Core WOW Show

Here are a few pictures from the reception at the Core WOW show on Friday night.


My piece is above me (with the pulley, arm, and bird).

A few of my friends had work in the show as well.

Gayla Ruckhaus ( the flower is felted wool, mounted to painted canvas).

Susan (Simone) Maxwell

Sabyl Horneck

I had a great night hanging out with friends before and after visiting the show.  I should have been getting down to the Denver night scene more often in the last few years.

Core Art Show, WOW

I have a piece in the WOW show at the Core Gallery.  If you've ever thought about visiting this gallery, the WOW show is a great one to see.  WOW stands for Wide Open Whatever. There is no theme so it is an eclectic mix of art, and they try to exhibit as many pieces as they can. The walls are filled to bursting. 

I will be at the Artist Reception Friday the 9th, around 6 or 6:30.

Fly Away

Carnival Mixed Media piece

Here is a picture of my "Carnival" piece that was in the New Core Gallery's Square show. The show ended on Sunday, but it was nice to see it hung up properly since we don't have a lot of wall space in our house.

Carnival collage/assemblage

I finished my Carnival assemblage/collage. I submitted it to a show yesterday and just took a quick picture before putting it into my car.  I had to crop the picture since the background behind it was a mess, but there are pieces that stick out past the edge of the canvas. This picture doesn't really do it justice. I will take a better picture when it's hanging in the show, or at home if it doesn't get in.

This piece is 24" x 24", excluding the parts that stick out.

The theme for the show is "Square" so I thought I would submit some other pieces as well.  Here is the bird assemblage completed, that I had shown a progress photo the other day.  This piece is 12" x 12". This piece is the second in a series, the first one is here.

This is a piece from last year. My husband and I had taken a field painting class.  I really enjoyed the fabric layers and then painting over them. I plan to do some work similar to this in the next few months. I think this piece is 18" x 18".  The work was originally on raw canvas, but I glued the finished piece to a painted canvas using gel medium.

I will post if any of these get in the show.

Next up, I need to finish some handmade gifts for my family for Thanksmas (Christmas celebrated during the Thanksgiving holiday).

Carnival Assemblage, peek #2

Here are another photo of the  Carnival assemblage I am working on.

And here is another assemblage I have in the works.

Visit to Simone and Sabyl's studio

Sometimes I go to Susan and Sabyl's studio to visit and work on projects together. It's nice to get out of the house and spend some time with good friends. And it's nice when some of your good friends are artists too.

This is the piece Sabyl is working on.

This is Simone's work in progress.

This is my piece. I think it looks better in person.  Taking a picture and looking at it really can give you a fresh look at it. I can now see that I need to improve the transition at the top left from the darker blue to the lighter music sheet. Also, I think the whole piece needs another wash of blue.  

Assemblage peek

I am working on a Carnival themed assemblage, and thought I'd post a peek.

Fly away assemblage

Here is an assemblage that will be in the Art Students League of Denver's show, What Once Was Lost, The Art of Assemblage. I plan to go to the reception on October 4th.

I actually found the metal panel, already rusted and attached to a wood frame, at a local thrift store. I don't remember where I got the pulley with chain.  The pulley is bumpy on the back side, so I used some washers and rusty bits as shims to allow the pulley arms to attach correctly to the panel. The arm is a baby doll arm that I painted off-white. I love the way it turned out. I plan to do another one in this series next week, I have a rusted baby doll arm, another bird, and a more simple pulley and chain waiting for me in the studio!

What Once Was Lost: The Art of Assemblage 

Art Students League

200 Grant Street Denver, Colorado 80203

 Sept 30–Nov 13, 2013
First Friday Reception:
Oct 4 | 5:30–8 pm

Hearts from recycled fence pickets

I really love the shape of the Mexican heart milagros, with a decorative edge and flames above. I had seen a cool mirror shaped like one at the Cherry Creek Art festival and thought it would be cool to make some artistic ones.

Recently, we replaced a small portion of our wood fence due to structural issues (a strong wind almost took a portion down). We had put the leftover wood in a pile until we had time to cut it down and put it in the trash. The longer it sat there, the more I thought this would be great for my hearts. It is great to re-use the wood and will give my hearts a rustic feel. So I took five boards and was able to get three hearts from it. The larger ones are about 21".

Here is my first set of boards. I glued (and eventually) screwed the wood strip to them to hold them together.  Usually it took more than one strip to keep the assembly from being kind of wobbly.

I used a hand held jigsaw to cut my shapes. When I planned my design, I made sure I didn't make any tight curves that this saw couldn't handle. Having made three of these, there are some things I would do differently. Make sure the wood strip on the back is not going to get in the way of the saw. I also think cutting the end pieces separately, before assembly, would be best as the saw vibrates so much that these pieces sometimes came unattached. Even with the glue and screws, the wood is old and these pieces would just fall off.

Here is the backside. I then spray painted the back and edges black.

 Front side:

Heart 2:

Heart 3:

I gessoed the fronts with white gesso in the center, and black gesso around the edges and flames.

I painted the smaller heart turquoise in the middle. I plan to leave some black details, but most of the black gets covered with metal leaf.

I painted details with gold paint to give me a road map for the metal leaf and the black details.

I knew I wanted this heart to have two types of metal leaf. I applied glue only where I wanted the gold leaf.  I used a glue that dries tacky which allows the leaf to adhere.

I use a stiff painting brush to first press the leaf into the glue, then brush the excess leaf away. I then used a rainbow (oil-slick looking) metal leaf for the other part of the frame area. I always put any scrap foil pieces I brush off into a plastic container to use later on another project.

 I then mixed some black paint with some glazing medium to paint some shadows on the heart center and on the gold frame.

 Red Heart 1, before adding black shadows. Foil was from my mixed container of foils, some copper, gold, rainbow, etc.

 Red Heart 1, finished.

 Detail, Red Heart 1

Red Heart 2, before adding black shadows.

Red Heart 2, finished. Gold foil was used.

Red Heart 2, detail

I really like how these turned out!

Mosaic tile picture frame

For my parents' 50th wedding anniversary, my sister and I decided to make a mosaic tile picture frame. My sister made a lot of the tiles and did the assembling, but I made and mailed her some tiles to use. I used either Sculpey III or Fimo Soft polymer clay, depending on the tile.

These were white tiles stamped with rubber stamps, then painted with acrylic after they were baked. Some of the details I painted a darker color first, then "dry brushed" with paint on my finger to apply the light color to the raised sections. I did do a lot of touch up with a small brush afterwards.

These were gold clay stamped with a rubber stamp, then "dry brushed" with metallic blue paint on top after they were baked, then dusted with gold powder (similar to Pearl Ex, but mine are called Fairie Dust).

I am not too fond of these pink flower tiles. Mod Podge makes hot melt glue sticks and molds to be used with these glue sticks.  I found it hard to get the molds filled well. I glued them to already baked polymer clay tiles and painted them with acrylic paint and applied a russet colored shimmer powder.  The backs of the flowers are somewhat lumpy so they are not completely flat with the face of the tile. I do think these flowers would work well on some of my  Day of the Dead skulls.

If you decide to try the Mod Podge glue sticks, please note the following, these are hot melt glue sticks. They really need to be used with silicone molds. There are other brands of low temp glue sticks that can be used with rubber stamps and other molds, but do not use the Mod Podge glue sticks with these.

For these, I embossed copper and brass metal sheets with embossing folders and my Wizard (similar to a Cuttlebug). I then used double stick tape to attach each to a piece of mat board, then folded the edges around to the back of the board.

All of the polymer clay tiles (not the embossed metal ones) were given a coat of Galaxy Gloss to give them a shiny finish.

I also made the alphabet tiles and some gold "grout" sticks, but forgot to take pictures before I mailed them.

I love the Laurie Mika book "Mixed Media Mosaics", which is what I used as a reference for my polymer clay tile making.

Here are some progress photos my sister sent.

And the framed almost completed.

Finished! Happy 50th Mom and Dad!

Day of the Dead assemblage with dart board

A while ago, I picked up this cool dart board at the thrift store for 99 cents. I thought it would make a great assemblage.

I added one of the skulls I had made with plaster wrap, see this post. I knew I wanted to keep the design on the skull black and white to complement the dart board. I decided to do the skull pattern in yarn, which I had done before on another piece, see this post. Originally, I was not going to alter the dart board, but then decided it would be more interesting if I put a pattern on it as well. I also used yarn for the dart board decoration. It basically took one long day to finish it, but I think it is pretty darn cool.

Framed Day of the Dead skulls, Part 1

Michael's finally has some Halloween stuff coming in. I picked up a bunch of these paper mache skulls. They also had some ornate frames in the clearance section, so I picked some of those up as well.

I cut the back of the skull off so that it would lie flat in the frame (I left "tabs" to be able to attach the skulls later on).  I glued some paper behind the eye/nose/cheek openings so that I could fill them with paper clay. Paper clay need a surface to stick to and will not attach without something behind the opening. I mixed some matte medium into my paper clay so it would adhere well. After the paper clay dried, the skulls were gessoed and painted white. I will work on adding day of the dead touches to the skulls next week!

Update from the Summer Art Market

Allen and I shared a booth at the Summer Art Market this past weekend and here are some pictures from our booth. I have been very quiet on my blog the last week or two since I was preparing for the show, so this week I should have a lot to share.