New Show

I'm showing with my Art Sisters through the end of October at the McLean County Art Center in Bloomington, Illinois. The reception will be Sept 20th - I'm excited to see how they've arranged all of our art. After delivering my art for that show, I quickly made a new piece for the CIAO Show in Peoria - a group show of 49 area artists. I'm glad I made the new work as was awarded 2nd prize! "At the Corvid Convention" features a raven in the foreground of a Van Gogh painting "Wheat Field with Crows". After choosing 4 filtered versions of the composite image, I cut those into strips, assembled into a new scene and added copper and gold leaf.

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.

 

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???

New Year, Slow Start

I was gone the month of January and started in slowly in February. Here it is mid March and I've made only three pieces of art! I think I feel things shifting for me a bit... less time making art and more time nurturing my relationships with people I care about. Another artist and I have sent out invitations to about 20 people to discuss starting an Art Salon in Peoria. I'm excited about that and my upcoming group show in June with my Art Sistas. Life is full. Life is good.

In the art below, I've experimented with stenciling and painting on the art. More to come!

More experiments with animals and birds

I'm having fun combining photos of wildlife with collaged backgrounds!

Experimenting

I saw a painting of a shorebird with rectangles of black and white behind it, with some text and spirals in the color fields. That got me to thinking about how I could work with color fields behind a silhouetted bird. So I laid down some metallic gold paper with some blue ledger paper and cut out a great blue heron photo to lay over those. I photographed the composition and then added some white "spatters" and a white line between the colors in Photoshop. I ran filters on the image and printed out three versions to cut into strips. I built my artwork by combining those strips of paper with some of the original ledger paper and handmade papers. I then made a second composition using the same metallic paper, a star chart from a 1919 book and a cut out barred owl. In the final artwork I added in some of the gold metallic paper, script from an 1868 household expense book and some handmade papers. Lots of ideas for future compositions are building in my head....

The first two photos show the compositions I photographed and the second show the resulting 12" x 12" artworks.

Camino memories

I've made two pieces that are evocative of my walk on the Portuguese Coastal Camino route this spring. They each feature ceramic tiles of designs found on buildings in Portugal, the arrow and stylized shell used to mark the Camino route, and photos I took along the Atlantic coast. Each is 10"H x 20"W x 1.5"deep on a wooden panel. Filtered photos cut into strips, handmade papers and colored pencil.

These make a nice pair

I took the original photos while on walks on the island of Curacao. I liked how the plants were featured in front of the plain, colorful walls. In each, I've embedded text or handwriting, handmade papers and shredded U.S. currency. Each is 12"H x 9"W. The shot of them together also shows some fossilized corral from the island.

Back in the Studio

After being away (in warm Arizona and Florida), I'm back in my art studio. I'd printed out and cut the prints for this piece in January as I wanted to try put pieces of blue ledger paper (from the 1850s) into all the blue sky in this artwork. I was anxious to get back to finish this piece and I'm pleased with the result. Some of the handwriting is readable and says "New Orleans" "Savannah" "loose cotton" -- the ledger was from Suffolk Manufacturing Company, a cotton textile business -- so I've named the piece "Southern Exposure". In addition to the photo prints and ledger paper, I've used some handmade yellow paper and colored pencil in this mixed media piece. 12" x 12"

End of year production

Despite the increased social activity of the holidays, I did find time to make art for some holiday shows, new gallery inventory, and some 5x7 woven pieces for my Art Sistas. Looking forward to a new year with travel and more explorations in art.

Commissions

I've completed a number of commissions in the last couple of months. People gave me good photos of places that were meaningful to them and I gave them additional meaning and interest by embedding things into the art.

They include a sunflower watercolor artwork transformed by my art technique to make reproductions on metal for the woman's children and granddaughters... a field of sunflowers with names in the sky to memorialize three high school students killed in a car crash.... a dramatic cowboy and horse... a Colorado scene for a woman to give to her boyfriend... a NC beach scene at sunrise for a couple to think about their second home.

My two-person show is up!

My work is being exhibited along with the sculptural ceramics of Chris Dokolasa at The Contemporary Art Center in downtown Peoria through October 15. I'm very pleased with how the show looks.

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.