::  Taught by Elsah Cort, artist and web presence consultant

:: Location available in Three Rivers,
but also can be where you live (WiFi is required.)

“Make Art” digital collage © Elsah Cort

Note to Artists (and anyone who wants some online exposure for what you are up to) > Take a deep breath and let go of your reluctance for making a creative splash in the world wide web.

This will take you step by step in making a “blog” as a website. You won’t need to know how to use website design software to do this. You won’t need to purchase expensive website software to do this. You won’t need to hire a web designer to make changes on your website later on.

You will be able to easily and quickly showcase your art, your business or whatever is your special niche. You will have an online “business card” you can share with your customers, clients, art patrons and friends. You won’t be using up a lot of precious art-making time on the computer. You will be able to integrate quick postings into your regular creative schedule. Or, even into your irregular schedule.

The free blogging platform used in this workshop will be wordpress.com, which has wonderful, sophisticated and simple templates for the design and framework of your website. So you won’t have to create a design from scratch.

Call Elsah Cort at 559-561-4671 to sign up.
Number of spaces is limited to six persons.
Registration fee is $50. VISA, MC and Discover, check, cash accepted.
Fee covers both sessions.
No refund for cancellation or missing a session.

Laptop is preferred, not exactly required, but you won’t be able to progress as easily without one. You can share one with a friend, provided the friend signs up with you, of course!

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Samples of websites “made from a blog” template linked below.
(all made by Elsah Cort)

altapeakcnps.org

redbudfestival.wordpress.com

maingalleryvisalia.com

engshuifun.com

digital collage  © Elsah Cort

Weeds are just notions in our minds, after all, and I do hate to pluck to death those brave plants who want to live where I want to walk. Start anywhere, I tell myself, compost the weeds, invite them to be reborn into wildflowers.  I transplant the non-weeds—the poppies, the purple alyssum, the love-in-the-mist, the bush lupine seedlings, the rose campion (all derived by original plants and seeds given to me by Marion Gray in the late 1970′s), the sacred native white sage and the black sage, the mountain mahogany (I have four of these sprouted near my front door right now), tons of Spanish lavender, and purple violets, which have popped up in the path instead of the garden beds.

And when the weeding becomes just too much to bear, there is always photographing blossoms for future art works, and pressing flowers and leaves in old phone books for flower mandalas or swirled in handmade paper pulp.

Or, I  just sit, doing absolutely nothing, except sniffing the air for the first waft of the intoxicating scent of the ceonothus, wild native lilac (already one lilac bush is in bloom with its tiny white blossoms) at the meadow’s edge.

“Flowers changed the face of the planet. Without them, the world we know—even man himself—would never have existed. Francis Thompson, the English poet, once wrote that one could not pluck a flower without troubling a star. Intuitively he had sensed like a naturalist the enormous interlinked complexity of life. Today we know that the appearance of the flowers contained also the equally mystifying emergence of man.” from the essay by Loren Eiseley called “How Flowers Changed the World”.

photo by Elsah Cort

A Sunday trek to Fresno for an art fix and some Trader Joe goodies, led me to this tree in the courtyard of the Fresno Art Museum and my camera and I caressed the bark. Now a new series of collage work is showing up.

from the Bark Series

The natural world does not call itself an artist, yet in every aspect of its existence, art is living. This tree stood very still for me as I made hundreds of photographs of it. It was hard to leave, but I will be back.

The Hatchery Series images were photographed during a one day art exhibition in the small Sierra Nevada foothill community of Badger, California. The show was called “Free Range” and included a wide range of art, some installation work as well as monoprints, paintings, collage, photography and video. The building was actually a series of several large Butler buildings joined together. It was originally built by the group called Synanon which lived on the property many years ago. The huge structure had been used briefly as a charter school, then abandoned to the cows and ghosts.

It has been re-invented as The Hatchery.

The Hatchery artists pulled up some of old carpeting, tidied it up but not too much, and used some of the found materials and walls to create new art. I was literally mesmerized by the space, and my camera lens attached itself to scene after scene. I could not stop making photographs as I meandered through the immense “rooms”.

This one day experience came about with some elbow grease, an organic vision via a handful of gifted artists (some local, some from the Bay Area) and showed how creative expression does not have to be a big production. I look forward to the next hatching from this group (they call themselves the Shadequarter Artists Initiative) and another breakthrough look-see.

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Images © Elsah Cort

Apple made their first computers in 1976.

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Christies is going to auction one of the first apple computers, the Apple 1.

“Be Crumbled” digital collage © Elsah Cort
[first attempt...it's all process]

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PS.  I used Indesign to make the final image.

photograph “mind over matter” ©Elsah Cort

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Just made ten twelve new square images for the hatchery card series, all from photographs made yesterday in that surreal space. The cards will debut at the Kaweah Land and Arts Festival next Saturday.

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Some of the artists showing yesterday at The Hatchery were:

Robert Mertens

Jane Ziegler

Matthew Rangel

James Stark

Anne M. Klint

Matthew Hopson-Walker

Just finished making the little “yearbook” for our local garden club.
Here is the cover…it’s 5.5 inches by 4.25 inches.
The yearbook lists members, meeting dates and programs, resources.
[There are some member openings, in case you live near by
and love gardening, especially with native plants.]

Image Source: expo-renoir.com

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Favorite post from Design Sponge this week is about gallery walls in your home. I love mixing it up on my walls and encourage you to move the art around on your walls today, even just a little. Add some, take some away (just for a while…) and here is an idea—save a closet or a storage space just f…or your favorite art. Let your art collection rest here from time to time, so you have room to add new works, either of your own making or from our wonderful local artists. You can never waste money when you purchase artwork that tugs at you, in any way, or for whatever known, or unknown, reason.

Read Design Sponge’s post called “Sneak Peek of Best of Gallery Walls.”

Image sources are cited on Design Sponge under each photo.