It needed something...

After living with this 24" x 18" collage for awhile, I decided it needed something in the middle ground. I decided to add a rock into the grassland. Presto Change-o! I like it better now.  :-)

It all worked out

The woman who commissioned two pieces from me (see April 23rd post) to go with two others she'd purchased from Xanadu Gallery sent an email after they'd received the package. She said they really loved the barrel cactus close-up piece, but it wasn't working with the grouping and was like the song form Sesame Street "One of these just doesn't belong here..." HA! I told her I wondered if it would "play well with others" as it had a very dominant personality. She expressed interest in getting another 12"x12" landscape of mine at Xanadu, so we decided she should ship the cactus piece to the gallery and they would send her the landscape. She sent this photo of how the arrangement looks with the watercolor they already owned. They're very happy with the grouping and I think it looks great!

Marion Fine Arts Festival

One of the places that sells my art is Campbell Steele Gallery in Marion, Iowa. (Marion is adjacent to Cedar Rapids.) They have an annual Marion Arts Festival in the city park right across the street from the gallery and the day of the festival is a busy one in the gallery. (The festival is ranked #17 among the top tier of fine art events in the nation!) The gallery owner asked me to send some more pieces for the event, held May 26th. I'm working on one more piece and will then send four 8"x8" pieces and four 12"x6" works.

Commissions Complete

I completed my commissions and sent them off on Friday. I've been doing mostly landscapes, so working on the close up of the cactus was really fun and gives me new ideas to pursue...check back to see!

Studio Time

I've been spending as much time in my studio as I can. I started the above piece last weekend and then worked on it during the week whenever possible. It is another 24"W x 18"H piece to submit to the Cincinnati "Art Comes Alive" exhibition. In addition to the three digital variations of the photo of the Hoodoos in Yellowstone, I've added sections of topographical maps of the park and photos I took of animals in Yellowstone. There are tiny images of: 1 bear, 1 coyote, 4 bison and 6 antelope (you can actually see some of them if you click on the image to show it larger). I'm calling this piece "Hidden Life" due to those hidden images and also referencing all the other hidden life within the park.

I needed to get the Yellowstone piece finished and off my drawing board as I now have two commission pieces to complete by the end of the month! A woman in Chicago purchased two of my desert collages she'd seen at Xanadu Gallery and asked me to make two more for a grouping of art. The images above are the two photos of mine she chose for me to work with. I started the cactus grouping today....

Upcoming shows

There is a national juried show in Cincinnati with an April deadline and one in Monmouth with a June deadline. I want to have some new, larger work to submit to those, so this is my first completion toward that goal. This is called "Listen - the grass is singing" and it is 24"W x 18"H. I used some colored pencil lines on yellowed book text and put fragments of that in the grass for some up-close surprises.

I spoke to an area church's Daughter Banquet last week and have two more speaking engagements lined up for women's groups. It's been fun to put together a 20-minute talk summarizing how I got into collage and then moved from traditional collage to what I'm doing with photographs. It was also surprising to look back and realize how many achievements I've made in seven years; good motivation to keep pushing ahead!

Desert Path

After hiking up this path to see some Native American ruins in central Arizona, we made our way back down, frequently stopping to enjoy the up-close view of desert plants and the long view of saguaro, lake and mountains. I made three digital alterations of a photo from the path, shredded those alterations and combined them to form a new landscape.