Bad Art Half Moon Bay - A Year in Review

The was held at my home on Jan. 14, 2011. We are coming up on our one-year anniversary in just a few weeks. A third BAN has sprung up in British Columbia since then, and the base-camp BAN group started in St. Paul, Minnesota by Laurie Phillips and Jon Spayde celebrated its 17th year.

The intention, and schedule, was to hold BAN every other Friday. My personal goal was to never have to cancel or reschedule. As it turned out, I loved having BAN so much that many an “informal” BAN was held on the off-weeks.

In September, when I had packed up the house one Friday morning, and was moving out the next day, I still had BAN. The only furniture in the house was the kitchen island and chairs and I kept jumping up to clean, patch and paint, but we still had BAN. The piece I did that night was very different than regular “good art” I create. The house paint I was using to touch up the walls was used in the piece.  A couple of weeks later, in the new house, the full power was still not installed, but we had BAN anyway. Nothing could stop me from my Friday night routine of .

One “off” night, I sewed the bassinet for my soon-to-be-born grandson while a friend joined me to work on her sketchbook. We talked, sewed and sketched into the wee hours of Saturday. Most of the bassinet turned out well, but there were a couple of bad parts, so in honor of BAN, I just left them as is.

Some weeks, there were 12-15 people who showed up for BAN. Other weeks, just two or three of us showed up. But someone was always here with me on the regular nights.

One week in September, I was in the midst of learning how to do digital image transfers. Someone at BAN asked me about what I was doing, and I broke into an impromptu lesson on how to transfer images, creating four of the most beautiful images of art I’d done all year.

Fast and bad turned out good.

That experience led to me using the transfer process in creating the cat and dog cards I donated to the held in Half Moon Bay (to benefit the Peninsula Humane Society) a few weeks later. As I was doing one of those transfers during BAN, I had to borrow a brayer to press the images. Nancy Struck’s brayer was covered with glitter and paint from a previous project. I didn’t think it would affect my transfers, but to my initial horror and then “go with the flow” amazement, the brayer left a glittery film all over my precious image. The eight transfers I did during BAN were far better than the first pristine eight images I’d done in my studio. An accident ended as an improvement to the end product.

I learned a lot from everyone who came to BAN too. Charie generously shared everything she was learning in her many college art classes throughout the year. Jolene and Sally turned me on to some great watercolor pencils, Nancy West, a local photographer, showed me how to draw with abandon. One late night, Kristine Wong showed Barb and I how to paint over photos in the New York Times Magazine using gesso, then paint over them again with acrylic paint as a way to create a new image yet use the original as a guide. Our paintbrushes covered models' faces (advertising luxury goods) into a new reality. The completed transformations served as an unconventional way to comment on models and the idea of beauty.

The artists who came to BAN consistently report that coming to BAN opens them up to new inspiration and the creation of pieces that they never knew were inside them.

Kristine said that she contemplated for awhile about what materials to use for a piece, but held off starting it as using paint, pens, or making a print of what she wanted to make didn't seem to be right. A week later at BAN, she spontaneously picked up some colored pencils on the table and started the piece - and it worked. "I'm not a big fan of colored pencils nor do I own a good set, so I would never have imagined that this was the right medium to use if I hadn't been at BAN," she said.

“The piece is turning out better than ever because I'm talking to people while I’m making art," she said while drawing. "There's something about the flow of creativity when part of your mind is occupied doing something else."

In February 2011, with two evenings of BAN under her belt, Nancy West said “I am having an amazing time learning to let go and play with pen/ink, pastels and watercolors.  Last night was another wonderful evening with friends: playing, laughing and creating. My brain is on high creativity during BAN!” 

People who attended this year also developed new friendships with other local artists, including many from the Colony of Coastside Artists (CoCA) group thanks to promotion of BAN by , local weaver and jewelry artist.

Linda Theroff, a mixed-media artist and jewelry maker, says "I love that everybody is creating and everyone has a different style. The connection provides lots of news and information about art materials, techniques and events."

Linda writes:

BAN has been so much fun for me, especially meeting new people and spending more time with people I see from another art group that also go to BAN.  I love to see what and how other artists create. Going to BAN is often a goal, a specific time to arrive to create along with company, smiles, and creative energy.  Laura's home is beautiful, nicely-lit, comfortable and clean. It is nice to be there with Laura and anyone else that shows up there.

When I arrive I decide what inspires me or want I want to work on after I say hi and see what everyone else is working on. I have worked on Zentangle designs and applied them to beads, painted a bird picture after having canvases sitting and waiting in my space for months.

The latest BAN evening I attended, Patt invited me to work on a cigar box to decorate it, I watched as a few people torn and applied paper and buttons were glued, I kept eating this delicious chocolate cake and then walked away to watch Laura with her beautiful rich water colors, and crayon resist, inks, patterns, layers and torn papers and words. 

BAN has helped me move my creative energy, even at home to work on completing projects, making a with my daughter and trying new techniques decorating beads and using my Zentangle designs on a rainstick and finishing a group of squirrels made of nuts. 

My goal is to be more spontaneous and flow so I would like to do that soon, be brave, be bad, be free. I remember watching a video on Art 21 where a woman painted a floor in a room with her hair, I'm not ready for that but I sure could loosen up and have even more fun and I think BAN is a good place to start doing that! 

I consistently used BAN to try out things I put in my art “parking lot.” Many times through the week, I would have ideas and new techniques that I would reserve to work on during BAN when had opportunity to things out without the pressure of needing it to turn out successfully.  One BAN, Nancy West’s assignment to herself was to experiment with ink and brushes. She dipped different sized brushes in ink and then let go when she put the brush to paper.

I found my energy when taking up these new ideas within the context of BAN was much more calm and settled. I could say to myself “let’s see what happens” when I worked with a new material. I was also more present to the process, like a child learning to walk or taste something new, I could savor it and deepen my learning. I was more connected to ideas for using the material or process differently, rather than creating what I thought was expected.

As a result, my art branched out into some new, exciting and unexpected areas, including combining watercolor, acrylic ink, white acrylic paint and black ink pens with washi tape on watercolor paper to make small abstract paintings.

BAN artists are planning a show to exhibit work including panel discussions to talk about their process in early 2012. Stay tuned!

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