Three Ravens

I made the previously posted raven with the red string for my friend Linda for her birthday. I really enjoyed working with that image, so I decided to make three more collages using the same bird photo. I placed the raven in various settings and ran different filters on the image in Photoshop to give the feathers subtle texture changes. The collages are all on 11 x 14 canvas and are titled "Raven's connection" (with the ribbon), "Raven's gift" (with the flower) and "Raven's invitation" (with the stick - an invitation to come play). I'm going to hang these three – plus two landscapes and three spiral pieces – at Q's Cafe in downtown Galesburg. The owners have expanded the cafe and have asked five artists to hang work in the new dining area. The work will be for sale and we can change it out for new work when we want.

Different degrees of not real

I made a small 6" x 6" collage this summer using part of this scene. I decided it was such an unusual scene (a high mountain lake in Yellowstone) that I wanted to make a large collage with it. This 20" x 10" x 1.5" canvas has a painted sky with paper clouds, spliced together pieces of the scene with a "dry brush" filter run on the original in Photoshop, and art papers and tissue papers added to the trees and grass areas.

Red String of Fate

In our last art group gathering, we all brought items to combine and make an assemblage together. Linda brought red string and talked about Asian stories of red string connecting people destined to be together. I decided to add a red string to this raven photo to combine the string folklore with a bird who has a lot of folklore associated with it.

My husband took this photo of a raven on a road in Yellowstone. I ran the poster edges filter on the picture in Photoshop and then "painted" a light blue across the top at 15% opacity. I then added light brown to the area around the raven. After I'd attached the print to the cradle board with matte medium, I decided the brown was too light and added a light wash of brown acrylic paint. I layered up art papers and tissue papers for the shadow and ground textures.

gulp!

I just received an e-mail from the director of the Abecedarian Gallery in Denver that she'd posted an online pdf catalog for the upcoming "Imagination Navigation" show that includes one of my collages. The work in the show is really really nice. I'm honored to be included.

http://www.abecedariangallery.com

Triptych - part 2

Here's what the work looks like on the wall. In answer to Crystal's question posted below about why I chose to make the side panels deeper... it wasn't actually planned! I'd purchased the 12" x 36" canvas thinking I'd push myself to do a bigger collage than I normally make. Then I came up with the idea of putting the raven in the center of three panels and having the spirals cross over all three. I had two narrow canvases that seemed to be a good size but were different in depth than the large one. I decided that would be OK. Logically the center one would be the thicker with the side panels subservient to it. However, I'm pleased with how this worked out as it has a feel like wooden religious triptychs have -- the ones where the side panels are hinged and can be closed like doors over the central painting -- when the panels are open, they are closer to the viewer due to being hinged at the front of the boxed structure. Since my side panels stand out from the wall more, they also serve to funnel the view right into the raven.

I've decided to call this "Messenger Spirit" as that is what Native Americans called ravens. To them, the raven symbolized the black void in space which draws in all energy toward itself and releases it in new forms. That idea works well with the spirals, don't you think?

Triptych

I'm hoping to line up a gallery show with my spiral series (all are 9" x 11") and wanted a bigger work to kind of "anchor the wall" in a gallery. This piece is made up of three canvases that add up to 25" x 36" -- the two at the edges are a half inch thicker than the central panel. I'm featuring a fabulous raven photo Rob took in Yellowstone that I used the "paint daub" filter on in Photoshop. The raven is sitting on ground made up of some torn pieces of the "paint daub" rocks, two different scales of topo maps, tissue paper and paint. (If you click on the image you can see the details better at a larger size.) I usually set my most recent collages on shelves in our dining room to live with the art for awhile and see how it looks in different light. This is way too big for the shelves AND can't all sit on the same surface as they need to hang at different levels... may need to remove a painting in the living room for awhile to see how this looks on a wall!

Talking...

I'm finding that the collages I'm making with my Montana photos -- ones that I've been planning to send to a gallery owner in Montana for consideration -- are speaking to folks in the middle of the country. My friend Marvin in Texas just HAD to have the piece with the three ravens, so I put it in the mail last week. When a group of friends was over for drinks Saturday night, Brett was really taken with the piece below with the spirals and concrete compass and asked if it was for sale and Bob really liked this mountain and valley collage and asked if it was for sale. Pretty exciting that my recent work is talking to people -- it makes the fun I'm having all the more delicious!