More desert anyone?

I'm making some more desert pieces for Xanadu's winter "high season" and am enjoying cropping photos I took around the Valley of the Sun to fit a 12" x 24" cradled panel. The horizontal one is of a landscape in Sedona and the vertical is a view from the lower cliff dwelling at Tonto National Monument. One of the filters I used on this one is "sand" so that is the grainy texture on some of the strips... it seemed appropriate for the subject matter.

The opening for the Buchanan Center's 64 Arts national juried show was last Friday. Eric Fischl was the juror and he flew out from NYC to be here for the opening. Since he's "an internationally acclaimed American figurative painter and sculptor," around 20 of the 78 artists in the show came to the opening. I enjoyed visiting with artists from Rhode Island, Montana, New York, Michigan, Washington, Iowa, and Illinois. Here's a photo of Eric talking at the opening with one of my pieces on the wall beyond him.

Arizona Landscape

I was surprised to realize I'd made square and vertical collages from the photos I'd taken around Scottsdale, AZ, but I hadn't made any horizontal landscapes! Having used up my supply of 12"H x 24"W cradled panels, I decided to make a collage of those dimensions on two 12"x12" panels. I also decided to experiment a bit and merged a constellation chart with the sky in one of my digital manipulations of the photo and put a topo map of Tonto National Forest in the sandy areas in another. Those additions are very subtle, but offers something unexpected in the close up view.

A Personal Landscape

This piece was so fun to work on, as the image is of the farm where my grandmother grew up. I enjoyed spending time there as a child visiting her brother and his wife, and now my cousin lives there. The house isn't visible with all the leaves on the trees, so I just might have to take photos of farm in all seasons and make more collages!

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.