Summer Workshops at Hog Island, Maine!

Well! It's been a long time since I've been able to announce an in-person workshop schedule. With improved and improving coronavirus and vaccine news, venues have started to make plans for amended summer programming. Yep, it's a spot of light at the end of the long, tedious tunnel.

Long-time followers will know that the highlight of my summers, long before I moved to Maine, was teaching at the Hog Island Audubon Camp. Summer camp for grown ups has run here every year since 1936, except for one summer during World War II...

... and last year.

So it's with delight that I announce the opening of registration for this summer's camp programs. There will be lots of changes, of course... participant numbers have been cut in half, masks and distancing will still be required. But the island will still be beautiful and even at arm's length the camaraderie and learning will be great.

I'll be on the instructional staff for Arts & Birding week, June 20-25. This year I am particularly excited that not only will I be working once again with the fabulous Jean Mackay, but we've also been able to add good friends and fabulous colleagues Barry Van Dusen and Sean Murtha to the team. The phrase Dream Team might be overused, but in this case it's totally appropriate.

Also new this year are "day camp" programs. If you're not yet ready to join a residential camp experience, but would like to visit Hog Island, I'll be leading a one day on-island sketching adventure on June 10! We'll start out with some skills practice and then roam the island filling sketchbook pages. 

I've got a few more workshops and demos in the works, so watch this space for announcements of firm dates. Yippee! Let's go draw outside this summer!

The Summer Sessions....

After a solid month of workshop facilitation I finally see light at the end of the one-thing-after-another tunnel. I've got two more short workshops coming up in the next week, but then, whew! I'll have some time back at home and in the studio, catching up with framing and shipping and getting ready to start some new linos.

The past few weeks have been great, though... a lot of time outside in the field! Right on the heels of my exhibition opening at the Museum of American Bird Art I had a grand group of field sketchers at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland.

Farnsworth Field Sketchers in a friend's garden.

We enjoyed a busy week visiting the beach, the farmers market, and the garden of a friend who lives just a couple of blocks from the museum. We also spent a little time indoors working on drawing and watercolor skills.

Watercolor skill-building at the Farnsworth Art Museum

A few days after that class finished I was off to my annual gig at Hog Island Audubon Camp. "Back in the old days" when I lived in Colorado, coming to camp involved a couple days of travel on either end. Now I live 20 minutes from the camp's mainland dock! I'm still not sure if that's good or bad.

The Arts & Birding team: me, Jean Mackay, Derrick Jackson, Drew Fulton

My first week on the island was for the Arts & Birding session, which I co-facilitate with the fabulous Jean Mackay. If you don't know Jean's work, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

The photography section of our week is led by filmmaker Drew Fulton (he who made the short film about my work in the previous post) and photographer/journalist Derrick Z. Jackson.

Evening salon at Hog Island

One of the highlights of the Arts & Birding week is the evening salon. Every night, just before dinner, anyone who wants to share puts out sketchbooks or laptops with slideshows running, and lively conversation ensues. It's a lovely way to come together and see what everyone has been up to during the day.

My second week on Hog Island was for the high-energy Educators' Week. About 50 educators serving the spectrum of learners from PreK to college, schools to nature centers, came together to share ideas and experiences for outdoor education.

Sketching in the gardens at Hog Island

Of course I always make sure there are opportunities for field sketching at camp! We also make journals, and this year I even managed to squeeze a quick printmaking session onto the already-packed schedule.

And in an amusing twist, a few of the new printmakers decide their prints could translate well as temporary tattoos...

I came home this weekend, did the laundry, paid some bills, answered some email, and now I'm ready to pack a bag again! I'm headed back down to Massachusetts for another quick little workshop at the Museum of American Bird Art, and I'm looking forward to catching up with folks in the Boston area. Then it's back to Maine for a printmaking class at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens... at which point it will already be August! Stay tuned.

Workshops everywhere, and some linos, too!

Whew! July and August... what happened to them?

After two weeks of workshops on at Hog Island Audubon Camp and a short workshop at Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge I immediately... led more workshops!

The first week of August I was joined by eleven fun and inspirational women for a week-long field sketching adventure, hosted by the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland. Naturally it was a week of record heat and humidity, but we were fortunate that our class met mornings and we were able to avoid the worst of the oppressive afternoons. We spent time at Owls Head Light, the Rockland South Beach, and in the garden (complete with chickens!) of one of our group members.

Sketching at Owls Head Light

We spent the hottest morning inside the museum, first drawing from Ai Wei Wei's Circle of Animals gold zodiac heads, and then taking a close look at the preliminary drawings for a number of Andrew Wyeth's paintings. Fun!

Sketching in the Ai Wei Wei exhibit at the Farnsworth Art Museum

The group had such a great time that we've scheduled a "reunion" sketch date next week in Rockport Harbor. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again and filling a page or two of my own this time!

I thought I'd be getting back in the studio the following week, but I was called to sub for some workshop sessions back on Hog Island for Family Camp. This time I was sketching with kids and parents and grandparents...

Sketching in the gardens on Hog Island

Whew! All done now, right? Not quite! I had a pile of framing, packing and shipping to do for upcoming shows at Ann Korologos Gallery in Basalt, Colorado and Oh Be Joyful Gallery in Crested Butte, Colorado. It was the first time I had to manage all that in my new place, so it took extra time to figure out new working systems. But I got it all done, and I know at least some of the work has already made it to its destination.

At long last I got into the studio last week, to work on two small linocuts for Project Postcard, coming up during the Birds in Art exhibition at the Woodson Art Museum in Wisconsin. Carving went well, but the morning I set up to print... disaster!!!!

If you've been following along since my move you might know that Presston, my lovely 30 x 60 Takach press, came out of his 6-month storage adventure with a buckled laminate surface on the bed. After some panicked correspondence with the good folks at Takach I was just about to order a new press bed when my neighbor asked if he could take a look at it. 

He pronounced it fixable, and proceeded to help me pull up the loose portions of the laminate and re-adhere them. Hoorah! I got a couple of editions through the press in between the chaos of workshops and workshop prep and kept my fingers crossed.

Unfortunately, no doubt encouraged by our two weeks of record heat and humidity, the portions of the laminate that had been intact in June decided to pull up, creating a big bubble on half of the bed. There was enough flat space for me to print the two tiny (4 x 6) pieces I was working on, but once again I was dead in the water for anything else. 

This time when my neighbor came by we agreed that the best thing to do would be to remove the laminate across the entire press bed... including the areas we had fixed in June... and stick it all back down again. 

As you can imagine, this was a multi-hour, multi-day project. The old adhesive came up fairly easily, but the new stuff we put on in June? Ooph. We finally finished it yesterday. So far it all seems good... so tonight I tore down some paper and started to prep for a new, largeish lino! What a relief. No pun intended.

As for the little pieces created for Project Postcard, I'm afraid I can't show them to you. At least not in full until after the event. But I can make a silly warped image of them...

Assuming I don't run into any more press-related disasters I expect to have this new piece underway tomorrow, so hey! It looks like we might be getting back to our regularly scheduled... schedule. Stay tuned!

Time Out for Arts and Birding

Sketching in the flower garden, Hog Island Audubon Camp

The loon linocut sits waiting to be completed, and it will have to sit for one more week before I can get back in to the studio.

It has to be something pretty special to drag me away when a piece is as close to completion as the loon is, and Hog Island Audubon Camp is definitely special.

I've been traveling from Colorado to Maine to be an instructor at the camp since 2008. The commute is a lot shorter now that I live nearby, but that doesn't diminish the magic of island time.

This past week's session was Arts and Birding, and I was fortunate to team teach the drawing and painting track with the brilliant Jean Mackay. Campers spent a fun week practicing sketching and watercolor skills, working both in the field and in the lab. We hiked to beautiful locations and explored sea life in the intertidal zone, and of course we took a boat trip out to see puffins. Because what's Maine without puffins?

Tomorrow the campers arrive for Educator's Week, so there's more adventure to be had. But next weekend I'll be back in the studio and happily putting the last few passes on the loon. Stay tuned!

Drawing from the specimen collection (and, yes... they always looked this serious!)

Sharing work at nightly salon

Looking for sketching subjects at low tide

Obligatory puffin shot

Evening light at Hog Island

Hog Island Audubon Camp and the Audubon Artist Residency

It's hard to believe that I've been in Maine for almost two months now. That familiar dichotomy of just arrived/been here forever has taken hold and I find myself conflicted, as always, about the approaching transition back to the west.

Here at Hog Island Audubon Camp we just wrapped up another action-packed Educators Week. Fifty teacher-naturalists from across the educational spectrum gathered on the island and spent 5 days learning about the natural history of Maine and sharing ideas about how to bring their enthusiasm for the natural world back to their communities.

It's hands-on for camp participants and their subjects

My friend Trudy finds a mini-island in the middle of the trail and
uses it to explain natural succession

Sing it with me now:
The forest is a wonderful place
A place to find frogs and snakes
I wanna see a salamander's face
The forest is a wonderful place

Journal-building! Stab-bound books are always fun.

There are a zillion images to share about the Hog Island experience, but I don't want miss an opportunity to share our Artist-in-Residence program. Full disclosure: I am the program coordinator, so my excitement about it is sort of a given, but it's the unexpected results of sharing the island with campers and artists simultaneously that really gets me going.

We've had three Artists-in-Residence so far this year, writer Rachel Dickinson, painter Michael Boardman, and photographer Daniel Grenier. Watercolorist Judy Boyd will join us in August.

Dan Grenier was with us these last two weeks, working on a project connecting people who work behind the scenes for the environment to place. He made thoughtful portraits of campers and staff, but not just digital snapshots. Oh, no no no! Check this out:

Photographer-in-Residence Dan Grenier and his large format Linhof camera

We're excited to see the end results of his work, but of course we'll all have to wait... Dan included! I like to think of Hog Island and the Audubon Artist Residency as a bit of a throwback to slower, more thoughtful times, and Dan's project as well as his antique cameras and generous energy were a perfect fit. (Thanks for a great two weeks!)

The application period for the Summer 2018 Residency season will open in mid-October. Check out the information for yourself or someone you know, we'd love to welcome you to the island next year!

Still on the road... or on the sea... or in the woods...

Picture a window seat long enough to sleep on, one that looks out into the thick and richly textured green of the Maine woods. Now picture me, cozy under a puffin-themed quilt, laptop perched across my legs. Rough life, ain't it?

Ah, but it gets worse.

Atlantic puffin on Eastern Egg Rock, Muscongus Bay, Maine

We've been on break this week at Hog Island Audubon Camp, so I've been spending some time with my friend Sue, who is the Assistant Manager of the research islands maintained by Project Puffin. Some of our time has been spent picking up, dropping off, and provisioning researchers, who spend two weeks at a time living and working on one of seven small islands where seabird conservation projects are underway.

Eastern Egg Rock on a calmer, sunnier day

On one of these days we made the logistics run to Eastern Egg Rock, home to the southwest-most Atlantic Puffin colony in the US, and site of Project Puffin's first restoration success. The way it usually works is that we pile people and supplies into a motorboat, make our way out about 9 miles to the Rock. There is no dock and no way to get a large boat close to the island, so we pick up a mooring and someone from the island rows out to us in a small rubber boat. Personnel and supplies are shuttled back and forth, then we drop the mooring and head back to the mainland.

On this day, however, the island personnel had reported a problem with their electrical/solar system, so we were going ashore. Their problem became my gift, as I got to spend about an hour in an observation blind while they worked on the system.

The trip out had been a wet and wild adventure. The seas were very choppy and we were surrounded by rain squalls. We arrived at Eastern Egg Rock soaking wet and very cold... but who cared? We were surrounded by nesting terns, puffins, guillemots, and gulls!

Another rain squall approaches Eastern Egg Rock.

Panorama from my perch in the west observation blind, click to embiggen

Common Tern eggs

Tern chicks demanding a meal

Adult tern responding to the call for food

Laughing gull pair

Black guillemot showing off its bright red feet.

Speaking of guillemots.... this past week we also celebrated International Guillemot Appreciation Day! The endearing faces of puffins attract a lot of attention and adoration, but what about its equally important and intriguing cousin? Mark your calendars and join us next June 27 by donning your black, red, and white attire and whipping some some treats like this 7-Layer Guillie Dip.

Check out that stunning beak interior! Guillemots are something to shout about!

Up Nest... I mean Next.
Some of this seabird ogling will have to stop soon, but other adventures will soon appear. I'm off to Massachusetts on Wednesday, gearing up to present a 2-Day Reduction Linocut workshop at the Museum of American Bird Art in Canton, and then it's back to Hog Island for Educator's Week. Wheeeeeee!

The Maine Event - 2017

If you've been checking in with Brush and Baren for a while this won't be the first time you've encountered a post with photos from the coast of New England instead of the Rocky Mountains. I've been migrating east to be an oh-so-fortunate member of the instructional staff at Hog Island Audubon Camp since 2008, and coming to this chunk of Maine rock every year feels like coming home.

Arrival dock, Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine

This year I'm an instructor for two sessions, Arts & Birding (which starts tomorrow) and Educators Week (which is in July). In between I'm taking care of some tasks relative to the Audubon Artist Residency here on the island and presenting a 2-day Reduction Linocut workshop at the Museum of American Bird Art in Massachusetts. It's a busy summer... but aren't all summers busy?

The highlight of every Hog Island camp session is a boat trip to Eastern Egg Rock, home to a restored Atlantic Puffin colony that is the focus of research and education for Project Puffin. I tagged along on a trip last week and took advantage of the opportunity to be a participant instead of an instructor.

.
Many threatened bird species are colonial nesters, and biologists have successfully used decoys and other techniques (like vocal recordings) to attract birds to suitable habitat. It's a strategy called social attraction; you can think of it as "make it look and sound like a (tern, gannet, puffin, albatross, oystercatcher) party and they'll come."

Social attraction techniques require decoys of the focus species, but it's not like one can walk in to the local hunting outfitter and buy an Atlantic Puffin off the shelf. For many years the manufacture of seabird decoys for bird conservation was the province of Mad River Decoys in Vermont, but when the owners of the company decided to retire, Project Puffin moved the factory here to Maine.

Which is a long introduction to this photo:

A different kind of face painting

It's not a lino, but this blog is called Brush and Baren. That's me, painting face details on a Laysan Albatross decoy.

I did spend a little time this week with my journal, but starting tomorrow we'll be "all sketching - all the time" until next Friday. Hopefully I'll have a thing or two to share with you along the way.

The Sunday Hacker

No, I'm not suggesting that I've taken up a life of techno-crime. Although there is a virus involved.

Mine is the sort of hacking that accompanies a horrible, deep, junky cough that I never saw coming, but which now has me locked in its nefarious grip. To say I'm unhappy about it would be an understatement. Who gets this sort of thing when it's almost April? And where did it come from? I would sincerely like to send it back.

Whilst I'm plotting revenge against all things germ-related, there are a few things that I continue to work on. Doing so distracts my viral overlords from the efforts of my personal rebel forces. (Yep, I'm watching more movies than usual right now.)

Secret unnamed commission project:

Which of course is not so secret now, except that I don't think anyone involved regularly reads Brush and Baren. There could be blog stalkers, I know. It's a risk I'm willing to take. I've become reckless under the influence of germs.

The commission is for either a watercolor or a linocut of black swifts, and honestly I'm still on the fence about how I want to approach it. They're cool little birds that nest behind waterfalls, but their shapes are unfamiliar and challenging to sort out because they're small. And black. And they hang out in shadowy places. Thankfully, preliminary sketches are doable whilst dressed in my battle uniform of bathrobe and slippers:

But wait, there's more!

Arts & Birding Camp, Hog Island Audubon Camp, Maine:

June is coming up faster than you think, and our instructional team has been busy working on the schedule for our great week of sketching, painting, and photography on the island. We have a few spaces left, so please pass the word to anyone you know who might like to join us. (Yes, of COURSE you can come, too!)

Audubon Artist Residency at Hog Island: 

I am indeed thinking a lot about Maine right now, and not just for camp. You may or may not know that I am the Coordinator for the island's Artist in Residence program, and the last few weeks have been filled with selecting, notifying, and then sending an avalanche of forms to our four Residents for 2017. General program information is on the Audubon Residency website, but info about our upcoming season is on the Residency's Facebook page.

2-Day Reduction Linocut workshop, Salida, Colorado:

I can make room for one more person to squeeze into the April 8-9 weekend of printastic fun. To my great surprise and delight I have participants coming from across Colorado and also Nevada and Michigan! I've also had a couple of recent queries for east coast workshops, so I'll be working on that for some future date. 

Sorting, sorting, sorting. Applying, applying, applying. 

To be followed by framing, framing, framing.

It's that time of year! I've been busy submitting work for exhibition juries, and getting organized for upcoming shows. First up is the Colorado Governor's Show at the Loveland Museum. Opening Gala is April 28, show runs through May 28.

Clearly this is no time to be functioning at half speed, so I'm off to send reinforcements and supplies to my valiant white blood cell troopers. I'll let you know when the victory celebration is scheduled. Dare I say it? It's gonna be yuge. 

Artist Residency Opportunity!

Every summer I am so fortunate to spend time at a place I love: Hog Island Audubon Camp, off the coast of Maine. The island itself is a 330-acre wildlife sanctuary, and the energy of the camp community can't be beat.

Long-time readers may recall that I spent all of the summer of 2015 on the island, wearing multiple hats during the course of the season. During that adventure I spent several weeks living in a rustic cabin, partly as Artist-in-Residence, and partly as the person who was going to help formalize the Residency program. Which we did.

The application period for the summer 2017 Residency season has almost reached its deadline: February 1. If you are an artist or writer... or know an artist or writer... whose work could benefit from two weeks of unstructured time in a great environment, I encourage you to take a minute to check out the Audubon Residency at Hog Island. I'd love to meet you there this summer!

(The Residency also has a Facebook page here.)

Hog Island view

The Writer's Cabin / Residency site

The Main Lodge / Residency site

Main Lodge interior

Evening light

Island sunsets are fantastic