Time

I haven't posted anything for awhile as I've been gone the last two weekends and haven't been able to fit in any time for art making. I'm getting a little "twitchy" with all the art ideas jamming up in my brain!!
The first weekend in October, we drove up to Palatine to deliver an alabaster sculpture of my husband's to its new owners... this past weekend, I took the train up to Chicago and spent time with my cousin, Suzanne,  and my MT friend, Karen... this coming weekend is a big fundraiser for the Galesburg Civic Art Center and I'm on the committee, so the whole weekend will be spent on the event. When I get caught up on my social life and graphics work load, I'm going to take off a few days and work on fine art, as I want to get a few more pieces done for our November show!

The photo above is of me with a Dick Tracy bronze that is along the river walk in downtown Naperville, IL. Dick Tracy is talking into his wrist radio, but I'm looking at my watch wondering how many more days until I have to deliver my art for our "Plains and Planes" show....

Recycling...

I showed Harlow Blum, emeritus art faculty at Monmouth College, the interesting laser prints that were left after cutting rectangles out of them to create the mixed media piece I posted on August 31st of Dailey Lake. He suggested I make a new piece by layering the sheets with their cut out areas. I didn't make it quite that way, as adding matte medium to the process made it a bit difficult to put down such large sections of paper with openings throughout, but I did use some as the base and then added more rectangles – where needed – to cover the white canvas. I like how the scene doesn't line up and looks distorted. I'm calling it "Reflections" since it has the feel of looking at a landscape reflected in water. So... let me know if you think I should do more using this technique....

A flock

I got all of my deadlines met by Wednesday noon this week, so I turned my attention to making more bird collages. With my friend's permission, I made two pieces that were variations on ones she'd recently purchased from me (goldfinches and white-crowned sparrows). Then I made a 10"-square collage using a vintage illustration of a field sparrow's nest, an 11"x14" using an altered Audubon warbler illustration, and a 9"x12" monarch butterfly collage from a photo my friend Sheila took. I'd like to make another 24" x 24" since it had such impact... but am feeling a pull to make a few more landscapes for the Plains and Planes exhibit and a couple more plants of the plains to go with these birds of the plains... stay tuned.

More birds of the plains

Over the last few months I'd made four in the "Mise-en-scène" series with birds of the plains for our November exhibit... and then sold three of them to a friend who is getting married and moving into a new home! So, I'm making some more, altering Audubon illustrations and setting a new stage for them. In this one, I took Audubon's Marsh Wrens illustration and modified it digitally, added some vintage grass illustrations to each side of the nest, ran out color laser prints, tore and pieced the image together on a painted canvas, then layered up art papers and dried grasses. The grasses come around the two sides and I have "Marsh Wrens" in script along the bottom right edge, so I added the bug on the top edge for that wren on the branch to be flying after.

Inspiring new work space

This is my new studio space and I LOVE it! We just replaced the 1959 windows in our living room and office, and we decided to switch the room functions while we were at it. We put our graphic design desks/ computers into the former living room and moved my collage desk and drawing board in, too. Now we have a big creative studio for graphics and art (which puts me closer to my computer and color printer when working on fine art, too!) Big plus -- I now have a great view of our backyard while creating instead of looking up at white closet doors!! It's going to be a very inspiring space for my work. Note, there are also plenty of dog beds for my Sheltie furkids....

Combo

In this piece, I decided to take my new technique – of printing out an altered photo and cutting it into rectangles to piece together with other alterations of the same photo – and add some acrylic paint, grassy papers and pine needles to the marshy area in the foreground. My hubby is going to make a nice cedar frame for it. I really loved walking along this lake in Montana and liked the photo I'd taken of the scene; I'm really happy with how this 24" x 18" mixed media piece captures a sense of Dailey Lake in Paradise Valley.

The finished landscape of rectangles

Here's how the new landscape turned out. I like how some of the rectangles stand out and seem to advance while others recede. I added some acrylic paint to the field and grassy area but wasn't very bold with it -- partly because I didn't want to draw too much attention to that area since this image seems to be about the clouds and how they dwarf the buildings ... and partly because I'm way out of my comfort zone when painting!!