three rigorous years during which two and a half of them I taught art full-time in public school, the loss of my mother (and sharing the tough road of her fighting cancer for three years), and then almost a year later the birth of my daughter, and then, the move from a quiet private artistic life to an open door studio with an attached gallery and artists to manage, and even a "new marriage" to biz partner and dear friend Janna (etc.). Yep, I think I am still trying to fill these shoes but they do find me energized, but am I INSPIRED? I am not sure but this babbling is getting me there. There I things I like to do to prepare myself for receiving inspiration. This sounds a bit funny but I don't think I have made time to be really be inspired lately. This time is coming, and it comes from DISTANCE, STILLNESS, and QUIET. Do you think this may be challenging to find in my life? Certainly. But it is coming closer. Within two weeks we'll be packing our family van for ten days of a slightly warmer climate, my grading will be completed, the gallery will be closed for vacation, and space will be created for a little more of me just being. I'll be working on my personal roadmap to good cafes, coffee and bookstores and playing with my husband and kiddo. There is nothing better than rollerblading with coffee and stroller in hand(s). This will give me the quiet to breathe and open myself up for a new year. A new start with new inspirations. Thanks for asking that question _____. I am still working on it.

Off Again

Again I find myself at the end of a busy but fruitful time of art making and professional opportunities. The exhibition “Considerations of Place” featuring works by Kate Buehner, Cynthia Ahlstrin and myself opened at Cerulean Gallery last Friday evening. A rich and curious show which plays off the concept of place, and unsurpringly, we all have such different responses. The following statement might help you in guiding my vision of my works which took form in encaustics on panel, an artist book using acrylic on rag paper, and mixed media paintings using bits of textile and embroidery.
"This work demonstrates my consistent investigation of the use of abandoned photographs as a source. These works uniquely use small amounts of embroidery, reclaimed textile pieces, and drawing and painting onto raw canvas. These choices in materials were drawn from my intention to speak metaphorically about how life is weaved physically into where we live, play, and work. Drawing from locations specifically near to my home and personal landmarks here in Central Maine, I am speaking about our sense of belonging to place. Working to see how the language of landscape (its meandering roads, rolling hills, tall pine trees) in painted form with references to the figure, I wanted to create dialogue about our own relationship to place and to articulate emotional attachments we have to place personally and communally. After my third return to this area, our landscape of the Kennebec Valley has spoken to me as home. I hope you can feel this in these works and look a little closer at our gem of the state of Maine."
Whenever a show comes to fruition, the artist always comes to a “place” of a possible change in direction – will the works continue? In this exhibition I began an exploration in the use of textile, either in embroidered elements with charcoal work, or in embedding found textile pieces, also an artist book form that locates my voice as a painter, and I’d like to push these developments further. I'm not sure how and that’s what makes it most interesting. When the dust settles and I’ve breathed a bit more I’ll get my road map back again.

I’ve also been working on a new body of work featuring my favorite subject of birds in encaustics. This subject really allows me to play with this wax paint without a lot of tight constraints and this is something I need to push harder into this complex medium. My newest pieces feature some generous carving into the wax with woodcarving tools and an inherent interest in the whimsical. I am pleased to announce that you can now see more of my encaustic bird paintings at Maine Cottage Furniture with a showroom in Yarmouth. More to come.

Don’t miss the artist talk for “Considerations of Place” on Saturday, Nov. 21 at 3 PM at Cerulean and our 2nd Anniversary Celebration on this Sunday the 22nd from 11-1. Please come and join us as we celebrate with good foods and company.

….My mind races forward with next preparations such as the Cerulean holiday sale on December 12 & 13, holiday presents for loved ones, finishing up some old works, and other bizarre artistic interests inspired by retiling my bathroom shower, hmmmm?

Come and see a wonderful collaboration of 34 artists at the Richmond Store Gallery opening Friday, November 6th.

Momentum

I am off and running with many new works going.... My works with birds in encaustics continues to be lots of fun and engaging. I am now pushing my use of pattern through using a collected box of vintage fabrics I acquired at a yard sale this fall. Also, propelling me forward is a trio show titled "Considerations of Place" with artist friends Cynthia Ahlstrin and Kate Buehner at Cerulean in November. I am creating some mixed media works that again use abandoned photographs as part of a source - only this time I am embroidering and painting onto raw canvas. Drawing from locations specifically near to my home, I am attempting to speak about a sense of belonging and how the language of landscape can be used to ground these ideas. I was fortunate to discover a Welsh artist named Eleri Mills in Fiber Arts Magazine recently whose work I have found very intriguing and I can pull from. My use of cloth material and the act of sewing, designing fabric I think may be coming back to surface after many years of neglect. If one grandfather was a tailor and the other grandfather designed and created dresses, how long can an artist surpress this need to loop string, needle, and cloth together? Does anyone remember my senior prom - yikes, I think I am still trying to forget it but I do remember the dress!

Anyone want to come and learn about encaustics this weekend? I am offering a one day workshop on Saturday from 10 - 3 at Cerulean. Just give us a call at Cerulean if you'd like to come 626-9009.