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