Grid revisited

I thought I should have a few more little collages for the First Friday event, so I made this 4"x4" canvas with a grid of images. I really enjoyed making this and might have to do another!

History...houses

These showcase four 1899 photos of Victorian homes that are still single-family residences in Galesburg, Illinois.

History...

I've been working on a series of small 4x6 collages featuring photos from my town's history. Several reasons for that: 1.) I like the nostalgia for times gone by that old photos elicit, 2.) I'm supposed to have art on display/for sale as part of a "First Fridays" event downtown on July 3rd, and 3.) I've been wanting to make notecards out of some of my art and thought this theme would appeal. I've placed the scans of photos onto images I had of faded papers and added typewriter type describing the photos. I've wrapped those laser prints around canvases (these are a half inch thick and the ones I'll upload of old houses are 1.5 inch-thick canvases) and layered other papers for color. Click on the photo to see the art bigger.

Out of Round

My "Art Floozy" group members all put ideas on slips of paper at our first meeting over a year ago. Each time we meet, we draw an idea out of the jar for the next meeting's project. This month our topic was "out of round." One member made a beautiful asymmetrical copper and pearl bracelet, one had unusual blown glass beads, another had a clay bowl that had started out round but she'd sliced the edges off to make a rectangular top with a round base. I made a collage using a chart from an old science book as the featured element; it shows the "wanderings of the earth's pole from the year 1890 to 1910" – about 60 feet! Part of a page out of a solid geometry book showing spheres seemed to be a good addition for the theme, too.  I picked a blue art paper with gold and white squares on it – thinking that square made a nice counterpoint to round, and blue worked well with a chart about our "blue planet." I then chose a gold paper to pick up on the gold squares and rubbed some acrylic bronze paint onto it to highlight some of the layering of the gold paper. (If you click on the collage image, it will enlarge so you can see the piece better.)

Montana

My friend Karen invited me out to Montana for a restorative long weekend. I took over 200 photos of the stunning scenery around Wilsall, Bozeman and in Yellowstone National Park. The above collage is my first (of many, I'm sure!) using a Montana image. The photo I started with is of a rock formation in Yellowstone. I added pieces of a "topo" map over the rocks and handmade papers; the top of the canvas has enlarged sections of a topo map.  The canvas is 6 inches square, 2.5 inches deep.

A temporary slow down

I've been low on energy for about 6 weeks due to a painful case of shingles. In that time, I haven't been in my collage studio much but did make the collage above to enter for consideration as the Art-in-the-Park image for 2009. The event has art and music in our town's arboretum, so I tried to evoke music, nature and art (via the colored squares) in the piece.

My husband Rob has 10 of his sculptures on display at the Contemporary Art Center in Peoria right now. Here's a link to an article in the Peoria paper:

Rob Reed — encouraging contemplation from both the viewer and the artist - Peoria, IL - pjstar.com

Galveston seawall

The seawall at Galveston Island is so fun with its paintings of sea life - I must have taken 20 photos as we walked along the beach! I made this 12" x 9" canvas using 3 photos of the seawall, grayscale photos showing the topography of the sea floor, and pieces of gold paper making kind of a floating, motion feeling. I've titled it Sea Wall Sea Floor Sea.