Voyager dans l’imaginaire/Journey Into imagination

Avec/with: Elissa Baltzer

le 30 mai 2014 /May 30th 2014

14:00-17:00 @ le Milieu 1251 Robin,

Montréal

$15/pers

A multi-media artistic journey through creativity into imagination and form. Un atelier mixte-media qui vous fera voyager dans l’imaginare et la créativité.

Fro more info please contact me at elissabaltzer@gmail.com or check out the event on https://www.facebook.com/events/1450574285187598/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming" target="_blank">FaceBook

Pour plus d'info svp veuillez me contacter @  elissabaltzer@gmail.com ou aller voir l'evenement sur https://www.facebook.com/events/1450574285187598/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming" target="_blank">Facebook

www.elissabaltzer.com

http://www.lemilieu.ca

This past Summer at Openmind a friend of mine approached me to see if I would make her a tattoo. She really loves the new work I have been doing and decided she would like a piece of it inked into her skin and so the creation of a tattoo for her began.

Starting as ideas that she and I had agreed upon by poring through the work I had created in the past we began imagining what her tattoo might look like. We added elements, chose colours, ruled things out. Bit by bit it came together through discussion and co-creativity and today it is finished(my part at least the ink remains to be done-but she has already chosen her tattoo artist).

This was a really novel experience for me and one I look forward to repeating in the future for other people. I am honoured that someone loves my art enough that they want to wear it everyday. This will be the second piece of my art (that i know of-though if any of you have tattooed my work in the past on yourselves I would LOVE to see photos!) that someone will have gotten inked on since I have been creating art. The first was a body painting piece that I did on someone's leg of a light house that they decided they liked so much they got it put on permanently.

So if any of you have decide that today's the day that you need a tat design done let me know!

(the piece I was working on there-a work in progress)

Yesterday afternoon I walked through this sunny, windy city and one metro ride later made my way to Beaudry and the short trek up to Co-op le Milieu from there. It was my second time there, the first having been to drop of my artwork for the Croire show a couple of weeks prior.

The first time I went I was invited to stay and create with the others there but politely declined due to the usual time constraints and not having brought my art stuff. However, in my little artist's heart of hearts, I really just wanted to sit down and let loose with the creativity, time constraits be damned because that is what this amazing art supply lined space with it's inviting wooden tables and freshly brewed cups of handmade coffees and teas calls you to do. It is brimming with creative energy and amazing people making very cool things.

Yesterday I went intentionally, excited by the knowledge that i could stay as long as I wanted beacause my afternoon was mine. in arriving at le Milieu I had the beautiful surprise of running into a friend of mine unexpectedly and getting to take in all of the colours and sights and sounds of people creating there. There was a textile art therapy group happening while I sat snuggled into a couch and a sunbeam drawing. A table of regualrs were chatting and making stuff and one lone woman at another table was happily painting away at a papier maché creation that she was working on, meanwhile a mom and her baby were playing on the floor nearby. 

I had the chance to meet the two lovely co-founders of this space as well as one of the work shop profs and a few of the participants. The atmosphere is open and welcoming and they have an amazingly diverse and interesting array of workshops and community events they offer as well as just open studio time.

If you are looking for a beautiful, soul-full creative community this is a fantastic place to start that search or to continue it. Check them out here www.lemilieu.ca/en/ or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/cooplemilieu?fref=ts . Happy creating!

Hey to all of you lovely people! As we are heading into Spring and have hopes of warmer times and heartwarming moments to come this fantastic group show is opening up at le Milieu on the 17th of March. It is an interfaith collection of works that celebrate the artists' vision of the divine and what they believe in, what speaks to their heart. A couple of my Greenmen will be on display. I'll be there myself for the vernissage! Hope to see you there.

So there is this amazing group of artists who are passionate about drawing from life all over the city here in Montreal. They call themselves Urban Sketchers Montreal. They are part of a larger movement of Urban Sketchers and I have to say that spending a day with them is a lot of fun. For the past 2 months I have attended outings to both the Redpath Museum at McGill as well as the Montreal Muséé des Beaux Arts an had a blast both times. I drew things I never would have  drawn otherwise. I discovered parts of the city I hadn't necessarily seen and rediscovered others I had but with new eyes. The Museum doesn't look the same when you are hunting for something inspiring to draw!

The group meets on the last Sunday of each month (mostly in indoor venues when the weather turns cold and for outdoor adventures for the warmer months) and they draw the parts of the city, wherever they meet, that inspire them. The events are free and at lunch time everyone meets up to share their work and eat together before they set out again to discover new things to draw.

There are artists sketching other artist's sketching stuff. There are artists sketching architecture, indoors, outdoors and anything else that catches their interest. There are artists making art and having fun. Big sketches spawled over several pages, little sketches peeking from sketchbooks, many different types of media. This group is eclectic and fantastic and they love what they do. If you want to see your city through new eyes and your media of choice I highly reccomend joining them for a Sunday outing, new sights await you and so does a welcoming community of Urban Artists! For more info check out their website here.

Redpath Museum

Dromeosaurus Albertensis

A new piece of mine entitled "Heart of the Family Tree" is currently showing in a group context at Gallerie Ame Art in Mile End. It is a piece about the love necesary for a family tree to grow through the years. The show goes until the 25. If you are in the neighbourhood please drop by and check it out.

Recently I have started these Rorschach Tales. A flowing continuation of my previous work and an exploration into water colour I have been doing these little pieces as I travel around. Toting only a micron pen, my Moleskine water colour sketchbook (of which I have grown pretty fond in the past 2 months...if you are thinking of trying one I can only reccommend it) and a couple of Koi brushes with reservoirs of water in them; my kit is prett transportable. 

The process of finding the stories is similar to what I was doing before with my Linear Fairytales only this time instead of looking for what i see in a line I create pools of watercolour, let them dry and then go hunting for hidden images and stories in the resulting landscape left on the page.

I am really enjoying creating these and the process. Working in Watercolours again has been liberating. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the work, please feel free to leave a comment.

FREE DIVING WITH ANUBIS (a work in progress)

THE MOUNTAIN KING

OF FISH AND RABBITS

Montreal as the new Gotham

16 x 20

Mixed media

2013

This piece was created both at gallery Fleurbain live, as well as at home in my studio for Culture Days. It was done for an event at Fleurbain Gallery called "View from the 9th Window" celebrating the Montreal skyline as seen from the gallery. I spent several hours looking through the window with binoculars, pencil or paintbrush in hand, making sketches to get the feeling and the lines down. To capture the very essence of what I was seeing and then translate it into the image you are seeing today. At home from photos I refined the lines and details using illustration markers and acrylics.

When I originally learned about this show I had a very specific idea in mind basedon an on going cycle of life and death that was connected to a bird’s nest nestled into the church tower, if you look closely you still can see it over there now. I came prepared to do a detailed work of that part of the church and it’s story, but in the end I got lost in the beauty of the neo gothic architecture of the church itself that you can see from Fleurbain’s window and so the painting I had in mind honoring the natural cycles of life and death in the city became a detail and the architecture became the painting.

While painting it I was reminded of the architecture depicted in various Batman comics of Gotham City and with all of the stories of corruption and a city crumbling apart at the seams that are part of Montreal right now I figured that “Montreal as the new Gotham” seemed like a fitting title for this piece.