Roots

I live in west central Illinois in the land of cornfields. There’s a spot in our county called Pilot Knob that is 100 feet higher than the surrounding terrain. My husband and I went on a drive one day to take some landscape photos for my work and decided to see what the view was like from that higher ground. I really like how the eye goes from the mailbox in the foreground, to the farm house in the middle ground and then follows the road into the distance. Viewing this 12"H x 24"W piece up close reveals the digital filtrations I used and the texture of the strips of imagery pieced together. I don't think I'd ever driven up that part of the road before, yet my grandma grew up just down the road beyond that group of trees! Relatives still live in the family farmhouse... I'll be working on a new piece soon of the Asplund farm just down the road from this mailbox....

National Show and new work

I'd made two 18"H x 24"W pieces earlier this year to enter in a show in Cincinnati. The works weren't accepted for that show but I needed new work to enter in the 64 Arts national show in nearby Monmouth, so I entered them plus a Chicago scene. The juror was Eric Fischl, a prominent New York artist, who has an interesting project called "America Now and Here" and he wanted to tie that into the 64 Arts show. One of the categories was "America as Place" and he chose these scenes of Wyoming and Montana to be in the show! It opens August 31st.
America Now and Here -

The past two weekends I've worked on some new graffiti-enhanced train car images. I took the original photos while doing a rail yard tour here in Galesburg. I like how they could work as a pair with the yellow cars at the inner edges of the two works. These are 12"H x 24"W and I made the strips 3/8" wide instead of the 1/4" wide that I usually use for a 12"H piece. I think the wider strips work fine with this complex imagery; what do you think?

Art Before Your Eyes - Live Demo!

Here's a short video of me during the fundraiser, answering some questions about my process....

FUN event at the Galesburg Civic Art Center

The two-hour fundraiser at our local art center turned out to be a LOT of fun! Great food and drink, nice music playing, and nine artists creating artwork for a silent auction. I think everyone enjoyed seeing the working processes of the artists -- there were several mixed media artists, a woman making a necklace from her lampwork beads, and painters working in oils and acrylics at easels or on the floor. Sometimes you're lucky enough to get to visit an artist's studio, but to see them at work is even more of a rare opportunity! As I was waiting for a coat of matte medium to dry on my piece, I made a quick round of the art center to see how everyone else was progressing. My husband took some movies, too, so I was able to see a bit more of other artists' process. I may try to upload a movie once he's done some processing and editing.

The photos in this posting show me answering a question of one of the guests, my finished collage, and two of my fellow artist friends at work: Basia Krol is painting a flower in her composition from a reference photo and April Jackson is working on her abstract creation.

Making art for an audience...

I'm going to participate in a fundraiser tomorrow night at our Galesburg Civic Art Center along with eight other artists. We're to create a piece of art during a two-hour reception and our art will be purchased via a silent auction at the end of the evening. I've done a little over half of the base layer of this 11" x 16" collage -- piecing together three different alterations of the photo -- so that I can finish it and add 2 more layers of pieces during the event.

I took the photo (above) looking up the stairs on the north side of the Art Institute, showing a bit of the building and the buildings it faces on Michigan Avenue, Chicago. The famous lions in front of the Art Institute are hidden by large planters but we know they're there. I'm calling this piece "Avenue of the Lions." I'll have my hubby take pictures tomorrow night during the event as I finish the work.

Click on the art below to see how my collage is turning out.

2 small abstracts

Here are two small (6" x 6") abstract collages I've done in the past couple weeks. The one uses strips of paper from three different ledgers from the late 1800's along with some art papers; the effect is kind of an abstract cityscape. The other uses leftover strips from several collages I've made of Arizona imagery. I'm calling it "Dream of the Cactus Wren" as I think glimpses of desert plants might indeed be what a desert bird might dream about....

Another Chicago scene

After getting good feedback on the last blog posting and in email concerning the Chicago landscape piece, I worked with an interesting photo I'd taken in Millennium Park, downtown Chicago. This view stopped me in my tracks when walking through the park last autumn. All of the upward movement of columns and buildings intersecting with the sweeping curve ... the old architecture and the new... the unexpected angle of the tall building in the upper right corner overlapped by the bit of vine with red blossoms - wow! So, I made some digital alterations of the photo - including combining one with a filter called "acidic", which seemed appropriate for what city buildings deal with - and started combining strips. Interesting how I can divide an image into a series of horizontal pieces and the vertical thrust is still quite strong in the image!