TLC students bought fire and ice to the 2010 Petone Winter Carnival. Students demonstrated ice sculpting, portrait sketching and bought flames to the finale with sculptures in the fire sculpture event. This short video documents some of the projects that TLC students produced over the carnival.

A professed anarchist has become mayor of Reykjavik in Iceland (the nation that led the way in collapso economics).  His name is Jon Gnarr and among other things he is a comedian.  His campaign included a song which you can hear on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxBW4mPzv6E.

Gnarr had to find coalition partners for his party and insisted that he would only accept people who had watched all five seasons of The Wire.  If you’ve seen the series you’ll know how it might serve as a political filter.  Maybe that’s why it was buried after midnight when it screened on New Zealand television (most likely it was because the language is a little unparliamentary and the realism is much more edgy than we’re used to).  If you haven’t seen it, the good news is that it’s widely available on DVD and it’s worth the effort.

David Simon, lead writer, director and producer of The Wire, sees it as a contemporary version of ancient Greek drama.  He says* ‘Instead of the old gods, The Wire is a Greek tragedy in which postmodern institutions are the Olympian forces.  It’s the police department, or the drug economy, or the political structures, or the school administration, or the macroeconomic forces that are throwing the lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no good reason.’

The Wire challenges many of the core myths of our society.  It is extremely local and remarkably international.  Set in Baltimore (not far south of New York) it is packed with ingredients that could only belong to a particular city.  At the same time the dynamics of Baltimore symbolise Everycity.

Simon is fiercely angry about the corruption and stupidity that drives some of our main institutions.  For example, in terms of law and policing he says: ‘I am unalterably opposed to drug prohibition; what began as a war against illicit drugs has mutated into a war on the American underclass, and what drugs have not destroyed in our inner cities, the war against them has.’

One of the consequences for America is that it has placed more than two million people in jail.  In California the state budget for tertiary education is more or less level with the budget for prisons.  In New Zealand our rate of imprisonment is lower but there is big political pressure to jail more people – at a cost of $90,000 per person per year.  Most of the people in jail are from our local ‘underclass’.  Advocates of imprisonment should view The Wire and consider whether there are aspects of law and enforcement which make our communities more dangerous.

Simon also confronts what he calls ‘untethered capitalism run amok’.  He says that the show explores the ways in which ‘power and money actually root themselves in a postmodern American city and … we as an urban people are no longer able to solve our problems or heal our wounds.’  It’s hard to escape the sense that our most fundamental institutions – the law, schools, government, democracy, commerce – can morph into monsters.

New Zealand rates closer to Nirvana than it does to Baltimore although we share many of the same dynamics – mostly on a much smaller scale and without the culture of hand-guns.  TLC’s campus is in the low-decile area of Taita and we see the problems right there.  It isn’t as if our society is falling apart but there are precursors of major trouble.  The Wire is a powerful way of focusing attention and building the courage to try a few things differently.

* In THE WIRE – TRUTH BE TOLD, book by Rafael Alvarez

Who is Katie Houghton-Ward?

It’s a good question. She is an animated personality and she is a woman comic artist, in a medium that’s heavily populated by men. For two years in a row Katie made a pilgrimage to the Comic Con in San Diego USA. We asked her some pressing questions about the Comic con and her practice as a comic artist.

How did you get started?
My first real break was when I got asked to do a weekly comic for a music Magazine called Deckheadz. That went for five years.

What is the Comic con like, who goes to it?
The Comicon is a deluge of geeks and freaks. Each year thousands of people head to San Diego to meet their favorite creators and film stars and many comic creators head there to pitch their work to major publishing companies.

What are some of the Highlights from the Comic Con?
Meeting your heroes.
Getting a shot at landing the big jobs you’ve always dreamed of when you were little.

Do you have any heroes?
Too many to list, but my three faves would be Mike Mignola, Frank Miller, Eric Canette, Simon Bisley…oh that’s four…. There’s so many.

Tell us about the greatest comic writer and comic artist that ever lived?
Well that would have to be Will Eisner, he was pivotal in comics becoming recognized as a true art medium for writing and sequential art.

What process do you have when drawing a comic?
I plot out the characters, create their history and then weave them into a tale.
Or read the script I’ve been sent and then I make thumbnails of the story arc to map the flow. Then I pencil the comic, see if it’s approved and then take it to inks or send it to an inker, then a colourist.

What is the most important thing in creating a comic?
Making the audience become involved with the characters and being true to yourself with artistic authenticity.

Mon 27 – Wed 29 September
10am – 4pm

Drawing / Stone Carving / Life Drawing Ceramics / Printmaking / Photoshop

$199 for 3 days of creative fun and artistic exploration!

Open to anyone 14 years +

(Life Drawing Class students must be at least 16 with parental consent)

Call Programme Support on 0800 ART POWER (0800 278 769) or email ps@tlc.ac.nz to enquire or to register

Summer holiday classes will also be available, so watch this space!

By Jonathan Milne

One of the fears of beginning artists is that others will steal their ideas.  At TLC exhibitions there are stern signs saying NO PHOTOGRAPHY.  I assume that there is a worry that people might use images to make money at the expense of the artist.

Since TLC began in 1988 we have never had any convincing evidence of illicit copying or cheating.  There have been one or two grumbles (‘Your work looks too much like mine’), but on investigation we haven’t found anything other than an overlap of themes and styles.

Cheating turns out to be more complex than it seems.  At one end of the spectrum are brazen, undisputed acts such as wholesale copying and on-selling of movies.  At the other end of the scale are acts which sometimes look more like education than cheating.

We teach children by mimicry (copying) and when it comes to art we blame them for following our teaching too well.  For example, figurative drawing is based on the notion of making a copy of something you can see.  It’s a strange idea because the ‘copy’ is an illusion and it can be made without a shred of creativity.  Meticulous paintings of photographs are called ‘photographic realism’ and they are generally counted as ‘art’.

It is then just a small jump to a ‘style’.  Is it ‘copying’ to make a picture in a pointillist style?  The funny thing is that you can press a button in PhotoShop and achieve a pointillist result with no creative input.

The notion of ‘cheating’ is increasingly blurry.  You can see a vast amount of art for free on the internet, but under some circumstances it is an offence to copy it.  You can borrow a DVD of a movie and view it legally, but if you make a copy you are technically breaking the law.

There are smart marketers who realise that cheating can be good.  Musicians give away segments of their music in the hope that people will ‘steal’ it and thereby help them to sell albums. The same tactic can work for artists.  If your work is seen you have a better chance of making sales.

Education itself is problematic.  How can students engage with art if they’re deemed to be cheating by making copies?  It puzzles me that there are galleries that allow people to make drawings of art while at the same time prohibiting photographs.  Even more problematic, how can critics usefully talk about art without being able to use images?  If artists and their agents are so possessive or greedy that they won’t allow any ‘reasonable use’ of photos, then they are inhibiting education.

When I wrote ‘GO! The Art of Change’ I used nearly 1500 images, almost entirely my own photos, many of which gratefully, were of a substantial number of art works by TLC students.  If we had been required to pay royalties for all the art then the production would have been an economic and legal nightmare.  The book would have been impossible and this is why small countries like New Zealand don’t have many books about their own artists.

I’m therefore drawn to a different notion of ‘cheating’ and ‘copying’.  If the cheat is causing damage by undermining your livelihood, then it is pure, old fashioned cheating and deserves to be penalised.  If there is no damage and of educational value or possible free publicity, then maybe it deserves to be encouraged.

The Kapiti Coast recently played host to its third Kapiti-Horowhenua Annual Art Review. Held at the prestigious Mahara Gallery, the competition attracted 225 entries from 138 artists of all ages and backgrounds and showcased ceramics, mosaics, textiles, multi-media and paintings. The event is gaining in popularity – this year it attracted around 2500 visitors, saw increased sponsorship interest by local businesses and reported a 69% increase in entries from last year.

Amongst those entries and winner of ‘Best Emerging Artist’ was TLC’s own Sharon Hall. A BFA graduate (majoring in 3D) with creative working experience in such industries as the World of Wearable Art and Hoglund Art Glass, Sharon is currently a tutor and coordinator of TLC’s restricted programmes and has worked with glass for the last eight years. “I am attracted to the glass making process itself,” she says. “There is also something comforting about using a material that has been around for thousands of years.” Sharon works specifically with ‘cast glass’ and, in particular, the ‘lost wax’ method. “It’s a fairly laborious process that involves making a wax positive as well as a mould, steaming out the wax and firing it in a kiln. The mould is then cooled slowly and chipped off, so every mould is a ‘one off’. It’s a bit like Christmas at this point, as you kind of unwrap it while brimming with anticipation. I thought this feeling would subside over the years but it hasn’t yet,” she says. “Perhaps when it does I know I need to swap media.”

Once the glass object is unwrapped, the real work begins with the ‘finishing’ stage when the long process of grinding and polishing begins. “I confess the lengthy process can be frustrating,” says Sharon, “especially as you may get a piece to the final finishing stage and then chip it on the grinder. In saying that it hardens you up to failure and makes success even sweeter – cheesy I know! I’m also conscious that I’m making an object that will potentially be floating around the planet for a while, so I have a responsibility to try my best.”

Sharon likes to work on a specific creative idea over a 12-18 month time period. Her current body of work is investigating ‘luck’ and its connection to success. This has culminated in a series of black and white rabbits. It is from this series that Sharon’s winning entry into the Kapiti-Horowhenua Annual Art Review was drawn. Entitled ‘Altar’, the work comprised three components – two life-sized rabbits sitting before a life-sized antler, all made of glass (pictured). It received lots of positive feedback and, for her efforts, Sharon was judged ‘Best Emerging Artist’ by leading New Zealand arts patron Gillian Deane and Wellington gallery director Mark Hutchins.

'Altar' by Sharon Hall

Since the awards, Sharon has continued to explore her current theme. “I have been having fun with the potential relationships that the components can have to each other,” she says. “My work also has a somewhat ‘darker’ side to it as I have worked a lot with animal bones, in particular bird bones. So I was surprised at how much I have enjoyed working with a slightly friendlier image, like the rabbit, without having to compromise on the intention or meaning behind the work,” she adds. Although balancing art making and full-time work can often leave room for little else, Sharon feels that this current body of work still offers rewarding challenges as the process continues to be refined and ideas evolve.

If you would like to see more of Sharon’s work, visit her website at www.sharonhallglass.com.

TLC talks to Anne-Marie Jean in a video interview about her creative process, her painting style and some of the challenges around exhibiting her work.

What is your preferred medium?

While I am interested in lots of different media, including developing my work in 3 dimensions, I can’t escape for long from my love of oil paint.

How would you describe the way you use paint?

I use paint expressively. I want the marks to show the actions I am taking and how I am feeling. I want the marks to talk about physical as well as psychological or spiritual experience and also to acknowledge the medium of paint, its range of physical properties and its use throughout the history of painting.

How do you choose colours and colour combinations?

I am very much intuitive with colour. I start somewhere and I let what is happening on the canvas direct my next move, my next colour choice. Trying to activate a canvas or an area of canvas is like a game. The next choice of colour, its size, position, tone and texture change everything. Each move brings you back to square one. A thrilling and sometimes frustrating process.

What are your subject choices, what do you like to paint?

I use the landscape to inspire my work. It’s forms and colours, smells and light. What it feels like to walk through, sit and study.

Are the landscapes in your work chosen for a particular reason?

The landscapes in my work sometimes represent a place where I have walked and drawn, and often contain more than that, other landscapes, other experiences. What is important is that I regularly connect with the landscape through walking, camping and drawing or painting.

What is the most significant moment you have had as an artist?

When I was nine and our class went outside to draw in the playground. I drew a tree and it really was a tree. I was captivated by the internal experience of looking at the tree and recording what I saw on paper. It changed me somehow, or opened a door.

Who are your favourite artists and what is it you like about them?

My favourite painters are Cy Twombly, for his ability to make the paint express his feelings, beliefs, interests, concerns without the need for realist imagery.  Joan Mitchell, for much the same reason; her colours and marks describe the essence of a place and an experience, not just what something looks like. Patrick Heron, for mark, colour and composition. Jessica Stockholder is my favourite artist working in 3D. Her installations must make the audience feel like they are physically walking inside a painting or drawing. Incredible!

The Artist’s Body
July 24-25 / Rachel Johnstone
What is Performance Art? This weekend class examines artists’ use of self and body as an object in their work and how this mode of working can be incorporated into your own work.
See more here

Every term students fill the walls with artworks in The Learning Connexion’s end of term student exhibition. The most recent exhibition also saw the floors, stairwells, cupboards and lawn covered, as students showed off the fruits of their creative labour.

The exhibition starts with an opening night where students and proud friends and family celebrate creativity. Student work covers a wide range of media, from painting, to sculpture, to jewellery, to video and animation. The exhibition is entirely organised and run by the students themselves and last term’s exhibition was definitely one of the best we’ve seen at our new campus.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

While many people make the trip out to Taita to see the work, we’ve placed a gallery of work online so those who have missed out can continue to appreciate what our students have produced. Our Flickr site is currently showing off over 80 works by TLC students at varying levels in their programmes.

Looking for a quick tip, short project or creative inspiration? Try Quickart!! TLC’s answer for boredom and inspiration. In this episode of Quickart Lucy Adams demonstrates felt making. She shows how you can pummel and beat straggly pieces of wool into a smooth and magical piece of cloth, ready for all your creative needs. Look out for more Quickarts, coming soon.