In Print

Interesting week ...

- Art Buzz 2012 arrived in our mailbox. Rob and I submitted art to this juried competition in the fall because we liked the founder's mission. Instead of the usual juried show where you pay $30 to enter and send images, then ship the art to the gallery if it is juried into the show, Art Buzz publishes a hardcover book of the art chosen. They then distribute the book to gain recognition of emerging and mid-career artists. They send books to art dealers in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Naples, Miami, Santa Fe, New Orleans, Washington DC, as well as ones in The Netherlands, Russia, UK and France. We found out in December that we'd been juried in; I have one image depicted for Honorable Mention in "altered photography" and my husband won First Prize in sculpture so he has 3 images shown.

- One of my collages is featured on a full page in the current 96-page gallery catalog for Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale, AZ. The catalog arrived this week as well.

- We were interviewed Saturday (along with another Galesburg artist with an image in Art Buzz) for an article that will run in the Galesburg Register-Mail next Sunday.

- I emailed the Peoria Journal Star about possibly doing a story on my husband and another Bradley University graduate who are having an art show together in February. The reporter looked at our website and decided she wanted to do a story on Rob and me instead! So she'll come to our studio on Thursday to interview us for the Sunday arts and entertainment section.

Fun stuff!

Sedona image

When visiting Sedona, Arizona, in December, I took a photo featuring this crazy blooming cactus in the foreground with a stunning red rock formation beyond it. My husband chose this image to try out a new stylus and a free paint program on his iPad. I liked how his painting looked, so I made a print of it – as well as prints of two digitally filtered version of the photo – and combined pieces of all three to make this scene. I love how abstracted it is up close, but then the eye tricks the viewer into seeing the scene pretty clearly from several feet away! (This piece is 11x14 on cradled panel; click the image to enlarge it to better view the abstraction.)

Busy start to the new year

How did it get to be the 4th week in January already?! I haven't done any postings as I haven't had a LOT of time in my studio, yet I've been very busy with art!



- I shipped the three Arizona collages to Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale. Xanadu is doing a catalog of art every month this winter and I'm on page 39 of the January catalog. They sent out PDFs of the catalog to each artist whose work is featured and put my art on the cover of my PDF - is this gallery top notch, or what?!


- I decided to remove my art from the gallery in Montana since the owner had decided to feature only two artists in the gallery each month of the summer tourist season and my art was in storage during high-traffic times. I'm currently looking at other galleries in the MT/WY/CO region. My friend picked up my art and is storing it for me; I've written descriptions and placed some of it on the Xanadu website.

- Friends had purchased two small collages a couple years ago and asked if I could make a third to coordinate so they could have all three hanging vertically together. This is a scene in Yellowstone National Park; I've layered pieces of topo maps of the park onto the rocky areas and art papers to accentuate the red plants growing in the rocks.


- I'm packing up eight pieces of art today to send to Campbell-Steele Gallery in Marion, Iowa. The gallery owners are going to rehang the gallery with works of abstraction and asked for more of my art.


They also commissioned a small piece to coordinate with another abstract collage I'd made out of old ledger papers; an interior designer wanted two pieces for a job she was working on. Sweet.

- I DID get a piece finished last week that I'd actually run out the prints for in November! It was for my Women's Art Workshop topic of "River." This piece is 6" x 12" and entitled "Passing By."

Two more

I made two more "interference series" Arizona collages over the holiday weekend. I sent images of them to the director at Xanadu Gallery and she asked me to ship out all three new desert pieces!

In the top one, I liked how the spent blossom of the century plant seemed to follow the line of the distant rock formation, so I worked to frame it just right when I took the original photo. I like how the strips of paper interrupt the vertical line of the blossom but it still captures the eye flow. In the second piece, I enjoyed working with the sense of space in the scene and emphasizing the foreground cactus by adding multiple layers of vertical strips of the altered image (click on the image to enlarge and better see the verticals).

First Arizona Piece

My trip to deliver art to the gallery in Arizona also allowed me to take a number of photographs from which to create new work. I was so happy to get back into my studio and work on this new desert piece over the weekend. It is 12" x 12" and entitled "Desert Uplift" to reference the uplift of the rock feature, the reaching saguaro and the cloud building up over the rock formation.

Mission Accomplished

I delivered my art to Xanadu Gallery in old town Scottsdale last Saturday and enjoyed seeing the gallery and meeting the staff. I didn't think my art would be on display for the Thursday night Art Walk as the owner was out of town for the week. However, I was delighted to find five of my pieces hung and viewable from the street!!! (You can make out "my wall" to the right of the parked car in the photo below.) I was also thrilled to find out that I'll now be moving from my spot waaaaaay down on the online artists part of their website to the top section of 25 in-gallery artists. GULP!
Update Thursday, Dec 15th: the gallery director called me today to tell me a couple came in after seeing my work in the window and bought the upper right piece to ship home to St. Louis - whooohooooo!

2012 Art Calendar

I put together some small calendars for 2012 with 13 images of my artwork. The pages measure 5.5" wide by 8.5" high with a 4"-square image on each page. I took some to the Galesburg Civic Art Center and the Buchanan Center for the Arts to sell in their gift shops. I also have some extras, so let me know if you'd like an $18 calendar for you or a for a gift!