Experiment

Several years ago, I made collages by tearing random segments out of my digitally altered prints to build up a scene. In this experiment, I'm trying to stay in the spirit of the horizontal strips of imagery that I've been doing for a couple years but tear the strips instead of cutting them. I'm pleased with how this 12" x 12" turned out, but I'm not sure I could handle doing a large piece this way! We'll see....

Preparing

A year from now I'll have my work on display in the Quad City International Airport Gallery, so I'll be making work this year with an eye towards filling my part of the gallery there. This is a 12"H x 24W" image of the Tetons. I made it more abstract than recent works by adding in pieces of art papers, leftover image strips from other landscapes and even some sections of Brazilian paper currency a friend gave me.

Tetons

The Teton Range in Wyoming is not like any other mountain range in our country. The Tetons lack foothills or lower peaks which can obscure the view. The range is too young to have had time to erode into soft hills, so the Tetons rise sharply, from 5,000 to nearly 7,000 feet above the valley floor. After driving through Yellowstone, we entered Grand Teton National Park and encountered one stunning view after another. We stopped at the lodge to take photos and were driving down to Jackson Hole when the road turned and it seemed we were going to drive right into the mountain range! We stopped at a little parking lot to take in this amazing view and watch the billowing clouds as they revealed a mountain peak to us and then obscured another. These mountains have been uplifted by geological forces and being in their presence is completely uplifting. This piece is 12"H x 24"W and is titled "Uplifting."

Just one more...

I wanted to make one more piece for the owner of Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, to choose from, so I worked on this image of the Tetons. This is another 16" x 16" cradled panel like last week's. I made a piece earlier this year where I angled a few strips across the horizontal pieces, but in this one I really broke out of the straight lines. I built up a lot of angled pieces in the clouds to give a feeling of moving, billowing clouds.

I'm hoping this work also conveys some of the wonder of the Tetons. The mountain range doesn't have any foothills, so it just rises straight up nearly 7000 feet above the valley floor! We were shocked at the views we had driving along the road in Grand Teton National Park and wondered aloud if we were going to drive right up to the mountain base. I took the photo this piece is based on while we were driving toward one of the peaks in the range. In one of the digital variations, I added some text in the road about the Tetons; it's in the darker strips. I like the feeling this has of being on that road with the two cars up at the bend in the road ahead.

Back to the mountains

This week I came back to my mountain photos from our trip west. I chose one showing the Tetons in clouds and decided to do the foreground in horizontal strips and the sky/mountains in vertical strips. The 6" x 6" piece I made a few weeks ago ("Snow Curtain" posted July 5th) was a trial run to see how horizontal and vertical might work together. This week's collage (named "Another Time, Another Place") is 12" x 12" so the scale of the shredded strips gives the work a different look, but I like how it turned out -- especially at the horizon line where the verticals overlap horizontals. (Click on the image to see that area better.)

New images, new directions

I've recently worked on two pieces with images from our trip west and tried some new techniques.

In the 12" x 9" piece, I put down the base layer of shredded pieces, then I used some new techniques with acrylics to build up a feeling of depth somewhat similar to an encaustic work.  Another new addition was to add 3 angled strips of imagery that echo the line of the hillside.

In the square collage, I experimented with using vertical strips in the mountain/sky/tree with a horizontal foreground.

Input welcomed!