Sedona image

When visiting Sedona, Arizona, in December, I took a photo featuring this crazy blooming cactus in the foreground with a stunning red rock formation beyond it. My husband chose this image to try out a new stylus and a free paint program on his iPad. I liked how his painting looked, so I made a print of it – as well as prints of two digitally filtered version of the photo – and combined pieces of all three to make this scene. I love how abstracted it is up close, but then the eye tricks the viewer into seeing the scene pretty clearly from several feet away! (This piece is 11x14 on cradled panel; click the image to enlarge it to better view the abstraction.)

Busy start to the new year

How did it get to be the 4th week in January already?! I haven't done any postings as I haven't had a LOT of time in my studio, yet I've been very busy with art!



- I shipped the three Arizona collages to Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale. Xanadu is doing a catalog of art every month this winter and I'm on page 39 of the January catalog. They sent out PDFs of the catalog to each artist whose work is featured and put my art on the cover of my PDF - is this gallery top notch, or what?!


- I decided to remove my art from the gallery in Montana since the owner had decided to feature only two artists in the gallery each month of the summer tourist season and my art was in storage during high-traffic times. I'm currently looking at other galleries in the MT/WY/CO region. My friend picked up my art and is storing it for me; I've written descriptions and placed some of it on the Xanadu website.

- Friends had purchased two small collages a couple years ago and asked if I could make a third to coordinate so they could have all three hanging vertically together. This is a scene in Yellowstone National Park; I've layered pieces of topo maps of the park onto the rocky areas and art papers to accentuate the red plants growing in the rocks.


- I'm packing up eight pieces of art today to send to Campbell-Steele Gallery in Marion, Iowa. The gallery owners are going to rehang the gallery with works of abstraction and asked for more of my art.


They also commissioned a small piece to coordinate with another abstract collage I'd made out of old ledger papers; an interior designer wanted two pieces for a job she was working on. Sweet.

- I DID get a piece finished last week that I'd actually run out the prints for in November! It was for my Women's Art Workshop topic of "River." This piece is 6" x 12" and entitled "Passing By."

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!