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.

Are we there yet?

I realized there were a couple photos from our trip out west that I really responded to due to the roads depicted in them. I liked how this view pulls you in, yet you don't know what will appear if you continue on the road and make the curve to the right... kinda like life! In addition to working with three sets of digitally altered prints in this 16" x 16" piece, I added in pieces of old postage stamps, some green art papers, and fragments of a "2 reais" bill my friend gave me after her trip to Brazil – the currency had beautiful color etchings of an underwater scene, so I used sections of it in the composition... a couple turtles in my sky, some seaweed in the trees and part of a statue's head in the road. I like to put those "rogue" items into my landscapes so that they're revealed in the up-close view, further removing the art from the original photograph. (Click on the images to better see the details of which I speak.)

Donation

I always give a piece of art to our local art centers when they're having fundraiser auctions. In the past, I've pulled one from my storage area... usually an older piece. This time I decided to make a new collage for the Taste of the Arts at nearby Monmouth's art center. I hope somebody falls in love with it and it raises $100 or more for the art center.

I snapped the original photo from the car when riding home from Chicago. I liked how the farm was such a small feature in the landscape with the middle ground in bright sunlight and the clouds so moody. In addition to altering the photo digitally and shredding the three alterations to piece together, I've added in some blue ledger paper, bits of text and some green art papers. It is 12"W x 6"H and is called "Unsettled."

Art and the Economy

We had a steady flow of people during the three hours of our Art Happening. We were happy with how our art looked in a home with neutral wall colors and enjoyed receiving feedback on our new work. 

I was hoping to move out a lot of my remaining "early works" at very discounted prices but didn't think I'd sell any of my 2011 at gallery prices. To my surprise I sold one of my new pieces and only one discounted piece––to my stepdaughter (Thanks Amy)! The economy seems to have everyone holding tight and not making "discretionary" purchases. I should have put up a little Christmas tree to make people think of perhaps giving a unique holiday gift! So, I share with you some scenes from the event and two JPGs (below) showing the sale art (click to enlarge). If anyone stopping by my blog is interested in seeing one of these as a larger image, along with the size information, let me know!

Art ideas and experiences

We went to Chicago last weekend and enjoyed spending time at the Elmhurst Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Chicago Art Institute. It's always so inspiring to see great works of art up close and feel the ideas percolating.


This weekend I had time to work on a 9x12 abstract using shredded pieces of nature images and start preparing for an "Art Happening" we're staging on the 9th at a friend's Victorian home. He has it for sale and has a number of empty rooms, so we're going to put our art in 4 rooms of the house and have invited people to see the art and tour the house! My husband just finished an alabaster sculpture that will have its debut that day. I plan to hang my 2011 work on the main level, my 2010 work upstairs and also have about 40 older works marked at SALE prices hoping to clear out my art storage area.

Bold color palette!

After making the two small abstracts last week, I decided to make an 8" x 10". In contemplating the blank panel, I got to thinking about all of the nice art papers I had NOT been using since they didn't mesh with my current mode of making landscapes. I pulled out a stack of papers and fanned out colors that would work together to make a "field of color" when cut into strips. I went back to the pieces that were leftover from the train graffiti piece I made this summer (see the July 20th posting) to pull some of the red boxcar pieces into the composition. I realized all boxcars have text on them saying CLOSE AND LOCK DOORS BEFORE MOVING CAR and I had two red strips with the first part of the phrase and two green strips that held a variation of the phrase (it instructs to lock BOTH DOORS). I included those in the color fields along with strips of the ridged car sides and some green and blue graffiti (you can see those details if you click on the image to enlarge it). Some of the papers have metallic gold in them, so between that, the abstracted train imagery, the bits of text and the bold color, this piece is really jumping! I'm calling it "Moving Car" -- a direct reference to the train text, but also conjuring up images from a moving train or auto.

Bigger and Smaller

I usually work from photos I’ve taken, but when a friend sent me a photo from her hike to Trout Lake in Yellowstone National Park I immediately saw possibilities for a new collage. I loved the reflections in the water and the color range. With her permission, I made three digital alterations of her photo, cut those into strips and layered them together with art papers to create this 16"W x 12"H work. The title "I've Never Been There" can be taken as a straight forward admission by the artist that I’ve never been to this place, or it can be more of an implied wish ... I’ve never been there, but I’d like to be sitting by the lake’s edge contemplating the reflection on the water as it ripples toward me.

Today I decided to make a couple 6" x 6" abstract pieces. In one, I used the leftover strips from the prints of the water in the above Trout Lake piece along with some old ledger papers. In the other, I used blue and yellowed ledger paper along with some metallic copper paper to make an abstracted cityscape. I've been wanting to make some new pieces for a couple area art center gift shops, so these might be the first installments toward that goal....