Amplify: Ellen Zangla

As part of my Amplify series, today I am featuring friend and award winning photography Ellen Zangla. Ellen specializes in pet photography, and does an incredible job capturing the personality of each animal.

I don’t remember exactly when I met Ellen, but it was definitely through my wife Joanne. Both Ellen and Joanne are animal lovers and have done lots of work for a variety of animal rescue groups where we live in Virginia, and they move in many of the same circles.

Ellen lives in Hamilton, VA and has been pursuing photography for more than thirty years. In 2009 she decided to merge her love of animals and her love of photography, and began taking photos of pets and animals. Though she also did family photos and high school portraits, Ellen soon move to exclusively photographing pets, and sometimes pets with their people.

I may be a bit biased about Ellen’s work, since she has photographed many of our animals over the years, and I could fill up this feature with all photos of our crew. No matter whose pet she’s photographing, Ellen has a way of capturing animals, and anyone who has ever tried to take a photo of their own pet will know just how hard it is to get a decent photo of an animal. As I browsed through her photos, it was so difficult to just select a few. She has so many amazing photos.

Ellen typically takes photos outside, especially when working with dogs, and will often use her own backyard as the setting. But she is flexible and easily adapts to taking photos inside, especially for animals that can’t be outdoors. Ellen is a master and takes beautiful formal portraits of animals, but it’s the more candid ones that I like — the dog peeking over the fence, the action shot of the dog jumping, or the intimate moment between a kitten and her human mommy. These more informal images particularly pull me in.

Cats and dogs probably make up most of her pet photography, but Ellen never shirks from a challenge, and has photographed rabbits, guinea pigs, lizards, and even chickens.

Though she photographs mainly pets, Ellen has also turned her lens to capture some stunning views of wildlife and nature whether in her own backyard or out somewhere in the wilderness.

Probably more impressive than her skill with the camera and capturing images of animals, is Ellen’s generosity. Ellen has a huge heart, and dedicates a good bit of her time to helping animals in need, including the four legged family members that she has rescued and adopted over the years. Her generosity doesn’t stop there, and she has used her photography to raise tens of thousands of dollars over the years for a variety of local animal welfare and rescue groups. Teaming up with the likes of Leesburg Veterinary Hospital, Woofie’s, Happy Hound, and Dog Day Afternoon Ellen has done community photoshoots such as Santa Paws and Paws and Claus where pets and their people can have their photo taken with Santa. Her work has benefited the Leesburg Veterinary Hospital Pumpkin Fund, Friends of Homeless Animals, Lonely Hearts Animal Rescue, and many others.

Her biggest fundraising adventure most likely is her Tails of Loudoun County coffee table book. In 2018 Ellen began photographing more than 200 pets for the book as a way to raise money for two local animal welfare groups, Friends of Loudoun County Animal Services and Loudoun Community Cat Coalition. Along with the photos, Ellen has included stories of the animals. It’s a beautiful book. Published in November 2019, Tails of Loudoun County has raised nearly $30,000 to help local animals.

Ellen’s photographs are truly wonderful, and they are such a gift to pet lovers. I hope that you’ve enjoyed this little peek into Ellen’s work. To find out more about Ellen and to see so much more of her work, please check out her website and social media platforms.

Find Ellen online:
Website: https://ellenzanglaphotography.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ellenzanglaphotography/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellenzangla/
Tails of Loudoun County Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TailsOfLoudounCounty/

Amplify: Erin Keane

For this week’s Amplify, I wanted to feature another good friend of mine and wonderful artist, Erin Keane.

Erin is an encaustic and book artist who lives just outside of Asheville, North Carolina. Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Erin moved to western North Carolina originally as an art teacher and spent many years teaching middle school art in Brevard, just southwest of Asheville.

I first met Erin more than a decade ago when she took part in a five-day seminar that I was teaching with my fellow Journal Fodder Junkie David Modler at the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching in Cullowhee, NC. Like many art teachers, Erin had lost touch with her own art and wanted to reconnect with it. Dave and I were teaching about the visual journal, and it fit well into this drive to get back to her art. Erin and I stayed in touch over the next several months by working in a collaborative journal. We mailed a small sketchbook back and forth and took turns adding to the pages in a completely collaborative way as a way of inspiring each other and keeping the artmaking going. Check out the images below.

Erin eventually left teaching in the public schools and began pursuing her art full time. She apprenticed with a local book artist and fell in love with bookbinding, and around the the same time she discovered the art of encaustic. These two art forms would be separate veins of her work for awhile, but eventually Erin brought the two together and began to create encaustic journals and sculptural books.

Here are a couple of her sculptural designs.

In her encaustic work, Erin uses photography as the basis of her pieces, but she doesn’t just snap images of objects or scenes. She captures reflections in windows or employs purposeful camera motion to blur and distort the image. Erin says about her process, “I am especially interested in elasticity of light as it dances around reflection, shadow, and motion.” Once she captures a number of images, she prints them and transfers the ink of the prints to wood panels. Then the magic happens! She covers the transferred photos with layers of encaustic beeswax giving the final image a softness and a unique glow of saturated color.

Check out some of Erin’s encaustic work below. The photos don’t do the work justice, and they really need to be seen in person.

Erin’s bookbinding ranges from practical journals meant to be drawn, written, or worked in to journals meant to be stand alone works of art in and of themselves. She has also begun exploring bookmaking in sculptural terms creating complex structures that explore a variety of configurations and conceptual considerations.

Here are a couple of Erin’s functional journals.

Along with creating work, Erin exhibits her art widely, and is represented by several galleries in western North Carolina including 310 ART, The Gallery at Flat Rock, Penland Gallery, The Bascom, and Southern Highland Craft Guild. She also shares her artistic process in a variety of classes and workshops throughout western North Carolina and beyond.

Erin has been a big inspiration to me over the years, and watching her transition from art teacher to self-sustaining artist really inspired me in my own journey as I made the decision to leave teaching in the public schools and pursue my own art. I love being a witness to journey of other artists, and I have been awed over the years as I’ve watched Erin’s. I hope that you enjoy her work as much as I do, and if you’re ever in or around Asheville, NC, make sure to check out her work in person.

Find out more about Erin and see more of her wonderful art on her website and social media channels.

Website: www.erinkeane.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ErinKeaneStudio
Instagram: www.instagram.com/erinbeankeane

Amplify: Steve Loya

As we’ve all been staying at home on lock down and quarantine, we need connection more than ever, and I believe that only by uplift each other will we make it through this COVID-19 crisis with our sanity. Ever since this began, one thought — one word has been popping into my mind with greater and greater frequency — amplify. It’s too easy to focus on all of the negativity, and it eats away at your heart. I’ve been thinking about how we need to come together and help amplify the positivity that others bring to the world, and I’ve been loving how artists, musicians, writers, and performers have been stepping up. And I want to do my small part.

I want to start highlighting, uplifting, and amplifying my fellow creative folks — some are good friends of mine, some are social media connections, some are just folks that I admire, and some are downright heroes of mine. I just want to share them with my little slice of the world.

I want to start off with artist and educator Steve Loya.

I have known Steve for nearly 30 years, and we met our freshmen year at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania in 1991. We were both art education majors, but we didn’t meet in an art class or an education class. We met through Steve’s roommate when I needed to borrow a word processor for an English class, and we’ve been friends ever since.

It has been a pleasure watching Steve’s journey these past 29 years, and I am continually blown away by his prodigious output and his willingness to explore and experiment with new materials and new styles.

Steve has always been a lover of nature whether it was wondering the woods around his house where he grew up just north of Pittsburgh, PA or hiking the Appalachian Trail near his one now in Northern Virginia. Steve has explored that love of nature in his sketchbooks with countless drawings and sketches of trees, animals, and plants, and also in more resolved work like his Endangered Kingdom and Trees I’ve Known series. With his Endangered Kingdom series Steve researched a wide variety of endangered  animals and created an ink drawing of each animal on a watercolor background giving each animal a crown with unique details. As the title suggests, his Trees I’ve Known features a wide variety of trees that Steve has drawn in person.

Besides nature, Steve uses his imagination as a source of inspiration and is known for creations he calls Splotch Monsters. His process is simple. He typically creates a splotch from watercolor or ink, allows it to dry completely, and then draws in details with a variety of pens creating whimsical monsters. Sometimes he is more random with the splotches, and at other times, he is more controlled with the splotches. But there is always a good amount of chance and unpredictability with them.

Recently Steve has been exploring abstract painting using acrylic paint on canvas. In these paintings, he builds layers of paint allowing spontaneity and chance to have a vital role in the process. These paintings are very much inspired by Steve’s love of music, and have been influenced by the notion of chromesthesia, which is when a person sees sound as color. Though Steve doesn’t have chromasthesia himself, it provides a way of thinking about sound and music.

I admire Steve not just for all of the artwork that he puts out, but his ability to get his work seen. Over the years, he has had his work displayed all over in Virginia, Maryland, and DC whether it’s been part of group exhibits or solo shows, and it seems that he’s always got some show coming up.

It’s been so much fun being a witness to Steve’s journey. He’s such an inspiration! You can check out a recent podcast episode where I interview Steve here.

To see more of Steve and his creations make certain to check out his website, blogs, and social media!

Website: www.steveloya.com
Blog: www.goflyingtrtl.blogspot.com
Blog: www.asplotchmonsteraday.blogspot.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/splotchmonsterisland
Instagram: www.instagram.com/sloya72
Instagram: www.instagram.com/splotchmonsterisland

Connect, Inspire, and Grow

It’s been quite a while since I sat down, and created an honest to goodness blog post. I was posting Journal Friday videos here for a while, but that has slowly tapered off simply because it’s easier to post the videos directly to social media. check out my Facebook and Instagram pages for them.

Still there’s a part of me that loves to share more in depth through the blog — to sit down and allow thoughts to stream out, but it seems that I’m too busy, too tired, are just too lazy. The unfortunate consequence has been that the blog has been a bit neglected, so I decided to sit down today and share a bit about what’s been going on in my world lately.

Since September, I’ve been teaching and traveling quite a bit, trying to share my art and my process with as many people as possible. That has meant workshops at the art center that I manage, traveling to the beach for Art and Soul, and partaking in several art education conferences in different states. It’s meant a lot of driving, some flying, and a lot of good conversations along the way. I finally have a lull in the action.

I love connecting with folks, and though I love connecting virtually through social media, this blog, and my podcast, I love it even more when I can connect face-to-face with folks, and not only share my words, but share my art and my journals.

I won’t go into all of the details, but there was one major take away from all of this traveling and teaching — art is a very powerful, transformative process. Again and again, I heard from people how art, especially the visual journal is a life changer and a life saver. I’ve always known that from my personal experience, but connecting with so many people in different places really drove it home for me. I think I may have lost sight of that, and these past couple of months have me rethinking and reevaluating my approach.

The gears have started to spin, and ideas have started to flow. I can’t wait to share more as time progresses. Until then, thank you so much for being a part of this journey!

Journal Friday #83: Collaboration

Today was a day working in three small, collaborative journals. Though I most often work in a large 11 inch by 14 inch journal, I do have other sizes of journals to work in as well, and right now I have three 4 inch by 6 inch collaborative journals that I’m working in.

Perhaps you have taken part in a round robin where a group of people send their journals around to each other, working and adding to each other’s journals. Well, this is similar, but a little different. These journals are part of the tet[R]ad: Draw and Play Here project developed by two close friends and artistic accomplices, David Modler and Sam Peck. With this project, journals are usually exchanged one-on-one, so you always know who has the journal. Also, the journal is a true space of collaboration. In a traditional round robin, each artist has their own pages, but with the tet[R]ad project, any and all pages can be worked on and added to by each artist making the process about negotiation and response.

That means looking through what other artists have done, and deciding when and if to add to a page. Sometimes a page is completed by primarily one of us, and other times, a page is a blend of each of us as lines and imagery, color and text, style and techniques of different individuals merge and blend. This collaboration offers surprises and new directions, and it also offers risk and vulnerability. It’s like a conversation as I put something on a page and wait for a response, and so I’ll put down some watercolor or lines or a little collage. I might layer a few things together allowing room for the other person to add and expand upon the things that I’ve started. I also “listen” to what has been said by the other person and respond to the ideas, images, and elements already on the page, and I can continue a thought or change the direction all together.

It’s a challenge to collaborate with another artist when that collaboration is strictly on the pages since they most often live far away in a different state. It’s a collaboration with in the space of the journal since we don’t talk about, discuss, or plan what happens within those pages, and that’s what is fun and challenging about it.

To find out more about the project, check out the Draw and Play here website (which by the way, I designed!)