If you’ve driven down McCallie Avenue in the last three years, you’ve seen Ali Kay’s work. She painted the mural near Holtzclaw Avenue of the young aviator wearing goggles and flying through the air.
You’ve also seen her work if you’ve visited the MetalTek offices on South Creek Road. She painted the mural in the lobby and at other MetalTek offices around the country.
Kay is a muralist who has created decorative pieces for clients, both private and commercial, around the country through her Positive Space business inside the Chattanooga WorkSpace studios on Sixth Street.
The former Texan is known both for her work and her workshops, and she recently taught two two-day workshops called Reactive Art at WorkSpace. She broke them up to accommodate the 27 people who signed up, people who came from California, Illinois, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Maine, Florida and New York.
The two workshops were identical in nature, but were split up to accommodate the large number of attendees. Participants learned to create pieces that react with different materials.
The visiting artists did a total of three pieces, with the first two being similar to Kay’s examples and a third where they were asked to do something original.“Most of these people are decorative arts professionals, but some are artists as well,” she says.
The workshop was both a lesson in painting a piece of art and in technique, specifically working with reactive paints, which can be applied to almost any material and made to look like a piece of iron that has rusted or a piece of weathered bronze or copper, without the wait.
“It was both,” Kay says.
Melody Peacock Brooks also teaches decorative art technique through her business, Hoity-Toity Peacock, in Brenham, Texas, and signed up for the seminar to learn from Kay. While she doesn’t try to copy Kay in her own teaching, she does borrow a tip or a technique or two, she says.
“I like how Ali teaches. She is an excellent teacher. She is really, really good,” Brooks says. “I’ve seen people with no artistic ability leave her class and do good work.”
Brooks says she picked up some tips on applying layers and washes. Reactive paints can be “applied to anything. Plastic, furniture, wood. Anything, so there are lots of applications,” she explains.
Terry Hansen Leibenguth is a decorative artist from Portland, Ore., with 23 years of experience working with plasters, glazes and stencils. She wanted to expand her repertoire and knew of Kay’s work so she signed up for the workshop, too.
“I love Ali and her style and technique,” she says.
A week after the workshop, Leibenguth was back home in Portland, creating a 10-foot Spider-Man mural for a client. She says she chose to attend Kay’s workshop to get a better handle on the use of color and to expand her own artistic palette.
“What she does is way different than what I do,” Leibenguth says. “I’ve worked with rust, but not reactive paints.”
She says she is more likely to use the reactive paints in art pieces she might create than in a decorative art piece like on a wall because the paint would likely run or drip.
Kay says the class focused on donated products by Golden Artist Colors, Modern Masters-Metal Effects and Faux Effects International. She’s done four workshops over the last two years here in town, but has done several others around the country as a member of the International Decorative Artisans League, a group formed in 2008. It was originally the Stencil Artisans League Inc.
Kay’s workshops have included portraiture and painting landscapes, specifically trees.
“I only do a couple a year because they are really demanding,” she says.
Fellow Chattanooga WorkSpace artist Hollie Berry assisted with the Reactive Arts class. Berry is known for her equine works, in particular her scorched wood pieces, but she does other types of art as well. She did the McCallie mural next to Kay’s of the four stained-glass style panels called “Four Horse Women.”
“I wanted to learn how to do this, and help Ali,” she says.
Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.