First work in the new year

After tossing around several ideas for a title, I've decided to call this one "A Sign"... and maybe THAT is a sign that in 2010 I'm ready to move this new series of "high plains" mixed media pieces to a new level. My New Year's list of desires would include: 1. an art gallery in a western state will contract with me to represent my work in their gallery, 2. a gallery show of my work will be scheduled in Illinois or elsewhere, 3. an art consultant will want to show my work to some of their corporate clients. So, that's what I'm putting out there, and we'll see what pops up this year. We're in the middle of revamping our website to better reflect our current focus, and I'm putting together a portfolio of work to send to a Montana gallery owner who expressed interest in my art. Stay tuned and thanks for stopping by to check my art blog!

Two new landscapes

I made a 6" x 4" collage for a friend's Christmas present that combined a photo of horses and one of a mountain range. I really liked how it turned out, so I decided to make a 24" x 8" version. I like the sense of big space it has. My Art Floozy group's assignment for January is to make something utilizing petroglyphs, so the other landscape is for that project. And... I'm planning to submit it to an art competition entitled "Gateway to Imagination" that is sponsored by a museum in New Mexico – the butte and petroglyphs are from the area of New Mexico near the museum.

Giant Step

I made a piece earlier this week that seems to be a giant step for me. I decided to buy a 24" square cradleboard and see what it inspired me to create. I looked through my photos from Montana and chose one I took that featured a large rock in the foreground and a grassy hillside rising up beyond it with clouds peeking over the crest of the hill. I ran a few filters on the photo in Photoshop, giving it a painterly look, and then added a sketch filter which made the blue sky really interesting. In order to print the photo out to fill a 24" square, I printed it out in 6 sections. I then increased the color intensity and printed out segments of the scene to layer over the view.
I took all of the photo pieces into my collage studio to see how they looked all laid out together. I decided to increase the layered effect and first cut sections of canvas and adhered those to the cradleboard to be the surface on which I would place my photo strips (you can see that if you click on the top photo). After getting the image pieced onto the board, I added art papers, grass seed heads and flax fiber. The four people who have seen it have had OMG outbursts, so I'm taking that as a good sign!

New frame technique

At an art auction last month, I saw a work where the artist had made his own cradle board and had made it purposely rough and crude - including finger prints and paint slopped on the sides. I liked the "honesty" of the obviously handmade frame and how it worked with his mixed media art. So, we decided to make a couple 12" x 12" frames to try it out. I applied canvas to the surface and made these two collages of animals whose photos we took in Wyoming. Let me know – by posting or sending an e-mail – what you think of the art and our construction (you can see it better by clicking on the images to enlarge).

Self Portrait

Art Calendar is having a "self portrait" contest and the winner will be featured on their March issue cover. They said it could be 2-D or 3-D and abstract was fine. That was an interesting assignment to give myself... what would I use to represent me as an abstract self portrait. I thought about using an owl since I'd had a dream recently about an owl. However, I decided it should be a raven since I've been using ravens in my art of late and I admire their intelligence, trickster nature and sense of play. I decided to add the rice paper spirals to the image to also reflect a recent theme in my art. I put my green eye in place of the raven's black eye. :-)

I'm calling it "As a Raven, I'd Breathe Spirals to the Clouds."

Blurring the lines

My husband and I have a graphic design business together, in addition to both being artists (he's a sculptor: Dr. Stone's sculpture blog ). We just completed a 100-page catalog for our client who sells training equipment for dogs. I decided to make a collage for the front and back covers of their 2010 catalog and use torn papers inside for page headers and backgrounds – blurring the lines between my design business and fine art. In the printed catalog, the J&J Dog Supplies logo will be at the upper left above the jumping dog for the front cover; the horizontal collage will take up half of the back cover with 800# and other information reversed out of the left side of the image. They were very pleased with the look, so I'll be taking these out to hang in their offices.

Pieces of Memory

There's something about looking up hillsides and seeing clouds rising over their edges that I find really magical. I took this photo on a hike in Montana. In Photoshop, I ran three different filters to make it less photographic and more like a painting. Then I made a pale version of the photo and a full-intensity version; I printed out sections of the pale version to tear and overlap on this 30" x 10" cradle board. Then I overlaid torn pieces of the full-intensity view. I added art papers to the ground and sky to further the painted feeling of the work.