Have you ever cut up a hardcover book? It goes against everything we are taught about how to treat books. We are supposed to care for them, tucking them carefully away on a shelf. We become more familiar with it’s spine than what’s between its covers.
I think there is something to be said for re-thinking how we use books, especially older books that have been read and re-read and are falling out of date. We don’t know what to do with them. They find their way into used book stores, free book libraries or the recycling. This is why I think that after a book has loyally served its purpose (often for many decades), maybe it’s time to give it a new kind of life.
Decadent Diagrams Workshop
Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending the afternoon with a room of quality individuals doing just this. We began with a collaborative drawing project. The end results were fantastic! Here are some pictures of them below.
We then moved into sorting through stacks of book pages, collecting diagrams we found interesting and then took scissor to paper. 🙂 I often consider collage as “thinking with my hands,” because you get into a rhythm of shifting objects in front of you, making decisions instinctively. Trying things. Seeing how pieces want to go together. Your hands start to move quicker than your mental decision-making.
The participants also created monochromatic (single-coloured) ink drawings inspired by their collages. We discussed how you can find easy pathways to abstraction by using methods like these (but we will always know they aren’t truly abstract 😉 )
I wish I took more photos at the end of the class! The juxtapositions between the ink drawings and the black and white collages were stunning. I have been looking forward to seeing these artworks for weeks because there was no way of knowing the end results! This is the magic of creation: it can surprise you!
It’s easy to over-think life and take it too seriously. There can be a lot of weight, which is why I think we need to give ourselves a little breathing room and space for playful exploration and creation. This is why it’s important to gather with like-minded people, put on some baroque music, cut up a book together and make something decadent. Let’s break the rules, give yourself permission, do something out of your comfort zone, find the “best” diagram and turn it into something completely unique. Why? Because it’s good for us.
Since my last update, it’s been a season of change and fresh perspectives.
In the fall my husband and I had the opportunity to celebrate our anniversary by going to Azerbaijan and Georgia. This was our first time outside of Canada since attending the NES Iceland Art Residency in early 2020. These countries are not only beautiful in landscape but have such beautiful people as well. It is so inspiring to see art from different parts of the world, and to see the connections and similar themes that are woven throughout art history. I love how history and art can’t be separated. They always come back together and intertwine. It’s interesting to think that artists today are also contributing to documenting and commenting on our current times, which quickly become history.
We came home to the busy holiday market season and I also lead a watercolour workshop. It was funded by a Neighbourhood Small Grant for my local community. This workshop was so fulfilling and I loved seeing people come together and build relationships while exploring painting leaves and flowers. The paintings created were wonderful and the company was great!
In the spring I instructed a workshop in partnership with the Tofino Arts Council, Pacific Rim Arts Society and the Ucluelet Aquarium. It was a dream-come-true workshop for me! I loved working with these amazing non-profits, bringing art, science and community together. The aquarium even delivered a touch tank of live specimens for us to draw before we made our way over to the aquarium for the final part of the workshop.
Having the opportunity to be in Ucluelet was a blessing. It’s been a full season with lots going on and I was happy to have a little time by the sea. After the workshop we went to the beach to explore and I was able to do some sketching as well (I drew a limpet, one of my favourite animals). It was still stormy-ocean-season (my favourite season) and there were many treasures to find. The first couple photos above show a small amount of the probably millions of velella velellas that were washed up on the beach. These creatures are also called by-the-wind-sailors (which is equally as good a name). They are not jellyfish, but they are jellyfish-like and they are also planktonic, meaning they rely on the ocean to move them around. They are shaped to have a sail that rises just above the waves, which catch the wind and help them travel great distances. They must have gotten stranded on the beach during a storm. They fade from bright blue to clear as they dry.
The second treasure I found was a mermaid’s purse (also known as a skate egg casing)! Inside this rather science-fictional-looking object would have once housed the embryos of a skate. I have wanted to see one of these for years and was very excited to find it. The baby skates had already hatched and just the casing was left behind. It probably washed up in one of these winter storms.
Amidst all this activity we also found ourselves moving into a unit that will allow me to have a dedicated studio space. I am still settling into the space but here is a picture of the first wire orca to be created here 🙂 Having a fresh space to create in is already filling my mind with ideas of what I want to work on next. I find it interesting to see how environment plays a role in the type of work one creates and I am looking forward to seeing what ends up coming out of this space.
Upcoming Markets & Events
You will find me at the following events around Victoria (and beyond). For more details, check out my events page.
Vic West Fest June 6th, 12pm-6pm
Community-Lead FernFEST June 13, 12pm-7pm
Gorge on Art July 1st, 9am-4pm
Art Gallery Paint-In July 18, 11am-4pm
Ucluelet Market August 1st, 10am-2pm
Upcoming Workshops
I have two workshops coming up and both are almost full (just 1 spot left in each).
Decadent Diagrams Collage and Drawing Workshop (Afternoon of May 31)
In just over a week I will be instructing Decadent Diagrams. This workshop focuses on finding creative ways to use diagrams from old textbooks to create something new and quiet extraordinary. Together, we will be “dissecting” a beautiful, 1960’s copy of ‘Invertebrate Zoology’ and using the informational figures to create extravagant collages and coloured ink drawings.
Imaginative Nature Drawing (Full weekend: July 25 & 26)
Due to popular demand, I am bringing this workshop pack to MISSA! But this time, we will be located at Pearson College in Metchosin. This is a retreat-style workshop, so lunch comes with your registration and you also have the option to sleep over and stay for breakfast and dinner. Themes in this workshop include pseudo-scientific drawing, observational drawing, and using nature as a starting point for your creativity to flourish.
If you happen to be heading to the Saanich Municipal Hall in June/July, take a peek in the Window Gallery by the entrance. I will be installing Soundwaves, an installation I created for my Orcaphilia exhibition a few years ago. This installation will contain double the amount of salmon and can be viewed from all four sides. I still have a little work to go on figuring out how to hang large sheets of black and white paper from the centre of the display and I am excited to see it all come together!
I imagine you have probably heard the phrase, ‘variety is the spice of life’. However, I would prefer if the saying went, “curiosity is the spice of life.”
Variety often depends on outside factors, but curiosity comes from within. I think curiosity is a skill that we can nurture and develop and, when you do this, you will reap great rewards. Curiosity means to engage with the world and not just take things at face value. To question things and ponder.
Curiosity is something that starts off strongly when we are young because there is so much that we don’t know. Although it’s intrinsic, it is something we can loose. As we go through life we can slip into a pattern of accepting things as “just the way they are” and loose that attitude of engagement with life. This is why I think it’s important to stretch out those curiosity muscles and exercise wonderment.
Do you need a little curiosity kick-start? Here are a few places that I find inspiration:
One of the main topics that stirs my curiosity is whenever art mixes with scientific elements. Add a pinch of imagination and I am hooked! Speaking of which, I thought I would share a few photos from the Watercolour Animal Pop-up workshop that I instructed last weekend. These are just a sample of the incredible and intricate creatures that the participants created.
And here are a few creatures in more detail:
Upcoming events:
This Sunday (tomorrow) I will be participating at Apple Day, an event at Sea Cider from 11-4 as part of the market inside the pavilion. For more information about this free event as well as a list of my upcoming holiday workshops, please click here.
Today closes week two of my residency here on Malcolm Island at the Sointula Art Shed and officially marks the halfway point of my time here. This week I have been able to get some solid studio time and I’m starting to feel like I’m gaining momentum on my residency projects. The weather has been gloriously unsettled, swinging from golden sunshine, to melting-grey clouds, pouring rain and even hail. It must be spring! Even though I have only been here two weeks, there is already a visible difference in the plants. Leaves are budding and little flowers are popping up everywhere!
Me taking advantage of a studio where I can pin things to the all and leave projects on go
I started the week by working on a project about counting the Northern Resident killer whales (as seen in the image above, hanging from the horizontal lines). I am representing each member in this pod by making a linocut orca print… this work is still in progress and I am now in the problem-solving stage trying to figure out how I want it to all come together.
Someone recently gave me some mylar charts and before I left for the residency I dry mounted pieces of it to shaped matboard offcuts. This combination has turned out to be quite an inspiring surface for oil painting. I am working on a series of small paintings based on my experiences of seeing whales exhale and the way light often catches their blows. The surface of mylar is velvety and smooth—lending itself perfectly for the removal of paint. So, in away, these are anti-paintings because the subject matter is represented by a physical absence.
Yesterday I hopped on a ferry to Port McNeill and instructed a workshop inside the office of the Marine Education & Research Society (MERS). I wanted to do this workshop as a way to connect with the community and also to help support the important conservation work MERS. Three lovely researches were there to help set up for the event and offer whale knowledge during the workshop. The main theme of the workshop was to not make perfect drawings but rather I wanted people to think about the individuality and quirkiness of whales. And yes, apparently there are whales out there with some pretty hilarious underbites—point made! We began by making blind contour drawings of whales, finished it by using pieces of cedar as drawing instruments, and did a bunch of projects in the middle. My heartfelt thanks to MERS for being such welcoming hosts and to each of the 11 participants that made this afternoon special.
Before installingWHALEFALL during the dayWHALEFALL during the night
And this brings us up to today! This morning I installed my first of a series of three artworks that I will be displaying inside the Window Gallery that is adjacent to the studio. This is now the fourth time that I have exhibited WHALEFALL, and every time it looks different because it is comprised of a collection of individual orca sculptures that need to be assembled and disassembled. Depending on the size of the plinth, the shape of the artwork changes, but also the amount of orcas is slowly growing. I had to add four orca since I last showed it in June of last year. This installation shows all of the Southern Resident killer whales that have passed away since we started counting and naming them in the 1970’s. There are now 147 orcas. I don’t know if this link will work, but I made a video showing the setup with me talking about this installation (probably the most high tech thing I’ve ever done): WHALEFALL video. You may have to unmute it by clicking the symbol at the bottom.
This is a view from the beach that only takes 2 minutes to walk to from my studio
Okay, I think I will leave it there for now. Thank you so much for reading along.
Natasha van Netten 