Decatur Art Guild

We are super excited to hear from Chandler Hayes at our next Guild meeting. Chandler is a native of Decatur. He has been making and showing art in North Alabama for over 15 years. He has been painting skateboards, spray painting murals, and doing digital illustration. He went to school in New Zealand and has been exploring themes like landscape spirituality and pop culture. He tries to use dynamic compositions and vibrant colors to uplift the viewer and unconventional materials to expand their ideas about what fine art is. .art

Art Guild Room
Decatur-Morgan Archives Building
Third Floor
July 7th - Noon

Our program director, Jennifer Spiller, has a very unique program planned for us this month!!!

We will be meeting this Thursday, at noon as usual-- BUT--- at the Alabama Center for the Arts on 2nd Avenue, just north of the Princess Theatre. There is an exhibit there called "Wild and Precious" where we will meet the artists behind the exhibit. The artists take found objects and turn them into works of art. Afterwards--- we will go to our meeting room-- 624 Bank St (Archives building) on the third floor--- to create our own pieces-- inspired by the exhibit.

The things we will create-- well, the ideas are endless, especially for those of us who love good found objects in our work! You can bring found objects from home-- things from nature, broken bits, shells, corks, vintage papers, just anything!! You may want to cover a broken or cracked pot-- an old silverplate tray-- let your imagination run wild!

Here is some information hat Jennifer shared with us that will help: (concerning a class she took)----Two things have stuck with me: One thing was to go for a walk and pick up a branch, pinecones, anything to create texture. When we got back to the "studio," we used these objects to make marks for what we worked on. The other idea was that we had to find metal objects. I went to a construction site and my Dad's garage for this. Then we used the objects and vinegar to create marks on mixed media paper and watercolor paper, or to dye cheesecloth that was used in our creations. So many things you can do with found objects if we think outside of the box. Below is a list of ideas. Some are quite elaborate. Please do not feel you have to pick from this list of ideas. It is only meant to get you thinking about ideas. Think about the Japanese art - Kintsugi- where they fix broken pottery with gold. Or mosaic artists like Jill Gatewood, who use found objects in their work, or Mentone's very own Scott's Happy Art! In recent years, oyster shell art has become very popular. The ideas are endless

We have at the Guild Room
Acrylic paint
gel or maybe mat medium
pour paint
canvas (small)

We have gel plates coming.

What you need to bring
Your found objects
substrate of choice
craft items needed
For gel prints, if you would like to try that old book paper, or newsprint works well

We hope to see you there on Thursday!! We will have a business meeting after we are back at the meeting room, but it will be brief.