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

Field trip to the Paris Street market, Littleton

One of the places I love to go in the summer, is the Paris Street market in Littleton.  I impatiently wait for the first weekend all spring. Finally the first Saturday in May arrived.

It was pretty packed with shoppers, as usual.  I like to look for rusty bits and cool weird things to include in my assemblage art.  These types of things seemed very limited this time.

I also have the new house to decorate, so I was looking for a small free-standing cabinet for the downstairs bathroom and other small house furnishing items.  For the most part, all of the vintage furniture at the Paris Market was painted. I would prefer pieces with a wood finish for the new house. I did not like the colors of the painted furniture. I actually would have preferred something with some pow if I was going to get a painted piece, but most were black.

Regardless, I did find some cute things.

Cast Iron hand, I have a specific spot in the new house for this, and a cast iron doo-dad, for art:

Old folding table, I will probably do something to this and hang this as art. I tried to remove the paint splotches but with little success. I have a pressed tin panel somewhere and thought I could mount it to this to "frame" it.

Pillow.  I love this because it reminds me of a Gustav Klimt painting. The living room walls in the new house will be a green-yellow, so this will look great in there.

This is probably the last time I will get to the Paris Market before we move.  I hope I find some good flea markets in Nebraska.

We also stopped at an Estate sale on the way home.  I have a high tolerance for dirt and dust, but this home looked like it hadn't been cleaned in 40 years. I touched the wood legs of an ottoman and it felt greasy as well as dirty.  Ugh!  I did buy some old roller skates and five small embroidered pieces.  I didn't look very hard at the embroidered pieces while I was there, and I love this mermaid piece.  

I also stopped to see Susan at her studio and exchanged some 50's dress patterns I bought for her for some Methyl Cellulose.  I am looking forward to playing with it, but still need to finish some other art pieces first. I bought this for creating fabric collages, but I found some instructions on my computer for marbling with it, so may try that too.

New Home in Kearney

Our bid got accepted for our new home in Kearney, NE.  It is lovely, it is old, and it is ours (pending inspection and closing).  This will definitely keep me busy through the summer and beyond. We haven't had the inspection yet, but we think it will go okay. We know it has a plumbing issue as the waterline does not hold pressure. That is accounted for in the price of the house.

The main and second floors only require some new paint and floor refinishing, except the kitchen.

Here is the living room.

 Dining Room looking toward the living room. 

Kitchen. I am looking into re-staining the cabinets ourselves if they work well, and replacing the counter tops. If the cabinets aren't functional, we will need to replace them.

Upstairs hallway.  I know it is totally old fashioned, but for some reason I totally dig the ivy carpeting and textured wallpaper.

Current Master bedroom. We plan on finishing the basement renovation the previous owners started, so the master will be in the basement. This room will be Allen's office.

My office/sewing room. My "wet" art area will be in the basement.

The guest bedroom. Go Huskers!  No really, all of this must go. It will be repainted, and I'd like to strip the paint off the wood window and base trim. It was amazing how many houses we looked at that had a "Huskers" themed room.

I cannot believe I didn't take a picture of the main floor bathroom, which is huge and has a claw foot tub.  I probably forgot as it had hideous dark eggplant textured wallpaper (you can catch a glimpse of it in the dining room picture).  There is no bathroom on the second floor, which is one of the reasons we want to complete the basement renovation.

Here is the master bedroom in the basement. I want to remove all the painted faux-wood paneling, which is on 50% of the walls in the basement.  The wall on the left side hides the walk-in closet.

Closet.

My art room in the basement. I actually like this wall color, but we plan to open this room up to an adjacent area so I will be changing this to a light blue/gray.  I may paint the basement bathroom a color similar to this one though.

Basement bathroom. It is bigger than it looks in the picture. Closet on the left, and doors to furnace/water heater on right.

And a "vanity" to the right of the shower. I hate this blue paint. I plan to leave this a vanity area, but will put in a free-standing vanity table, a framed mirror, and updated light fixture.

Scariest room in the house. I want this to be the laundry room, and hopefully get a work/utility sink.

That completes the "as-is" tour of the house. I will do future postings as rooms get updated! We won't close til June, so I have one month to make a plan (not that I haven't been planning since we bid on it a few days ago).

Patchwork tree fabric collage

I have been working on some blue patchwork backgrounds recently.  I have specific ideas for each.  I finished one of them, which is pictured below.

A couple months ago, I was at Sabyl and Susan's studio, and Sabyl was working on a wood cut of some tree trunks and the stark simplicity of it was beautiful to me.

For days afterwards I was looking at the bare winter branches everywhere I went. I was a bit obsessed. When I started working on my patchwork backgrounds, I knew one of them would be of bare branches.  I love the stark contrast of the trunk and branches against the bright blue sky. 

Embrace the Orange

One of the things that Cas did on the first day of the workshop, was to give each person a color chip and we were to use this color in our work.  She made sure not to give us our favorite color.  I got orange (liquid amber  - a nice yellow orange).  I rarely use orange in my work, but actually like it and was up for the challenge. 

The first few pieces I worked on were orange and a purply-blue, but I found the contrast too strong.  My other problem was that we were working small, and I just made them too busy.  I created four small ones and my favorite one disappeared. I think it fell out of my bag in the parking lot. I guess I am practicing (accidental) art abandonment.

This one is lost:

This one I added some hand embroidery:

I worked on some bigger pieces the next day, one almost completely orange and another almost completely blue-purple.  I think they are a nice start, but I need to work on finishing them.

I also started three other panels in a cream/green color scheme and look forward to working on them as well.

I really liked pushing my boundaries with the orange color.  I know I have some orange in my stash so I will try to include it in other work.  I loved working with the techniques I learned in the workshop and look forward to using it more.  Unfortunately I have a large stack of work-in-progress that needs to be addressed before I continue with these or start other pieces.

Why, not how

One of the things I learned from Cas Holmes last week was, when describing my work, I should talk about the "why" not the "how".   I rarely do this, as I don't even discuss this with myself. I have a vision for a piece of work, and I don't even ask myself why it is important to me or where the idea came from.  I have never written an artist statement since I never think hard about my "vision", my ideas, and why I want to create a certain piece of art.  I don't have a specific theme that runs through my work, except when I specifically create a series about a subject.  Without telling myself to create a series, I would be all over the map with technique, materials, and subject matter.

I have been blogging a while now, and realize I almost never mention my motivation or insight into the "why" of my pieces.  I will still be blogging on techniques I use for fabric dyeing, painting, surface design, etc. But when I post a completed work, I plan on concentrating on the "why".  Because not only will this give viewers a better understanding of me and my work, it will give me a better understanding as well. And maybe soon I can get that artist statement written.

Field trip to Phoenix/Scottsdale

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind and I am just now getting my feet back on the ground.  Two weeks ago we had to organize, clean, and put some stuff in storage so we could get our house on the market.  The For Sale sign went in the yard last Tuesday (we are selling it by owner), then Wednesday morning, I frantically packed a bunch of art supplies and clothes in about an hour and a half and drove to the airport.

My long-awaited class with Cas Holmes was the end of last week at Frenzy Stamper in Scottsdale.  I was very unfocused when I arrived, since I had been dealing with so many things regarding the house before I left.  But over three days, I really left my comfort zone and worked with ideas, colors, and thought processes that were new to me.  I will do some other posts regarding things this, but they aren't posts I can just sit and whip out and will require some searching and time.

In the mean time, here are some photos from my trip.  The Chiluly exhibit at the Desert Botanical Garden was lovely, especially at dusk. A lot of the locals say the previous Chiluly exhibit here was better, with more pieces, but for this tourist, I thought there were a lot.

 These cactus flowers caught the last rays of sun before it set behind the hills.

 The other thing I wanted to do in Arizona is take a hike and get some pictures of Saguaro cacti. We don't have these where I live and I find them interesting.  My Dad did a lot of photography in the 70's and often took photos of driftwood and interesting dead trees, so I took this photo with him in mind.

 There were quite a few flowering cactus along the trail

I also wanted to go to Taliesen West, but it was Easter Sunday and they were closed. So I decided to go to the Heard Museum, their website did not say they were closed on Easter, but when I got there they were not open.  The Phoenix Art Museum was just down the street, so I went there instead. I found this piece very interesting. It is a (dead) avocado tree covered with black velvet. There were many glass birds perched in the tree. They were filled with blue liquid, and after reading the description for the piece, I found out they were filled with Windex, which was a statement about harsh chemicals and the environment.

But still, I find the chemical birds quite lovely.

There was another exhibit at the art museum that really made me think, but I will do another post regarding that.

In closing, here is a photo of the carriages in Old Town Scottsdale. It reminded me of the "Old West."