Saturday, February 29, 2020

February: Works of Paper

This month our challenge is something new for us, works done using paper in a different way, not just to paint on. Read on to see how each of the Pieces of 8 met the challenge.
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Cindy's response to the challenge:

Collage is the art of gluing lots of different things down to make a pleasing piece, recycling old magazines or other printed material is one way to do this.  Here is a portion of a collage I made using ripped magazine pages....can you tell what it is?

GAIA
I so easily see the green foreground of the mountains that turn to blue as they go deeper into the horizon.  But squint your eyes and look carefully: do you see the figure of a woman on her side supporting her head with the hand of a bended arm, the other shoulder jutting up, the valley of her waist and the gentle hill of her hips??  I do.  This is Gaia, the earth goddess.   Cindy Michaud

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Donna's response to the challenge:
Speaking of collages??  My second love after oils, is collaging and I was surprised how long it had been since I had done one, so I was very excited for the challenge this month.  Somehow I had the idea I would like to do a cowboy boot?  Why? Who knows, but I was inspired. I used acrylic paint to cover a gessoed support and then drew the boot in chalk. I always try to use something connected to the subject when I collage so maybe it was the great cocktail napkins I had with peppers, writing and deep Southwestern colors I had that screamed cowboy boot!!


Instead of using magazine papers I used tissue, cocktail napkins and all different types of papers I have collected over the years.


These are a few close ups of how I used paper to show length and roundness.

I really liked the angle of this photo.
donnavinesart.etsy.com

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Kathy's response to the challenge:
I have created hundreds of paper butterflies for all occasions over the years. But, I've been wanting to create a Cecropia moth and this challenge gave me the chance to work on it. I have a stash of special papers, including beautiful rice papers I find at Ralph's Art Supply on Highland Avenue in Eau Gallie. Below are my first two moths. The brown version is made of a rich felted paper. The one above it is mostly rice paper and a few pieces from an antique paper doily. Each is larger than life size - a Cecropia has an average 6 inch wing span, and these are both 9 inches wide. 
Bottom right is my first attempt, top left is number 2.
The bodies and antennae were much more of a challenge than the wings. The brown butterfly used a mix of chenille like white yarn and a specialty orange feathery yarn. The other is just the chenille yarn and acrylic paint. Neither do justice to the actual body of a Cecropia which is a true work of nature's art. I also tried a variety of methods to create the antennae. The brown moth ended up with antennae tediously cut from black paper. For the second moth, I hand tied multiple black threads to a thin wire (after many other less successful attempts). I was happy with this method after starching and cutting the antennae, but they mangled easily when attaching them to the body. Some of my progress steps are shown below. (Click to enlarge.)
Here's a closer look at how my second moth was created.
Getting that truly magnificent (yet artsy) look of a Cecropia that I'm after is a challenge. I just finished the third moth today - the last day of the challenge. This one is watercolor pencils on rice paper. I forgot to get a photo of it before I put it into a plexiglas frame.
Cecropia Number 3 -with a few plexiglas reflections!

All three in order made from top to bottom.


Kathy Garvey
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Denette's Response to the Challenge

Donna's Papers 

I decided to take a picture of Donna's beautiful papers and paint it.  So here it is.  

Denette Schweikert

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Carmen's Response to the Challenge
I never miss a challenge, but I have spent the whole month of February sick and have not done a single artistic thing, so here's a repeat. Years ago Cindy Michaud and I competed in The Mystery Build Contest to create an artwork using the items mailed to us in a box. The box contained twine, wood, clay, paper, glue and other materials and we were to use those plus paint, and nothing else. We had great fun creating a tableau of a crucial point in the story of Moby Dick, and we even used the box. Moby and the little figures were paper mâché. 


Carmen Beecher

www.carmenbeecher.com
www.carmensart.etsy.com

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Fay's Response to the challenge:


I have already written a post about this sculpture that I saw at the Cumner Museum of Art in Jacksonville in an exhibit called "Striking Power: Iconoclasm in Ancient Egypt." This piece from an unidentified sarcophagus 320-30 BCE. The planes of the face combine in such a dramatic and yet soft way to imbue this fragment with an expressive personality these many centuries later.


I wanted to use this piece to study contrast. Although the photo doesn't capture the light reflection on the foil or the glittering gold of the background, I think I did manage to get the contrast. What I came nowhere close to portraying is the inviting personality of the original. My "person" would not be fun to know at all and looks more like the Tragedy mask than a friendly face.

Next Month's Challenge 
The Pieces plan to visit the Vero Beach Art Museum and study their current exhibition:
From Homer to Hopper: American Art from The Phillips Collection, Washington, DCFrom there, we will each see which artist inspires us the most and prepare information on the artist and a work inspired by that artist. How each meets the challenge is yet to be seen. Watch this space for the results on March 31st, 2020.

Friday, February 28, 2020

Cover that Mirror: With Art!

How many times have you said (or heard said) "oh, I'd love to own that painting but I have no room left on my walls"?

That's pure BS -- 99 times out of 100 I promise you I can find more space for paintings, niches you've overlooked or walls that just cry out to hold new art.  I put art everywhere!  So imagine my surprise when I stole this idea from my daughter-in-law!?  A new one on me but boy it came in handy.

Afer purchasing a city condo I was amused at all the mirrors....I suppose previous owners thought it made the tiny footprint look larger but frankly seeing myself so many times was rather disconcerting. Especially in the bathroom!  Alas, the wall length mirror would not budge without the entire wall being destroyed - a tad out of the immediate decor budget.  So I remembered a trick I saw at my son's house orchestrated by his creative wife.

She had vertically hung two pieces of art ON TOP of the offending mirror without ruining the mirror itself.  It was done with an approriate colored ribbon threaded through both pieces and hung with a decorative bow from the wall board above the mirror.  Voila!  Lovely.


It's a small bath with a huge mirror so I wanted something whimsical and colorful.  After having fun with green shades and texture I taped out a trellis idea and cut two stamps of philodendron leaves.  The stamps were an experiment and due to my texture they had to be painted in some spots as opposed to a pure stamp.  But I enjoyed the process and had fun with it.  This is the bottom panel since I did not have a canvas that would cover the entire height of the mirror.


Here is the top panel of the diptych which also shows how I joined the two together with cup hooks.  We used the top of the canvas as the hanging support and put a couple of nails in where we wanted it to hang.  At this stage I was already happy with what was happening.


And here it is!  Ta-da.  It's awkward to photograph without getting myself into it so this is a side view.    But, the good news is that I can now exit the shower without being faced with a full view old lady nude staring back at me!!  Much happier to see the art....AND happy to have a new place to add art to the bathroom.

NOTE:  This piece is acrylic on canvas and holds up very well under steamy conditions.  Give some thought to your bathroom environment before you hang...if in direct sunlight you will avoid a delicate watercolor due to fade possibilities and if the work is on paper (pastel or a drawing) consider how well it is sealed and whether or not steam will be a factor.  Just a caution....in most cases no harm will be done: hang and enjoy!

Cindy Michaud
questions: art@cindymichaud.com
www.cindymichaudart.com

Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Marbleizing Paper for Fun

by Kathy Garvey

For a recent visit from the grandchildren, I ordered this inexpensive marbleizing kit on Amazon. (There are many, but this is Jar Melo Marbling Paint Kit.) 

They had so much fun with it that, after they left, I set it up for a neighbor.  And after the neighbor had fun with it, I set it up for myself. (Note that set up requires mixing the solution the night before and letting it sit in the tray. If you don't do this, the paints tend to slide to the bottom of the tray and don't get picked up by the paper.) Below are some photos from our three experiments with marbleizing.
Youngest of the Grands! 

Her results on paper!

 
My little neighbor was in awe of her design and it turned out just as beautiful on paper.
Since our Pieces of 8 Challenge for February is working in an unusual way with paper, I had my butterfly making supplies out and whipped up a few with some of my results. Here's how one of them progressed!

The colors dropped into the tray.
The colors swirled with a toothpick on the water surface.
 
The paper after lifting it out of the tray.
The paper after drying.

The finished butterfly made from the marbleized paper.
Overall it was a fun experience. The kit is worth it for hours of fun. We've altogether made over 24 prints so far and there are plenty more of the paints. It's easy for kids to do with supervision. And, since you can use any kind of paper or even wood and stone, there is a lot more experimenting in the future.

Subscibe to our blog to see the latest with the Pieces of 8. And watch for our responses to the paper challenge on the last day of February.

Friday, February 21, 2020

What a Painting Reveals



This is a very interesting quote and does beg discussion.  But my experience is that it is true.  The artist may not agree with the assessment but I think it is a statement more correct than false!  You can read a lot about the individual who made something by examining it closely.  (I've decided to accept "mildly schizophrenic" as a personality trait since I seem to be all over the map in my work!)

Case in point:        Less than a year ago I had a horrible experience with my back.  Unaware I had chronic problems it all came to a head when I could not move or get up without excruciating pain.  I was ready to sign off.  Fortunately those around me had other ideas and without belaboring details I was able to have surgery, learn to walk and get up and resume life.  How did this affect my painting?


I decided to process this event via my painting and I wasn't much worried if it met a "painting standard" or not.  This was to be personal art therapy.  To be real I had to be the model for any photos I painted from so with the assistance of my husband we did a home photo shoot.  Even that was therapeutic.

I was able to sling the black colors of my "dark night of the soul" to my hearts content gradually healing towards gray tones.  I think I even had some ambilivant violet on the canvas before finishing with the more hopeful white.  Oh yeah, you may see a few drips of red anger as well.

Even with the (realistic) lumpy, bumpy rear end this felt good.  It was done.  No one needed to like it, I spilled my guts.


Little by little I felt myself coming out of the angst and fear that had become second nature.  So I decided to paint a more hopeful rendition of the back issue.  Much less black and a lot more neutral gray.  But the head is surrounded by yellow, a color of a new day dawning.  The pink, the blue and the violet are all soft as if they are creeping in little by little, just trying to bring a bit of color forth in a gentle, non-obtrusive way.  This is a painting of hope, of the posibility of happiness and recovery.  Whether it is perfectly correct as a figure drawing is not the the point here.  Progress is.

Have you ever studied the work by an artist and then had the opportunity to meet them?  Did you correctly gauge their personality traits from their work?  I think it is a fascinating revelation to find out what moves and motivates a particular artist in subject matter as well as style.

I have to agree with Pollock above that "painting is self-discovery."  Quality be damned if you are discovering something about yourself!!  And I liked discovering that ending on a bleak, black and gray note was just a temporary fixation...not a permanent rut.

Cindy Michaud Art
questions? contact me at:
art@cindymichaud.com
www.cindymichaud.com

Monday, February 17, 2020



A Trip Down Memory Lane…Sort of.

by Fay Picardi

 This past week, I was fortunate to visit the Cumner Museum in Jacksonville, Florida with my good friend and fellow poet, Bonny Sanders. There we found an intriguing exhibit called: Striking Power: Iconoclasm in Ancient Egypt. My first step in understanding this exhibit was to review a definition of iconoclasm. From the Oxford Dictionary:
Noun: 1) the action of attacking or assertively rejecting cherished beliefs and institutions or established values and practices. 2) the rejection or destruction of religious images as heretical; the doctrine of iconoclasts. Maybe not an exact fit to this exhibit, but close enough.




Here are some of the sculptures that were displayed. I found it somewhat amusing that grave robbers would destroy the noses of the “dead” so they would not be able to breath and therefore could not report them to the authorities. Below is a photo of the head of Hapshepsut.

  


This next sculpture is my favorite from an artistic point of view. I am thinking of doing a collage of it for the Pieces of Eight February challenge. Do you think the subject is a woman or a man?




I don’t know who this last guy is, but he certainly is the lucky one. His sarcophagus is untouched. Again, sort of.




After all this afterlife, it was time for some modern frivolity. A  circle twelve foot in diameter made of resin and dead flies. Makes quite a statement, even from a distance. The lights give it some pattern, but the circle is solid black in reality. 


 





Friday, February 14, 2020

Children's Church Mural

For the past four weeks I've been working on 82 feet of mural in the River Run Christian Church in Melbourne. Hap and Audra saved me hours by putting in the largest blocks of color, then Kathy Garvey came and painted many of the little critters you see. Last Sunday a two-year-old little girl walked right up to the wall and gave a turtle a kiss. That's what it's all about.

Carmen













Thursday, February 13, 2020

More from My Life in Limericks by Carmen Beecher

We were living in Charleston and Suzanne was a baby when President Kennedy was shot.


Next came Bermuda. Can you imagine living in Bermuda for three years? Yes, it was wonderful. We lived in Diamond Cottage on Suffering Lane. That was our whole address. 



The water was turquoise, the beaches had pink sand in them. Snorkeling was great and we could stay near the shore. Beautiful fish were abundant. It was a great place for kids.

Carmen

Ballard Park, Original Oil on Canvas

  I had not painted outside in two years, so this was quite a challenge. It was one of those paintings I had to improve upon in the studio. ...