I am so excited and honored to have been accepted into the Sumi-e Society of America’s 64th annual exhibition. This will be an online only exhibit. The link will be  sumieshow.org but it won’t be active until next month sometime. My piece is of the Jacksonville Zoo’s Asian garden. I used a technique that I learned about in the Sumi-e Society’s quarterly newsletter. You can use milk as a resist! I keep meaning to try it as a mask in my regular watercolors.

While organizing I found a bunch of “beginnings” stashed in various parts of the studio. The origins of art are so varied – especially in mixed media. Sometimes a pieces starts with an idea, but sometimes it simply starts with a palette of colors or interesting materials. For a mixed media artist a piece might start in one medium, but begs for a mixture.

These two are starts with bits of similar colors. I’m going to love the 1st one for its different textures when it’s done.

The second will be be loved for its rich and vibrant colors. It’s hard to tell but the substrate is a rich burgundy paisley patterned fabric stretched like a canvas. It had been used before but the piece never sold, so… Destroy and recreate was the only option. This will have lots of rich reds and golds along with the burgundy.

I’ve spent many many months doing a deep dive into cleaning and organizing my studio. This has been an every 3 months chore for years now. This time, I’ve gotten down to the nitty gritty and I hope this means that the cleaning will have to be done less often and will be easier. I’ve worked very hard to make sure that everything has a place and that I know where that place is. I know it’s working because when I’ve purchased new things and bring them home, I know exactly where they go. The same has been true of when I finish a piece and have to return some items their place.

In the process, I stumbled upon some things that may be of interest and taken pictures along the way. I will be posting about these things on Thursdays and Sundays. Even a clean and organized studio doesn’t necessarily look like any other clean and organized room:

Artist Trading Cards are both fun and instructional. They are a great way to work out ideas on a small scale. They are also a great way to get Free art! Unfortunately I am not part of a group that trades them anymore, since our wonderful Society of Mixed Media Artists (SoMMA) disbanded several years ago (due to Covid mostly). However, I did finally get around to framing the many wonderful ones I had collected (or most of them). 27 + 5 = 32 great pieces of Art!

There were some that I was not able to frame at this time….eventually….

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.