Two more

I made two more "interference series" Arizona collages over the holiday weekend. I sent images of them to the director at Xanadu Gallery and she asked me to ship out all three new desert pieces!

In the top one, I liked how the spent blossom of the century plant seemed to follow the line of the distant rock formation, so I worked to frame it just right when I took the original photo. I like how the strips of paper interrupt the vertical line of the blossom but it still captures the eye flow. In the second piece, I enjoyed working with the sense of space in the scene and emphasizing the foreground cactus by adding multiple layers of vertical strips of the altered image (click on the image to enlarge and better see the verticals).

First Arizona Piece

My trip to deliver art to the gallery in Arizona also allowed me to take a number of photographs from which to create new work. I was so happy to get back into my studio and work on this new desert piece over the weekend. It is 12" x 12" and entitled "Desert Uplift" to reference the uplift of the rock feature, the reaching saguaro and the cloud building up over the rock formation.

Mission Accomplished

I delivered my art to Xanadu Gallery in old town Scottsdale last Saturday and enjoyed seeing the gallery and meeting the staff. I didn't think my art would be on display for the Thursday night Art Walk as the owner was out of town for the week. However, I was delighted to find five of my pieces hung and viewable from the street!!! (You can make out "my wall" to the right of the parked car in the photo below.) I was also thrilled to find out that I'll now be moving from my spot waaaaaay down on the online artists part of their website to the top section of 25 in-gallery artists. GULP!
Update Thursday, Dec 15th: the gallery director called me today to tell me a couple came in after seeing my work in the window and bought the upper right piece to ship home to St. Louis - whooohooooo!

2012 Art Calendar

I put together some small calendars for 2012 with 13 images of my artwork. The pages measure 5.5" wide by 8.5" high with a 4"-square image on each page. I took some to the Galesburg Civic Art Center and the Buchanan Center for the Arts to sell in their gift shops. I also have some extras, so let me know if you'd like an $18 calendar for you or a for a gift!

Going to Scottsdale

The collages above are all going to Scottsdale, Arizona, next week to Xanadu Gallery. I'm going to ride out with my friend, Linda, who will be wintering in Arizona, so we're going to hand deliver the art. The gallery owner has been very nice and fun to deal with via email, so I'm excited to get to meet him and tour the gallery. Linda and I then plan to go to Taliesen West, the Botanical Garden, maybe head up to Sedona, and also go on part of the Thursday Night Art Walk in Scottsdale before I fly home. It promises to be a fun adventure!

Just one more...

I wanted to make one more piece for the owner of Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, to choose from, so I worked on this image of the Tetons. This is another 16" x 16" cradled panel like last week's. I made a piece earlier this year where I angled a few strips across the horizontal pieces, but in this one I really broke out of the straight lines. I built up a lot of angled pieces in the clouds to give a feeling of moving, billowing clouds.

I'm hoping this work also conveys some of the wonder of the Tetons. The mountain range doesn't have any foothills, so it just rises straight up nearly 7000 feet above the valley floor! We were shocked at the views we had driving along the road in Grand Teton National Park and wondered aloud if we were going to drive right up to the mountain base. I took the photo this piece is based on while we were driving toward one of the peaks in the range. In one of the digital variations, I added some text in the road about the Tetons; it's in the darker strips. I like the feeling this has of being on that road with the two cars up at the bend in the road ahead.

Are we there yet?

I realized there were a couple photos from our trip out west that I really responded to due to the roads depicted in them. I liked how this view pulls you in, yet you don't know what will appear if you continue on the road and make the curve to the right... kinda like life! In addition to working with three sets of digitally altered prints in this 16" x 16" piece, I added in pieces of old postage stamps, some green art papers, and fragments of a "2 reais" bill my friend gave me after her trip to Brazil – the currency had beautiful color etchings of an underwater scene, so I used sections of it in the composition... a couple turtles in my sky, some seaweed in the trees and part of a statue's head in the road. I like to put those "rogue" items into my landscapes so that they're revealed in the up-close view, further removing the art from the original photograph. (Click on the images to better see the details of which I speak.)