Welcome to X-Alt Art Studio

Anita Gilbert and Anthony Vodraska established X-Alt Art Studio in 2007 in a rural location outside of Spencer in Northwest Iowa.  Adrienne Vodraska is an Associate Artist with the Studio and periodically collaborates and exhibits under the X-Alt Art Studio heading.  The Studio consists of three working studios: a clay studio, a digital art studio, and a painting studio plus additional workshops. The Studio is used by the artists to explore and share new techniques that enable each artist to find innovative approaches to support their creative vision.  This blog will allow the individual artists to share with others their thoughts along the path of creating new work, their sources of inspiration, highlight other artists that they admire, their progress on individual works of art or series, and the techniques they are learning or developing to further their artistic expression.    

Currently the artists work with a variety of tools and media.  The clay studio includes equipment for wheel-thrown, slab-built, extruded, oxidation fired, and raku fired clay work employing a variety of glaze and "naked clay" techniques.  The resident artists specialize in both low-fire functional clay and paper-clay sculptural forms utilizing glazes, digital image transfers on glazes, raku firing, saggar firing and non-traditional surface treatments using oil/acrylic patinas and digitally printed polymer gel transfers on clay.

The digital art studio includes high resolution image capture tools, PCs, digital image processing software and large format printing capabilities.  The artists specialize in digital photo-montage compositions on fabric, digital over-glaze decal designs for clay, and digital gel transfers for mixed media work. The painting studio supports acrylic and oil painting on canvas, over-painting digital prints, painting on fired clay sculptural forms, and mono-type work.

There is a lot to explore and share.  We want others to benefit from what we have learned from many artists and how we have adapted their experience to serve our artistic visions.  We hope through your comments and questions to learn something from our readers as well.  Please join us on this journey.