Combo

In this piece, I decided to take my new technique – of printing out an altered photo and cutting it into rectangles to piece together with other alterations of the same photo – and add some acrylic paint, grassy papers and pine needles to the marshy area in the foreground. My hubby is going to make a nice cedar frame for it. I really loved walking along this lake in Montana and liked the photo I'd taken of the scene; I'm really happy with how this 24" x 18" mixed media piece captures a sense of Dailey Lake in Paradise Valley.

The finished landscape of rectangles

Here's how the new landscape turned out. I like how some of the rectangles stand out and seem to advance while others recede. I added some acrylic paint to the field and grassy area but wasn't very bold with it -- partly because I didn't want to draw too much attention to that area since this image seems to be about the clouds and how they dwarf the buildings ... and partly because I'm way out of my comfort zone when painting!!

New idea

Sometimes the littlest thing will inspire a big idea. Looking at the sky of a collage in an art book, it occurred to me that I could make a collage by cutting a photo into rectangles. I printed out three versions of a photo (all with different art filters applied to them) and have been building the art, kind of like a puzzle. The top photo shows the 24"x12" canvas with a couple prints on the drawing board that I've been cutting sections out of; the lower photo shows a detail of the piece. I may add acrylic paint to the foreground, too... stay tuned!

More plants of the prairies and plains

I made two more plant studies this past weekend, but we've had such a FULL week that we didn't get them photographed until today! I used a different technique of tearing and layering on these that I think will work well for larger pieces, too. On the big bluestem grass collage, I added some actual dry grass at the bottom, too. I have ideas for more plant collages, the bird series, and some new mountain ones... I'm going to have to pick one tomorrow and run with it!!

Amazing Week

I had quite a "glow" going all last week. A friend told me she and her fiance wanted to buy the large goldfinch collage for their new home ... our Open Studios event was fun and I sold a dozen works ... I found out that "my" gallery in Montana had sold two of my collages (bringing the total to FOUR in two months!) and the owner asked me to send more work out ... so we wrapped and shipped six more collages off on Friday ... we had friends and their friends from the Chicago suburbs come by for drinks and studio tours before we all went out to dinner on Saturday, and they came back Sunday and purchased a large collage of mine and made a 50% deposit on an alabaster sculpture of Rob's!! (That particular sculpture is going to a national juried show this weekend, so we'll settle up with the purchaser when the show is over and the stone is back in our possession.) Oh, and I made some collages over the weekend, too! The one above is the first of several I hope to make for our November show depicting plants of the plains and/or prairies. We picked and photographed some Queen Anne's Lace and I found a 1913 illustration of the plant that I placed over a cloud photograph. Input on this piece would be welcomed before I go onto more plants.... thanks!

Open Studios

This past Saturday we had an "Open Studios" event in the afternoon and invited our graphic design clients and art-loving friends to see our art studios and celebrate the 25th anniversary of Reed Studios. My husband, Rob, showed how he carves stone with traditional tools and pneumatic-assisted tools, and some of our guests tried their hand at carving. I had some of my older art on sale for the day and displayed new 2010 art. Our guests seemed to enjoy checking out where we work and seeing work in progress – it was a fun day. A shout out to our friend Bob Marsden for taking these photos!

Back in the Studio

After an encounter with a super-heated metal pot lid sitting too close to an open flame, my hand was finally recovered enough from the second-degree burns to get back in the studio! I had all sorts of ideas I wanted to pursue, but landed on using the vintage star charts again with the theme of migrating birds. (I've gotten such amazing responses to the Indigo Bunting piece I posted March 7th, I thought it was worth exploring some more.) I found some wonderful copyright-free illustrations from 1917 by Louis Agassiz Fuertes of North American warblers, so I modified them to become more painterly and soften the details. I put this text at the bottom of the collage: "North American warblers are small songbirds, generally quite colorful and with fine pointed bills; most eat only insects, but a few supplement their diets with berries and seeds. Warblers migrate at night; if you stand outside in the fall or early spring and listen carefully, you may hear their soft “chip” notes as they fly overhead. On a moonlit night, early in the evening, try looking at the moon through your binoculars and you might see the silhouettes of passing warblers." Additionally, I wrapped one of the maps around the cradled panel – I've done that on canvas before but never on wood! I'm pleased with how it turned out, and ... thanks, dear husband, for suggesting softening the bird illustrations instead of using the very precise original illustrations.   :-)