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Years ago I created a series of linocuts that were very simple (really just line drawings carved into soft rubber). I’ve long admired more complex designs, especially ones that incorporate multiple colours. These designs require careful planning, and carving and printing multiple images in layers. Daunting, to say the least.

Earlier this month, though, I was inspired by a print of a hot air balloon shown to me by a friend. I decided the time had come to set aside my anxieties and give it a try. Further inspired by the imagery I’ve been working with in my paintings, I decided to create a print of a barred owl.

The first step was to draw the image in my sketchbook, trace it onto tissue paper and then transfer onto the rubber.

I decided to start with two layers. The first would encompass the background (blue sky) and the second the owl (in dark brown).

As I transferred the images onto two pieces of rubber, I decided I also wanted the owl’s beak to be yellow and the heart to be red. Not feeling up to creating two tiny linocuts for these elements, I decided to include them on the background carving and figure out a way to add the colours before printing.

After rolling on the blue sky, I hand painted the beak and heart onto the rubber with a small paint brush. It worked!

The final step was to print the owl carving. Not having any brown ink, I mixed purple, red and yellow inks together. That worked too!

This print worked so well, I can hardly wait to start working on the next one! Meantime, though, I will be printing an edition of this owl, which will be on display and for sale at Bird on a Wire Creations in Vancouver, BC, next week. (If you’re in town on Thursday evening, Feb 2, drop by to say hi!)

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Having always lived in the city, owls are mysterious creatures to me, known mostly through night-time children’s stories. When my son was about two, he insisted there was an owl in the tree outside the bedroom window, which my husband and I chalked up to a vivid imagination. Then, a year or two ago, a large barred owl showed up in that same tree and stayed watching the neighbourhood for a day.  My husband and I were amazed, but our son just kind of shrugged it off as the most natural thing in the world.

Now I’m working on a series of small paintings featuring species identified as being “of conservation concern” in the province of British Columbia. I’m drawn to the owls. I thought I’d paint one, but have done three so far and want to do more. Their eyes are so intense, so clear and sharp. And so big.

I know they’re dangerous birds of prey with strong, sharp claws and beaks, but they move with such purpose and grace.

Spotted owl (artist: Robi Smith; acrylic on wood panel; 6" x 6")

Here in BC, we’re fortunate enough to share territory with many species of owl, though we’re not doing a very good job of protecting their habitat and food sources. The most endangered is the spotted owl, which relies on ever-shrinking stands of mature old-growth forest to survive. It’s unclear how many of these owls are left.

The short-eared owl lives in the southern part of the province, from the Lower Mainland to the Interior. Some of these owls overwinter on Vancouver Island, but most spend the winter months in the Fraser River Delta. Their survival is threatened by the huge urbanization and intensive agriculture in the area. Also, because these owls nest in the ground, their nesting sites are vulnerable to fire, flooding, farm machinery, predators and pesticides. Adults collide with cars, aircraft and barbed wire. We haven’t exactly been owl-centric in our local land-use planning.

Short-eared owl (Artist: Robi Smith; acrylic on wood panel; 8" x 6")

The northern pygmy owl is perhaps my favourite, just because it’s so tiny (adults grow to a maximum of about 18 cm or 7 inches). The swarthi subspecies, which lives on Vancouver Island, is threatened by increasingly fragmented habitat and the loss of preferred places to nest. Other animals prey on them, including barred owls. Raccoons and red squirrels are fond of their eggs, which doesn’t help.

Northern pygmy owl (Artist: Robi Smith; acrylic on wood panel; 6" x 6")

In the end, I’ve fallen in love with these owls. They are one more reason to protect the remaining wild places in our province, and incentive to better manage those territories that we actively share.

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I’m not much for New Year’s eve parties or morning after resolutions. But, as one year comes to a close and the next opens up before me, I do find myself reflecting on the past 12 months and wondering about the next dozen ahead.

This year’s turning point was no exception, perhaps especially because 2011 ended on such a soft and mushy note for me. After spending nearly two months sick or caring for sick family members, I needed to remind myself that I had accomplished something earlier in the year. And I’m certainly motivated to get back to work now that everyone is feeling better.

So, without further ado, here are my highlights from 2o11:

• Curating art exhibits at two scientific conferences, which allowed me to merge two of my passions (art and conservation) and continue to build my community of artists and scientists with shared interests. The art shows were part of the International Marine Conservation Congress in Victoria and the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference in Vancouver.
• Pulling off my first major solo show, featuring more than 30 of my ocean paintings. As someone who has never really worked in series, I’m proud of myself for producing so much work on a theme and stretching myself to keep it interesting and meaningful (to me at least!). The show was well received, written up in the local papers, and is the springboard for new work and opportunities.
• Writing and illustrating a fairytale about a contemporary issue that means a great deal to me. I’d been wanting to write about the Alberta tar sands in a meaningful way, yet offer hope and resolution to the bleakest, most depressing environmental crisis in this country (particularly since there is almost no political will to deal with it). I first shared my fairytale at the Seymour Art Gallery and have since been refining it and looking for new ways to share it. You can read it here.
• Launching my career as an art teacher, something I’d previously avoided because I had the mistaken idea that I would have to do it the way others do. Instead, by focusing on what I wanted to teach, where, when and how, I had a fabulous time running a four-week introductory collage workshop out of my studio. I’m looking forward to expanding my teaching repertoire in the coming months. Many thanks to the 6 wonderful “students” who took a chance on me
• Attending the Balance/Unbalance conference in Montreal, which brought together artists, scientists and policy makers to talk about the intersections in our work and practices and how they can benefit each other, particularly when trying to solve environmental issues. Hugely inspiring!

And then there were all the wonderful events I took part in (the art show fundraiser for the Wake Project at Rhizome, Artful Sundays, the Eastside Culture Crawl) and the many, many new people I met and had meaningful conversations and connections with. My gratitude is deep.

As with the start of any year, I have no real idea what lays ahead. Time and circumstance seem to always bring more and different things my way than I could ever plan. The best I can do is set forth with good intentions and a bunch of ideas. These I seem to have in abundance, from a series of new paintings created inside old cutlery boxes to a range of classes to teach on everything from collage to nature journaling to how to be more radical (at least on Thursdays). I can hardly wait for the new year to get into full swing.

What are you looking forward to most this year?

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As an urban environmentalist and artist, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much nature is present in the city. If you look closely enough, you’ll see it everywhere even though the dominant landscape is made of concrete, asphalt and glass. Under those layers, seeping up through the cracks, and flying around us are grass, trees, native plants and flowers, insects and birds.

I found a great book at the library called “Nature Printing” by Laura Donnelly Bethmann and have been using it as my guide.

First I went on a nature walk with my son. Really, all we did was walk from our home in a neighbourhood just east of downtown Vancouver to my studio, 10 minutes by foot away. In that short walk, I was frankly astonished by the variety of natural materials we found: three varieties of pine cone, crow and seagull feathers, and myriad leaves, stems and flowers.

Once at my studio, we took a huge old dictionary and pressed the flat items within its pages, using playing cards as page markers. I stacked a bunch of art books on top to add weight to the press.

Then, using tips from the book, we began printing. Bethmann provides great tips on how to roll water-based printmaking ink onto leaves and feathers (just move in one direction and use thin layers). When you lay the inked item down on the paper for printing, cover the back with sheet of paper from the recycling to soak up the extra ink that seeps through the fibers. This keeps your fingers and also the paper being printed on clean.

Same goes for when using a stamp pad: place the item to be printed on the stamp pad, cover it with paper and press down on the paper to pick up the ink. Remove the paper to transfer the item to where you are going to print it, then cover it again with a fresh clean paper for pressing down. The pressing is all done with your fingers.

By and large, the results were stunning and the process simple enough for my five year old. I’m inspired to do more and hope you are too!

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Yesterday I was the Artist in the Window at Bird on a Wire Creations. In thinking about what I wanted to create, I decided to challenge myself to break out of some old patterns in my collage techniques. I’ve been feeling like my recent collages have ended up too cluttered, mostly because I’ve been overly concerned about “ruining” the images I’ve been working with. I also want to get back to infusing each collage with a story. These stories may only be implied, but the mystery about what might be going on inspires contemplation and repeated viewing.

What to do differently? More paint and colour, fewer but stronger images. And I wanted to be more playful.  So, instead of relying completely on existing images that I cut out from old magazines and books, I decided to cut some shapes out of maps and paint those with light washes of colour. These became the boat and moon in the finished piece. I then added the bird,  fish and coins, which are cut-outs from an old illustrated dictionary.

Dreaming Boat (Robi Smith, mixed media collage, 10" x 14.5", $250)

Overall I’m very happy with the results of my experimenting!

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Do you ever get in comfortable rut? The kind you know you want to get out of but can’t quite, at least not without some seriously hard work?

Well, I’m kind of there with my collage work. It not that I don’t like what I’m producing—it’s okay—I just feel like I could be doing better, more interesting work. My collages are starting to feel stale, repetitive, and cluttered. I want to get more intuitive with them, worry less about ‘ruining’ or ‘wasting’  the  materials, and be more bold.

The trouble is, I’ve always had an internal resistance to being bold, to making loud changes that other people might notice. I’ve always preferred to go quietly about my business.

But it’s time to put aside my resistance and push through my fears. Fears about collage? Laugh if you must, but it’s true. My art is very personal, and the way I create art even more. I  have my little quirks of personality that show up in the way I do things. It feels risky to actually change the way I do something. What if no one likes it?

Thankfully I know from past experience that when I do manage to set aside my worries about what others may think of me, and let myself into the zone where failure and bad art are okay, I do enjoy playing around and seeing what my non-thinking brain comes up with.  I like working away at something until it feels right, if it ever does.

I can see that my fears are irrational. In all probability, no one is actually going to point or laugh or set me apart from others and scrutinize me uncomfortably. In fact, very few people will probably notice that I’m really being radical at all.

So….(drum roll please)… in the spirit of experimentation, I’m going to try on the experience of experimenting in public this weekend. Eek!

If you’re in Vancouver, on Saturday (Aug 20) I’m going to be the Artist in the Window at Bird on a Wire Creations from 11 – 4 pm (on Main St between Broadway and 10th Ave). On Sunday (Aug 21), I’ll be doing the same at Artful Sundays in Napier Square (Commercial Drive at Napier St) from noon – 5 pm. Drop by and see what I’m working on, working out, and re-imagining.

Are you afraid of experimenting too? Come, bring your own little project, and let’s face our fears together!

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Thanks for checking in. Until further notice I’m happily on summer vacation and not bloggging Be back in time for school in September … and maybe a little earlier than that!

Robi

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Not much is known about the daytime habits of the quillfish, though it’s speculated that it burrows into the sandy or muddy ocean floor. At night it swims snakily to the surface, attracted by the lights of fishing boats. Quillfish range all along the BC coast and as far north as Alaska.

Quillfish (by Robi Smith, acrylic on canvas, 18" x 24", $1100)

You can see more of my paintings from the same series here on my website. And be sure to check back next Monday for another ‘Catch of the Day’!

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The oceans have recently been in the news, and not for the best reasons. Scientists are coming to understand that our oceans are under even more stress than previously thought, and that mass extinctions are on the horizon. This is bad news for all of us on the planet. The bad and the good news is that we humans are the problem. Bad because there are a heck of a lot of us doing pretty destructive things. Good because we can change those actions for the better. As an optimist, I’m hopeful that by changing our collective paradigms about what is important and how we live/consume, we can turn things around.

Yes, changing paradigms. Totally daunting, overwhelming, and completely doable. How do I know? Because it’s already happening. Everything we need to do in order to turn things around is already being done by people just like us. Just think about that for a few minutes. The future we want is already here, if we can just muster the courage to embrace it.

Imagine our world as a place where the “normal” diet is vegan (abundant wild fish stocks, no fish farms), most people go car-free (huge drop in the use of fossil fuels, widely available and affordable mass transit, high speed rail, and massive networks of bike lanes), single-use plastic packaging is a thing of the past, and governments and businesses support and promote renewable energy sources (no more oil spills, no tar sands). All these actions would drastically reduce pollution and carbon emissions. And all these actions are available to us.

What does this have to do with my art?

Well, everything really. As I look forward to the paintings I want to produce over the next while, these are the issues I’m going to be grappling with. The ocean remains for me the place where all of my environmental concerns come together, so my paintings will continue to be based under water. Beyond that, you’ll just have to wait and see what emerges

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The underwater trumpets blare. The fish line up in all their spawning finery. And the parade begins, with the king of the salmon in the lead, followed by streams of wild salmon.

Salmon Migration (Robi Smith, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 inches)

So I imagine the scene each year when the salmon return to the coast after their life at sea, to begin their long ascent up rivers and streams to their spawning grounds.

According to the Makah people (whose traditional territory is in the San Juan islands, the American counterpart to BC’s Gulf Islands), the king of the salmon does lead the wild salmon home each year. The king of the salmon is heralded as good luck; to catch or kill one is a bad omen.

Contrary to its name, the king of the salmon is not itself a type of salmon. Rather, it’s a long ribbon fish that grows to about 180 cm or 6 feet. It swims to a depth of 900 metres and ranges from Alaska to Chile.

King of the Salmon (Robi Smith, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 36 inches)

You can see more of my paintings from the same series here on my website. And be sure to check back next Monday for another ‘Catch of the Day’!