Avery Maltz

Avery Maltz

VISUAL ARTIST / EXPERIMENTAL INK MAKER

I’m very excited to start this new painting, inspired by an incredible lichen that I recently encountered! I’m fairly certain that this is rock jewel lichen (Calogaya saxicola), but I’m waiting for confirmation from an expert. I’m so in awe of the vibrant colors, this will be a fun one to paint! My love affair with lichen continues!! Today I took a lichen walk with the @santacruzmuseum and saw so many beautiful tiny worlds. I had so much fun today finding and painting mushrooms with @sarahlovebot at @santacruzmuseum!! It was really great to get outside of my normal art practice and experiment a bit. I ended up painting this birds nest fungus on a manzanita twig. The slug is done!! This is a banana slug on redwood bark, painted with ink that I made out of redwood cones, Monterey pine cones, Monterey cypress cones, Bermuda buttercup flowers, and candelabra aloe flowers. I became enamored with banana slugs while still on the east coast and dreaming of living in the redwoods. I was then very excited to join the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department at UCSC and become a slug!! This summer I got to see banana slugs in the wild for the first time and wore my favorite hat for the occasion. Now whenever I see that flash of yellow out on a walk, it’s like a little bit of magic! I had so much fun honoring this amazing creature in pigments harvested from the landscape. Now that my studio is at home, he’s learning to be chill around the paint. Making good progress on the slug today! Just finished my under-drawing for my new painting! I’m very excited to add color and shading. This was inspired by a moment in the redwoods where I watched a banana slug make its way across a fallen log. New ink alert: Monterey Cypress!! This ink smelled absolutely amazing, my whole kitchen smelled like a spicy campfire! I found these cypress cones in the same pile that I found the pine cones from last week’s ink. I knew that I’d get a rich brown out of them, and I’m so happy with this new color! This next ink ended up being a two-for-one! I found some Monterey pine cones in a pile of logs from a downed tree and knew that the tannins would give me a nice brown. They were covered in lace lichen, so I decided to make a bonus ink out of that too! Lace lichen is found on many trees in this area, specifically Monterey pine, and does not harm the tree at all.