Panel 2 - Experimenting with a new surface

The title of the piece I will talk about today is "A Difficult Repair". The new shiny copper gear sits alone in the corner, trying to figure out exactly where he will fit in this complex collection of old rusty and bronze gears.

This panel was one of the black gessoed ones. (see previous post) I didn't have a clear idea of where I was going when I began this one, so I painted a wash of yellow paint over the black gesso and sprinkled four different types of salt over the wet paint. Once it was dry, i scrubbed all of the salt away and was left with a nicely speckled surface. The wet paint collects around the edges of the salt to create the speckles. I usually work on many paintings simultaneously, setting one aside to dry while i work on the next, because almost all of the art I do is done in layers. So, while I liked the speckled background, I wasn't really getting much inspiration for where to go next. After a couple of days of looking at it, I still wasn't getting anything, so I decided to cover it up. I had a piece of vintage dress pattern paper I had used to remove excess gesso on a piece a few days earlier. I do this a lot, instead of dabbing the excess paint off with paper towels, I will use a piece of found paper, which I then hang up to dry to use in another piece later. The random paint or gesso adds interest and texture and a delicious randomness that isn't possible to duplicate with a brush. Anyway, I glued this piece of gessoed tissue to the panel, letting wrinkles form wherever they wanted. The original texture is visible in a couple of places where there is no gesso. Once this layer was dry, I decided the piece was a little bright for my tastes so I painted a glaze of burnt umber light and GAC 100 medium over the whole thing. The paint collected around the wrinkles and gave the piece a wonderfully aged feel.

After the background was done, I searched through my found objects and came up blank. I didn't have enough of anything flat enough to glue down to fill the piece, and I really wanted to use gears. (I love gears!) I remembered buying a package of die-cut chipboard gears at our local paper arts store, Eclectica. I searched these down (I am really disorganized) and decided I wanted to rust them. The metal paints I use are fairly unpredictable, and a lot of times the absorbancy of the surface affects how the paint responds, so i took my selection of gears and prepared them all in different ways. One group I gessoed with black gesso, one group I sealed with matte medium, and one group I left unsealed. I painted them all with iron paint, and once that was dry, the rusting solution. The all rusted beautifully, but I don't really think all my prep work sealing them made much of a difference in this case. I took a few more gears and painted them with blackened bronze paint. Last, i took one lone gear and covered it with fine garnet gel to give it a little texture. Once that was dry, I copper-leafed it and the texture showed up beautifully under the copper.

I arranged the gears on the panel until I had them the way I wanted. I had layered them in three levels, so I took off the top two layers and glued the bottom layer of gears on with craft glue. Normally I glue everything on with gel medium, but it was so much easier to use the craft glue than a brush because it is very important not to get the gel on the rusted surface, it changes the appearance pretty dramatically. Once that layer was glued on, I weighted it with a heavy book and left it to dry. I repeated this step with the second and third layers of gears and it was done!

I could have done this piece on stretched canvas, but I found it was easier to glue the thick chipboard to a flat panel rather than the giving surface of canvas. It was also easier to weight down durning drying.

best laid plans

one of my new years resolutions was to blog more regularly. here it is, feb. 7, and i am doing my first post of the new year. ah, well, better late than never!

christmas was really busy for me. i decided a couple of weeks before christmas that i was going to make gifts for most of my family. i did seven (!) medium sized canvases in the last two weeks before christmas. i finished five of them on christmas eve, which is the day they were given. with all that was going on, i didn't photograph them first, so photos will have to wait until i make it over to my sisters' houses and my moms house with my camera!

one thing i decided i HAD to do was make something for my children. they each have a couple of my paintings, but i had never made one specifically for them, which is crazy because they are my biggest fans. so, i made them each a 12 X12, completely taylored to them, to give to them on the winter solstice (that is when our family exchanges gifts and have since they were born)

my daughter is owl obsessed. she has half a dozen owl shirts, a couple of owl bags, books about owls, owl figurines, owl notebooks, owl converse all stars, if it has an owl on it, she has to have it. so i made her an owl collage. i don't usually do "cute" but i had a lot of fun making this one. i have tons of bright printed art papers from collage packs i bought for the more muted papers. i mean TONS. i thought that it would be perfect for chessie's owls AND it would use LOTS of it up.

So, i spent a couple of days drawing and cutting and edging each little piece with black, then glueing everything down. It turned out really well, and my daughter LOVED it. she especially liked the fact that each owl was looking a different direction.

when i was making this, i cut out three too many owls, so i made a little set which will be posted on etsy pretty soon.

a few days before i started on these projects, tony had some time to kill and went in a thrift store to look around. he didn't find much, but he ran across a big box of antique player piano rolls. he bought a couple and when he brought them home for me, i made him go back and get the whole box because i love them so much. they are each in a box and the spindles they are on are awesome. the paper itself is all yellowed and crumbly and the lyrics to the song are printed along the left hand side in a kind of ghostly faded green, and the ones that have dates on them date to the early 1900's. my son was fascinated. he spent about an hour carefully looking at each one, so i told him to pick one out. he loves old stuff, just like me. so when it came time to make his gift, i used some of my favorite old treasures, and i just HAD to use some of the player piano paper since he liked it so much. he is a great piano player, so the theme fit perfectly. here is the final piece, which is just full of old things!

i have to say, i was pleased with the end result, and it made me really happy to see my eleven year olds so excited to get a painting from me, made just for them.

every year i say i'm not going to stress myself out by making gifts. and every year, i do just that. but when my family and friends open the gifts that i make, it is their reaction that makes it worth it for me.

the cooper young festival and plans for the future

I am really going to try to be better at blogging regularly. I think it has taken me months of reading other artsy-crafty blogs to realize that my blog posts don't have to be so long! So my new plan is to post more, but shorter!

The Cooper Young Festival was a few weeks ago. It was a HUGE success! I sold 27 paintings at the festival and during the week after the festival. I never imagined I would do so well! Here is a picture of one of my favorite pieces I had there. I liked it so much, I even put it on my business cards! It was one of the ones that sold. It is titled "Jealousy" and is 4X4

Now I am working on stuff to restock my Etsy store! I had planned on putting all of the stuff I didn't sell at the festival in there, but I didn't have a whole lot left! Right now I have about 9 canvases in various stages of completion lying and propped around my studio. I really got a lot done over the weekend! Some of these will be going on etsy and some of them are for the show that I haven't gotten yet :) I figured it would be good to have about half of them done before I start trying to find a gallery for my first REAL show. Everything is turning out beautifully so far!

My kids are out of school for the next two weeks on fall break. I love it when the kids are home, but I don't get as much done. They are, however, going to visit their grandparents in the country for a few days, so I will probably be able to catch up then.

We bought a new camera! Finally! I haven't played with it much, but once I figure out how to use it, I will be posting a LOT more art pics.

I think I might pull my stuff outside, it is a beautiful day here in Memphis. There is nothing like painting messy outside :)

Rainy Day

Here I am, awake at 8:30 on a Saturday morning. (WAY too early if you ask me!) Tony had to go to work this morning, and I got up with him. The kids are still sleeping and I can hear the rain ticking on the roof. The dogs are sprawled out, sleeping around me, one at my side, one at my feet, and another across the room on the pillow. It is very quiet and peaceful and I thought it would be a good time to catch up on everything. I haven't kept up with this blog like I had planned, but life just gets in the way sometimes.

Spring break is over and we are in the last stretch of school before summer vacation. We had a lovely little mini vacation during the break, the kids and tony and I took the train to New Orleans. We stayed in the French Quarter and walked everywhere. I hadn't been to New Orleans since a school trip when I was 14 or 15. It sure is a beautiful town. I don't think I ever care to travel by train again, though. (Something none of us had ever done) Probably the coolest thing about our trip happened the night we arrived. There were two movies being filmed! One was across the street from the hotel, a movie called "The Librarian 3" which is a made for tv movie starring Noah Wyle. And in the alley right next to our hotel, they were filming the movie "Cirque du Freak", starring Salma Hayek. Vinnie loves the Cirque du Freak books (I think they are about vampires maybe?) AND he wants to be a filmmaker when he grows up, so it was all very exciting for him.

I finally gave my show application to Jane at Artists on Central. I don't know when I will find out if I got it, but I am crossing my fingers! She said all of the months for 2008 are full, so it might be next spring if I am accepted, but she also asked me if I would be able to do it in the fall if someone falls through. With a couple of months notice. I told her yes. So that means I need to spend the next couple of months painting as if it were going to be in the fall. That way, if it does happen in the fall, I won't be completely unprepared. I had planned on spending the summer months working on stuff for the Cooper-Young Festival, which is in mid-September, so I am going to spend the next couple of months painting for the show. If it happens in the spring, I will just be ahead of the game, which never ever ever happens. I am one of those people who are painting the edges of those last couple of paintings the night before a deadline. It would be nice to be ahead for once in my life! I have a good start. I spent the last couple of days working on a 24X48, and I might actually be able to finish it early next week if I get a chance to work on it this weekend. I have been in kind of an art slump the last few months, just kind of working on small paintings here and there, but not too excited about any of them. Now I have a specific focus, and doing large paintings is my favorite way to work, I definitely have a different process for big paintings than for small ones. This will be a different way to work for me, really focusing on one theme instead of bouncing from one thing to another. I spent the morning yesterday planning. I have 4 paintings done for this show, another 5 paintings in progress, specific plans for several more, and tentative plans for the rest. And, I figure if I'm not accepted to do a show at Artists on Central (though I feel relatively confident that I will get it), I can just try somewhere else. I am aiming for 20 large paintings (or groupings of smaller paintings) Can I do 16 paintings in the next two months? Probably not. But I bet I can do 10, which is the goal I've set myself. That is a little more than one a week.

Another goal I've set for myself is to not purchase anything new as far as art supplies go, for this show. I have all the canvas I need. My studio is absolutely full of paper and screen and nifty found objects I have been collecting for years. I am going to resist the urge to run to Michaels or Hobby Lobby or the Art Center and wander around, filling my basket with more random stuff to bring home to my already overflowing studio. The only thing I am going to try really hard to allow myself to purchase is paint and mediums, but only if I run out of what I already have. I got my tax stuff together yesterday (I sold 28 paintings last year! yay me! and a bunch of jewelry!) and it was kind of depressing seeing how much I spent on materials versus how much I sold so I am going to try really hard not to do that this year.

I can hear the kids stirring, so I guess I will go start the day. More about the art I am creating later!

My Weekend and a new project

I had a busy (for me) weekend! Saturday I went to an Art Marketing workshop at Artists on Central. It was very informative and inspiring and now I have lots to think about. Tony had to be at work, so I rushed home afterwards and I worked all afternoon on my new project!

This picture was taken on my kid's recent field trip to Elmwood Cemetary. I absolutely love this statue. I cropped and enlarged the photo, printed it out on regular legal sized copy paper, and spent the afternoon manipulating the image with gel medium and copper leafing. I am still playing with it, but so far the results have been lovely. I'll have a picture of what I've done with it as soon as it is a little further along.

Sunday was busy as well. I spent the afternoon at Chessie's friend's house, working on her science fair project. She is doing it in a group this year, which requires me to interact with the other moms. I have mixed feelings about this, because I don't usually feel like I fit in. But every now and then, I meet someone really cool. This time, I lucked out. I had a great time hanging out with Jane, who is Chessie's friend's mom. She was very cool. And had some awesome photographs and art. We made solar pizza box ovens with the girls.

After science projects, I went home and picked up Vinnie and dropped off Chessie and he and I went to the movies! We saw Cloverfield. Vinnie has been talking about this movie for ages and I really wasn't sure if it would be too scary for him, but he loved it. I liked it too, it was very entertaining in an updated Godzilla kind of way.

I also worked on a couple of other projects this weekend, off and on. This first one is a background i created. It is on a 12X12 canvas. It reminds me of the ocean, which I love, though not colors I normally paint with. I tend to use a very earthy kind of palette, not too many bright colors, but I have been dreaming of the beach. I have a vision in my mind for this one. I think I'd really like to use old engravings from the 1800's and collage the rest of this one. Jellyfish, I am thinking. I picked up a Dover clip art book of animal engravings, and there are pictures of every animal imaginable, so I could use squid, or coral, or fish...

I have one more picture to share today.

This last one is currently on my easel. I've been working on it for a while. I started this painting in anger, and every time I look at it, I can feel hints of that anger, so I really need to finish it soon or put it away for a while and move on. I like how it is coming together, but I can't decide quite which direction to go with it. This one is 30 inches by 40 inches. I am pretty sure it will look very different by the time I finish it. I tend to start out with one idea and over time, I add so many layers that you can barely tell it is the same painting.

It is a dreary, rainy day today. It makes me want to curl up with a cup of hot coffee and my dog butterscotch and daydream. Have a great day!

My first blog post!

I have been kicking around the idea of doing a blog for some time now. Some of my favorite artists have blogs, and I thought it might be fun. I'll probably try to do it for a while before I even tell anyone about it, just to make sure I can keep up with it, but I am really hoping that this will be a good way to get some feedback on the art I am making. Anyway.

First, here is a little bit about me. I am a mixed media artist in Memphis, TN. For the last two years, I have been selling my art at Fountain Art Gallery, but this is my last month there. Pretty soon, in either Feb. or March, I will (most likely) have a small spot at Artists On Central.

Last year was a pretty big year for me. I was Featured Artist at Fountain in April, then again in December. June and early July were spent getting ready for the HGTV crew to film in my studio. They filmed me doing a painting and a collaged soldered necklace. It will air sometime next fall or spring. I will find out exactly when in a month or two. That was lots of fun and exciting! I can't wait to see it! After that was over, I spent a couple of months painting and making jewelry to sell at the Cooper-Young Festival. It was the first year I actually got a booth, even though I had been saying for YEARS that I was going to. I did better that I ever imagined. I sold a handful of jewelry, but about 3/4 of the paintings I brought were sold! Once that was done, I was painting for the Fountain show in December. Also, the painting that I donated to the WKNO art auction was chosen for their special collection.

This year, I am taking a slightly different direction. I am going to concentrate on making stuff for the festival in September (last year I shared a booth with a friend but this year I want to fill the booth myself) and hopefully painting for a show. I am about to apply for a show at Artists On Central, and if I get it, that will be lots of LARGE paintings to do.

As far as my personal life goes, I am the mother of the two coolest kids in the world, ten year old twins Vinnie and Chessie. My husband, Tony, and I have been married for eleven years, and started dating in high school. We have been together for 16 years total. He is a t.v. engineer and we like to joke that he is my benefactor, because he is the reason I am able to be an artist. You know how, years and years ago, artists would be funded by some rich person to do art? That is tony. (Only he isn't rich. lol) We have three dogs. Hugo is our 7 month old bloodhound-st.bernard mix puppy, Maggie is our 7 year old beagle, and Butterscotch is 11. He is a cocker spaniel mix and my favorite. I hope he sticks around for a while, because I don't know what I'd do without him!

When I am not doing art, I am probably reading or watching one of my tv shows. Sometimes I get a little obsessive about the tv shows. The writer's strike is killing me. Wanna hear my list of shows? I love all of the CSI's, Bones, Lost (which is my favorite!), Dexter.... Well, anyway, the list goes on. I was never a big tv watcher until we got a DVR, but when I can watch them whenever I want, instead of when they come on, it is really easy to add shows here and there! Tony and I are currently making our way through Alias on DVD and I've almost decided that is the way to go. Wait for the DVDs.

So that's me in a nutshell. Next time I will talk about art, maybe!