Jaime Lyerly Art : Video

Showing posts with label Video. Show all posts

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Total Permission to Say YES to Life!

This is a beautiful video that totally captures the place I am shifting towards.

It is a struggle everyday to be the embodiment of feminine that I am so wanting to be. Yet, I get closer with each time I say YES to living fully, even if I am scared to do so.

Thank you to fellow Guide from The Goddess Life Sheena La Shay for sharing this! Check out Sheena's Facebook page the Sociology of Sheena or her website for more of her juiciness.

Total Permission to say YES to Life Video on YouTube

Are you ready for this? Are you ready to say YES to your soul's desire?

Embracing YES,
Jaime Lyerly

Friday, July 30, 2010

Luminous Layers: Exploring Contemporary Encaustic - Video by Linda Womack

Finally! A great video which shows the shows the versatility of encaustic (hot beeswax) painting and sculpture by contemporary artists.

The video below is by Embracing Encaustic author Linda Womack who was also the curator of the Luminous Layers: Exploring Contemporary Encaustic at the Lake Oswego Festival of the Arts in Oregon.

The show is now closed, but you can get a peek at the work in the video below.

I personally love the sculptural encaustic works, and I am dying to find out the name of the artists. Since 3-D encaustic is where I am working, it is great to find more artists who have "mastered" the techniques and are showing them out. When I get the name of the artists, I will be sure to share them!

So how about you? What is your favorite work in this video? Share in the comments below.

Luminous Layers: Exploring Contemporary Encaustic Video

You can read more about the Luminous Layers show on Linda Womack's Embracing Encaustic blog.

I love encaustic! ~ Jaime Lyerly

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Watch me tonight LIVE on Community Artist Connection Public Access TV show

Haven't gotten enough of me "talking" on my blog? Watch me on TV!

Tonight at 8 pm, I will be interviewed by artist Laura Jean Thompson for her Community Artist Connection Public Access TV Show.

We will be talking about my encaustic art, future career goals and whatever else she throws my way.

I am surprisingly less nervous than I would expect at the moment. However, I am not sure what is going to happen when I actually get there!

You can watch the broadcast LIVE via the internet at the link below. It should be on 8 pm, PST.
Live Broadcast!

There is supposed to be a "Chat" function that you can ask questions which we can see. This is all new to me so I am not sure how that all works. But feel free to check it out!

I am even letting my 13-year-old son watch via the internet at home. He may be the only kid in the world who would want to "chat" with his mom during her interview.

The show will air later on Public Access TV. I will let you know exactly when it will be on.

Okay - time to shove down some dinner and get moving!

Thanks for the support! ~Jaime Lyerly

Friday, June 4, 2010

San Diego area volunteers needed! The Tag Project at Kiku Gardens this Saturday June 5, 2010

Image from the Tag Project Facebook page

In San Diego area and have nothing to do this Saturday morning?

Want to help with an amazing project?

Great! Come join us at the Kiku Gardens as we help Artist Wendy Maruyama "age" tags for her Tag Project: E.O. 9066. See this invite below from Wendy:

The Tag Project will be at Kiku Gardens Saturday, June 5, 2010 from 10 AM - noon. We are now at a point where we need help taking the tags through an aging process (dunking in coffee and krinkling and setting out to dry).

If you would like to help, please bring rubber gloves, old newspapers, and if you have one, a plastic dishpan or some similar plastic container for dunking tags.

Roll up your sleeves, and join the fun!!

Location:

Kiku Gardens
1260 Third Ave.
Chula Vista, CA 91911

Time: 10 AM til 12 pm

Here is more about the Tag Project from the Facebook page:

This project was begun as part of my research on Executive Order 9066: it is the first time I made the personal decision to really look at this sorry chapter in history as a Japanese American artist. I plan to focus on this direction in my work for the next few years.

One project, "The Tag Project", was started in New York - I replicated 1011 tags from internees from my hometown (San Diego/Chula Vista). I was inspired by the thousands of folded origami cranes I saw at the Hiroshima Peace memorial and this group of tags was called "Cascade". I was also deeply moved by the photos of Dorothea Lange, one is shown above: it was her photos that initially provided the physical and emotional weight of the internment, and how it so profoundly affected the Japanese American citizens during and for years to come. All Japanese Americans were rounded up in 1942 and each were issued a tag and an ID number designating their destination: one of several internment camps, all in desolate deserted areas of the United States. The most haunting and striking photos were of the families wearing tags at the various assembly centers before being shipped off by train to these remote areas.

I was taken by the weight of these tags when they were completed and hung, despite appearing to be light and airy. This struck me as being very relevant to the way the internment was perceived by the general American Public. To this day it shocks me to still run into fellow Americans who had no clue that this had happened. I am going to commit to making all 120,000 tags, for all the Japanese Americans who were sent to all the camps. I feel that the sheer numbers and the scale of these tags will convey to all who view this that the internment was a massive project that was to affect an entire culture of people and their future generations.

Find out more on the The TAG Project: E.O. 9066 Blog.

Interview with Wendy in American Craft Magazine - "The Tag Project: In Search of Cultural Memory"

Tag Project Video

The Tag Project | Poston from xavier vasquez on Vimeo.

About Wendy Maruyama -

Wendy Maruyama is Head of the San Diego State Furniture Design /Woodworking program and has taught at SDSU since 1989. Prior to that she has headed programs at California College of Arts and Crafts and at the Appalachian Center for Crafts. She received her BA from San Diego State and MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology. She has been the recipient of a Fulbright Grant to England, foreign travel grants to France and Japan, and four NEA Craftsmen's Fellowships. She also serves on several non-profit boards, including the Furniture Society and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. She is a frequent workshop leader and lecturer and her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. It is documented in numerous publications and included in public collections, among them the Mint Museum of Craft and Design, American Craft Museum, Oakland Museum, Mingei International Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Arizona State University Museum in Tempe.

I know it is late notice, but you really want to come to this event! I would love to see you there.

Happy volunteering! ~ Jaime Lyerly

Monday, April 26, 2010

Thread Sketches - Process and Elaboration

In my post, Thread Sketches - Exploration of Universal Symbols through Machine Embroidery, I gave you a peek at some of my newest non-encaustic / fiber related work.

Now, I want to show you a little of the process and the elaboration that has occurred with these pieces. First, the process.

I was inspired by drawing/carvings on leaves done by Ana Mendieta whom I wrote a research paper on recently.

To give you a taste of this work, here are some of the leaves scanned from the book Ana Mendieta: Earth Body by Olga M. Viso.

Leaves by Ana Mendieta, from Ana Mendieta: Earth Body by Olga Viso

I started my exploration with machine embroidery on fresh magnolia leaves.

Fresh Magnolia Leaves

Here is me working on the leaves (with my freshly dyed purple hair and purple finger tips).

Here are the finished projects two days after they were completed. They have already began to lose their coloring around the stitches.

Machine Embroidery

I then started hand embroidering and pricking designs on the leaves at home. These took much longer than the machine embroidery, but were easier to control.

I could embroider through thicker and bigger leaves with this technique.

Hand Embroidery

This leaf was scanned in about a week after it was done. The white slowly covered the entire area that had been pricked or manipulated.

The back side of the leaves look different than the front.

I continued this exploration of hand embroidery about a week later, shaping them into forms with the thread.

I used a variety of techniques on these leaves.

We began needle felting in my fiber class, which is using wool roving and a barbed needle to puncture the roving through felt.

Here is a short video on needle felting by artist and author Rice Freeman-Zachery called Needle Felting 101

To learn more about needle felting, you can check out Outback Fibers which is where we get the roving.

After a few tests on felt, I knew that this technique would work on my magnolia leaves.

Needle Felted

Here is how this Thread Sketch changed over a week.

I liked how the felt looked like it was growing out of the leaves, so I enhanced that by punching the felt on the "wrong" side.

So what did we learn?

You can embroider or needle felt through anything that you can get the needle in
Natural materials change over time in interesting ways
Anyone can do embroidery or needle felting!
Experimentation is GOOOOD!

That last one is the reason I write this blog - to support other artists by showing them my experiments in hopes that they will be inspired to create.

Your Turn:
Experimented with any new media or techniques recently? Ever tried embroidery or needle felting on something other than cloth? I would love to hear about it! Leave your comments here and share it with us.

Happy experimenting! ~ Jaime Lyerly

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Thread Sketches - Exploration of Universal Symbols through Machine Embroidery

Fiber has becomes an important part of my art recently.

It has opened a new world of art making with a meditative and repetitive process that keeps my hands busy making while my mind is off somewhere else.

Here is the short story of how I got to this point. Read on and be inspired!

Over the summer, I started to intuitively knit sculpture using a loom while the San Diego heat blazed on. It was a savior for me to be able to make something when it was too hot to turn on my encaustic wax.

Every time I would heat up my encaustic wax outside, I questioned my sanity! You don't want to know how miserable I was during this heat. All I wanted to do was make something that didn't require a heat gun.

Knit, knit, knit. I made odd shapes in soft, blood red yarn. They looked like shirt sleeves that morphed into pig organs. But they were fun to make.

So next semester, I enrolled in a Fibers class at San Diego State University which worked with my schedule, which was Fiber Surface Design. Can you imagine my surprise when this class expanded my view of art completely?

Since I have been studying "fine art" at SDSU, I was ignorant of a whole world of contemporary art which is normally shoved under the category of Craft.

My instructor, Kathryn Harris, is an amazing and has opened my eyes to a world where art and craft not only tolerate each other, but actually work together to create art that is unique. Thrilling, right?

So I have a new body of work that is fiber without encaustic wax that I am not sure where it fits into my portfolio. But it is so exciting, I have to share it with you! Here we go...
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Thread Sketches - Exploration of Universal Symbols through Machine Embroidery

Machine embroidery is new to me.

Two months ago, I learned how to hand embroider in Kathryn Harris' Fiber Surface Design class and I love it. It is slow and repetitive. It can be painstakingly exact and rigid.

But it can also be fluid and intuitive. I have replaced my pencil and paper with needle and thread.

So when we moved from the hand to the sewing machine, I was not excited. Why would I want a machine to do the work for me? Because a machine can do what I cannot.

What is free-motion machine embroidery? It is embroidery that can be done with a sewing machine that uses a foot that allows you to move the fabric all around instead of just front to back.

Check out this quick, un-intimidating video by author Rice Freeman Zachery which shows free-motion machine embroidery as an easy way to add decoration.

Free-motion embroidery on a sewing machine is just another tool for expression.

I took scraps of fabric and using the free-motion embroidery foot on the sewing machine, drew on the fabric the universal vagina symbol. I made some more.

The top thread and the bobbin thread are different which makes the front and the back of the piece look different. I love the duality.

White on black. Black on white. White and gray on black. White and gray on white. Black and gray on black. Black on black. The possibilities with only three hues...

I hung them on the wall with pins like my fiber and encaustic sculptures "Fibrous Waximus". Still wasn't sure what to do with them. So made some more.

I made some thread lace using Solvy which is a water soluble plastic wrap. You take one piece of solvy, put some threads on top, then another piece of solvy on top of that. Then you sew through all layers. Rinse the solvy off of the piece and all that remains is the thread.

After showing them to Kathryn, she suggested I try machine embroidery on Solvy. That opened even MORE possibilities.

After doing research on Ana Mendieta for my Contemporary Latin American Art class, I was inspired by her Silueta series.

Ana Mendieta Silueta Series

I made a small homage in machine embroidery to compliment her large scale outlines of the human body.

I embedded a small leave in the belly of the figure to hint at the natural world.

I made another...

Inspired by these, I decided to further my homage to Ana Mendieta by doing machine embroidery on actual leaves.

Mendieta did drawings by piercing on green leaves of universal and feminine symbols. She embraced the changes in the leaves from green to brown.

These have already changed colors, and curled since I first made them on Saturday, and when I scanned them on Sunday. How do you think they will change?

See those gray spots on the left side in between the stitches? Those were not there on Saturday when the leaf was fresh and full of juices.

So what did we learn from this experiment?

Art or Craft? Both? Either way, it is a new way to work
Machine Embroidery is easy to do
Thread lace and solvy are more tools to use
You can bend and break the rules of what is fiber
Inspiration comes from many sources
and for me...Not everything in my artist portfolio NEEDS to be covered in encaustic wax!

I titled these "Thread Sketches" because that is really what they are. A sketch without paper and pencil, and a new way to work.

Your Turn:

I would love to hear what you think! Experienced in the ways of the sewing machine? I bow to your expertise. Always wanted to try free-motion embroidery? Let me know if this helps you to get started.

Happy sketching! ~ Jaime Lyerly