One of Seven

Well... I was thrilled to get juried into the "Open Small Works Exhibition" in New York City and be one of 65 that made the cut out of 600 entries. The icing on that nice cake arrived in my email Sunday, congratulating me on receiving one of the seven recognition awards at the February 9th opening reception. (The image above is on the news page at N.A.W.A.-National Association of Women Artists | National Association of Women Artists)

3rd in a series

After seeing the first two pieces in this series, friends asked how I kept the image together after the print went through the shredder... the answer is, I didn't! I took photos as I worked on the third one to show the process I've worked out. I started with a 12x12 cradled panel for this collage. I cropped a photo to that size and ran out three sets of prints: one without filtration, one with a "dry brush" Photoshop filter, and one with a "poster edges" filter (If you click on the image to enlarge it, you can see the different look each has.) I then printed the images in two sections on my color laser printer (the white lines show how I divided the 12" wide images for printing on my 8.5"x14" paper).

I put all of the top sections through the shredder and placed those in a pile on my drawing board and then shredded the three bottom sections and put those in another pile. I printed out a small photo of the scene to help me as I sorted and tried to assemble the image out of the quarter-inch wide strips.

As I adhered strips, I purposely did not line up the images exactly and would add sections straddling strips to further abstract the image. I varied the lengths of the strips as well.

I let the piece dry overnight and, in looking at it the next morning, decided to add a few more pieces to the bottom left to add a bit more interference.

2nd movement

I continued experimenting this week with running my imagery through a shredder and piecing together a landscape on two 10x8 cradled panels. Two friends whose art opinions I trust saw this piece and really raved about it, so that made me feel good. I got it done in time Friday to photograph it and submit it (and the 8x8 one from last week) to a juried show in Colorado. (click on the image to enlarge and see the details better)

Shredded

In my musings this morning about torn paper vs cut rectangles, an idea hit me – use a paper shredder!! I ran a print of grass through the shredder and liked how it looked. So I ran some filters on a shot of Emigrant Peak with a grassy foreground, made a print. Ran some other filters, made a print. Placed those prints through the shredder, piled the pieces on my drawing board, and started picking out strips to glue down.  This is a little 8" x 8" cradled panel. I really like how it turned out, so I think I'll do a bigger one next....

This week I emailed the National Association of Women Artists to ask how big of a show my piece would be part of in NYC in February. The director said I should feel very honored as she thought the judges were very tough this year and they picked 65 pieces for the show out of 600 entries. GULP. There are five pieces of sculpture in the show and my friend Amber Jean is one of them - go Amber Jean!!
New York Debut of the Frog Bronze! | AmberJean

Going to New York City!

The 12"x12" collage above will be traveling to New York next week to be in the "Small Works" juried exhibit at the National Association of Women Artists Gallery on Fifth Avenue! The show will run February 1-22. It is a thrill to be juried into this show and a great start to 2011.
 >grin<

2 canvases, 1 piece

A friend who is a painter and chair of a nearby university's art department suggested pairing a geometric (cut rectangles composition) with an organic (torn paper collage). I didn't go quite that far, but I paired two canvases and two scenes together. The top one is all cut rectangles pieced together from three sets of filtered prints and the bottom one has a few darker rectangles applied to the image and some leaves layered over the image of grasses. I like the different treatments on the two and the different size canvases (the top is 12" x 16" and the bottom one is 12" x 6").

First art of the new year!

Having been to Yellowstone National Park in three seasons, I have a number of photos of the Hoodoo rock formations – including some great angles from hiking around in them last fall. I decided to rough up a topo map with some of the same filters used on the rock photo, and I made prints of maps at small and large sizes so type is readable is some and becomes more of a texture in others (click on an image to see the map pieces larger). I tore out and applied pieces to the rock photo – covering more of the image than I have done in previous collages. I sent these images to an artist friend in Montana to get her feedback. I love her response to the bottom one of the two images: "As a climber...I love the angle of the rocks as it looks like I'm looking up at a great new route. The map is subtle and beautiful...offering various potential meanings and depth to the piece."