Sail Away With Me!

Just immerse yourself in this scene... hear the waves lap against the sides of the boat... float away from it all! This 12"H x 9"W mixed media piece is comprised of three filtered versions of my photo, cut by hand into quarter-inch strips of imagery which I adhered to a panel and sections of an 1854 blue-paper ledger added on the rippled water.

Resting in Hope

This was another photo my friend Ellen McDowell took that I ran filters on, chose three to print and cut into strips, then added in vintage text, colored pencil and shredded U.S. currency to the nest. 12" x 12" x 1.5" deep wood panel.

Wrapping up for my Michigan show

I made a few more pieces for my show in Grand Haven, Michigan (August-September 2019). All three are 6"x12" on 1" deep cradled panels.

Feeling Beach-y

Combating winter cold by making beach art! I made a 12"x9" collage from a photo of collected shells, adding in ledger paper and handmade paper surf. The cormorant is also 12"x9" and incorporates some yellowed ledger paper and weaving in of vertical strips in the bottom right corner.

Large close up

This 16" x 20" is comprised of 4 filtered photos of tulips with some fragments of tulip poems added into the background.

Filtering my former work

I'm experimenting with taking photos of collages I did years ago, running filters on them, printing those out and cutting into strips to make new and different art! I'll show the original art and the new version pieced together in strips.

 

Revisiting an image

I cropped an image of a flower garden tighter than a previous use of the image. Then I ran 4 filters in Prisma and cut the prints into irregular shapes. A few pieces of handmade papers found their way into this 12"x12" collage, too.

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....

Another face and some small abstracts

I wanted to see what other images I could combine with faces, so I used a Ferris Wheel from Navy Pier in Chicago, an image of the original Ferris Wheel that was made for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and the face of the inventor, George Washington Gale Ferris. (Ferris was born in my town of Galesburg, Illinois; he was named after the town's founder, George Washington Gale.) I turned the older wheel on its side for a more dramatic layout.

I have a growing pile of paper from "leftovers" after combining strips from three variations of images to build each artwork. So... I made some 6x6 and 8x8 abstracted landscapes using those leftover strips of paper. It was fun to work solely with color fields and design.

Art Trade

I admired a table runner my friend Penny had made and asked if I could commission one from her. We decided to do an art trade instead. She quilted a beautiful table runner with six matching napkins for me and I made her an abstract collage that looks a bit like a quilt. I used leftover pieces from previous collages and handmade art papers to build the composition.
Here's a link to Penny's quilting blog:
Studio Notes

2 small abstracts

Here are two small (6" x 6") abstract collages I've done in the past couple weeks. The one uses strips of paper from three different ledgers from the late 1800's along with some art papers; the effect is kind of an abstract cityscape. The other uses leftover strips from several collages I've made of Arizona imagery. I'm calling it "Dream of the Cactus Wren" as I think glimpses of desert plants might indeed be what a desert bird might dream about....

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.

Abstraction from "leftovers"

Since I generally work from three altered files for my landscapes, I end up with a lot of leftover pieces of paper. Making abstract collages out of them allows me to work strictly with color and composition. I really love quilts, so this feels a bit like making an art quilt without having to fight with the sewing machine! After I'd finished the first one, I was showing a friend how it looked sitting on one side of the cradled panel, then rotated the square to see the next side, then -- he stopped me and said he liked it at the "half turn" so that it was a diamond shape. Oh YES - much more dynamic!!

Both of these are made with strips leftover from collages of landscapes of Montana, Wyoming, Illinois and Arizona...so the top one is "States of Mind" and the bottom one is "Altered States."