Lori Reed - Mixed Media Blog

Sedona image

2012-01-30T14:23:00.001-06:00

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

2012-01-23T09:55:00.004-06:00

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

2011-12-29T12:08:00.001-06:00

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

2011-12-19T11:43:00.001-06:00

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

2011-12-10T19:57:00.002-06:00

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

2011-11-27T20:32:00.000-06:00

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!

Going to Scottsdale

2011-11-23T21:07:00.001-06:00

The collages above are all going to Scottsdale, Arizona, next week to Xanadu Gallery. I'm going to ride out with my friend, Linda, who will be wintering in Arizona, so we're going to hand deliver the art. The gallery owner has been very nice and fun to deal with via email, so I'm excited to get to meet him and tour the gallery. Linda and I then plan to go to Taliesen West, the Botanical Garden, maybe head up to Sedona, and also go on part of the Thursday Night Art Walk in Scottsdale before I fly home. It promises to be a fun adventure!

Just one more...

2011-11-16T14:16:00.001-06:00

I wanted to make one more piece for the owner of Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, to choose from, so I worked on this image of the Tetons. This is another 16" x 16" cradled panel like last week's. I made a piece earlier this year where I angled a few strips across the horizontal pieces, but in this one I really broke out of the straight lines. I built up a lot of angled pieces in the clouds to give a feeling of moving, billowing clouds.

I'm hoping this work also conveys some of the wonder of the Tetons. The mountain range doesn't have any foothills, so it just rises straight up nearly 7000 feet above the valley floor! We were shocked at the views we had driving along the road in Grand Teton National Park and wondered aloud if we were going to drive right up to the mountain base. I took the photo this piece is based on while we were driving toward one of the peaks in the range. In one of the digital variations, I added some text in the road about the Tetons; it's in the darker strips. I like the feeling this has of being on that road with the two cars up at the bend in the road ahead.

Are we there yet?

2011-11-07T16:33:00.000-06:00

I realized there were a couple photos from our trip out west that I really responded to due to the roads depicted in them. I liked how this view pulls you in, yet you don't know what will appear if you continue on the road and make the curve to the right... kinda like life! In addition to working with three sets of digitally altered prints in this 16" x 16" piece, I added in pieces of old postage stamps, some green art papers, and fragments of a "2 reais" bill my friend gave me after her trip to Brazil – the currency had beautiful color etchings of an underwater scene, so I used sections of it in the composition... a couple turtles in my sky, some seaweed in the trees and part of a statue's head in the road. I like to put those "rogue" items into my landscapes so that they're revealed in the up-close view, further removing the art from the original photograph. (Click on the images to better see the details of which I speak.)

Donation

2011-10-31T13:38:00.001-05:00

I always give a piece of art to our local art centers when they're having fundraiser auctions. In the past, I've pulled one from my storage area... usually an older piece. This time I decided to make a new collage for the Taste of the Arts at nearby Monmouth's art center. I hope somebody falls in love with it and it raises $100 or more for the art center.

I snapped the original photo from the car when riding home from Chicago. I liked how the farm was such a small feature in the landscape with the middle ground in bright sunlight and the clouds so moody. In addition to altering the photo digitally and shredding the three alterations to piece together, I've added in some blue ledger paper, bits of text and some green art papers. It is 12"W x 6"H and is called "Unsettled."

Art and the Economy

2011-10-15T10:53:00.003-05:00

We had a steady flow of people during the three hours of our Art Happening. We were happy with how our art looked in a home with neutral wall colors and enjoyed receiving feedback on our new work.

I was hoping to move out a lot of my remaining "early works" at very discounted prices but didn't think I'd sell any of my 2011 at gallery prices. To my surprise I sold one of my new pieces and only one discounted piece––to my stepdaughter (Thanks Amy)! The economy seems to have everyone holding tight and not making "discretionary" purchases. I should have put up a little Christmas tree to make people think of perhaps giving a unique holiday gift! So, I share with you some scenes from the event and two JPGs (below) showing the sale art (click to enlarge). If anyone stopping by my blog is interested in seeing one of these as a larger image, along with the size information, let me know!

Art ideas and experiences

2011-10-03T20:21:00.001-05:00

We went to Chicago last weekend and enjoyed spending time at the Elmhurst Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Chicago Art Institute. It's always so inspiring to see great works of art up close and feel the ideas percolating.

This weekend I had time to work on a 9x12 abstract using shredded pieces of nature images and start preparing for an "Art Happening" we're staging on the 9th at a friend's Victorian home. He has it for sale and has a number of empty rooms, so we're going to put our art in 4 rooms of the house and have invited people to see the art and tour the house! My husband just finished an alabaster sculpture that will have its debut that day. I plan to hang my 2011 work on the main level, my 2010 work upstairs and also have about 40 older works marked at SALE prices hoping to clear out my art storage area.

Bold color palette!

2011-09-18T11:59:00.001-05:00

After making the two small abstracts last week, I decided to make an 8" x 10". In contemplating the blank panel, I got to thinking about all of the nice art papers I had NOT been using since they didn't mesh with my current mode of making landscapes. I pulled out a stack of papers and fanned out colors that would work together to make a "field of color" when cut into strips. I went back to the pieces that were leftover from the train graffiti piece I made this summer (see the July 20th posting) to pull some of the red boxcar pieces into the composition. I realized all boxcars have text on them saying CLOSE AND LOCK DOORS BEFORE MOVING CAR and I had two red strips with the first part of the phrase and two green strips that held a variation of the phrase (it instructs to lock BOTH DOORS). I included those in the color fields along with strips of the ridged car sides and some green and blue graffiti (you can see those details if you click on the image to enlarge it). Some of the papers have metallic gold in them, so between that, the abstracted train imagery, the bits of text and the bold color, this piece is really jumping! I'm calling it "Moving Car" -- a direct reference to the train text, but also conjuring up images from a moving train or auto.

Bigger and Smaller

2011-09-11T17:34:00.004-05:00

I usually work from photos I’ve taken, but when a friend sent me a photo from her hike to Trout Lake in Yellowstone National Park I immediately saw possibilities for a new collage. I loved the reflections in the water and the color range. With her permission, I made three digital alterations of her photo, cut those into strips and layered them together with art papers to create this 16"W x 12"H work. The title "I've Never Been There" can be taken as a straight forward admission by the artist that I’ve never been to this place, or it can be more of an implied wish ... I’ve never been there, but I’d like to be sitting by the lake’s edge contemplating the reflection on the water as it ripples toward me.

Today I decided to make a couple 6" x 6" abstract pieces. In one, I used the leftover strips from the prints of the water in the above Trout Lake piece along with some old ledger papers. In the other, I used blue and yellowed ledger paper along with some metallic copper paper to make an abstracted cityscape. I've been wanting to make some new pieces for a couple area art center gift shops, so these might be the first installments toward that goal....

More Depth

2011-08-29T16:50:00.001-05:00

I really love encaustic, but I haven't figured out how to combine fast-drying, oil-compatible layers of hot wax with my acrylic-compatible way of slowly building my imagery. I made a piece previously (see July 5th posting) using several layers of pouring medium and decided to take that to greater depths.

I have 12 layers in the 12" x 6" work above:
1 - base layer of strips cut from three different digital manipulations of a photo of Dailey Lake, Montana
2 - acrylic pouring medium
3 - acrylic pouring medium
4 - additional strips of imagery applied
5 - pouring medium
6 - pouring medium
7 - additional strips
8 - matte medium
9 - pouring medium
10 - pouring medium
11 - strips of imagery and matte medium
12 - strips of imagery and matte medium

The pouring medium is glossy and I don't like the glassy surface it leaves, so I cover it with matte medium. It doesn't absorb the medium like paper does, so I get much more visible brush strokes on the surface. If you click on the above image, I think you can see that this piece ended up with a definite feeling of depth, luminosity and texture.

Speaking Engagement

2011-08-23T12:18:00.001-05:00

Rob and I were asked to speak to Women's Issues Network (WIN) on Monday about our art. It was an interesting process for me to try to summarize how I got to where I am in my art and how and why I make the things I make! I showed images of some of my earlier art as well as how the pieces changed after visiting Montana. Here's the outline I followed when I spoke:

One of the issues we as women face is—outside of our relationships with other people as wife, mother, daughter, co-worker—what makes US happy? What recharges our batteries? What makes us want to laugh with joy? Six years ago, I discovered that creating art was what did that for me. It puts me in a space without concern for time or to do lists or the latest headlines on the news. The more hours I can be in my art studio, the happier I am. So let me tell you about my passion.

My artwork in the beginning was more traditional collage, making compositions out of old photos, art papers, maps, Viewmaster reels, book pages, layering them with acrylic medium and sealing the final composition with another coat of acrylic medium. I was trying to evoke a sense of nostalgia or journey with these pieces.

Then in 2009, I went to visit a friend who had recently moved to Montana and she took me to Yellowstone National Park and through some of the many mountain ranges in Western Montana. I flipped out! I came home with hundreds of photographs and a desire to make art about this amazing place.

I wanted the art to be more than the photograph, so I started altering the photos digitally to have a more painterly feel, a scratched surface or enhanced light or color. Then I’d take prints of the altered photos and tear or cut segments from those variations to piece together a new scene.

As a result, the artwork becomes more of a recollection or glimpse of a place. Possibly looking like a painting or photo from a distance, then as you look closer you see the cuts or tears, and then even closer you might find bits of text or ledger paper or actual grass or pine needles as part of the surface. Most recently I’ve been shredding the prints by hand or with a paper shredder and building the composition out of lots and lots of strips of paper.

Rob and I have been to Montana three times since my initial visit. I love working with the photos we’ve taken, remembering the sounds, smells and feelings of being in nature. Through my art, I’m hoping to bring those feelings of peace, stillness, and joy to the viewer. When someone responds so strongly to my art that they want to purchase it and take it into their home, it’s an inexplicable feeling for me. I’ve been writing the word JOY on the surface before I start applying the imagery hoping that is what people will feel when they look at the work. We all need to find the JOY in our lives, and making art does that for me.

Dwell in Possibility

2011-08-15T19:48:00.000-05:00

My friend Linda gave me a magnet for birthday with that statement on it -- "Dwell in Possibility." I've been trying to move in that direction -- of what is possible -- rather than setting limits on myself.

In that spirit, I approached a gallery in Park City, Utah, about gallery representation... and was turned down.

I contacted a gallery in Iowa and the owner expressed interest in both my work and Rob's; we met with her a couple weeks ago and now we both have work hanging at Campbell-Steele Gallery in Marion, a suburb of Cedar Rapids.

I uploaded images to the website of Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, to apply as an online Studio Artist (they sell your work online, you ship it to the buyer, the gallery sends you 80% of the sales price; if your work sells they MIGHT put your work in their downtown Scottsdale gallery). I received notice I'd been juried in and my work was now "live" on their site... then the owner contacted me, said he really liked my work and asked if I could send him 8 - 10 pieces by November to put in his gallery!!! The above piece was the second I've made for the November shipment AND it will be in Xanadu's 2-page ad in the October issue of American Art Collector Magazine.

Continuing to make art and dwelling in possibilities....
:-D

Bigger

2011-07-31T20:26:00.000-05:00

I was wondering if I could work bigger with the shredded idea by hand cutting wider strips so that the scale of the strips would increase as the canvas size went up. This 30" x 10" canvas was my test of that idea and I think it works fine. This opens up a lot of possibilities....

Back to the mountains

2011-07-23T16:52:00.002-05:00

This week I came back to my mountain photos from our trip west. I chose one showing the Tetons in clouds and decided to do the foreground in horizontal strips and the sky/mountains in vertical strips. The 6" x 6" piece I made a few weeks ago ("Snow Curtain" posted July 5th) was a trial run to see how horizontal and vertical might work together. This week's collage (named "Another Time, Another Place") is 12" x 12" so the scale of the shredded strips gives the work a different look, but I like how it turned out -- especially at the horizon line where the verticals overlap horizontals. (Click on the image to see that area better.)

Lotsa Trains!

2011-07-20T16:37:00.002-05:00

We have an annual exhibit coming up at our Galesburg Civic Art Center where members can submit one piece for the "Members and Friends" show. Since BNSF has a large rail yard here, I thought it would be fun to try using my shredded technique on some graffitied train car photos I'd taken last summer. (I exhibited high plains landscapes at the art center in Nov-Dec, so I thought I'd submit subject matter that wasn't typical for me in my new shredded technique that I haven't yet exhibited locally.)

At first I thought I'd need to take new photos that had the train cars all intact in the photo frame AND all with the same horizon line. Upon further reflection, I realized that might be too static, and having the center image be further back in space and the train cars cut off at the edges would give more of a feeling of movement. The piece is the product of both digital and physical manipulations of my photos. The three panels are fastened together by metal channel, giving a feeling of train cars coupled together.

My husband said, "It's still technically a triptych even though they are fastened together, right?" I replied, "Sure, remember all of those altar pieces from art history? They were called triptychs but they were hinged together. This is like an altarpiece for commerce." His eyes widened and he said, "That's a perfect title!" And so it is.

(Click on the images above to see the details a bit better.)

U-turn

2011-07-11T20:10:00.000-05:00

So my last post was about going in a new direction...and then I go and revisit the torn paper method I used to employ! Partly I wanted to see how it felt to work that way again, and I needed a bit more variety in my pieces to take to meet with a gallery owner in Iowa. (With 16 pieces on display in a physician's office and 18 of my recent pieces now in Montana, I have mostly just the shredded works on hand.) So... it felt kind of odd to be tearing my manipulated photo prints and I didn't really like how it looked after I covered the 12"x9" panel with imagery. So, the next day I tore art papers and added them to the scene, covering any white edges of the torn imagery and lessening the details in the image. I like it much better now.

New images, new directions

2011-07-05T17:20:00.001-05:00

I've recently worked on two pieces with images from our trip west and tried some new techniques.

In the 12" x 9" piece, I put down the base layer of shredded pieces, then I used some new techniques with acrylics to build up a feeling of depth somewhat similar to an encaustic work. Another new addition was to add 3 angled strips of imagery that echo the line of the hillside.

In the square collage, I experimented with using vertical strips in the mountain/sky/tree with a horizontal foreground.

Input welcomed!

Wild West Tour was Fabulous!

2011-06-19T20:35:00.003-05:00

We were out west for the first two weeks of June. After spending a few days in art museums and galleries in the Denver area, we drove to Grand Junction for the opening of their 14th National Juried Contemporary Exhibition. I was really pleased with where my three pieces were hung in the multi-room exhibit and the feedback I received during the reception.

From there we drove up to Park City, Utah, and checked out a few galleries and went to the opening of an encaustic exhibit (where we saw two new pieces by our friend Madeline de Joly and met Daniella Woolf, whose book and DVD on encaustics I have!). Then we spent a week with our friend Karen near Bozeman, Montana and unpacked and unwound. This was one of the dozens of photos I took of the ever-changing view out her living room window.

We took my boxes of art into Visions West and unpacked them; the gallery owner said she plans to put a grouping of my art in Livingston and in her Bozeman gallery. (www.visionswestgallery.com)

Our trip home took us through Yellowstone and the Tetons, with a stop at an alabaster quarry to load up 675 pounds of stones for my husband to carve. What a great trip!!! We took over 1,000 photos, so you'll be seeing some art made from them on my blog sometime soon....

Fishy

2011-05-30T09:07:00.000-05:00

The Visions West Gallery in Livingston MT (http://www.visionswestgallery.com) is having an exhibit in July called "Save the Trout Eat Catfish" that will be a group show of art with fish as subject. When the gallery owner was picking out what art of mine she wants for her galleries, she mentioned the show and said if I had anything fishy to include that as well. I remembered having fun working with some photos I'd taken of the sea wall on Galveston Island that is painted with fish and sea creatures, so I looked through those photos and chose one to work with. I've only done landscapes with my shredded technique to date, so this was fun to try something flat. Its title is Sunday Morning Ichthyology... couldn't resist a little play on words...!

Seventeen

2011-05-22T12:34:00.001-05:00

I sent an email to the owner of Visions West Galleries who represents my work (locations in Bozeman and Livingston, MT and Denver, CO) and asked her to pick from 25 JPGs the art she'd like me to bring out in June. I was pleasantly surprised after a few days to receive an email saying "These are all wonderful! Here's the list:..." and she listed 17 titles!!! All of the above were "the chosen ones"... good that we're taking the truck when we go west. :-)

Expanding my horizons

2011-05-16T19:40:00.000-05:00

30" x 10"... the biggest collage I've made using shredded papers! It was a bit daunting to figure out a scheme to keep this amount of skinny pieces of paper somewhat organized. What I came up with was to first print out the scene in sections, so I had six 8.5" x 14" prints of the scene manipulated with a watercolor filter... six prints of a drybrush filtered scene... six prints of a poster edges filter. I laid the prints out in the proper orientation for the whole scene and proceeded to shred one area at a time, starting with the prints for the upper right.

In this photo you can see that I'm working on the center top section. I have a print at the top of my drawing board showing me the whole scene, divided into sections. Under it are three sets of shredded pieces sorted into the proper order for me to easily pick from as I build the scene. I also shredded some pale blue paper from an 1856 ledger to use in the sky (you can see those by enlarging the top photo) and some yellowed paper from an 1879 ledger and prints of a 1904 topo map of Yellowstone to use in the grassy area. Those give an additional interest to the piece when viewed close up.

The business of art

2011-04-24T19:58:00.001-05:00

My old business cards don't reflect the work I've been doing the last two years with scenes from the west, so I decided to make some new ones using shredded imagery. We'll photograph this to make a digital image for the printer. When he trims them out after printing, I'll have ten cards each with different imagery out of each sheet of card stock.

Second Chapter

2011-04-18T17:16:00.000-05:00

Ever since making the "book" two weeks ago, I've been wanting to make another one. In this one, I chose to use all pages from the same book (Natural Advanced Geography, 1901), so the overall tone is the same yellowed paper, but variation is achieved through the use of etchings, colored maps, and illustrations from the book. I put the page numbers at the top for these facing pages and had some fun in picking what images to use out of the geography book. I'm calling this piece "Earth Bound."

Lines

2011-04-11T17:44:00.000-05:00

Last year my friend Bob shared a photo with me that he took of a country road that had such a sense of depth with the road and power lines receding in space. Using his photo last spring, I made a torn paper collage of altered versions of the photo (top) and thought it would be fun to print out those versions again, run them through my paper shredder and make a second collage with horizontal strips (bottom). I was interested to see what the horizontal strips did to the perspective of the road. My husband gave it "a big thumbs up". Let me know what you think.

"Light Bulb"

2011-04-03T18:48:00.004-05:00

I was looking through a list of "call for entries" when I saw where a Santa Fe gallery had expanded and posted three calls for entries for themed shows to exhibit in their larger space. The three themes were BOX, BOOK, and LINE. A "light bulb went off" and I had an idea to shred book pages to make an abstracted book!

I shredded pages from several books, chosen for their yellowed paper, language or illustrations. I used The Earth and the Stars ©1925, 1946; The Home Book of Art ©1884; Devil’s Ditties ©1931; Les Temps Modernes ©1959 and L’Europe Gothique XII XIV siécles. I made one 6" x 12" cradled panel (on the left) and then decided it would be fun to do a "facing page" and connect the two panels. As I made the right panel, I tried to make it relate to what was on the left panel – including putting the facing page number (43) in about the center, across from page 42. At times it felt like I was making a wild poem with the fragments of text. (If you click on the image, you can see what I mean.) We used a 3/8" aluminum channel to "bind" the book pages.

My Women's Art Workshop has taken a few months off while two of our members were in warmer parts of the country. I've proposed that our first topic be BOOK and we can submit any finished pieces that please us to the Santa Fe show. Stay tuned... more books to come!

Anticipation

2011-03-27T17:48:00.002-05:00

My thoughts are turning toward a summer road trip west. After visiting our friend near Bozeman, Montana, we're planning to drive through the eastern edge of Idaho, down through Utah and over through Colorado. We'll take photos all along the way for me to use in my artwork, stop at some galleries to leave portfolios, and pick up some alabaster at a quarry in Ft. Collins for my husband, Rob, to carve.
In looking forward to spending some time in the western landscape, I worked on the 12" x 12" piece above. I've digitally altered a photo from Utah and added in some art papers and segments of text from a yellowed brochure from a western park. I told Rob I'd meant to work in some vertical strips in the left foreground and was musing about adding something and his response was, "No. That would ruin it. It's perfect the way it is." Well OK then!!!

Sketching

2011-03-20T19:22:00.001-05:00

My friend Penny came over on Friday so I could show her my technique for doing collage. As she started making a "sketch" using color aid papers and fabric to be a study for an art quilt, I began gluing down leftover shredded paper to work on a few ideas.
I see with the top one that making a landscape with random pieces could easily happen... weaving or using vertical strips has possibilities... and abstract scenes can work, too. What feelings are evoked for you when you look at these sketches?

Ya'll come!

2011-03-14T19:53:00.002-05:00

I submitted images of three of my pieces to the National Juried Contemporary Exhibition at the Western Colorado Center for the Arts and was surprised to be notified that all three were accepted into the show! 134 artists submitted works and 53 pieces were juried into the show. I'd just finished my first two pieces using a paper shredder before the submission deadline and decided to see if they caught the juror's interest. I'm thrilled that they did as I find this new direction to show a lot of promise. I'll be packing them up soon to send them on their way to Grand Junction.

More abstracted shredded landscapes

2011-02-28T13:54:00.002-06:00

In the last few weeks, I inched my way closer to abstraction with the shredded imagery. First I used leftover pieces and added some art papers to make a 12"x6" mountain and valley scene. I was pleased with how that turned out and decided to try a desert view.

I worked with a photo I took in Arches National Park in Utah and was planning to make a 14"x11" collage. I ran out two sets of filtered imagery, shredded them, started to organize the strips and decided it just felt like too many pieces, too hard, too too much!

In mulling over my options, I concluded that less height really worked best for the shredded work, so I made a 12"x6"(the one on the left) and shortened the height of the rocks as I built the scene from the bottom up. Since I had so many leftover pieces, I made a second 12"x6" and created my own rock formation. (In both I've added some art papers in green, rust, gold, and some ledger paper with handwriting; if you click on the image you can see those details better.) When I put the new collage on the shelf with the first one, they made a nice diptych! I'm calling it "Entrada" which is Spanish for entrance or entry; it is also the name given to the Jurassic-era sandstone layer that gives the park's arches their form.

Workshop with Students

2011-02-20T12:02:00.000-06:00

I had a lot of fun Saturday conducting a collage workshop with eight students at Knox College. I showed them some of my work from a few years ago that used only found papers and old photographs, did a demo of my technique, and then set them loose. All of the women had brought in some items they wanted to work with, and they supplemented with some of the photos and papers I'd brought along. Two seniors in the group said this was just what they needed as a break from their busy schedules; we had a fun couple of hours creating together.

One of Seven

2011-02-14T14:50:00.000-06:00

Well... I was thrilled to get juried into the "Open Small Works Exhibition" in New York City and be one of 65 that made the cut out of 600 entries. The icing on that nice cake arrived in my email Sunday, congratulating me on receiving one of the seven recognition awards at the February 9th opening reception. (The image above is on the news page at N.A.W.A.-National Association of Women Artists | National Association of Women Artists)

3rd in a series

2011-02-06T14:38:00.004-06:00

After seeing the first two pieces in this series, friends asked how I kept the image together after the print went through the shredder... the answer is, I didn't! I took photos as I worked on the third one to show the process I've worked out. I started with a 12x12 cradled panel for this collage. I cropped a photo to that size and ran out three sets of prints: one without filtration, one with a "dry brush" Photoshop filter, and one with a "poster edges" filter (If you click on the image to enlarge it, you can see the different look each has.) I then printed the images in two sections on my color laser printer (the white lines show how I divided the 12" wide images for printing on my 8.5"x14" paper).

I put all of the top sections through the shredder and placed those in a pile on my drawing board and then shredded the three bottom sections and put those in another pile. I printed out a small photo of the scene to help me as I sorted and tried to assemble the image out of the quarter-inch wide strips.

As I adhered strips, I purposely did not line up the images exactly and would add sections straddling strips to further abstract the image. I varied the lengths of the strips as well.

I let the piece dry overnight and, in looking at it the next morning, decided to add a few more pieces to the bottom left to add a bit more interference.

2nd movement

2011-01-29T20:03:00.001-06:00

I continued experimenting this week with running my imagery through a shredder and piecing together a landscape on two 10x8 cradled panels. Two friends whose art opinions I trust saw this piece and really raved about it, so that made me feel good. I got it done in time Friday to photograph it and submit it (and the 8x8 one from last week) to a juried show in Colorado. (click on the image to enlarge and see the details better)

Shredded

2011-01-22T16:13:00.004-06:00

In my musings this morning about torn paper vs cut rectangles, an idea hit me – use a paper shredder!! I ran a print of grass through the shredder and liked how it looked. So I ran some filters on a shot of Emigrant Peak with a grassy foreground, made a print. Ran some other filters, made a print. Placed those prints through the shredder, piled the pieces on my drawing board, and started picking out strips to glue down. This is a little 8" x 8" cradled panel. I really like how it turned out, so I think I'll do a bigger one next....

This week I emailed the National Association of Women Artists to ask how big of a show my piece would be part of in NYC in February. The director said I should feel very honored as she thought the judges were very tough this year and they picked 65 pieces for the show out of 600 entries. GULP. There are five pieces of sculpture in the show and my friend Amber Jean is one of them - go Amber Jean!!
New York Debut of the Frog Bronze! | AmberJean

Going to New York City!

2011-01-15T18:42:00.002-06:00

The 12"x12" collage above will be traveling to New York next week to be in the "Small Works" juried exhibit at the National Association of Women Artists Gallery on Fifth Avenue! The show will run February 1-22. It is a thrill to be juried into this show and a great start to 2011.
>grin<

2 canvases, 1 piece

2011-01-09T19:27:00.002-06:00

A friend who is a painter and chair of a nearby university's art department suggested pairing a geometric (cut rectangles composition) with an organic (torn paper collage). I didn't go quite that far, but I paired two canvases and two scenes together. The top one is all cut rectangles pieced together from three sets of filtered prints and the bottom one has a few darker rectangles applied to the image and some leaves layered over the image of grasses. I like the different treatments on the two and the different size canvases (the top is 12" x 16" and the bottom one is 12" x 6").

First art of the new year!

2011-01-03T15:36:00.005-06:00

Having been to Yellowstone National Park in three seasons, I have a number of photos of the Hoodoo rock formations – including some great angles from hiking around in them last fall. I decided to rough up a topo map with some of the same filters used on the rock photo, and I made prints of maps at small and large sizes so type is readable is some and becomes more of a texture in others (click on an image to see the map pieces larger). I tore out and applied pieces to the rock photo – covering more of the image than I have done in previous collages. I sent these images to an artist friend in Montana to get her feedback. I love her response to the bottom one of the two images: "As a climber...I love the angle of the rocks as it looks like I'm looking up at a great new route. The map is subtle and beautiful...offering various potential meanings and depth to the piece."

Abstraction

2010-12-21T10:48:00.002-06:00

I'd received good input during the opening reception for our gallery show on three landscapes made out of rectangles of art papers. A large collage with topo maps layered over a rock formation also seemed to be a favorite. I decided to make an abstract western landscape with paper and topo maps... I might have to explore this idea some more. What do you think?

Six Women Exhibition

2010-12-04T11:37:00.001-06:00

We had a great turnout at our opening last night for my Women's Art Workshop gallery exhibit with 325 people in attendance. The gallery director did a wonderful job of displaying our work, despite running out of pedestals since there was so much 3D work from the three potters! It was fun to share the evening with this group of special women.

New week, new show

2010-11-29T10:50:00.002-06:00

Yes, 2010 is ending with a lot of fanfare. My Women's Art Workshop group is having an opening this Friday for our group show! We've had fun over the last two years: pulling a topic out of our jar of ideas, all making something in response to the word or phrase, and meeting 4 to 6 weeks later to workshop the resulting pieces. We picked 6 words to showcase the work that was brought to the initial meeting and subsequent work that was inspired by the project.

"New Business" relating to Rob's and my "Plains and Planes" exhibit...
- We're being interviewed tomorrow by the NPR station in Rock Island to air Dec 12 on their Sunday afternoon "Art Talks" program; they post the show on their website, too, if you want to listen to it at another time.
WVIK Program Listings
- We're going to do a gallery talk at the Galesburg Civic Art Center on December 9th at 7pm.
- Rob has added a section on our website showing photos from the gallery and the opening, and he is in the process of adding individual shots of everything in the show. So, if you aren't able to come to the gallery in person, you can still see the show!
Reed Studios - Plains and Planes Show 2010

Fabulous Opening

2010-11-20T21:47:00.001-06:00

We had a wonderful opening reception for our "Plains and Planes" show on the 19th. The gallery director said we broke the attendance record with 200+ people during the 2-hour reception! We both received lots of great feedback on our new art and felt energized by the experience. I sold seven pieces during the opening, so that was icing on the cake.

Ready for the Show!

2010-11-14T11:46:00.000-06:00

This weekend, Rob and I are taking care of details for our upcoming exhibit. A couple of my pieces still were needing frames, and I'm checking to make sure all have wires and tags. Then I'll start wrapping them up for transport downtown to the gallery on Tuesday. Rob is finishing a few bases for his sculptures and doing the final sanding on a limestone piece he's hoping to get finished by the opening on Friday night! We're looking forward to seeing all of the art in a nice gallery setting with proper lighting. I have 47 works; 11 are from 2009 and the rest from 2010. Rob has 6 stone sculptures and 10 metal sculptures. I'll try to get some good shots in the gallery after we've hung the show and the lighting is done.

Storm Cell

2010-11-08T16:28:00.001-06:00

My friend, Julie, snapped a photo with her cell phone on her drive into work of a dramatic stormy sky and sent it to me since I like sky photos. I kept the photo open on my computer screen and, after several days of looking at it, decided to transform it into a piece of art. It's a small piece (12" x 6") but commands attention with its strong horizontal lines and colors.

New Plains Landscapes

2010-10-31T18:49:00.002-05:00

I made a few landscapes last month that were all rectangles and decided to do another. I digitally moved some MT horses into this pasture, made three sets of prints – all with different digital effects – and then cut rectangles out of the prints to piece together the landscape. I like how some of the rectangles appear to recede or advance due to their value and how the differing digital treatments have altered the trees and shrubs. (This is a 30" x 10" canvas.)

I decided to take the leftover pieces and make a new landscape where nothing quite lines up so that the scene is more abstracted. I had done this once before with a scene that had a lake in it and wanted to see if it would work without the water reflection aspect. (This is a 12" x 12" cradled panel.)

Back in the Studio at Last!

2010-10-24T14:23:00.002-05:00

I was able to take a couple afternoons this week to work in the studio, plus Friday and Saturday - yahoo! I wanted to get another large piece done for the November show and decided to revisit the Hoodoos of Yellowstone. I'd done small 6"x6" works from this photo last year and thought it would be fun to go big with it so the topo maps applied to the rock surfaces would really show up. I laid down the image in torn segments and then layered up sections of 1904 topographical survey maps of Yellowstone Park, grassy papers and pine needles. It is on a 30"x24" cradled panel so it has a real presence in the room – kinda like how the hoodoos have along the road in the northern part of the park. (When you click on the detail image, you can see the maps much better.) Then...

Additionally, I worked on two 11"x14" canvases using photos I'd taken of a prairie remnant in Palatine, Illinois. I altered them to look more painterly, added in some vintage grass illustrations, text about prairie in one of them, and art papers to add more blossoms to the plants. I like how the color is so intense in these. They'll go in the show as well as "plants of the plains."

Time

2010-10-11T19:48:00.002-05:00

I haven't posted anything for awhile as I've been gone the last two weekends and haven't been able to fit in any time for art making. I'm getting a little "twitchy" with all the art ideas jamming up in my brain!!
The first weekend in October, we drove up to Palatine to deliver an alabaster sculpture of my husband's to its new owners... this past weekend, I took the train up to Chicago and spent time with my cousin, Suzanne, and my MT friend, Karen... this coming weekend is a big fundraiser for the Galesburg Civic Art Center and I'm on the committee, so the whole weekend will be spent on the event. When I get caught up on my social life and graphics work load, I'm going to take off a few days and work on fine art, as I want to get a few more pieces done for our November show!

The photo above is of me with a Dick Tracy bronze that is along the river walk in downtown Naperville, IL. Dick Tracy is talking into his wrist radio, but I'm looking at my watch wondering how many more days until I have to deliver my art for our "Plains and Planes" show....

Recycling...

2010-09-28T20:08:00.001-05:00

I showed Harlow Blum, emeritus art faculty at Monmouth College, the interesting laser prints that were left after cutting rectangles out of them to create the mixed media piece I posted on August 31st of Dailey Lake. He suggested I make a new piece by layering the sheets with their cut out areas. I didn't make it quite that way, as adding matte medium to the process made it a bit difficult to put down such large sections of paper with openings throughout, but I did use some as the base and then added more rectangles – where needed – to cover the white canvas. I like how the scene doesn't line up and looks distorted. I'm calling it "Reflections" since it has the feel of looking at a landscape reflected in water. So... let me know if you think I should do more using this technique....

A flock

2010-09-19T18:39:00.000-05:00

I got all of my deadlines met by Wednesday noon this week, so I turned my attention to making more bird collages. With my friend's permission, I made two pieces that were variations on ones she'd recently purchased from me (goldfinches and white-crowned sparrows). Then I made a 10"-square collage using a vintage illustration of a field sparrow's nest, an 11"x14" using an altered Audubon warbler illustration, and a 9"x12" monarch butterfly collage from a photo my friend Sheila took. I'd like to make another 24" x 24" since it had such impact... but am feeling a pull to make a few more landscapes for the Plains and Planes exhibit and a couple more plants of the plains to go with these birds of the plains... stay tuned.

More birds of the plains

2010-09-14T20:33:00.001-05:00

Over the last few months I'd made four in the "Mise-en-scène" series with birds of the plains for our November exhibit... and then sold three of them to a friend who is getting married and moving into a new home! So, I'm making some more, altering Audubon illustrations and setting a new stage for them. In this one, I took Audubon's Marsh Wrens illustration and modified it digitally, added some vintage grass illustrations to each side of the nest, ran out color laser prints, tore and pieced the image together on a painted canvas, then layered up art papers and dried grasses. The grasses come around the two sides and I have "Marsh Wrens" in script along the bottom right edge, so I added the bug on the top edge for that wren on the branch to be flying after.

Inspiring new work space

2010-09-06T16:08:00.002-05:00

This is my new studio space and I LOVE it! We just replaced the 1959 windows in our living room and office, and we decided to switch the room functions while we were at it. We put our graphic design desks/ computers into the former living room and moved my collage desk and drawing board in, too. Now we have a big creative studio for graphics and art (which puts me closer to my computer and color printer when working on fine art, too!) Big plus -- I now have a great view of our backyard while creating instead of looking up at white closet doors!! It's going to be a very inspiring space for my work. Note, there are also plenty of dog beds for my Sheltie furkids....

Combo

2010-08-31T11:32:00.001-05:00

In this piece, I decided to take my new technique – of printing out an altered photo and cutting it into rectangles to piece together with other alterations of the same photo – and add some acrylic paint, grassy papers and pine needles to the marshy area in the foreground. My hubby is going to make a nice cedar frame for it. I really loved walking along this lake in Montana and liked the photo I'd taken of the scene; I'm really happy with how this 24" x 18" mixed media piece captures a sense of Dailey Lake in Paradise Valley.

The finished landscape of rectangles

2010-08-21T16:35:00.000-05:00

Here's how the new landscape turned out. I like how some of the rectangles stand out and seem to advance while others recede. I added some acrylic paint to the field and grassy area but wasn't very bold with it -- partly because I didn't want to draw too much attention to that area since this image seems to be about the clouds and how they dwarf the buildings ... and partly because I'm way out of my comfort zone when painting!!

New idea

2010-08-15T20:58:00.000-05:00

Sometimes the littlest thing will inspire a big idea. Looking at the sky of a collage in an art book, it occurred to me that I could make a collage by cutting a photo into rectangles. I printed out three versions of a photo (all with different art filters applied to them) and have been building the art, kind of like a puzzle. The top photo shows the 24"x12" canvas with a couple prints on the drawing board that I've been cutting sections out of; the lower photo shows a detail of the piece. I may add acrylic paint to the foreground, too... stay tuned!

More plants of the prairies and plains

2010-08-12T19:54:00.000-05:00

I made two more plant studies this past weekend, but we've had such a FULL week that we didn't get them photographed until today! I used a different technique of tearing and layering on these that I think will work well for larger pieces, too. On the big bluestem grass collage, I added some actual dry grass at the bottom, too. I have ideas for more plant collages, the bird series, and some new mountain ones... I'm going to have to pick one tomorrow and run with it!!

Amazing Week

2010-08-03T20:31:00.000-05:00

I had quite a "glow" going all last week. A friend told me she and her fiance wanted to buy the large goldfinch collage for their new home ... our Open Studios event was fun and I sold a dozen works ... I found out that "my" gallery in Montana had sold two of my collages (bringing the total to FOUR in two months!) and the owner asked me to send more work out ... so we wrapped and shipped six more collages off on Friday ... we had friends and their friends from the Chicago suburbs come by for drinks and studio tours before we all went out to dinner on Saturday, and they came back Sunday and purchased a large collage of mine and made a 50% deposit on an alabaster sculpture of Rob's!! (That particular sculpture is going to a national juried show this weekend, so we'll settle up with the purchaser when the show is over and the stone is back in our possession.) Oh, and I made some collages over the weekend, too! The one above is the first of several I hope to make for our November show depicting plants of the plains and/or prairies. We picked and photographed some Queen Anne's Lace and I found a 1913 illustration of the plant that I placed over a cloud photograph. Input on this piece would be welcomed before I go onto more plants.... thanks!

Open Studios

2010-07-28T16:09:00.000-05:00

This past Saturday we had an "Open Studios" event in the afternoon and invited our graphic design clients and art-loving friends to see our art studios and celebrate the 25th anniversary of Reed Studios. My husband, Rob, showed how he carves stone with traditional tools and pneumatic-assisted tools, and some of our guests tried their hand at carving. I had some of my older art on sale for the day and displayed new 2010 art. Our guests seemed to enjoy checking out where we work and seeing work in progress – it was a fun day. A shout out to our friend Bob Marsden for taking these photos!

Back in the Studio

2010-07-25T17:21:00.001-05:00

After an encounter with a super-heated metal pot lid sitting too close to an open flame, my hand was finally recovered enough from the second-degree burns to get back in the studio! I had all sorts of ideas I wanted to pursue, but landed on using the vintage star charts again with the theme of migrating birds. (I've gotten such amazing responses to the Indigo Bunting piece I posted March 7th, I thought it was worth exploring some more.) I found some wonderful copyright-free illustrations from 1917 by Louis Agassiz Fuertes of North American warblers, so I modified them to become more painterly and soften the details. I put this text at the bottom of the collage: "North American warblers are small songbirds, generally quite colorful and with fine pointed bills; most eat only insects, but a few supplement their diets with berries and seeds. Warblers migrate at night; if you stand outside in the fall or early spring and listen carefully, you may hear their soft “chip” notes as they fly overhead. On a moonlit night, early in the evening, try looking at the moon through your binoculars and you might see the silhouettes of passing warblers." Additionally, I wrapped one of the maps around the cradled panel – I've done that on canvas before but never on wood! I'm pleased with how it turned out, and ... thanks, dear husband, for suggesting softening the bird illustrations instead of using the very precise original illustrations. :-)

Take Two

2010-07-11T15:21:00.000-05:00

The 16" x 8" piece that I posted on May 24 was recently purchased as a birthday gift. When I made that one, I felt like it was a piece that could be bigger, so I decided to revisit the original photo this weekend. I realized we'd taken two photos that I could piece together to get a wider view of the Gallatin Range with the storm clouds enveloping the mountains. On this piece, I did an underpainting and put in areas of color for the ground, mountains and sky. Then I tiled out the altered photo in sections, tore the image and left little gaps between the torn pieces of paper so the underpainting could show through. It is 30" x 10"... but I probably could have made it even bigger! Who knows, maybe there will be a "take three" and I'll really push my comfort zone and go LARGE!!!

Going to the show!

2010-07-06T20:40:00.000-05:00

I just found out today that this piece – The Road to Dailey Lake – was accepted into the national juried show "64 Arts" in Monmouth Illinois!! The juror was Al Gury, chair of the painting dept of Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and the show will run Aug 20 - Sept 25. It's so affirming to have an artist you've never met choose your work to be included in a show... sweet!

Double the fun

2010-07-05T19:39:00.000-05:00

I decided to step out of my comfort zone and try one of these new bird pieces at a much bigger size. The first three were 10"x10" and this one is 24"x 24". I applied unprimed linen to a cradled hardboard and that is the brown showing through in the "cracks" ... my husband said it seems like there's an old stone wall behind the birds with shadows on it from the plants... I like how it has the feel of a cracked fresco. I added a decorative swirl pattern to the right of the birds and ghosted some of the thistle leaves at the bottom to add more interest to Audubon's composition.

2 more birds of the plains

2010-06-20T11:50:00.001-05:00

I made two more bird collages this weekend and am really enjoying working with the Audubon prints from an old book and giving them new life. Many of Audubon's bird illustrations seem to have exaggerated poses or odd turns of the bird's body – like the bottom bird of this pair of catbirds – so I just used the one catbird in my composition. I altered the color to make the bird slate gray like it is in real life, added text about the catbird's habits, an illustration on the mechanics of flight, and more leaves and berries.

In the piece with the white-crowned sparrows, I added some very subtle Victorian filagree to the background on the left. I showed the first of the mise-en-scène series to a friend this weekend and she remarked that the background had an eggshell feel, so I've used that same technique as part of the manipulation of the art in these two.

Mise-en-scène

2010-06-13T15:28:00.001-05:00

- an expression used to describe the design aspects of a theatre or film production, which essentially means "telling a story."
- stage setting

I'm planning on doing a series under the title of mise-en-scène using bird illustrations by Audubon and others. (I've done a few pieces for our November show with ravens and thought it would be fun to make some more bird collages depicting other birds found in the plains states.) This first one is "Mise-en-scène: bluebirds." I've altered an Audubon illustration I scanned, added art papers onto areas of the birds, and added more flower stalks and faux foliage -- which includes text about bluebirds from "The Source Book" of 1930. I'm essentially telling a story about bluebirds and setting the stage differently than the original production... this one is 10" x 10" but I think it would be fun to see at 36" x 36"!

Clouds

2010-06-07T17:28:00.001-05:00

I said in an earlier post that I might make a piece that had just clouds in it ... and here it is! It is a 24" x 12" canvas with the imagery going around the four sides. I think I might try some with just a hint of ground at the bottom, too. I also had an idea -- after seeing the pile of cloud fragments left on my drawing board -- to just make a piece with random cloud sections. So, I glued strips of canvas to a board to start with an uneven surface (to add another design element), then glued down various fragments of clouds and sky, and decided to add a raven flying amongst the cloud bits. What do you think?

Productive Weekend

2010-06-01T14:09:00.002-05:00

I made two new "High Plains" pieces this weekend.

I'm calling the one with the big rock "Sitting..." since the boulder has most likely been sitting in that spot for a LONG time... there are two rock cairns sitting on top of the boulder... and the shape reminds me of a fat Buddha sitting. This one is really a mixed media piece. First I altered the photo by placing a taller rock cairn than what was actually there (using a photo of rocks I'd brought home from Montana) as I wanted it to reach up into the sky area, and then I ran some painterly filters on the photo to abstract it. After applying the two sections of prints to my 11" x 14" cradled panel, I layered topo map fragments over the rocks, painted daubs of straw color in the upper grasses to help distinguish the rock edge from what was behind it, and added grassy papers, pine needles and raw flax to the foreground to make the vegetation more dimensional. (If you click on the image, you can better see the details I'm talking about.)

The second piece shows a two-track road up a hill in Montana that I'm calling "Rising" -- it is 20" x 16". I made three filtered variations of the image and tiled out the large images. Then I tore sections from each to glue down with acrylic matte medium to merge into this new image. I added fibrous art papers to the clouds and grasses to further alter the image.

Great Plains

2010-05-24T17:29:00.000-05:00

I stray – when a new idea just must be addressed – but then I come back to preparing new work for our "Plains and Planes" show in November. This one is 16" x 8" but has a "big" feel to it with the dramatic sky. I'm thinking I might try making some collages of JUST big billowy clouds... I'll look through my photos and see which one speaks to me next.

More Experiments in Encaustic

2010-05-16T20:08:00.001-05:00

A local shop that sells artist-made items, asked if I'd bring those two leaf encaustic pieces down to sell on consignment, so I made a couple more: the ash piece is 8x8, the maple is 6x6.

The third piece is also 6x6; I used a photo of a sidewalk as the background, adhered some leaves from my mother's day flowers, pushed some metal nuts (as in nuts & bolts) into the wax and painted oil paint in the shapes they left ... that has possibilities, I think.

Encaustic launch

2010-05-03T20:19:00.001-05:00

After the workshop on encaustic, I decided to buy the things I needed to give it a try with my work. Next month's art group topic is "something leafy," so I decided to see how leaves would work embedded in the waxy medium. I'm pleased with how this looks, so I'll keep experimenting....

On the move

2010-05-01T13:48:00.001-05:00

I've been moving work around here lately. I needed to get one of the pieces on display at Q's Cafe to send to Montana and had sold two more that had originally been in the grouping, so I decided to take down everything that had been hanging there for four months and put up new work.

I'm the featured artist in the One12 Gift Shop of the Galesburg Civic Art Center for May, so we hung ten new works on the wall there. I'll be in the gift shop during the gallery opening on May 7th.

And, drumroll please, we wrapped up 13 of my pieces and sent them off to an art gallery in Montana this week! They're to arrive at Visions West Galleries in Livingston on Wednesday. Once they get all of my work up on their website, I'll put the link on my blog. I'm so excited to have gallery representation!!

Some more April work

2010-04-27T14:33:00.001-05:00

My friend Bob sent me a photo he took of snow showers somewhere between Butte and Bozeman when he was there on business a few weeks ago. I loved how dramatic and BIG the sky was in the shot with a small farm under the snow clouds, so I made a large (24x18) collage emphasizing that sky.

I made another bird piece to send with the other dozen collages to my new art gallery in Montana. In the grass I've placed pieces of a topo map of the terrain between Livingston and Yellowstone.

I'm going to submit a few pieces to a show called "Constructed Territory" that is soliciting work using maps, cartography or topographical explorations. I took this photo of the Hoodoos in Yellowstone and have covered many of the rocks with Yellowstone topo map fragments.

Encaustic

2010-04-24T14:44:00.001-05:00

I took two evening workshops on Encaustic this month as I've always been drawn to this medium (melted beeswax and Damar resin applied to the surface). While I enjoyed making an abstract piece with the pigment-tinted encaustic medium and oil paints in the first workshop, I wanted see if it was something I could combine with the collage work I've been doing. I made two little 4x4 collages and took to the second workshop and found that I COULD combine it with the acrylic matte medium! I think I'm going to get the necessary supplies and start experimenting with adding this luscious depth that beeswax can bring....

Gifts from the Sea

2010-04-18T13:51:00.002-05:00

I made a collage two weeks ago (see post below) for my upcoming Women's Art Workshop's "gifts from the sea" assignment. The fat sand dollars are just so irresistible, I decided to do a grouted collage using ceramic tiles, shell fragments from South Padre Island, and three of the sand dollars from the Florida Keys. I made it the same width as the earlier collage but not as high (for a lighter-weight wall piece!) so it is 20" x 8".

Road to Dailey Lake

2010-04-11T18:57:00.001-05:00

This piece is 20" x 16" on cradled panel. I made three filtered variations of the same photo, tore and pieced those together and then added art papers and pieces of grass to the foreground. There's a deadline coming up for a national juried show at a local art center, so I think I'll submit this one....

Sea

2010-04-03T19:56:00.002-05:00

My Women's Art Workshop group has the topic this month of "Gifts from the Sea." I decided to continue with the pieced-together landscape for the back layer of this collage, but made a darker border/edge this time (whereas last week's had a lighter border). I've used a photo of a boat anchored in the water, then layered on top of it a 1787 ship navigation map (the dark arch shows the gulf stream) and photos we took of some very large and thick sand dollars a woman from the Florida Keys gave us years ago. (I gave one of the potters in my group a couple of the sand dollars last month; she pressed one into the bottom of a clay bowl to take on that star shape, so our pieces will relate to one another!) This canvas is 20" x 10" and is titled "Riding the Gulf Stream."

Good Week

2010-03-28T19:29:00.000-05:00

I finished a commission piece and it was picked up this week by a very happy customer ... I received a check in the mail for three of my collages (all dealing with navigation as subject matter from 2008, 2009 and 2010) and will ship those off to Houston TX tomorrow... and sold another piece that traveled onto Naperville IL on Saturday! My Women's Art Workshop group met on Friday and had a great discussion on our new work made in response to the assignment of "birds" and the processes everyone had used. This weekend I worked on another bird piece and the above 14" x 11" landscape. Life is good.

Pieces and Layers

2010-03-21T13:25:00.003-05:00

After winning the GALEX Purchase Prize, I was musing about the raven work and remembering how fun it was to build the "ground" out of pieces of topo map. So... I decided to make some work where I pieced together entire landscapes using three different prints of the same image with several Photoshop filters applied to it – altering the look and brightness/darkness. First I made one wrapped around canvas of a hillside in Montana – "Blank Space in History." The second one I made by adhering canvas to wood panel and adding squares and rectangles of canvas on top of that in the foreground before adding the torn images of the hay bales – "After the Storm." The third one has a layer of canvas on panel, another layer of the Pikes Peak mountain shape, and more canvas pieces where the trees are – "Obscured by Clouds." The "lumpy layers" of canvas on the two panel ones show up when viewed at an angle or the light hits them – the mountain shape really shows up then! Click on the images to see them bigger; comments appreciated!

Purchase Award Recipient

2010-03-14T15:17:00.000-05:00

Gulp. My piece with three ravens was announced as the Purchase Award at the GALEX last night! That means it will reside in the permanent collection of the Galesburg Civic Art Center AND I was given a check for $1000 – wow! What a nice feeling, to have one's work validated by the juror out of 74 works that had been selected for the show. I'm stunned... and VERY happy!!

Combination

2010-03-13T16:29:00.003-06:00

This piece ended up being a combination of the two series I've had going – the "Album Series" has been my work with old maps, ledger paper, postcards, vintage photos, while the "High Plains Series" has featured mostly Montana landscapes. I took this photo last month of the Gallatin Range of mountains and crouched down so as to get lots of grass in the foreground. I ran filters on the photo to make it look more sketchy, adhered grasses I'd picked while in Montana, and also added some vintage things: a topo map of Yellowstone from 1904, a Montana map from 1903 and a Yellowstone postcard from 1914. (30" x 10" canvas; click on the image to enlarge it to see the grasses better.)

Birds

2010-03-07T20:39:00.002-06:00

The topic for my next art workshop meeting is "birds", and I decided to work with some star charts and bird migration. I found some interesting illustrations in an article about indigo bunting migration and experiments (involving the use of planetariums and changing the constellations on the birds so they tried to migrate north instead of south--all in the service of confirming they use the stars for migration). I combined those circular illustrations with some vintage star charts and an illustration of an indigo bunting pair. It's different color palette than I've used before, but very fun imagery to work with.

Exciting year

2010-03-02T20:27:00.002-06:00

2010 has been an exciting year so far!

... In early January we got the news that my husband and I had been offered a two-person show at the Galesburg Civic Art Center to run Nov-Dec this year,

... an e-mail arrived informing me that one of my submissions to a national juried show had been selected by the juror,

... my art workshop group of 6 women has been asked to do a show at nearby Monmouth's Buchanan Center for the Arts; the show will run Dec 3 - Jan 31,

... and while I was in Montana over the weekend, I met with the owner of Visions West Galleries (Livingston, Bozeman, Denver - the Livingston gallery is shown above). She is going to send me a contract and a list of my art she wants me to ship to her – so I'll have gallery representation now!!

I'm going to be spending a lot of time in my art studio preparing new work and I can't wait to get started!

Art Fortune

2010-02-21T19:30:00.003-06:00

Check out this website that was launched in October 2009 — ArtFortune.com
You'll recognize the current Featured Artist on the home page ... it's me! :-)

Bridging the gap between Artists, Art collectors, Fine Art Galleries, Art Dealers, Buyers of Fine Art, Sellers, Enthusiasts and Art Students, ArtFortune.com has globally reached the art community with innovative marketing and online services.

Rich in content and covering all aspects of art internationally, ArtFortune.com is making it easier to buy, sell, communicate and research art online. The ArtFortune.com database includes an online library of artists’ biographies, examples of work, how-to tips, art news, a global art events calendar, a global marketplace to buy and sell art and more. ArtFortune.com provides the most cost effective way to promote art globally and communicate with the art world directly.

Two more abstract western spaces

2010-02-15T17:04:00.003-06:00

I've done two more abstracted landscapes. So what do you think?
On the first one (posted Feb 6) I received this input:
- "I think the colors work well together. One thing that's interesting to me in it is that the 'rock' formations feel forboding to me, but that's countered by the calm blue sky."
- "I think you did an amazing thing with this piece. Very interesting."
- "It's not one of my favorites - it looks too much like a building to me."
- "Love the dimension you got with this piece."
It's a different way of working for me, so I'd love to have more feedback.... Click on the images to see them bigger if you like.

Accepted into a nationally juried show!!!

2010-02-12T08:15:00.000-06:00

Yep. I'm excited! My 24" x 8" piece "More than merely ourselves" has been accepted into the national juried show "GALEX 44" held at our Galesburg Civic Art Center. The exhibit will run March 13th through April 10th.

Abstraction

2010-02-06T19:24:00.000-06:00

I recently read a book about Melissa Zink and her artwork. I was really taken by some wall pieces of hers that were 3-D collages that came out/went back/came out/went back. I decided to do a canvas with the illusion of that out/back movement in space and to depict a rock formation we'd hiked along in Utah several years ago. (We'd climbed up a trail through rocks and scrub brush and were astonished to find a meadow growing on this high plateau with a high rock formation jutting up all along the far side.) I like how my rock formation has a feeling of depth and also the feeling of a building, giving it a bit of mystery. The meadow and the rocks almost look like a quilt, too (probably showing my love of Gee's Bend quilts and my friend Penny Gold's art quilts). I think I'd like to try some more of these abstracted landscapes, and I'd love to hear some feedback on them. If you have trouble signing in to post a comment, just choose "anonymous" and then type your name after your comment so I know who made the post. Thanks!

Assignment: Audubon

2010-01-31T15:34:00.006-06:00

Since I love to watch birds and have done a number of bird-oriented collages, I decided to make some pieces to submit to an international juried art show in Chicago entitled "Beyond Audubon" which is seeking work that "applauds, challenges or transcends the bird illustrations of John James Audubon."

I'm submitting one piece from 2008 entitled "Super Bird Sees All" and two new pieces "Corvus Corax" and "Pine Warbler Notes." (The imagery wraps around the 12" x 12" x 1.5" canvases.) I'll find out in early March whether any of my submissions have been chosen by the juror....

New art and NEWS

2010-01-25T13:45:00.000-06:00

In thinking about places in the west that I've found to be stunning, Oak Creek Canyon in Arizona came to mind. This is a view from the creek of some of the beautiful rock formations and vegetation. I added the ledger paper with some sketches to evoke a feeling of the first European explorer coming upon this magical place and trying to capture it in his notes.

NEWS: we have designed and uploaded a new website for my art and my husband Rob's sculpture. Check it out at www.reedstudios.net

NEWS: Rob and I will have a two-person show at the Galesburg Civic Art Center, Nov 19 - Dec 31, 2010!! We think we'll call it "Plains and Planes" and will feature my high plains art and his metal and stone sculptures that are very geometric and planar.

A Colorado scene

2010-01-18T10:13:00.003-06:00

Since a friend is offering to deliver a portfolio of my art to Scottsdale, I wanted to make some additional work to put on its pages that evoke more of the western states. I found a photo I'd taken on a pass in Colorado in spring, I scanned it in, and ran several filters on it to make the meadow more painterly. I applied numerous art papers to the meadow, increasing the color fields of flowers and lots of lush grasses in the foreground (click on the photo to enlarge it to see the very fun grass). I'd taken the clouds out of the original photograph and just made a blue sky so that I could add my own rendition of those clouds that form over mountain tops. (This is an 11x14 canvas.)

Art Galleries

2010-01-12T19:16:00.003-06:00

I don't have a post on new work for this week because I've been working on a portfolio to send to galleries. I ended up putting 34 pieces of work in the book with descriptions of what all is used in each collage and a short blurb about why or how I made the piece. I sent the first portfolio and CD of images off today to a Montana gallery owner who had met with me and asked me to send her more examples of my work as it evolved. In asking someone I know in Virginia if she and her husband would look at a PDF of my portfolio and give me their feedback, I ended up getting amazing input and an offer to hand deliver a second portfolio to their friend who is a gallery owner in Arizona!
I mailed off a CD of images to a juried show in Rock Island this week and need to submit images to the local art center's 44th annual national juried show, too. Busy, but exciting times.

First work in the new year

2010-01-03T14:22:00.003-06:00

After tossing around several ideas for a title, I've decided to call this one "A Sign"... and maybe THAT is a sign that in 2010 I'm ready to move this new series of "high plains" mixed media pieces to a new level. My New Year's list of desires would include: 1. an art gallery in a western state will contract with me to represent my work in their gallery, 2. a gallery show of my work will be scheduled in Illinois or elsewhere, 3. an art consultant will want to show my work to some of their corporate clients. So, that's what I'm putting out there, and we'll see what pops up this year. We're in the middle of revamping our website to better reflect our current focus, and I'm putting together a portfolio of work to send to a Montana gallery owner who expressed interest in my art. Stay tuned and thanks for stopping by to check my art blog!

Two new landscapes

2009-12-30T16:06:00.002-06:00

I made a 6" x 4" collage for a friend's Christmas present that combined a photo of horses and one of a mountain range. I really liked how it turned out, so I decided to make a 24" x 8" version. I like the sense of big space it has. My Art Floozy group's assignment for January is to make something utilizing petroglyphs, so the other landscape is for that project. And... I'm planning to submit it to an art competition entitled "Gateway to Imagination" that is sponsored by a museum in New Mexico – the butte and petroglyphs are from the area of New Mexico near the museum.

Giant Step

2009-12-25T16:00:00.006-06:00

I made a piece earlier this week that seems to be a giant step for me. I decided to buy a 24" square cradleboard and see what it inspired me to create. I looked through my photos from Montana and chose one I took that featured a large rock in the foreground and a grassy hillside rising up beyond it with clouds peeking over the crest of the hill. I ran a few filters on the photo in Photoshop, giving it a painterly look, and then added a sketch filter which made the blue sky really interesting. In order to print the photo out to fill a 24" square, I printed it out in 6 sections. I then increased the color intensity and printed out segments of the scene to layer over the view.
I took all of the photo pieces into my collage studio to see how they looked all laid out together. I decided to increase the layered effect and first cut sections of canvas and adhered those to the cradleboard to be the surface on which I would place my photo strips (you can see that if you click on the top photo). After getting the image pieced onto the board, I added art papers, grass seed heads and flax fiber. The four people who have seen it have had OMG outbursts, so I'm taking that as a good sign!

New frame technique

2009-12-13T20:48:00.005-06:00

At an art auction last month, I saw a work where the artist had made his own cradle board and had made it purposely rough and crude - including finger prints and paint slopped on the sides. I liked the "honesty" of the obviously handmade frame and how it worked with his mixed media art. So, we decided to make a couple 12" x 12" frames to try it out. I applied canvas to the surface and made these two collages of animals whose photos we took in Wyoming. Let me know – by posting or sending an e-mail – what you think of the art and our construction (you can see it better by clicking on the images to enlarge).

Self Portrait

2009-12-10T16:33:00.002-06:00

Art Calendar is having a "self portrait" contest and the winner will be featured on their March issue cover. They said it could be 2-D or 3-D and abstract was fine. That was an interesting assignment to give myself... what would I use to represent me as an abstract self portrait. I thought about using an owl since I'd had a dream recently about an owl. However, I decided it should be a raven since I've been using ravens in my art of late and I admire their intelligence, trickster nature and sense of play. I decided to add the rice paper spirals to the image to also reflect a recent theme in my art. I put my green eye in place of the raven's black eye. :-)

I'm calling it "As a Raven, I'd Breathe Spirals to the Clouds."

Blurring the lines

2009-12-07T13:05:00.003-06:00

My husband and I have a graphic design business together, in addition to both being artists (he's a sculptor: Dr. Stone's sculpture blog ). We just completed a 100-page catalog for our client who sells training equipment for dogs. I decided to make a collage for the front and back covers of their 2010 catalog and use torn papers inside for page headers and backgrounds – blurring the lines between my design business and fine art. In the printed catalog, the J&J Dog Supplies logo will be at the upper left above the jumping dog for the front cover; the horizontal collage will take up half of the back cover with 800# and other information reversed out of the left side of the image. They were very pleased with the look, so I'll be taking these out to hang in their offices.

Pieces of Memory

2009-11-30T13:28:00.002-06:00

There's something about looking up hillsides and seeing clouds rising over their edges that I find really magical. I took this photo on a hike in Montana. In Photoshop, I ran three different filters to make it less photographic and more like a painting. Then I made a pale version of the photo and a full-intensity version; I printed out sections of the pale version to tear and overlap on this 30" x 10" cradle board. Then I overlaid torn pieces of the full-intensity view. I added art papers to the ground and sky to further the painted feeling of the work.

Revisiting

2009-11-23T18:37:00.005-06:00

I decided to work with new landscape photos of Montana (thank you, Karen!) combined with old photos of Livingston, Montana. I hadn't worked with old photographs for awhile, so it was fun to figure out what to do with them and the mountain scene in this 14 x 11 canvas. I printed out one photo of the landscape unaltered and one with an ink edges filter applied to the image. I wanted to add some grassy paper to the bottom left, but only had green - nothing autumnal. And then, the lightbulb went on – I could paint the paper! So, I painted acrylic gold and brown onto the green grassy paper and then added them to the composition when the paint was dry. :-)