Have I Left the Artistic Life?

The answer to that is “no.” But I think all of our phases of life work together and add up to perhaps a final, completed manifestation of where you were always supposed to go in life.

I have been absent-minded….from art that is…because I am on another “assignment,” I haven’t been giving much mind to making art….but I still love it. I enjoy the “eye candy” of others that I find on Facebook, but am not driven like I used to be to go “make something right now!” But I am a “creator, ” there is no doubt about that. I love creating, whether it’s painting, paper collage or dyeing and printing fiber, or illustrations for books and writing. I love it all. I love creating on a print table, or taking lessons to learn something new on the computer and then creating digital images and patterns in Photoshop and Illustrator products.

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MoFA Conference…just what a working girl needs!

This spring I got to attend the the MoFA conference. This is the only professional organization I belong to right now. I love the variety of work represented by this group. I can go as far in my work in one direction as I want to and then go in another direction and still fit in fairly well! This group encompasses weavers, knitters, dyers, paper artists, etc. Some people use bones and skins in their work. I think I will leave that to them…I don’t think I will be going there with my art.

The conference is a wonderful event. There are classes, vendors, great food, a members’ show, a style show, usually a national teacher/speaker. This year the speaker/teacher was Judy Dominic, who works with a lot of different materials. At this conference she had held a 2 day workshop prior to the workshop teaching how to create mud cloth. I was unable to take the two day class because of work, but the girls who did take it had beautiful cloth.

I thought I would post some photos of the members exhibit in this post. Three awards were given. One for best use of color, one for best use of stitch, and one for best overall composition. I am always stunned when I see MoFA exhibits. I think they are stunning in their variety and are such a great display of the unique talents of all of the members. This year our projects had to all be mounted on 12×12 inches canvases that could be wired and hung on a wall. This would keep the show uniform in its size. About 35 members entered the members’ show.

I was not disappointed when I arrived and looked over the entries. They were all so wonderful, I felt like my puny, sort of thrown together at the last minute entry paled in comparison. I oohed and ahead over all of the entries. A lot of them were felted. There were so many clever ideas. I loved all of them. Another feature of the conference was that each artist could schedule their own private critique with Judy. I didn’t schedule one, not wanting to hear how bad my piece was! And Judy was also the judge for the show.

Imagine my surprise on Sunday when the three awards were given, to receive the Best overall composition award! I was shocked. And the funny part is, that I have always felt that composition was my weak point.

So without further ado, here is a panorama of the show. Drool, ooh and aahhhh all you want. It’s even better in person!

Starting on the right hand side of the exhibit….in the upper left hand corner (#26), Leandra Spangler’s lovely piece won the Best use of color award. My Fragments of a Life is in the first row, third photo on the right in the very middle and bottom of those on the wall.

               

#17 in the photo below, with all the trees, I believe was awarded best use of stitch.

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The show continues to the table with samples of papers and books with marks on them.

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More papers with surface design.

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New Painting

Sometimes I just have to try my hand at it….8 x 10 on canvas board. Acrylic and paper.  No name.

Painting with 3 circles

I love making small art!

I LOVE making ACEOs…those are the 2.5x 3.5 inch small pieces of art that I make a lot of. I use papers, bits of fabric, paper towels and other fun things. I use a product called Fast2Fuse interfacing. It’s fusible on both sides, which is great for layering stuff, then fusing it, then I cut it up, and then I work with each piece individually with paint, inks, gesso, etc. Here is a group I finished recently. Making these is just too much fun! They are $40 each. (First row, on the right is not for sale.)

 

 

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I’m Back

Where have you been, you say? Nowhere. Just extremely busy with job and all of the sundry other things life hands one in the way of errands, holidays and shows. Not that anything has slowed down now!!!! Bwahahaha!

But I do have pictures. Pictures of all the things I have been doing since Nov. 27. I guess we’ll start there.

This particular piece of art has been in a cheap little black frame for years while I hauled it around from show to show. Last year there were some people that expressed interest in it but they never made the great leap to taking it home with them. (Heh, heh) I read something about art one day that said a nice frame sells everything, so I decided to get it put in a nice frame.

the message resized

I am still waiting! That was almost a year ago! The frame and the framing job is lovely. A master framer lives just outside of town and she did it for me. She is also an awesome pastel painter. Stop in my shop and see some of her work! This little gem will be here too…maybe….

I’m Still Here

Yes, I am still here even tho I don’t post very much on this blog. I am still doing stuff…

I do love to take leftover bits and pieces and put them together into a piece of art. I suppose it’s the way I was raised, to use what I had and not waste. So here is art with leftovers of this and that, all put together and sitting on a little easel for sale. It’s a little three-dimensional as I didn’t glue it down flat. I like that.

 

 

bits and pieces

Junk Mail Art

There is a group on Facebook called Junk Mail Art Collective. I listen in and ooh and ahhh over the artwork posted there. I don’t contribute because I usually don’t get anything done. But this week…..I got to play around a little. There has been some really cool junk mail art posted on FB. I only wish the junk mail I get was that interesting.

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Payne’s Gray paint, acrylic INK in Yellow Ochre, label from a shipment I received, acrylic ink in Earth Red, and black acrylic paint.

The acrylic inks are FW Daler Rowney. These are AWESOME inks! I had so much fun playing with them. They are full pigmented COLOR! Very nice! I only have three colors right now, but that is enough. They are beautiful.

Postcard Panache

Saturday afternoon Jan. 25th was the second class of Postcard Panache. These ladies couldn’t make the first class, so I scheduled another one. There were supposed to be a couple more gals but something came up and got in their way! Here are Mary Ann and Bonnie learning some things about Angelina fibers.

Mary Ann and Bonnie in Class (800x600)

Next class: Saturday, March 8, I will be teaching a fiber photo collage class. Students will learn a bit about collage-making with fibers, photo transfer, and hand stitching. Class sample…

Fiber Photo Collage Class

Class on February 22

So far, Saturday afternoon classes seem to be doing well in the small town of Norris City. There is quite a bit of interest in my 2 hour classes. Coming up on February 22 from 1-3 p.m. is a new one called, Create Your Own Painted Papers for Collage. I think the idea came from seeing several of the gals in the Paper and Wax Collage class go through and pick out a lot of my dyed and painted papers to use in their own collages!

So call me at 618-383-2040 to sign up or come by the Studio and sign up. I’m here on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 10-4 and most Saturdays. (I work for the newspaper across the street the rest of the week).

Here are samples of what we will be doing.

painted papers

 

Next week the Home Extension crew comes in to watch me demo some dyeing and printing techniques.

Studio Time

I love my new space…I love having the shop. People drop in just to chat, which is great, and to sign up for classes, which is great too! I love having the space for classes. Most days it looks like this:

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and this….

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Here’s what a happy class looks like!

Paper and Wax collage class 1-25-14

Paper and wax collage. In this class, everyone first made a paper collage on bristol board. None of these had ever made a collage, they told me. They used some of my own painted and dyed papers in their collages. I just put a pile of stuff out and let them go to town with it. Some brought in specific papers they wanted to work with too. After their collages were glued, they brushed a layer of encaustic medium (wax and resin) over the collage. Then they did some etching in the wax. After that we put some paint on the places where they had etched and put another layer of encaustic medium on.  Lana, Noah, Kate, Diane, Brittney and Whitley all did an awesome job!