Los Alamos Studio Tour

Paul Weideman |

4/17/2008 - 4/18/08

The Hill is alive

When Mary Carol Williams talks about watercolor-painting techniques, it comes as no surprise that she was once an environmental chemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Williams, chair of the Los Alamos Studio Tour, which takes place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, April 19, and Sunday, April 20, gives a watercolor demonstration on Sunday at her studio. In a telephone interview, she said she plans to paint a pair of columbines and will work with a glazing technique, demonstrating how the artist can blend colors on the paper instead of on the palette. This technique requires a particular kind of pigment that she calls "pushy."

"Some watercolor pigments are sedimentary; they're heavy and settle in as soon as they're put on paper," Williams explained. "Some are staining, and once they're put down, you're stuck with them. And some are liftable — you can put them in and take the brush over them and pick them up. Then there are the pushy ones, which you can use to paint the bottom of a petal, where the color is deeper. You drop a little of these pushy paints, and it runs out and makes a bloom of color running into the rest of the paper. It's a fun effect for flowers and also sunsets."

Williams lamented that some of the traditional pigments are being suspended by the industry, but this is offset to some degree by the introduction of new ones. "A lot of the early pigments came from the soil, from iron, cobalt, and cadmium, for example, but as chemistry came along we got things like the very intense quinacridones that came out of the automobile industry."

Photography was a hobby for Williams ever since her uncle gave her a Kodak Brownie camera when she was 7 years old. Just before she retired from the Los Alamos lab, she took a class with Española watercolor painter Jan Hart. "That also improved my photography in terms of the ideas of composition and color balance, so now I do a little bit of both, as well as some pastel work and collage." Her favorite subjects include flowers, birds, New Mexico landscapes — she has a special infatuation with Overlook Mesa, on the outskirts of Los Alamos — and the jungles of Costa Rica and Panama.

The Los Alamos Studio Tour, after being held for 10 years, was suspended after the disastrous Cerro Grande Fire of 2000. Williams and other local artists revived the event a few years later.

Several of this year's artists will present their work at their studios, and others will exhibit their creations at Fuller Lodge (2132 Central Ave., 662-9331). The participating artists include Williams; jewelers Linda Ettinger and Kathy Hjeresen; painters Melissa Bartlett, Allen Brown, Marke Talley, Pat Walls, and Karen Wray; photographers Dean Carstens, Eric Peterson, and Bruce Warren; Connie Pacheco, who works in collage and mixed media; and Menolda Bakker, who makes hats.

Tour details are available at www.artfulnm.org/LAST.html, at Fuller Lodge, and at local businesses.

— Paul Weideman