Fabulous Opening

We had a wonderful opening reception for our "Plains and Planes" show on the 19th. The gallery director said we broke the attendance record with 200+ people during the 2-hour reception! We both received lots of great feedback on our new art and felt energized by the experience. I sold seven pieces during the opening, so that was icing on the cake.

Ready for the Show!

This weekend, Rob and I are taking care of details for our upcoming exhibit. A couple of my pieces still were needing frames, and I'm checking to make sure all have wires and tags. Then I'll start wrapping them up for transport downtown to the gallery on Tuesday. Rob is finishing a few bases for his sculptures and doing the final sanding on a limestone piece he's hoping to get finished by the opening on Friday night! We're looking forward to seeing all of the art in a nice gallery setting with proper lighting. I have 47 works; 11 are from 2009 and the rest from 2010. Rob has 6 stone sculptures and 10 metal sculptures. I'll try to get some good shots in the gallery after we've hung the show and the lighting is done.

Storm Cell

My friend, Julie, snapped a photo with her cell phone on her drive into work of a dramatic stormy sky and sent it to me since I like sky photos. I kept the photo open on my computer screen and, after several days of looking at it, decided to transform it into a piece of art. It's a small piece (12" x 6") but commands attention with its strong horizontal lines and colors.

New Plains Landscapes

I made a few landscapes last month that were all rectangles and decided to do another. I digitally moved some MT horses into this pasture, made three sets of prints – all with different digital effects – and then cut rectangles out of the prints to piece together the landscape. I like how some of the rectangles appear to recede or advance due to their value and how the differing digital treatments have altered the trees and shrubs. (This is a 30" x 10" canvas.)

I decided to take the leftover pieces and make a new landscape where nothing quite lines up so that the scene is more abstracted. I had done this once before with a scene that had a lake in it and wanted to see if it would work without the water reflection aspect. (This is a 12" x 12" cradled panel.)

Back in the Studio at Last!

I was able to take a couple afternoons this week to work in the studio, plus Friday and Saturday - yahoo! I wanted to get another large piece done for the November show and decided to revisit the Hoodoos of Yellowstone. I'd done small 6"x6" works from this photo last year and thought it would be fun to go big with it so the topo maps applied to the rock surfaces would really show up. I laid down the image in torn segments and then layered up sections of 1904 topographical survey maps of Yellowstone Park, grassy papers and pine needles. It is on a 30"x24" cradled panel so it has a real presence in the room – kinda like how the hoodoos have along the road in the northern part of the park. (When you click on the detail image, you can see the maps much better.) Then...

Additionally, I worked on two 11"x14" canvases using photos I'd taken of a prairie remnant in Palatine, Illinois. I altered them to look more painterly, added in some vintage grass illustrations, text about prairie in one of them, and art papers to add more blossoms to the plants. I like how the color is so intense in these. They'll go in the show as well as "plants of the plains."

Time

I haven't posted anything for awhile as I've been gone the last two weekends and haven't been able to fit in any time for art making. I'm getting a little "twitchy" with all the art ideas jamming up in my brain!!
The first weekend in October, we drove up to Palatine to deliver an alabaster sculpture of my husband's to its new owners... this past weekend, I took the train up to Chicago and spent time with my cousin, Suzanne,  and my MT friend, Karen... this coming weekend is a big fundraiser for the Galesburg Civic Art Center and I'm on the committee, so the whole weekend will be spent on the event. When I get caught up on my social life and graphics work load, I'm going to take off a few days and work on fine art, as I want to get a few more pieces done for our November show!

The photo above is of me with a Dick Tracy bronze that is along the river walk in downtown Naperville, IL. Dick Tracy is talking into his wrist radio, but I'm looking at my watch wondering how many more days until I have to deliver my art for our "Plains and Planes" show....

Recycling...

I showed Harlow Blum, emeritus art faculty at Monmouth College, the interesting laser prints that were left after cutting rectangles out of them to create the mixed media piece I posted on August 31st of Dailey Lake. He suggested I make a new piece by layering the sheets with their cut out areas. I didn't make it quite that way, as adding matte medium to the process made it a bit difficult to put down such large sections of paper with openings throughout, but I did use some as the base and then added more rectangles – where needed – to cover the white canvas. I like how the scene doesn't line up and looks distorted. I'm calling it "Reflections" since it has the feel of looking at a landscape reflected in water. So... let me know if you think I should do more using this technique....