Commissions Complete

I completed my commissions and sent them off on Friday. I've been doing mostly landscapes, so working on the close up of the cactus was really fun and gives me new ideas to pursue...check back to see!

Studio Time

I've been spending as much time in my studio as I can. I started the above piece last weekend and then worked on it during the week whenever possible. It is another 24"W x 18"H piece to submit to the Cincinnati "Art Comes Alive" exhibition. In addition to the three digital variations of the photo of the Hoodoos in Yellowstone, I've added sections of topographical maps of the park and photos I took of animals in Yellowstone. There are tiny images of: 1 bear, 1 coyote, 4 bison and 6 antelope (you can actually see some of them if you click on the image to show it larger). I'm calling this piece "Hidden Life" due to those hidden images and also referencing all the other hidden life within the park.

I needed to get the Yellowstone piece finished and off my drawing board as I now have two commission pieces to complete by the end of the month! A woman in Chicago purchased two of my desert collages she'd seen at Xanadu Gallery and asked me to make two more for a grouping of art. The images above are the two photos of mine she chose for me to work with. I started the cactus grouping today....

Upcoming shows

There is a national juried show in Cincinnati with an April deadline and one in Monmouth with a June deadline. I want to have some new, larger work to submit to those, so this is my first completion toward that goal. This is called "Listen - the grass is singing" and it is 24"W x 18"H. I used some colored pencil lines on yellowed book text and put fragments of that in the grass for some up-close surprises.

I spoke to an area church's Daughter Banquet last week and have two more speaking engagements lined up for women's groups. It's been fun to put together a 20-minute talk summarizing how I got into collage and then moved from traditional collage to what I'm doing with photographs. It was also surprising to look back and realize how many achievements I've made in seven years; good motivation to keep pushing ahead!

Desert Path

After hiking up this path to see some Native American ruins in central Arizona, we made our way back down, frequently stopping to enjoy the up-close view of desert plants and the long view of saguaro, lake and mountains. I made three digital alterations of a photo from the path, shredded those alterations and combined them to form a new landscape.

Gallery Visit

My husband and I flew out to Scottsdale, Arizona last week and the first thing on the agenda was to deliver four collages to Xanadu Gallery. After unwrapping the art and checking out the new work in the gallery, we walked across the street to dine at a nice sidewalk cafe with the director of the gallery. While we were eating, the gallery owner sold one of my artworks that had been on display in the window! Nice start to a vacation!!! We went to the Celebration of Fine Art where 100 artists set up their art and create new work under big tents and are there from 10 to 6 every day for ten weeks. We also took several trips out into the desert and took a lot of new photos for my work. It was a really great trip. Tomorrow I'll start on a new piece - after I narrow down my subject choices!

And Two Makes Four

I'm going to be replenishing my art at Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale and am making a compact package of two 11"x14" panels with two 6"x12" panels nested inside them. "Desert Bloom" and "SMoCA Loca" (shown in earlier posts) will be going to Arizona along with these two new pieces. I went back to my previous method of cutting rectangles for the piece called "Gathered Here" with all the small cacti around the tall saguaro. Doing that made me realize how much more I prefer my year-old method of cutting strips of imagery! (I think I'm going to devote myself to that method for the foreseeable future and push that idea using wider strips for larger pieces.) This newest 6"x12" is called "Almost Ready" and my friend Bob pronounced it my best piece ever!! He said he can see it as a work 6-feet tall... hmmmmmmm.

Abstraction of reality

My friend Linda and I went to the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA) in December. They have a sculpture courtyard that is a restful area with walls painted in solid browns, white and bright yellow that the sun and shadows really play with. I took a photo of the plantings against the round and flat walls and then decided to kneel down and take a shot of an exaggerated view of the cactus and the light hitting the wall above it. This weekend I digitally altered the photo, then shredded three prints of those alterations and pieced them together to take the image even further from reality. I'm calling this 6" x 12" piece SMoCa Loca.  :-)