ATC meet up

Yesterday was the meet up and actual trading day for the ATC Challenge. September posts are almost entirely ATC cards. The challenge was for 30 artists to make 30 cards in 30 days. Then it was upped to 40 cards in 30 days. Not everyone went for the 40, but I did. I'm good with a deadline. It all worked out, though because we had 30 artists and the those of us with leftover cards made additional swaps.

Kim Clanton and I drove up together. The meet up was in The Box Factory in St. Joe, Michigan, which is apparently an old box factory that now houses galleries,a performance space, and a ton of artist studios. Most of them were closed, but it was still cool to walk around and peek in the windows. Quite a few of the artists involved had studios there.

After the set up, we drew numbers to pick the cards and we lined up and picked in order. There was no choosing your favorites, you just picked up the first one from each artist. Some of the artists were fairly consistent in their work, and others had all different media and styles. A lot of artists did not leave contact info other than a phone number or email address. This was really a little disappointing, I was hoping for lots of new online connections. If any of you have an online presence in some form leave it in the comments and I'll add in some more links!

A few of my favorites...
clockwise from upper left: Susan Henshaw, pastel;  Jan Sonneman, ink; Deborah Landry, encaustic

left to right: Pamela Jolley Riggenbach, mixed media; Sibella Talic, graphite; Kim Pruitt, mixed media.

Here's a few shots of the set up.

easel-y done

Tonight was the Easel-y Done session I was leading/instructing at Studio 659 in Whiting. The idea of the evening is people can show up, have all the supplies provided for them, and create a painting during the course of the evening. The end result is you leave with a completed canvas.

I was asked to something fall-ish. I wanted it to be something similar to my work. I decided on pears, my favorite fall fruit. A pair of pears.

I sketched the pears out with watercolor pencil. I used the acrylic paint that we would be using in the class. I only used red, blue, yellow and white. There was green and black available for the class, as well, but no one used either of them. I had a painting completed and then painted a second version during the class, along with everyone else.

I made a couple of stencils of pears, and one of apples, in case anyone wanted to use them. Everyone did, so that was a good call. Here's a few class shots.

It was lots of fun and I was very happy that Studio 659 asked me to do it, and that I said yes. Below, the original on the right and the in-class painting on the left. I donated both of these pieces to the Studio, and they are available for sale.

grant update part 2

I don't have a whole lot to update since the last post as far as the grant work goes, but I have been working jointly with another regional artist, Melissa Washburn for updates at nwicreative.org. She is also an IAC visual arts grant recipient this year, so the two of us are representing northwest Indiana.

Here's  a few of Melissa's drawings from her time at the Field Museum, which didn't make it into the updates.

You can follow our previous progress on nwicreative.org: the introduction, the first month, the second month, and the third month.

nwicreative is an online group which focuses on creative professions in northwest Indiana. It's very design heavy, but they haven't turned me away. You can continue for follow our progress there monthly. Melissa also posts updates on her facebook page and if you want to see some of her non-grant work in person, you can check out her show Out of Place at HAC on October 19th.

grant work!

So, despite the lack of updates, I have been working on my grant project. I have been trying to set aside one day each week just for this project. It's mostly working. Last week I had two mornings instead of a full day, which is a little less ideal, but I just have to work when I can.

The mixed media pieces I'm working on are meant to be a bridge between my paintings and drawings. I think this is where my artwork is heading, in general. I am really enjoying it. I'm slated to do 4 of these pieces (and 4 large scale paintings.) One of the odd things about working this way is the show is already scheduled, before I made any work for it at all. And the 8 pieces were planned. So everything I make, I now have to consider how it will work within the show. How will it hang? How will it all work together? All the frames have been painted white. I originally planned to paint the frames black to make them look more cohesive, but the canvases will be unframed and so white on the edges. So white frames.

the ties that bind

I'm in the done-for-now stage with the ties that bind and this woman's work. I think the ties that bind is a bit to geometric in the bottom right corner, so that will need to be tweaked a bit. The spoons in this woman's work are going to be moved into a less dangle-y position and I think I'm going move the crochet work in the embroidery hoop to the right side.

this woman's work

And now I'm working on fairy tales...

line drawing and placement

ink writing under"painting"

acrylic

I've since put silver ink over the light pink section. The writing in the first layer there says "where is my silver lining?" The picture frames were going to get happy little individual landscapes in them, but then I went for blue skies, which had a kind of Magritte feel. I settled, for now anyway, on using them more as windows, in a rose colored glasses way. I still may work more on the background painting: more ink, more washes? maybe.

This is just set together right now. I am not sure exactly how I am going to attach the frames to the painting. I may cut it and insert them that way, but I'm fairly scared to cut this.