Avian Alchemist

I started to work with this photo of a Northern Flicker and remembered I had some flicker feathers in a vase. I printed out the original photo and then arranged the feathers on the print to photograph. I only had one of the yellow wing feathers, so I took 3 photos of the feathers arranged at the left, center and right of the print. I merged those 3 photos with the one of the bird and then ran my filters on that image. I gave the piece the title of Avian Alchemist, because this yellow-shafted flicker looks like a brown bird until he flies and the undersides of his wings and tail are yellow -- so he seemingly turns to gold.

Summer Home

Little did I know when I made this 6"H x 12"W piece that I'd have two people asking for it immediately after posting it on my Facebook page! I sold it to one person and will run out the same filtered photos a second time and make a variation of the art piece. Both responded to the mass of yellow flowers. What do you think of this piece or any of my others?

Depth

In this piece I worked with breaking up a scene on two panels of different sizes and different depths. In the foreground, I added a poem by Emily Dickinson and broke up the imagery with solid strips of handmade papers.

Up close with nature

In "Poised" I used a variety of handmade papers in the strip along the side and added some small circle stencils to give the feel of atmosphere or motion as the flower is in the act of opening up.
The leaf photo was abstract from the start with the reflections in the water surrounding it, so my filters worked to abstract it more and I added a quote from Camus at the bottom right to give further interest up close.

Two more with color blocks

I decided to add some texture or imagery to the areas of color in these, along with using leftover strips from previous collages. In "Coming Home Cows" I ghosted a cow onto the field of green and added a number stencil - evocative of number tags cows often wear in their ears. In "Golden Visitor" I overlaid a pine needle image on the green area and ghosted some of the circle pattern from the goldfinch photo on the brown rectangle.

Continuing the color block theme

This piece is 12"H x 9"W and has a field of sunflowers at the top and an abstract grid of color beneath. I think the blocks of colors evoke aerial views of farm fields as well as quilts. I'm using leftover strips of imagery from previous collages to layer up the areas of color and some of the golds are from a previous sunflower collage.

Working on new pieces for a spring 2018 show

I think I'll use landscapes, birds and flowers as subject matter for my show next spring in Monmouth, Illinois. I plan to experiment with more layering, adding paint, stenciling, and using scraps of imagery from past collages to make abstract fields of color....

Finished Commission

A couple from Peoria asked me to do a collage using a panoramic photo they'd taken. The photo featured purple martin houses and a bench dedicated to the man's grandfather who had instilled in him a love of purple martins. In my art, I added a purple martin in the foreground, fragments of a poem by Carl Sandburg about purple martins, and the park name and man's grandfather's name. The piece is 12"H x 36"W.

Successful Show

It was great fun to be the featured artist at C2C Gallery in Grand Haven, Michigan. The opening was Friday, July 7th and I thoroughly enjoyed talking with tourists and locals about my art process. The gallery sold 4 of the 20 pieces on display in 24 hours! To date, they've sold 7 works, and the show will be up through the end of August.

Piece #20 for my Michigan show

This piece is made up of two 8" x 8" cradled panels, the bottom panel is 1" deep and the top panel is 1/2" deep. The water has a poem about a fish overlaying the surface that is mostly readable...so I'm calling it Poem Fishing.

Boardwalk

I love walking up a boardwalk to Lake Michigan, cresting the sand dune and finally seeing the big lake stretched out before me! With this art piece, I'm evoking that feeling of anticipation and the quietness of being at a beach in Western Michigan. It's an intimate piece - 12"H x 6"W.

Special

I finished this collage today and will be giving it to my stepdaughter for her graduation from graduate school. Her late mother took this photo of her parent's farm. Very excited to gift it and to have worked with the photo that is so meaningful....

Photo Revisited

I made a collage with this photo of shells in March, intending to have it in my "Water's Edge" summer show in Michigan. However, someone saw it on Facebook and purchased it! So I decided to circle back and make a variation on the collage. You can see the first one in my March 28th posting. Which one do you like better?

Combining grayscale and color imagery

I've used some black and white photos in my collage work in the past, but decided to try using the entire background as a grayscale image in this piece. I used a shadow to help the color image "hover" over the background; I also combined horizontal and vertical strips in the featured color image.

I find that most of the appeal of black and white photos is the starkness of the image and how it makes us see it differently. I'm not sure that effect carries into cutting the image into strips...more experimentation might be called for.

This piece is 11" x 14" and depicts the Big Sable Light near Ludington,  MI. The background is a sand dune on Lake Michigan.

Venice!

For my summer show in Michigan I'm making art that features views at the edge of water. This is my "digital impressionism" view from the Guggenheim along the Grand Canal in Venice. We visited there in December 2015 and thoroughly enjoyed the Guggenheim art museum, St. Mark's Basilica, the canal rides and the city of Venice. What an amazing place!

This 10"x20" artwork includes script superimposed in the sky from a letter I photographed in a museum in Bologna, Italy. There are also embedded pieces of ledger paper in the buildings and handmade blue paper in the water.

Multiple-scene collage

In this collage, I wanted to evoke the memories of a day at the beach. The three collages are 10", 8" and 6" squares of scenes in Western Michigan along the lakeshore near Ludington.

Beach still life

Love the beach life? Here's a new 10" x 10" collage of shells, with a surf feel at the bottom. I've added in a few shell postage stamps to this one as well.

Still life

Recognizing that not everyone responds to landscapes, I thought I should do some still life scenes for my upcoming show in Michigan. I took a photograph of some shells I'd collected -- arranged on top of a rustic cabinet. In Photoshop, I ghosted a band of color along one side and then made three digital variations of the image to print out. Cutting those three prints into strips, I assembled the scene from the strips on a 12x12 panel. Then I added some seashell postage stamps and art papers to the band of color. I hope this evokes memories for the viewer of vacations at the beach and collecting shells as souvenirs.

Experiment

I chose a photo of a great blue heron standing serenely above the water and decided to make an active band of color along the vertical edge. I posted the collage on my art Facebook page and asked for input. Several people wanted to see some of the water in the band of color, so the second photo shows the revised version. "Edge of Morning" 12"H x 9"W.

More shore scenes

Working on some fun beach images for my show in Grand Haven, Michigan, July-August 2017.
I've also opened an Etsy shop LoriReedArt.

Scene from Lake Titicaca

I had the good fortune to go to Peru last summer and travel around the country for two weeks. When walking down the path on an island in Lake Titicaca, I noticed these three row boats tied up to the rocks. The different colored interiors of the boats caught my eye, as well as the picturesque way they were bobbing together in the water. This 16" x 16" collage is formed of quarter inch strips of three filtrations on the original photo. I layered grassy paper over the image at the bottom to increase the textural aspect. I've titled it "Go Fish."