Category Archives: Art Education

Book Review: Seven Days in the Art World

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Seven Days in the Art World

By Sarah Thornton

Seven Days in the Art WorldThis enlightening and entertaining book offers a glimpse into the rarified atmosphere of the booming contemporary art world as it stood in the years 2004-07. Sarah Thornton, with her ethnographic perspective on seven diverse segments of this expensive and exclusive scene delivers a peek into a world which few artists and lovers of art will ever gain access.

Offering glimpses into the marketing and selling of art through the dealers and auction houses, the trade shows and publications, Thornton delivers a thoroughly researched and lively written peek behind the so called curtain of art commerce. With the dramatic economic downturn the world experienced in 2008 this may be a prescient view of a market at its climax.

The artists themselves are represented at they hone their craft at a legendary California critique session, we tag along with short listed artists awaiting news of the winner of a prize which will catapult the prices of their art into the stratosphere. We then travel with an artist at the top of his game on a tour of the international studios where his work is created by and for him.

Interestingly, the artwork itself is but a minor character in this impressive theatrical event of Seven Days in the Art World. The artists pour ideas into and onto the market, the press and critics push the market with fantabulous facts and figures and the dealers, auction houses and collectors play the market. One is reminded of the Wizard behind the green curtain in the land of Oz pumping away while trying to keep the illusion real.

Kudos to Sarah Thornton for pulling back the curtain on this endangered microcosmic world in such an accessible and informative style.

Review by Mary Ahern 1/4/2008

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Over Thirty Years of Chasing My Dream

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After seeing the photos and reading the article Dream Chasers, written by Arlene Gross for Newsday, which featured myself among others who have turned in mid-life to careers which are more personally satisfying, I have enjoyed revisiting my journey.

Mary Ahern showing her oil paintings at the Floral Park Art League in 1976

Here is a photo of me with my Award winning oil paintings at the Floral Park Art League in 1976. I painted them all before I began my college Art education. For a year I took oil painting classes on Wednesday evening at the YMCA in Bellerose Queens NY and from this experience I found my life’s calling.

Each year I looked forward to showing my work at this outdoor art show and each year I sold some of my works. What a wonderful experience it is to realize that work you created from your own imagination and from assorted colors in tubes moved others in such a way that they will give you money that they earned so they can hang your vision on their walls. I am still moved that my skill and vision will enhance their lives each and every day.

2007-05-28 Mary on cell phone answering questions at the Washington Square Outdoor Art Show, NYCThirty-one years later I’ve returned to selling my Artwork outdoors at festivals. This shot of me was taken while I was taking a call on my cell phone at the Washington Square Outdoor Art Festival in New York City in May of 2007. I still enjoy getting out of my studio and meeting people. Speaking to my customers energizes me and personalizes the selling experience. At shows I always enjoy seeing some of my former customers who come by to say hello and tell me where they hung the Art they’ve bought from me and how much they enjoy seeing it everyday.

It doesn’t get better than that!

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Two Dimensional Design Project – Color

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During my freshman year in the York College, Fine Arts Program in 1975 I took a class in Two Dimensional Design. First we studied the rudiments of rhythm, and then we abstracted the underlying design elements of images. The third project was an introduction to color. We used acrylic paint to make color charts of both warm and cool gray scales.

2-D Design project exploring color
2-D Design project exploring color

It took a great deal of trial and error to get even steps from white to black and back down the scale again. As a former musician, I used to play my trumpet scales by the hour, much to the chagrin of my family. Trying to get the color scales right in paint is much the same experience, only quieter.

Another part of this Design project had to do with creating these scales in Color. These color scales were placed against various colored backgrounds to demonstrate how different the same colors appeared when imposed on competing ambient hues. These simple exercises introduced me into the world of luminance, saturation and hue, the basic platform of all painters and colorists.

2-D Design Class exploring gray scale
2-D Design Class exploring gray scale

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Two Dimensional Design Project – Abstracting

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Having explored rhythm in the first classes in my two dimensional design class in my freshman year in college, we then moved on to visualizing abstraction. I had to find an advertising in a major magazine, select a portion of the image and analyze why the composition worked. Then I had to take a one-inch section of the ad and reproduce it in acrylic paint.

2-D Design painting in abstraction
2-D Design painting in abstraction

This first piece was from an ad for scotch, I believe it was a bottle of Pinch. This abstract includes the side of the bottle and the half filled glass with ice behind it. The curves of the glass and bottle worked very well together and the slight color shift of the liquid in the glass unites the scene. I remember painting this with a brush the size of an eyeliner. The finished piece is about 12″ square. I’m very patient with my work.

I remember less about creating this abstracted landscape. I do know that it is a landscape scene from the southwestern United States and includes the long horizon lines and massive skies of this part of the country.

2-D Design acrylic painting in abstraction
2-D Design acrylic painting in abstraction

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Two Dimensional Design – Rhythm

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Among the first Art classes I took when I began my college art education at York College, CUNY in Queens NY was the study of two-dimensional design. I began this class in the fall semester, in September 1975. At the time I believed that Art school would teach me how to paint and draw but here I was cutting half inch pieces of cardboard and gluing them onto unlined 3×5 index cards.

Two Dimensional Design class projects in rhythm
Two Dimensional Design class projects in rhythm

I began to see the rhythm in these little squares. These rectangles show the first four assignments in this class. The first design project is asymmetrical, almost jazz like. The second is a symmetrical rhythm of one central oval flanked by two reduced ovals. The third is both a symmetrical and asymmetrical figure 8 and the fourth is the reverse positive and negative space.

These four small exercises opened my eyes to looking for the rhythms in everything around me from leaves, flowers, buildings, clothing and groups of people. I took these assignments very seriously since I felt so privileged to be offered the opportunity to learn the underlying secrets to a profession I so deeply desired. These same design rhythms are the groundwork for all the Art that I’ve created for over thirty years.

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First Botanical Drawings

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Now that I make my living by creating Botanical Fine Art, image my surprise when I stumbled upon my first botanical drawings, dating from 1976. In an effort to document my classical art education I have gone to the attic to retrieve my early drawings and paintings along with the schoolwork I saved from the excellent Art Education curriculums I attended at York College and Queens College, (CUNY), City University of New York during the 1970’s.

Branch with details, an early horticultural drawing

Branch with details, an early horticultural drawing

Without any historical background regarding the long tradition of botanical drawing, I documented the branch structure, flower and leaf as well as the knothole of a branch, which I more than likely retrieved from my garden in Queens Village, NY. I was an avid, but highly amateur gardener, tending to a huge cherry tree, a multi-stemmed white birch and three peach bearing trees in my tiny garden.

Drawing of a dead branch

Drawing of a dead branch

Drawing of a dead branch

The drawing of my houseplant has been badly damaged by mold but it describes nicely a succulent houseplant I nurtured for years without realizing that it would ever flower. When the plant finally graced me with a huge, star shaped hairy flower, the stench it emitted attracted an abundance of houseflies much to my dismay. The flower itself was stunning. Very large in proportion to the plant itself with reflexed petals and patterned markings. I, many years later, found that the common name of my trophy was, the Carrion Plant, and the Latin name is: Stapelia Gigantia, from the Family of Asclepiadaceae.

Considering the amount of flies that I remember finding their way into my home I am not surprised to have discovered that it was known to attract pollinators by emitting the horrendous odor of dead meat. I don’t remember exactly what happened to the plant but I think that it failed to flourish after blooming that year. That may either have been because the effort it took to produce that huge flower weakened the plant or it may be because I was so offended at the smell that I was not longer enamored enough with it to tend it with care.

Carrion Plant

Carrion Plant

Life Drawing With Clothed Figures

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I actually enjoy drawing the folds in fabric more than drawing the nude figure. The anatomy of bone and muscle structure is so compelling in studying the nude but the intricacies of fabric on the figure adds another dimension of complexity. I love the pull of a belt on a waistline or the cinching of the fabric at the bend of an elbow or knee.

Life drawing with clothed figure in pencil on newsprint paper
Life drawing with clothed figure in pencil on newsprint paper

I enjoy contemplating the lighting as it casts over and under the folds. Where is the source of lighting? I stare at the shadow type underneath to determine if it is soft and diffused or hard and linear. Now, thirty years later, I still am fascinated by the curves and shadow of figures and lighting though now I don’t draw the figure. I concentrate instead on my favorite subject matter, flowers. These life drawing were the beginning of the process of learning to see.

In most cases in the classes I attended at York College, CUNY, Queens, NY in 1976 when these drawings were created, the lighting was not dramatic or controlled. The classroom lighting was positioned from the surrounding windows and the overhead fluorescents to provide enough light for the students. The emphasis was not to create distinct lighting on the models. These drawings were from my second semester in college so are my first attempts at figures and folds.

Two figure life drawing with pencil
Two figure life drawing with pencil

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Life Drawing

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Life drawing classes are the traditional method for teaching the drawing of the human figure. Live models are used so that students can study the muscles and anatomy of the figure in order to render the volume and dimensionality of the human body. Using photographs instead of models can often cause students to render the figure in too flat a manner.

Life drawing in pencil
Life drawing in pencil

Drawing classes that I attended at York College, CUNY, in Queens NY in the 1970’s, were held in 4-hour segments. Poses were held for short bursts of sketching time such as 5 or 15 minutes in the early part of a class to allow the artists time to warm up their drawing arm and eye. As the class progressed, poses often were held for longer periods and were in fact upon many occasions maintained for the entire remainder of the session. When the model took a break they would then return to their position in the center of the class so the students could continue to work on the drawing of that pose.

Seated figure in pencil on newsprint paper
Seated figure in pencil on newsprint paper

Life drawing is such an fundamental part of the curriculum of any art school that it is hard to believe that in the not so distant past these classes were taboo for women. Throughout history women were banned from traditional art school under the guise of protecting their delicate sensibilities. In order to pursue their art many women took a separate path towards expressing themselves and gravitated to watercolor paintings of flowers and gardens. These were considered acceptable mediums and subjects for a well-protected and well brought up middle class woman.

Leaning figure seated on stool drawing
Leaning figure seated on stool drawing

And then along came Georgia O’Keeffe and everyone saw flowers in a very different way. She helped to forge an acceptance of woman as artist and the doors of art schools flew open.

Pencil drawing on newsprint paper from life drawing class
Pencil drawing on newsprint paper from life drawing class

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Paper Bags

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Brown Kraft paper bags are a wonderful subject for learning to draw. They don’t move like people do. They don’t wiggle or whine. They don’t go rotten and deteriorate like fruits and vegetables. They’re cheap and easy to find. Not only can you pack lunch into the smaller bags you can bring home your food shopping in the larger ones and as an extra bonus, you can then use them to take out the garbage.

Kraft lunch bags - wash drawing
Brown Kraft bags – wash drawing

Need I mention that when I was in school, we cut down the large grocery bags and used them as book covers to protect the textbooks that the public school system in New York City provided to us on loan. So versatile, so useful, so filled with nooks and crannies they make for a great student model.

Brown lunch bags
Brown lunch bag drawing

These 4 drawings of paper bags were done while I was in the second semester of my Freshman year in the Fine Arts Program at York College, CUNY in Queens NY. They were done during a two-week period from 3/21/1976 through 3/4/1976. All the dates of the drawings are noted at the bottom of each piece. I’m very glad that I was prescient enough to not only keep my student works but also to have dated them so that I could, 30 years later, look back on them and study the progression of my classes.

Brown bag wash drawing
Brown bag wash drawing

At the time of these drawings I had been paying attention to art for only 2 years since I had spent my Junior and Senior High School years immersed in music. I came late to art but at the time of this writing in 2007, I’ve been an active artist for over 30 years.

The mediums I was experimenting with in these drawings are plain pencil, pencil and wash and Conte crayon. I seem to be able to create volume using contrast in these pieces but I haven’t set each of the still lives up with a particular light source that is consistent throughout each piece.

The composition of each work is fairly good in relation to the page and utilizes the scale properly except perhaps the last piece. I believe the drawing would have been better served had the paper been turned horizontally.

Too late to fix the original now but as I would say in this day and age: “I’ll fix it in Photoshop.”

Folded brown garbage bag drawing
Folded brown garbage bag drawing

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Drawing Boots & Shoes

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The art of drawing boots and shoes is taught in all college curriculums since it is logical to select subjects readily available to even the most cash strapped students. In fact, the older and more beat up a shoe the more character it has and sometimes that goes for humans as well. These drawing studies were created in the second semester of my Freshman year of York College in Queens NY, 1976.

My son Chris' denin boots
My son Chris’ denim boots

The first drawing of boots, with the heel cropped on the bottom of the paper, either indicates an advanced notion of composition or the inability to judge the size of the paper. These were denim boots I bought for my son Chris and they made him the coolest kid in elementary school. The drawing is dated 3/7/1976.

This drawing was one of my first attempts at using a stick of Conte crayon. I had moved beyond using just the weight of the stroke to indicate dimension and had begun to include shadows and light source.

My Earth Shoes
My Earth Shoes in a conte crayon drawing (without shoe laces)

Earth shoes were my footgear for most of the ‘70’s since they were comfortable and easy on my back. This conte drawing is lacking the completion the assignment probably called for but I was amused at seeing my shoes again for the first time in 30 years. In fact these shoes might be having a renaissance as I’ve seen them advertised in one of the flood of catalogs that show up at my door. This drawing is dated 3/8/1976, which makes it the day after the denim boots shown above and is probably the reason for their lack of detail.

Frye Boots in a wash drawing
Frye Boots in a wash drawing

The pen and ink study of Frye boots dated 3/11/1976 was a very early attempt at controlling an ink wash. The composition, in my mind, is more successful than the first two drawings since they utilize the format and dimensions of the paper with a greater sensitivity.

I have no recollection of whether these drawings were done in the classroom or as homework assignments. Given the length of time it would have taken for me to complete each of these drawings I presume most of the work would have been done on my dining room table after my sons went to sleep for the night.

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