Live art demonstration

I'll be participating in "Art Before Your Eyes" at our local Galesburg Civic Art Center on the 19th of April. Eleven artists will be creating art during the two-hour event, and the artwork will be auctioned off to the highest bidders as a fundraiser for the Art Center. I've spent about 4 hours on this diptych, completing the right side and getting a good start on the left. I'll finish the first layer of strips during the event and then add two more layers of fragments of imagery and art papers.

Garden of the Gods Commission

A woman I know asked if I could make a piece from a photo she'd taken in the Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs. We decided to crop the image and make a 12"H x 24"W collage. I made several digital alterations of her photo, cut those into quarter inch strips and added some 1800s-era topo map fragments and art papers as I built up the layers. I enjoyed working on the image of a place I'd visited a number of times myself, and she was thrilled with the end result.

Here's how it looks after the first layer of papers has been adhered. Kinda striped in nature, but the 2nd and 3rd layers take care of that. Close up shows the topo map and solid art papers.

2nd torn experiment

After experimenting with tearing imagery for the 12" x 12" collage last week, I wanted to see what tearing half inch strips to build up a smaller image might look like. I'm pleased with how it turned out. Now I'm trying to decide if I want to try a bigger collage with this method or do another small collage....

Experiment

Several years ago, I made collages by tearing random segments out of my digitally altered prints to build up a scene. In this experiment, I'm trying to stay in the spirit of the horizontal strips of imagery that I've been doing for a couple years but tear the strips instead of cutting them. I'm pleased with how this 12" x 12" turned out, but I'm not sure I could handle doing a large piece this way! We'll see....

Winter scene

I've made three collages of this farm in three seasons. It's been very interesting to see how the scenes have similarities yet vary with the position I was on the road, the vegetation (or lack thereof) and the digital alterations that I make to my photo. Next up ... spring!

Commissions

I've completed two commissions in the last several weeks - how fun! The first was a surprise birthday gift. The husband asked me to make a collage for his wife showing a sweeping scene in the Grand Canyon with several photos overlaying it from their two hiking/camping trips in the canyon. For the background, I used my method of building the scene out of strips of altered imagery. I did not alter the snapshot photos and used them as distinct rectangles. She was very happy with the gift and I'm pleased with how it turned out.

The second commission was to do a raven. I'd made a series of ravens in 2009 where I'd torn the prints of ravens and added art papers to build the scene. It was fun to go back to that method and realize my skills had changed and I had new ideas of how to work with the imagery. This raven will be paired with two other collages of mine; one has a lot of old ledger paper in it and the other has torn topo maps of Yellowstone overlaying a rocky scene in the park. The raven's feet are surrounded by topo map fragments and I overlaid the Latin name of the raven onto old ledger paper to tie this piece to the other two.

Gift

I made this piece for a friend's 60th birthday. It is from a photo she took in Colorado of a stunning cloud. It was fun to work on it knowing who would be living with the art. I have two more commissions I'm working on for friends, so the fun continues!