Moving to Wordpress

For those who come here every now and again, I'm moving things over to Wordpress, I like the dashboard better. The new address is colleenpatriciawilliam.wordpress.com

I hope you all like it, I've decided to get serious about this, now I have the time. :)

Art and the Economy

I find myself looking at the bills, and it hits home that the art market is not what it used to be. The art market is there for a select few; the few that have the contacts and that know someone. The rest of us are struggling to survive.
It's not just the gallery scene, because lots of those have closed. It's the shrinking middle class, that class used to be the staple for the regular artist, but no longer. As the middle class has disappeared, the money that they used to purchase luxuries like art has dried up and blown away.

This leaves many of us out in the cold. Prices are now often too low to buy more supplies. Because of the economy that is not recovering, artists are now worse off, in my opinion, than they were before the Great Depression. But there is no New Deal coming to save us.

WIP- The Alien Brain Project

At least that's how I see the thing. It started as a mistake, my ill fated first attempt at hollow form resin casting, but I sure got a great looking alien brain kinda thing out of it! I LOVE the thing, really. It has these great textures, that were great before, but DYNAMITE when lit from below with some of those itty bitty blue LED lights. They are just fantastic!
As my use of my hands gets worse, the art that I can make has had to change. This is a a part of that change. This is what the alien brain is looking like now. It has quite a bit of work to finish it up, I haven't even started on the base!
More of the 3P will be in the base. Thus far, it's been an integral part of the piece. I couldn't have done this piece without it.
The husband is a trooper! He held the thing for me, so I could apply the wax and use the heat gun. He follows directions with flawless precision, too. No major explanations needed! More work on this to happen this afternoon!

The Internet Blackout

In support of the movement to kill the SOPA bill in Congress, my site will be blacked out until Thursday morning. I will be offline for that time.
Everyone, be safe!
Also, call your congressperson and tell them a vote for SOPA equals a non vote for that person come elections.
This is a dangerous piece of legislation and does not protect the little guy.

I am a kind of split. I won my fight for SSD, and while that is great in one way, in another, it's sad. It's an acknowledgment of the slow deterioration I'm experiencing.

I have so much to do! I have art to complete, and one of my urgent matters, is to get that 501(c)(3) designation for Continuum Heart Gallery. I do have to say, that will be one of my easier chores. Doing a nonprofit is really pretty easy.

One thing I am interested in, though, is the trademark stuff. It turns out that one's agents are supposed to do searches to see if other organizations preexists that trademark claim, and it turns out that in the case of Art with Heart, her attorneys dropped that ball big time!!
There are over 80 organizations that are antecedent to her trademark claim, and her attorneys, well, they SWORE that there were no other organizations, and they either lied or just plain did NOT do the work, in my opinion.

I have some theories about the relationship between Perkins Coie and Steffanie. Lots of reason to wonder about that. Lots of them, and she's lucky I have other stuff to do. I love stories, and puzzles. My spidey senses are telling me that there is a story with a puzzle there that might not stand the light of day, so to speak in someone's mind...
Perception is reality, for all of us. What to others may be no big deal, may seem as a mountain for someone with a perception of guilt. Either way, if I didn't have so much other stuff to do, I'd really like to dig into this conundrum!!

Now, off of the subject of minions and their masters, and on to art!!!
I've been working with this cool new stuff coming out, and here's one of the first serious pieces to incorporate the Expanding medium.
This stuff is way cool! I will have more images to show very soon with more progress. I got a lot done on it last night, so I'm close to finished, period. Yah!!!

We've packed up most of my studio, I'm winding down on some unfinished projects, and then we finish this remodel, put her on the market, and we're outta here! We're moving to New Orleans. It's so much easier to create art when one is warm and not shivering....
The bottom image shows the encaustic base.

This upper image is of the new project I'm almost done with! The ball is lit by blue LED. It's a ball of resin that was supposed to be a cast hollow head. As you can see, it didn't quite work out the way I was hoping for!

Poplar base, resin ball, the thick silver tendrils are left over wire from construction trash, and the thin ones are copper wire left overs from the same trash heap. My husband brought them home to me. There will be more to see regarding the thick aluminum wires in the future!!

This is a close up of the resin ball, in it's unlit state.

The resin ball. This was supposed to be a cast resin hollow head. I just didn't factor in speed like I should have, sigh! But I also could NOT throw out that ball that I made, either. Then it hit me! In a flash this project jumped into my mind!

The green and blue tentacle-ish stuff is the ever awesome 3P Expanding Art Medium. I've been helping the inventor along with a very good friend and colleague, Cayenne Link. She makes the coolest jewelry out of this stuff...
More to come!