New work for my upcoming show

I have a two-person show opening at the end of August at the Contemporary Art Center in downtown Peoria, Illinois. Since one of my galleries just requested my three largest works and sold a small piece via their website, I'm working to make "replacements" to fill the walls! 

Two of the pieces below originated with photos I took recently in Northwestern Michigan and one is from my daily walk. "On the Point" shows the lighthouse at Point Betsie along Lake Michigan. It was completed in 1858, so I added some vintage postage stamps and ledger paper from 1865. The beach scene shows a misty morning at water's edge. I've added 1865 ledger paper and shredded U.S. currency into this one.

The scene with the trees is along Grand View Drive in Peoria. Teddy Roosevelt rode in an open car along this 2.5 mile drive above the Illinois River that is lined with stately homes and pronounced it "the world's most beautiful drive." I've added handmade papers and vintage postage stamps from Teddy's era into the scene.

Sailing

As the snow falls here in the midwest, I had fun working on this piece from a photo I took last summer in Grand Haven,  Michigan. I like the vivid colors and the mood it sets.

Going to the beach!

C2C Gallery in Grand Haven, MI, sold 4 of my collages in August. The work will be up through September, so I'm taking 5 new pieces up this weekend. Here are three new pieces and the fourth is a beach stairway 2.0 (I sold the one I posted August 11, so I ran a new set of 3 filters and created another version of the scene.)

The gull/sailboat scene has text floating in the water about boats and water. The beach chairs have yellowed newspaper text under them in the sand.  The grass beyond the stairs in the last one have pieces of shredded US currency embedded.

Summer Time, Beach Time

I wanted to make another composition with an inviting walk down to the beach. I took the original photo for this on the upper shore of Lake Michigan. At first I thought I'd do a horizontal landscape, but then felt the big wood tops of the walkway were a bit distracting. I cropped the image into a square and made this 12"x12"x1" collage (middle photo) using three filtered versions of the scene with some Michigan road maps added into the clouds and handmade green paper in the grassy areas.

You're Invited to the Lake!

I titled this 24"H x 18"W piece "Beckoning" as the stairs feel like an invitation to come down to the lake. I made three digital alterations of this scene in Michigan, tiled out 18 sheets of legal paper and cut them all into 1/4" strips and combined those with text and handmade paper. I felt like the trees on the left needed something more to activate the dark green shapes; the answer was found at the Michigan Banker's Conference I was attending with my husband. The gentlemen at the  Federal Reserve booth gave me little bags of shredded $1000 bills... so of course I used them in my art!!! I guess I've made a "money tree"!

My friend Rae took the original photo, so when she saw the finished collage she said she had to buy it. I told her I wanted to have it for my Michigan show in August/September, and then she can "take possession" of the art.  :-)  The first photo is of the finished collage (on 2" deep cradled panel) and the 2nd and 3rd photos are detail shots showing the text and the shredded currency.

2 more for my Michigan show

Grand Haven, MI has an iconic lighthouse and pier, so I made this 16"x16" collage for my August-September show in that town. I made the sky more active by weaving in some vertical strips of paper. The squirrel is 8"x8" and the area around the tree hole is mounded up... and includes some text.

New year, new work

I'm preparing more work for my Woods-Water-Words show to be in Grand Haven, MI, this fall.

The swan piece is 12"x12" and has a quote floating in the water in front of the bird: "I understand that everything is connected, that all roads meet, and that all rivers flow into the same sea."

The squirrel piece is 8"x8" and I've layered up more than a dozen layers of paper around the tree hole to give the piece more depth. In addition to cutting 3 altered versions of the photo into strips, I've cut up some old newspaper text and interspersed it in the tree bark areas.

The lighthouse stands in the harbor at Grand Haven. I've placed a quote in the sky in this 12"x9" piece that says: "Once the lighthouse is seen, the rest of the sea is ignored."

I used the phone app Prisma to alter the photos in each of these art pieces before printing copies out and cutting into quarter inch strips.

Big Bird

I wanted to make a larger piece to enter in a couple competitions. This "Surf Sifter" is 24"H x 18"W showing a great blue heron in the surf. I made the collage of the bird using 3 filtered photos cut into quarter inch strips. Then I added irregularly cut shapes of green handmade papers along the edge to give the feel of seaweed in the surf.

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.

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.

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.

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.

More shore images

I've been working on more pieces for my summer 2017 show in Grand Haven, MI. I've overlaid navigational charts of Lake Michigan on the sail and depth charts of the lake can be glimpsed in some of the water strips. It is 11"H x 14"W. With the 8"x8" gull collage, I've added vertical strips and painted and sanded a frame around the bird. I think I'll do some more experimenting with painting frames around imagery.