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Community Enthusiast Events at Wet Paint Professionals Students

Wet Paint’s 2nd Annual Summer Postcard Project

Going somewhere fun this summer? Or, having a productive stay-cation? Draw, paint, or mix up your media on a postcard-sized paper and mail it to Wet Paint! We’re putting together an exhibition of mail art from our friends and fans wherever they may be. As postcards arrive, we will photograph them to share on our social media pages and then display them in our storefront windows. At the end of the summer, we’ll host a public art opening here at Wet Paint for all of the contributing artists!

postcardimage15There’s no limit to how many postcards you can send, but in order to participate, postcards have to arrive at Wet Paint via our friendly postal carrier – – no dropping them off at the store! Don’t forget to sign your postcard(s) and let us know how to reach you. We want to make sure we’re crediting you when we post the work online and we want to be able to contact you with details about the end of summer art opening on August 29th.
General Guidelines:
-We are a family-friendly shop, so please tailor your images & words to be suitable for viewers of all ages.
-We reserve the right to not display postcards that we feel are inappropriate for this activity.
-All artwork must be original.
-In order to have your postcard displayed in our end of summer exhibition, you’ll need to have it postmarked by August 21st, 2015.
-All participating mail art must arrive at Wet Paint via US Mail.
-Keep in mind that postcards will “wear” a bit depending on how far they travel- which is part of the fun of mail art!
-Contact your local post office for shipping and postage information.
-Send one or send one every week! We’ve got big windows!

Note: If you are willing, Wet Paint will be up-cycling the postcards (mounting on Strathmore cards) to then donate to Women’s Advocates.  Please let us know if you DO NOT want your postcard donated.
More info about the end of summer exhibition and opening on August 29th to follow.

Wet Paint Address:

Wet Paint
Summer Postcard Project
1684 Grand Ave
St. Paul, MN 55105

Categories
Community Enthusiast Events at Wet Paint Professionals

Graham on Graham – A Winning Combination

gregheadshot
Greg Graham

If you’ve been a customer of Wet Paint over the past twenty years, you know Greg Graham.  Greg came to Wet Paint from New York State via graduate school in printmaking and sales training in the shoe business as well as Arlene’s Artist materials in Albany.  After all these years of Minnesota nice, Greg maintains his New York edge. Many of you get his personalized attention and advice during your regular visits to Wet Paint.  Tonight we put Greg in the spotlight when he will actually demonstrate his painting techniques using one of Wet Paint’s quality lines of acrylic paint.

artgraham
Art Graham

Art Graham got out of art school and learned the art of paint making from the masters in New York City at Grumbacher during that brand’s heyday.  After too many years of big city living and corporate art materials company buyouts, Art moved to Oregon and built his own paint company, M. Graham.  In facilities not much bigger than a three car garage, Art, his partner Diana and a tiny staff, produce watercolor, gouache, oil and acrylic.  He keeps his product lines short and sweet, just doing it his way.  I am always surprised that the big companies in art materials never recognize the quality of Graham’s paints.  In blind testing, his colors repeatedly equal if not surpass the category leaders.

Ignore tonight’s weather and come over to Wet Paint and see Greg Graham’s painting demonstration with Art Graham’s paint.  It is a winning combination.

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Community Enthusiast Events at Wet Paint Professionals

Enkaustikos, a New Wax Cycle

As art movements wax and wane between figurative and landscape, realism and abstraction, the popularity of mediums change with the era too.  Encaustic, the art of painting with wax, is one of the oldest techniques, dating back to antiquity.  Anyone sitting through a required history and techniques class in college touched on the subject.  In the second half of the 20th century, there were diverse individual artists who picked up the process such as Jasper Johns and Brice Marden.  Until recently, dipping into encaustics meant reading recipes, acquiring the raw materials and manufacturing your own color and mediums.

kathryn
Kathryn Bevier monoprint using Enkaustikos paints

As we approached the end of the 20th century, a few art materials manufacturers came up with formulas to create “readymade” encaustic colors and mediums so artists could spend their time making art rather than making paint.  One of these companies, Enkaustikos, has taken the block of colored wax a few steps further.  They looked at the block of wax that artists put into a metal pot on their heated surface to melt and decided to sell their color in shoe polish sized tins to eliminate this step in the process.  Since then they have pressed their wax paint into “Sticks” and “Snaps,” giving the artist smaller increments for using colored wax and also giving them wax shapes to use like drawing materials.  They have taken some of the oldest art materials and reshaped them to meet contemporary artists’ needs.

Hot-Sticks-MonoprintingSome of these developments have turned into great materials to use encaustic techniques in monoprinting.  Printmaking has also experienced resurgence recently.  The marrying of these two techniques reflects the current movement of mixed media art making.

We want you to experience encaustic and encaustic monoprinting for yourself.  Join Kathryn Bevier from Enkaustikos this Saturday, January 18th, at Wet Paint.  Kathryn not only works as an encaustic artist but is involved in the manufacturing of the Enkaustikos product line.  This is a great opportunity to try out something new and ask a bunch of questions of a true expert in the field.

Click here for details and sign up for this demo.

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Community Enthusiast Events at Wet Paint Professionals

Winter Thaw at Wet Paint

bcutts11Mother Nature has given us a nasty New Year’s gift of sub-zero weather.  It is over and we do hope you get out of the house and studio and come and see us at Wet Paint.  We will be heating it up more than usual this Saturday with our friend Bonnie Cutts.  Bonnie is our regional working artist for Golden Artist Colors and she can raise the temp on your artistic flow through her creativity, enthusiasm and product knowledge.  Bonnie will demonstrate Golden Artist’s Colors newest product line, High Flow Acrylics.

bethbonniedoodle
Beth’s doodle with High Flow in a paint marker (yes, that is Bonnie’s picture)

Golden looks at how artists use paint today and formulate their lines to better meet their demands.  They took a limited market product in their airbrush color and transformed it into High Flow so it can be used with airbrush, empty paint markers, technical pens, as well as your more traditional painting tools.

If you’re a seasoned Golden Artist Color enthusiast, you probably wonder what the difference is between High Flow and Fluid.  Bonnie will not just answer that question but let you test the product side by side along with its application to different acrylic grounds.

Darin, Wet Paint’s General Manager, considers Golden’ s High Flow to be one of the hot products of 2013. I just loaded an empty paint marker with some High Flow and it’s quite a bit of drawing fun.

Get those artist juices flowing again.

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Community Enthusiast News & Media Professionals

Painting the Place Between

We are having one of those truly Minnesota weeks where we transition through a wide range of seasons in short order. Just days ago I moved through three different weight coats in one afternoon. By the end of today’s lunch, I had shoveled my sidewalk twice. What was falling from the sky on my way to Wet Paint wasn’t really snow or sleet or rain or hail. If we lived in Iceland or Greenland or Sami country, we would have an exact word for it. And the meteorologists are bracing us for sub-zero temperatures by the weekend. So we figure out how to navigate through our new landscape and still get back and forth to work and get all that holiday shopping done.
Looking at snow I like to focus on the shadows. Years ago, Art Graham added Ultramarine Violet to his watercolor paint line. It seemed odd to me he would add this one color. He told me it was for painting shadows on the snow. Holly Swift’s paintings, currently at Macalester’s gallery, have these haunting violet iridescent passages which remind me of the same unexpected coloration that you don’t see in the landscape until you really look, and then you do.
By Friday we will be in our seasoned Minnesotan zone, ready to weather it all to the Fitzgerald Theatre in downtown Saint Paul to attend the premiere of “Painting the Place Between.” A documentary film by artist Kristen Lowe, it features four of the Twin Cities’ finest landscape painters, Betsy Byers, Jil Evans, Holly Swift and Andrew Wykes. From the video clip I can tell these are the stories of real people weathering their life, their art and their craft in the Minnesota landscape. They split their time between the plein air and the studio with finished works that approach the abstract but are true to “the place between.”
You can still get tickets for Friday’s premiere. Before the showing, there will be a reception with the artists. It should be a great landscape of a weekend.

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Community Enthusiast News & Media Professionals

Wet Paint loves Holly Swift’s New Show at Mac

When you’ve had too much of the seasonal  events get yourself over to see Holly Newton Swift’s exhibit at Macalester College.  It’s a 2 block walk from Wet Paint and worth every step no matter what the weather.

The show includes sketches and fully executed works both in drawing and painting.  Swift studies the landscape and its trees, branches, boulders, water and snow and thoroughly investigates her materials, charcoals and oils, with the same depth.  Her understanding of  subject and materials masterfully comes together in compositions that reinforce both.   She makes the most amazing colors zing out of a palette of greys.

This is another show that confirms Macalester has built a quality space in their newly renovated Law Warschaw Gallery, Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center.  Swift’s paintings just sing in this gallery.  It feels museum-like yet  intimate with soaring ceilings that  never seem to dwarf the art on display.  Its greatest downfall as a college gallery is their limited hours.  Check before you go.  (They will be closed this Thursday and Friday for the Thanksgiving holiday but open Saturday and Sunday from noon to 4. )

You can have another view of Holly Swift’s work through Kristen Lowe’s film “Painting the Place Between.”  Swift along with Betsey Byers, Jil Evans and Andrew Wykes are the four featured landscape painters in the film that will debut at the Fitzgerald Theatre in Saint Paul on December 6th.We have tickets for sale at Wet Paint for this screening.

Woodlands and Waterfalls  by Holly Newton Swift is on display until December 15th

Law Warschaw Gallery

website: macalester.edu/gallery

email: gallery@macalester.edu

phone: 651-696-6416

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Community Enthusiast Events at Wet Paint

Ofrenda “Cigar Box” Workshop

If you have visited Wet Paint during the past 2 weeks, you may have noticed some changes.  What used to be the office, is now housing frames and easels.  We have moved the administrative and management staff off of our main floor, giving us much needed space for products and events.

680470_4440636687970_353664104_oSo on Saturday November 2nd, we will push the easels out of the way and set up for the first in-house Wet Paint workshop. Customers often ask us for classes at Wet Paint.  Our series of in-store “Try-Its” and “Demos” have been very successful, but those in attendance know how our space has been limited.  Last year when Armando Gutiérrez G showed off his decorated alters, ofrendas, and offered customers advice, many begged for a class to actually build their own ofrenda.

This year we are offering a 3.5 hour hands-on workshop so you can make your own ofrenda. Enrollment is limited to 10 and registration is required.

DSC_0135Armando is a longtime friend of Wet Paint.  He works in many mediums and incorporates his strong cultural and spiritual beliefs into his work.  Adding to this his many years of teaching, Armando was perfect at our “Try-It” event last year celebrating the Day of the Dead.  This year’s workshop is a great opportunity to learn from a master with more elbow room than we have ever offered at Wet Paint.   The class fee also covers a cigar box and the art materials to decorate your own ofrenda. You are encouraged to bring your own photos, copies or small items to personalize your box.  Armando will provide an ongoing dialog about the cultural significances of the Day of the Dead and ofrenda as well as tips and techniques to make compelling art in this traditional form.

Check out his website to see his portfolio.

Register for the class online or stop in the store!  Workshop cost is $35 and is 10:30am to 2pm on November 2nd at Wet Paint.

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Community News & Media Professionals

Why Wet Paint loves Greg Graham

Greg at the paper counter at Wet Paint
Greg at the paper counter at Wet Paint
Greg at the paper counter at Wet Paint

Twenty years ago I hired this guy not just with an artist’s attitude but a New York artist’s attitude to boot. I never imagined Greg would turn into a long term employee and be so devoted and committed to Wet Paint, our employees and customers. Greg has grown into a key manager at Wet Paint, keeping the front of the house well stocked and staffed. He is passionate about art materials and loves to share his extensive product knowledge with staff and customers. I am constantly amazed to hear Greg speak of a customer and the products they use; how they use it, and where they are showing their work.

"In Progress" enamel on panel by Gregory Graham
“In Progress” enamel on panel by Gregory Graham

And now Greg’s clientele has the opportunity to view his new work at the Bloomington Theatre and Art Center’s Atrium Gallery. The show includes 60 paintings (yes, 60) ranging in size from 4”x4” to 8”x10” (yes, inches). As a true art supply junkie, they are enamel over acrylic on Ampersand panels. He is currently using the Princeton Select 3750 series of brushes.

So join Greg at the reception for his show this Friday evening, October 4, from 6-8 p.m. I know he will love to see you and talk shop.

Check out his website www.gregorygrahamart.com

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Community Enthusiast Students

Most Often Asked Question at Wet Paint

Susan Rostow demonstrating Akua

If you were to ask Darin, General Manager at Wet Paint, what customers ask for the most that we don’t provide, it would be “classes.”  Besides not having classroom space, we at Wet Paint also believe the Twin Cities offer many options for further artistic learning. We have come up with some unique partnerships to connect those who manufacture art supplies with a number of organizations to bring new learning experiences to our customers and our community.  There are a number of classes and workshops we have helped develop this October featured at existing educational venues with our friends in the art materials industry, our customers and the Twin Cities community.

Mary Esch
Mary Esch

St Paul Community Education still has space open in “Almost Intermediate Drawing & Color Pencil” with Mary Esch.  An internationally recognized artist who has art in the Walker Art Center’s permanent collection, Mary Esch worked at Wet Paint a long, long time ago.  This is a hidden gem of an opportunity to work with this talented artist at Community Ed prices.  The class is held Monday evenings at Creative Arts High School.

Another Community Ed opportunity is “Open Studio Painting” with Dan Mackerman starting October 9th at Edgcumbe Rec Center.  Professional artist Mackerman will help beginning artists decide which is the best wet media for them.  This is a way to experiment with watercolor, acrylic and oil without having to purchase 3 ranges of color.

Brian Buell, president of Logan Graphic Products will teach a ½ day class on DIY mat cutting.  The class, held at Macalester College on October 26th, will take you through border calculation, mounting and cutting both single and double mats.  Brian comes armed with mat cutters and materials for everyone in class to have hands on training. This workshop is also part of St Paul’s Community Ed. Click here to see the entire Community Education Catalog!

Susan Rostow demonstrating Akua
Susan Rostow demonstrating Akua

Wet Paint is pleased to bring Susan Rostow, founder of Akua Inks to the Twin Cities.  Susan became concerned about health safety issues surrounding printmaking and created soy based printing inks which are highly regarded in college printmaking departments.  Besides offering a free talk at Wet Paint the evening of October 11th, Rostow is teaching a workshop at Highpoint Center for Printmaking on Saturday October 12th.  At this writing, there are still some spots open in this workshop.  Read more here!

Yuming Zhu
Yuming Zhu

Yuming Zhu, master of Sumi painting, has come to the Twin Cities for a number of years doing demos at Wet Paint and teaching workshops at some of the art centers in the area.  October 29 and 30, Yuming will teach a two-day workshop called Golden Leaves at White Bear Center for the Arts.  Yuming is a mesmerizing teacher and quite witty, too. This is a way to experience White Bear Center for the Arts’ new building which I saw last week and it is fantastic. Read more here!

All these classes have fees and registration through the organizations presenting the classes and workshops.  Wet Paint is happy that we can pool our resources and bring these opportunities to our community.

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Community Enthusiast Events at Wet Paint News & Media

Spark your Creativity

one of Carla's whimsical bunnies
one of Carla’s whimsical bunnies

We are pleased to have two hours next Monday, August 19th, with Carla Sonheim. Artist, author and teacher, Carla will rev up your creativity through an organic presentation and hands on event like so much of what we do at Wet Paint. Sonheim is finishing up a series of classes at the Midwest Art & Lettering Retreat and we are thrilled to have her visit Wet Paint during her trip to the Upper Midwest. She is widely known for her books “Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists,” “Drawing and Painting Imaginary Animals” and “The Art of Silliness” as well as her retreat workshops and online classes. We will have her books on hand for Carla to autograph. And she will nudge you through some “blob hunting” exercises to inspire and encourage your creativity.

Sonheim's new book
Carla Sonheim’s new book

What really excites me about Carla’s work is how much fun she has. I have watched many of the demos Wet Paint has hosted this summer and many techniques I’ve seen are really created just to get beyond staring at the blank canvas and asking, what am I going to make? She breaks through that barrier and helps you unleash your creativity to turn a contour drawing of a piece of bacon into an imaginary creature looking something like a dog. Not unlike techniques the Surrealists used to draw images out of their unconscious, Sonheim’s exercises will likely find the Dr. Seuss in you rather than the Dr. Freud. The pure joy of being creative. Just what the doctor ordered.

Find out more about Carla at her website www.carlasonheim.com or follow her blog.