Burning, Trimming, and Mural Painting

Dear Art Lover,

      Lately, my neighbors have been making little fires all around these hills in Tuscany.  They are removing much of the grasses that have overgrown over the winter.  Today, my landlord and his brother will start trimming their olive trees.  I really hate to miss this!

     Tomorrow I leave for Firenze and will live there for one month as I work with a private student.  We will have fun on his new still life painting project (after his first project EVER was Leonardo da Vinci’s “Leda and the Swan” – a human figure, and animal, and a landscape!).  But, I love my new home and I want so much to see each season here as they unfold.  My landlord assured me that spring will not pass me by before I return, but … I love helping “my family” in Casignano each November with the olive harvest.  To be around for the trimming sounds interesting to me.  Here, it is dangerous work because the olive trees grow on the sides of the hills and they use ladders and saws.  It would be nice if I could be here even for added safety for them.  Oy yoy. 

     My mural project progresses slowly.  This is partially because there is so much detail work in creating a specific landscape, and I, sadly, get confused easily on which of my charcoal markings denotes the dark shape or the light one.  The other part, naturally, is that I have a fair amount to do before leaving tomorrow. 

     I took these close-up images last night.  It is weird to see them in this way.  I think the mural looks better in person.  However, I have not finished with these parts that I show you.  I just wanted to share how I am layering the acrylic paint and trying to get soft edges to create something of an atmosphere. Sadly, not much more will happen on  this for at least a month, in case you were thinking to hold your breath.  Hahaha…

Thank you.  And happy birthday to two very lovely ladies:  Giuliana and Dilya! 

Peace,

Kelly

http://BorsheimArts.com

Women’s Day and Mural

Dear Art Lover,

     Apparently, it is International Women’s Day.  While I do not get particularly enthused about holidays designed to remind us that we each have value [why should we need that?], I must recognize that we still have not created a world in which we treat each other as equals, or at the very least, with respect and dignity.  So, until such a time exists, these days serve as reminders to decent folks. 

     And speaking of women, I lost a very dear Florentine woman friend of mine on March 1.  She called me a sister and I will never forget Susanna’s kindness to me and her love and friendship.  This has been a long haul for her and these last several weeks were especially difficult for me and her other close loved ones, as we watched her slowly leave us.

     Back at home now, I started working today on the mural project I wrote about in an earlier post.  This one is slow going since it is a specific landscape painting, versus an imagined one.  The mural size is 109 x 240 cm, so about one-fourth the size of my firstTuscan mural in Caprese Michelangelo, Italy.

http://borsheimarts.com/painting/murals.htm

Thank you.

Peace,

Kelly

http://BorsheimArts.com

  

Detail of starting to fill in the cartoon transfer

Start of another Tuscan Mural, Italy, by Kelly Borsheim

Tuscan Mural Start

Dear Art Lover,

     This is by no means an original idea, but what do you do when you want a room with a view and cannot get permission from the city to put a large window in your home?  Well, if you know a muralist, why not create a finestra finta [a false window]?

      And thus, my second mural in Tuscany has begun.  I do not expect this to be as quickly executed as my first mural (here:  http://borsheimarts.com/painting/murals.htm

     I received a request from someone I have no desire to refuse to teach him how to make art.  This will be our first project.  However, this person has a full life and helps a lot of people in this mountain community.  So, let us see what sort of time he may devote to painting!

    Here is the start of the project.  I am prepared to have some fun with this!  So, stay tuned . . .

Site of future Tuscan Mural

Painting the window frame on the Tuscan mural

Thank you.

Peace,

Kelly

http://BorsheimArts.com

Murals Skadarlija Belgrade Serbia

Dear Art lover,

     This post is about the murals I saw in Belgrade (Beograd), Serbia.  It is by no means any serious list since I only spent half a day there and most of that was spent in the Nikola Tesla Museum and later drinking wine with three friends.   This first one lends a peaceful air to the neighborhood.  I enjoyed its pastel round shapes contrasting with the square windows and forms of the buildings.

 

     This second and third images are not actually murals.  The first appears to be something like giant pieces of corkboard over the windows, but it gives a feeling of having pictoral elements.  The second is a restaurant on a famous street called Skadarlija.  It is the oldest street there, I believe.  The cobblestones feel like a massage on the feet.   Anyway, I thought the repetitive use of small flower boxes going vertical had a charming effect.   This next is another restaurant on the other side of the street.  Also, not really a “real” mural, but pretty.  [I did make a disclaimer that this is not an exhaustive list, right?]

 

     This next series is of an ambitiously large mural consisting of painted buildings on real buildings.  I hope you enjoy.  This mural is also on the Skadarlija Street in Belgrade, Serbia.

Kickstarter update:  19 backers have now helped me raise 29% of the funds needed to give the foundry.  Two people have even increased their original pledges!  $3,350 of a goal of $11,500.  Thank you and let us go for the other 71% please!  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/borsheimarts/casting-call-im-melting-melting-into-bronze/

Casting Call: I’m Melting . . . Melting! Into Bronze

Destroy to Create: Melted wax sacrificed to pour bronze sculpture. Hot art: Make it happen before these wax figures are truly lost.

Thank you so much for helping me make some bronze art a reality,

Kelly

~ Kelly Borsheim, sculptor, painter, writer, teacher

http://BorsheimArts.com

P.S.  This art post is dedicated to my Aunt Annie, who left us last night.

Sarina Arts Extravaganza Australia

Dear Art Loving Friend,

I have spent the majority of this past week teaching workshops to children in the schools, as well as to adults in our makeshift atelier up on the stage in the community building that houses the Sarina Arts Extravaganza here in Australia.  In addition to that, I have been working in a local high school to help the kids learn how to create a mural.  I have been consulting with the class to show them how to take their ideas, expand them to fit the project and create a composition.  Because of the time constraints, I was only allowed to talk about several ways they can take their – to date – unfinished designs and enlarge them to create the cartoons needed to transfer their ideas to a much larger space.  [Cartoon as defined in Michelangelo’s time, not today’s definition of the word.]

One of the area schools was thrilled to let us guide the various age groups of their classes around the art exhibit while I spoke about the idea of art being more than “just a pretty picture.”  Art is the safe place in which we can express and explore our humanity … all aspects of it, as well as appreciating the Natural (or unnatural) world we inhabit. I also wanted to tell them that artists train as long as or longer than other professions, such as doctors and engineers.   THAT raised a lot of eyebrows as the possibilities began to open in their minds!  Several asked me if I make a living at art and I told them, “Yes,” and that my life as an artist is what brought me to their lovely country!

Thanks to a suggestion by local artist and art teacher Sally Cunnington, my hostess (and Sally’s artist mother) Janice Ailwood and I asked the children and teens to choose an artwork in the exhibition that made them feel some emotion and use it as inspiration for their own creations.  We were all thrilled at how well they took to this.  I really love the freedom and joy in young children’s art!

I include a few images (not showing any kid faces) and have a few more of Facebook.  I loved this little girl with pigtails’ posture as she drew a mermaid.  Not unlike my own, perhaps, although she is way more flexible than I, even before my spine injury.  [The image of me was taken by Ayfer Mills in March 2014 in Florence, Italy.]

The kids copied the grownups art, other youths art, and a few went off on their own way and drew what they wanted with the inspirations already in their heads.  We must have seen hundreds of kids over a three day span and it was wonderful!  In general, the response here has been overwhelmingly positive and I wonder what sort of long-term impact our work here may achieve. 



I asked a few of the kids in our last class if they could hold their art up to the artwork that inspired them, but not show their faces to protect their privacy.  Isn’t it lovely how different their designs are from the original? 

This last image is my last sunset for this visit to Sarina in Queensland.  Next stop . . . Tasmania!

Thank you for reading and sharing the journey.

Mural Process Italy

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Here are two progress images on my mural in Caprese Michelangelo, Italy, the birthplace of the great Michelangelo Buanarrotti: one with shower cap, one without. Two days to go and I just enlarged the pool. Yes, this makes more work for me, but the artwork will be better.

Tuscan Mural Painting

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

     I have been working day and late evenings on this mural, with little time to write. I have been changing things a little as the mural painting progresses here in Caprese Michelangelo (east Tuscany), Italy. I include a few images here, with others being posted on my professional page on Facebook. If you click “LIKE” I believe you will receive updates of images in your Facebook newsfeed. Here is that link:
Facebook: Kelly Borsheim, Sculptor Page

     Back to work for me. I have started the figures today! Oh, for art techies, I am using Zecchi’s and Maimeri brand of (Italian) acrylic paint. Sandro Zecchi has become a friend and he and his staff were very helpful in helping me get what I need for this project. Grazie a tutti!

Happy birthday to two special people in my life: Lei and Bethany! You are both so lovely and true.

Mural Project Italy

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

I have the perfect client! He not only treats me as a professional, he gives me his dream requirements and then he also allows me to interject my artistic opinion and usually goes with it. He contacted me this spring and asked for a large painting. He had the idea fairly fleshed out in his mind, consisting of three voluptuous women, Roman ruins, mountains, and a pool in which the babes would frolic. But not knowing the lingo, he said “mural.” By the time I finished asking him questions to clarify his vision, he agreed that a mural on the entire wall was much better than what he thought he wanted.

He is also ideal because he can just look at a very rough sketch of my basic idea and see past the scribbly charcoal and into the vision. Over the summer I have fleshed out more of the details and spoken many times with my new mural guru, Victor Goikoetxea. After arriving at the site of my very first mural (as a grown up, I mean, since my mother let me paint an ocean theme on my bedroom wall when I was a young teenager), I recalculated a few details in the perspective and architecture part of the designo.

My client helped me on my second day here to draw all of the perspective lines in pencil on the wall. See how perfect he is? Even giving me an extra pair of hands! Actually, I think he is quite interested in the whole art-making process and has warned me that many neighbors and guests will be dropping in from time to time to watch me work. So, this is to be more like vertical street painting! Ha.

The second day I was delighted when I was told to come see the cinghiale in the yard and caught one on “film” here. The fig trees are starting to have ripe red fruit, and the beasts want to eat them more than they want their privacy in the woods. Who could blame them? I have myself been eating the juicy figs right off of the tree!

In this last image, I tried to show you how much I have drawn on the wall. I am not that good with Photoshop and thus just ended up making the contrast higher and then darkening the image. I hope you can see some pencil marks. There is a ventilation window in the upper left part of the wall. It was a bit of a problem and a HUGE consideration when I designed the mural. I was not sure if my idea would even work, but we took a look at the sketch on the wall and think that with some embellishments, all will be lovely. Here the dark wooden door with black iron hinges has been taken off and the base coat of white paint was painted over the red brick and wood piece that creates the opening. That way, I can paint right up to the window and the illusion will work better.

I am lacking sleep these days, not just these few days, but also because I explored San Sebastian, Spain, a lot, as well as spending long days at the mural workshop, trying to learn as much as I could in half the time of the other students, who stayed for the whole month class. I even spent one night working at the atelier in an attempt to get to a point in which I could continue with the next step of oil painting. Still, I have yet to learn that while I can do anything that I want, I cannot do EVERYTHING that I want!

Thank you for reading. I am not sure if I let you know often enough how grateful I am for your interest in the art and my journey.

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

I have returned to Firenze, Italia, from my lovely trip to Serbia, only to discover that I have too many friends. Ha.. My life seems to be go-go-go and while it is a lot of fun and I feel a bit spoiled, I am also feeling antsy because my art making has slowed too much. Soon, I go to Spain to study mural making. It was an excellent opportunity too good to pass up and the timing could not have been better: I have a commission to paint my first mural. I am excited and nervous about it since there are many new things for me to attempt.

I am currently trying to seclude myself for this week to finish the bozzetto (Italian for “sketch,” in this case similar to maquette or a small model of an intended larger work). Like most artists, I find inspiration from my colleagues of the past, as well as my contemporaries and my own imagination. Most of my work happens in my head long before anyone else will even see one mark of it. I was delighted last weekend when I visited my clients and showed them my charcoal sketch. It was very loose and I commend them and their friends for catching on to what I was trying to express.

To find inspiration for this project, I turned to one of my favorite romantic artists, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema [Born: Dronryp, Netherlands on 8 January 1836; Died: Wiesbaden, Germany on 25 June 1912]. He is often thought to be British (and lived in England for many years), but his interests and life were much broader than one country could hold.

I am including four images here of some of Alma-Tadema’s paintings that helped me with my composition. I also include here an image that I took in Serbia, which is also playing a role in my future mural.

Basically, I was told by the client what elements he wanted in what started out as a painting for a wall. But I had envisioned something larger and next thing you know he was preparing the wall with the latest technology in Italia: cork insulation with aluminum foil to keep out moisture and then covered in fresco-type material and sealed. You might imagine the laugh we had when I told him what I had envisioned as he sent me progress reports on the wall each day that I was in Serbia! [The foil threw me, but is laminated on a sheet of cork… whereas I had envisioned a home-made job of sheets of foil being pushed into the wall and lots of wine drinking going on to get corks available. Ha. My vision no doubt is also a memory of my friend Andrew Corke who is creating art with real wine corks. But, I digress . . . as I do.]

I made a list of all of the elements my client wanted (three curvaceous, long-haired scantily clothed female figures, Roman ruins, arched window(s), a pool for the ladies, etc.). I then mapped out the proportions of the wall and included various architectural elements (such as an awkwardly placed “window” in the wall) and furniture that would block some of the view of the mural.

My first disegno did not make me happy. It felt cluttered and lacked the impact that a mural should have (as a good street painting does). However, it was a necessary part of my process because my reaction to it led to a much better second attempt. So, I now have approval and need to solidify the drawing and hire the models. Stay tuned for progress images, although there will be a trip to Spain here before the mural begins.