Drinking blue-greens

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Diana Lynn Thompson

Installation Artist

Drinking blue-geens installation 2007 

Diana Lynn Thompson is an installation artist who works with ephemeral moments, accumulated objects, collected stories and insertion/intervention strategies, which she documents in video and photographs.

She took her BFA at the University of Victoria.

Her works have been exhibited, performed and installed

nationally and internationally.

In the 1980’s Diana worked as a park naturalist and botanical illustrator. This background in- and deep love for - biology influences her work, which integrates scientific methodology with a poetic sense of wonder.

She has been known to count every leaf on five trees, patiently collect and pin thousands of pine needles onto

a gallery wall, and distribute 25,000 shaped pieces of shell to people around the world.  She has hand-made and numberedthousands of ceramic stones which she then permanently placed on an eroding beach, and stitched and hung over 8000 brilliant autumn leaves at the SOFA Gallery in Bloomington, Indiana. Currently

she is painting and stringing millions of wooden beads for her ongoing project on cyanobacteria.

Check out her website for many other mind-boggling installation works that she has created. All this written info is from her website.

Polly Hammett

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Polly Hammett is a Signature Member of the American Watercolor Societyand the National Watercolor Society  and a professional member of the American Art Therapy Association. She has designed workshops for counselors, educators and therapists; and has conducted these painting workshops, as well as others, across the country and Canada. She is an exciting and innovative instructor who conducts workshops all around the nation.

According to Polly Hammett, "Each of us is as individual as our fingerprints. This individuality is a result of a lifelong accumulation of information gathered from personal experiences and impressions which provide a strong foundation for future independent growth in our painting as well as all areas of our lives." 

Design with the Figure

In this Creative Catalyst Production instructional DVD,innovative instructor Polly Hammet teaches you mixed media techniques for design with the human figure.

Learn Polly Hammett's unique, multifaceted and open-ended design approach as she develops and completes a painting. From this experienced teacher you will gain skills and techniques in a wide variety of topics:

  • design considerations
  • interaction with models
  • creative use of contour drawing
  • figure placement and the impact on their meaning to the viewer
  • developing a background
  • manipulating dark and light patterns to achieve a strong visual statement
  • lifting lights
  • adding texture
  • use of exaggeration and distortion
  • the importance of transitions
  • stamping.

Polly also shares many insights on subjects integral to being an artist including how to benefit from critique groups. Artists will find Polly's design concepts applicable to any subject.

Diane McCarten

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    "PRESENT PASSAGE" BY Diane McCarten

"The present is continuously passing away & yet it is always here".

This painting of Diane's is part of a group show in Houston, Texas. 10+ is a Houston based artists' group that has been gathering monthly for over 12 years "to share our lives, objectively review our art work & support each other on our artistic journeys. This past year we agreed to read Tolle's book, A New Earth, and to use it as a point of departure for creating individual visual responses to a portion of the book that especially resonated with each one of us. This show, "Present", is the result of our introspection and reaction. Each diverse creation, using color, line & design, holds its own conclusions & truths. Displayed here together, the works acknowledge our collective instinct to connect with one other consciously & respectfully".

"life is a verb"

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          "life is a verb" by Patti Digh
 
Review

"Life is a Verb is brilliantly-crafted, raw, gorgeously-designed, and daringly different from 'self-help' books. It relates, through stories that sparkle and astonish and soar, how to move, to be on your way, to realize who you really are through your actions. Through exercises that you participate in, as if in conversation with the author, you will learn, as she promises in the prologue, 'deeper things—how to know what to care about, how to treat others around you (and yourself), what to question, how to love, what to stand up for, and why you should tell stories and listen to the stories of others.' There is no more important learning.

         So read it. Inhabit it. Breathe in every word, because every word of this book is essential. Let it animate you. Annotate it to make it your own. And then let it let you change yourself, and become who you were intended to be. Begin now. You have no time to lose."
--- Dave Pollard, author of The Natural Entrepreneur, and the weblog How to Save the World