My latest play date was yesterday. What made it great was that one of my guests was an 8 year old (or there abouts). I have two friends that come to the studio weekly. My friend Debbie C comes every Wednesday and this week she brought her grandson. It is wonderful watching kids create. They come up with some interesting ideas (and I steal them). Here are Patrick’s creations for the day and one that we collaborated on. I kept the collaboration for later collage purposes. We started with paper making and then I taught Patrick the “shaving cream” methods for making collage papers. (You spread shaving cream on a plate, flatten it, put small drops of different colors on it, then take a stick and swirl through the drops to create a marbled effect). Then we did some found object printing.

Debbie and I also created some papers. This is one of my favorite things to do, though I have yet to use my home made papers for much. That will be a goal for next year. The first two are Debbie’s planet and map. The next oval and circle are actually the same piece. The oval was coming apart, so I repaired it by making it into a circle. You can see how much lighter the paper dries, because the oval was right out of the water. The circle was a day later. You can still see some of the orange oval in there. (Funny: I’m not sure why there was a “Q” on my table but the circle with the feather made two “Qs”.)

I love having guests in my studio. I often schedule “play dates” for various techniques. I recently scheduled two, one for paper making and one for printmaking with found objects. I didn’t have any one that was able to make it for the paper making back in April. A few people did show up for the printmaking playdates. It was kind funny though, there was very little printmaking with found objects. It was still loads of fun. Some people did collage and one of the ladies was so very excited by the idea of using her own home made papers. That’s one of the great things about inviting people in. It re-energizes you. Her excitement was contagious for sure. On one of the days, I had a fabulous photography come who wanted to learn about doing mixed media. He too was very excited about the process. This was eye opening for me. I have no desire to teach classes at all, but mentoring someone through a project was very satisfying. Here’s one of the handmade papers and the mixed media piece. While everyone was doing their things I made some rust paper and some prints of found objects.

I haven’t been gone as long as I thought, but still too long since my last post in February. There are good things and bad things about being a member of an arts organization. When you are a member of more than one each of those doubles or triples or quadruples. Sometimes they keep me so busy that I don’t have time to do my own artwork! The trick is to NOT volunteer too often. I was not successful this 23-24 Season. I was so happy in May when almost all my organizations quit for the summer! I immediately dug out several projects that have been in limbo for a long time. You will be seeing some of them in the near future. But here are some things I created for one art group’s final fundraiser of the year:

I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to be finished with a piece. I learned a lot, though. If there are any non-artists out there who believe art isn’t WORK, let me educate you. This one was hard. With a lot of back pain involved. I put in several full days of work. It took me two weeks of painting everyday. Some days I was a contortionist in order to get the paint in the corners it needed to go into.

So my love affair with this piece didn’t last. I made so many mistakes starting out. This created lots of extra work. Back breaking work – not literally, but very bad back pain at the end of the day. This is not my normal style of painting. I rarely paint with acrylics, or with flat color. The midcentury modern time period required it in the graphics. I show here 11 phases. Some of these phases have “temporary” items in them. Taking a photo of the “possibilities” helps me to see if it’s really what I want. In my next post you will see in the finale that I did away with some things that were there from the beginning.

I had a lot of images saved of clocks that were from the Midcentury Modern era.

I wonder if the general public realizes how much work artists do even before a piece is started. This particularly applies to conceptual pieces which for me are usually mixed media. In this case I had to make sure that my images were definitely all from that era. I also want any type that I use in the piece to be from that era. You can see that I’ve drawn some common motifs from that time onto my canvas. I will be painting them in the next phase – I think. Could be I decide to use some collage here. After that I definitely start turning it into mixed media with collage and the addition of objects. My path is much clearer now and things should move along quickly. I may just get this baby done in time for the take-in! * Some of the drawing here is from a previous idea.

I have to repeat myself and say once again that I LOVE to watch how an art piece EVOLVES. I’m certain most artists do, or we wouldn’t sit through the endless amount of demos that we do. 🥴 I’m showing you phase 2 even though it has evolved beyond this as well. As you can see, phase two was mostly about subtraction with a little bit of composition thrown in. However, while looking through the images I had saved on my computer for this project, other thoughts came to me. Please make sure to check out the last post to see the difference. You definitely won’t want to miss the NEXT post! Hold on to your hats! This ride is going to be a blast…from the past.

Starting a new work is almost always exciting. For me when it’s a mixed media piece, my exuberance might be a little too much. In this case particularly so. The idea for this piece called “Timing is Everything” has been in my head for at least 10 years. That means I’ve been collecting images and items for the piece for that long. The first phase is to bring out everything. It might surprise you that this in the picture ISN’T everything.

I have tons of digital images that I need to sort through and print. The next phase will be placing more things down, but also subtracting things and moving a lot of things about. During this process thoughts also come and go. These help me clarify what I want to say with this piece.

Given the amount of images and stuff that I have, I suspect this will become a series of at least 3 pieces.

This hasn’t happened in a long time:

Good afternoon,

We want to thank you for submitting your work to the upcoming “New Beginnings” at the Art Center Gallery. 

The judge made her final choices after two days of deliberation over the 70+ entries.  We are sorry to let you know that your work was not chosen for this exhibition…but, don’t be discouraged we have several other opportunities coming up in 2024.

I wonder if non-artists realize that we suffer the slings and arrows of rejection. This one is a little rough, because I entered THREE pieces. Not the judges cup of tea? Not deemed in alignment with the “Theme”? Just not going to work with the rest of those selected? Ah well. They will get into another show someday, I hope.

If an artist is lucky enough to have attended college, then they learn how to take it early on in their career. Students undergo regular critiques and competition. Once you start entering shows you have to grow thicker skinned. Rejection comes and goes. You may not win a prize for years (and often won’t even agree with the Judges choices – the same goes for the jurying process. You gotta just let it roll off your back. BUT then you have to re-access your pieces and work harder and smarter next time.

Today was a bit of a rough one and yet it was also exciting and fun. Is that unique to artists or do other professionals experience this? My “studio assistant” didn’t show up today to stop me from going overboard. I had to knock a few things back or cover them up along the way. I’m happy with the result. We will see if it gets accepted to the show I made it for….