MAGAZINE Porcelain Painters International Online Hello fellow artists,
We at Porcelain Painters International Online are very pleased to have been invited by Roger to be a part of his new venture, his online art magazine. I was very excited when I found his wonderful site and immediately
asked if we could link sites . We want to thank Roger for giving us the opportunity to "spread the word" about our little-known art form: overglaze painting on china...commonly known as "china painting".
I'd like to start off by telling you a little about myself: My name is Marci Blattenberger and although I also work in different mediums such as pastels, acrylics and photography, china painting has my heart. There is no other medium that produces such transluscence and once you paint on porcelain , it becomes addicting!
I've been china painting for over 20 years and have been teaching for a large percentage of that time. My specialties are portraits, cats,barns, florals and a new technique which combines traditional china painting
methods with modern texture and glass fusion techniques.I also enjoy experimenting with crazy luster techniques and am learning to work with raw porcelain clay so I can completely do a project from the ground up...Unlike many people who have an aunt or grandmother who has china painted, I wasn't aware of the art till I bought some beautiful old plates at a flea market. I was fascinated and was lucky enough to stumble upon a very active group of painters in my former hometown of Buffalo, New York and I was able to quickly find a teacher.( I still giggle about my husband, Rex's famous last words after I bought yet another handpainted piece of porcelain from a flea market or antique dealer...he said"You can paint. Why
dont you learn how to do this? It'll be cheaper!"...I'd say, after all the money I have since spent on supplies and white china and kilns and books and seminars,that he would have regretted those words but he is very proud
of my accomplishments (and as I say in the preface of my book"New Ideas for Small Boxes" , he hardly EVER rolls his eyes when I come home with more china.(grin!)
Two years ago, we bought a computer for Christmas and one of the first things I did was a search for china painting. It turned up a wonderful website by Betty Gerstner. Betty was the first china painter to have a
website (she programs for LA county and she is as much a whiz on the computer as she is with a paintbrush ). We started to correspond and she offered to feature some of my paintings on her website. Before long, there were several of us who were writing back and forth about china painting and Betty added several other painters to her web gallery.By fall of 1997, a friend of mine found a free mailing list server and I started the original china painters mailing list where painters could meet to ask for information , exchange ideas and just hang out with other overglaze painters. The list grew rapidly and Betty and I decided to start an online organization for china painters and Porcelain Painters International Online was born.I would like to invite you all to browse our
website at www.porcelainpainters.com . We offer a variety of services: the FREE mailing list which now boasts participation from painters from 23 countries (including Texas... grin),on-line lessons, an antiquities gallery with images of some wonderful porcelain paintings by both masters and talented amateurs, a library which contains many informative articles on
different aspects of the art ,a gallery featuring the work of our talented members and catalogs of china suppliers...with much more planned for the
future, including a searchable database for photographs for use as studies.
In the next issue, I will begin with a little history of overglaze.
Till then,
Marci Blattenberger ( rxguitar@bellsouth.net )
