Open Studios

This past Saturday we had an "Open Studios" event in the afternoon and invited our graphic design clients and art-loving friends to see our art studios and celebrate the 25th anniversary of Reed Studios. My husband, Rob, showed how he carves stone with traditional tools and pneumatic-assisted tools, and some of our guests tried their hand at carving. I had some of my older art on sale for the day and displayed new 2010 art. Our guests seemed to enjoy checking out where we work and seeing work in progress – it was a fun day. A shout out to our friend Bob Marsden for taking these photos!

Back in the Studio

After an encounter with a super-heated metal pot lid sitting too close to an open flame, my hand was finally recovered enough from the second-degree burns to get back in the studio! I had all sorts of ideas I wanted to pursue, but landed on using the vintage star charts again with the theme of migrating birds. (I've gotten such amazing responses to the Indigo Bunting piece I posted March 7th, I thought it was worth exploring some more.) I found some wonderful copyright-free illustrations from 1917 by Louis Agassiz Fuertes of North American warblers, so I modified them to become more painterly and soften the details. I put this text at the bottom of the collage: "North American warblers are small songbirds, generally quite colorful and with fine pointed bills; most eat only insects, but a few supplement their diets with berries and seeds. Warblers migrate at night; if you stand outside in the fall or early spring and listen carefully, you may hear their soft “chip” notes as they fly overhead. On a moonlit night, early in the evening, try looking at the moon through your binoculars and you might see the silhouettes of passing warblers." Additionally, I wrapped one of the maps around the cradled panel – I've done that on canvas before but never on wood! I'm pleased with how it turned out, and ... thanks, dear husband, for suggesting softening the bird illustrations instead of using the very precise original illustrations.   :-)

Take Two

The 16" x 8" piece that I posted on May 24 was recently purchased as a birthday gift. When I made that one, I felt like it was a piece that could be bigger, so I decided to revisit the original photo this weekend. I realized we'd taken two photos that I could piece together to get a wider view of the Gallatin Range with the storm clouds enveloping the mountains. On this piece, I did an underpainting and put in areas of color for the ground, mountains and sky. Then I tiled out the altered photo in sections, tore the image and left little gaps between the torn pieces of paper so the underpainting could show through. It is 30" x 10"... but I probably could have made it even bigger! Who knows, maybe there will be a "take three" and I'll really push my comfort zone and go LARGE!!!

Going to the show!

I just found out today that this piece – The Road to Dailey Lake – was accepted into the national juried show "64 Arts" in  Monmouth Illinois!! The juror was Al Gury, chair of the painting dept of Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and the show will run Aug 20 - Sept 25. It's so affirming to have an artist you've never met choose your work to be included in a show... sweet!

Double the fun

I decided to step out of my comfort zone and try one of these new bird pieces at a much bigger size. The first three were 10"x10" and this one is 24"x 24". I applied unprimed linen to a cradled hardboard and that is the brown showing through in the "cracks" ... my husband said it seems like there's an old stone wall behind the birds with shadows on it from the plants... I like how it has the feel of a cracked fresco. I added a decorative swirl pattern to the right of the birds and ghosted some of the thistle leaves at the bottom to add more interest to Audubon's composition.

2 more birds of the plains

I made two more bird collages this weekend and am really enjoying working with the Audubon prints from an old book and giving them new life. Many of Audubon's bird illustrations seem to have exaggerated poses or odd turns of the bird's body – like the bottom bird of this pair of catbirds – so I just used the one catbird in my composition. I altered the color to make the bird slate gray like it is in real life, added text about the catbird's habits, an illustration on the mechanics of flight, and more leaves and berries.

In the piece with the white-crowned sparrows, I added some very subtle Victorian filagree to the background on the left. I showed the first of the mise-en-scène series to a friend this weekend and she remarked that the background had an eggshell feel, so I've used that same technique as part of the manipulation of the art in these two.

Mise-en-scène

- an expression used to describe the design aspects of a theatre or film production, which essentially means "telling a story."
- stage setting

I'm planning on doing a series under the title of mise-en-scène using bird illustrations by Audubon and others. (I've done a few pieces for our November show with ravens and thought it would be fun to make some more bird collages depicting other birds found in the plains states.) This first one is "Mise-en-scène: bluebirds." I've altered an Audubon illustration I scanned, added art papers onto areas of the birds, and added more flower stalks and faux foliage -- which includes text about bluebirds from "The Source Book" of 1930. I'm essentially telling a story about bluebirds and setting the stage differently than the original production... this one is 10" x 10" but I think it would be fun to see at 36" x 36"!