First work for 2024

This is a 12"x12" artwork on wood panel. I started with two photos I'd taken at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Miami. I super sized the butterfly and laid it on top of an image of a ceramic tile patio in the garden. I chose four filtered versions of the photo composite that I thought "played well together" and printed those out on my laser printer. I freehand cut the sheets into strips and built the artwork from those. I recently purchased a pack of copper leaf, so I put some of that across the arcing band of rust-colored tile to add a little glitz.

 

Preparing for a 2024 gallery show

I'm making a series of birds/animals in front of unusual backgrounds for a show next summer. These are my recent pieces. The white egret has been placed over a digitally altered landscape, filtered, cut into strips and enhanced with gold leaf. The green heron was placed over a 1500's world map and has pieces of a vintage Rand McNally map added to the final layer along with copper leaf.

Experimenting

I made these 6"x6" gifts for my Art Sistas this summer. I used black and white illustrations of birds or animals of significance to each of them and combined those with photos and gold leaf.

Second Sista Show

My Art Sistas had a second show in the fall at the Macomb Arts Center. It was nice to see our art arranged in a different gallery space and meet people from Macomb who were unfamiliar with our art.

The Art Sistas show in Galesburg was a hit

The newly remodeled galleries at the Galesburg Civic Art Center were such a perfect setting for the show of the six of us who workshop our art together and even travel to Michigan and Arizona for our self-styled "art camps." We made art using tall wire columns to fill the smaller gallery and challenge ourselves to work in a way that was not our usual. The main gallery was filled with over 70 pieces of our art.

Experimenting with freehand cutting

Yes, I know, pretty radical. Instead of cutting along a ruler with my x-acto knife, I'm using the ruler as a guide off to the side and cutting freehand, wavy lines! HA! I'm liking the softer look the finished piece has. What do you think???

Ready for the show

I've made two more pieces to finish up the number I need for the Art Sistas show at the Galesburg Community Arts Center, June 2 - July 15. I'll be exhibiting six animal or bird pieces with unusual backgrounds and five landscapes. The square artwork uses a photo my friend Sheila took of a squirrel eating a cookie that I overlaid on a tile wall photo from Riomaggiore, Cinque Terre, Italy. It includes some sections of an expense ledger from the 1800s. The landscape is from a photo I took along the Atlantic in Portugal. I've added in some sections of a vintage world map into the boardwalk and vegetation.