Fall Arts Harvest Exhibition

40 West Arts is hosting another art exhibition as a part of Denver Arts Week and I will have 3 pieces in the show! I also served on the jury for this exhibition which was an interesting experience. The three pieces that I entered are rather different from my usual work, but are representative of some of the other work I am interested in doing.

 

Still Not Good Enough - 2012

Sometime back I posted these pieces in order to discuss the fact that I had no idea how to finish them. I simply cannot afford to frame my artwork and I don't even know if they are worth putting the money into if I could afford it. But I like them and really wanted them to get out into the world. Eventually I decided on mounting them to painted hardboard and stapling clear vinyl over the top. They have a sort of grungy graffiti look to them and I felt that the hardboard, vinyl, and staples added to the look. There is also something narrative going on there with the feminist issues and the vinyl..... I'll leave that to your imagination and personal interpretation. These photos don't show the vinyl. I knew it would be shiny and hard to photograph so I took the pictures before adding it.

 

How Can I Serve You? - 2012

 These pieces were created with scraped acrylic paint on heavy bristol paper. I scraped, splattered, mono printed, stenciled, spray painted, etc. Happy painting abandon! Then I tore up a newspaper and reassembled it as a collage, photocopied the result and started playing with the silhouettes. As a nod to my predilection for using fabric, I included a wee bit of hand dyed cheesecloth. The collages were glued to the hardboard with gloss gel medium. Good thing too! They buckled. Even though I let them dry while weighted with heavy books. It was kind of a mess. There is an artist named Johnathan Talbot who does amazing collage. He uses a technique where he pre coats his collage materials with gloss medium and lets them dry. He then arranges his collage items into place and IRONS them down. I used this technique to place the collage silhouettes. When my pieces ended up buckled I put parchment paper of the top and ironed the heck outta them. It worked! The gel medium I used as glue fused down quite nicely! Phew!

Woman's Depth - 2012



Spectacular Color! Blurry Trees!

The other day I was walking toward the door to my office and I realized how amazingly beautiful these trees were.  The early morning sun was hitting them just right, turning the autumn colors into a blaze of glory.  I just happened to have my camera in my pocket so I quickly snapped a few pics.  Sadly they came out blurry, but the point wasn't to get great pictures of trees so much as to get great pictures of the color.  I am not normally drawn to autumn colors.  I prefer bright jewel tones, but nontheless, autumn is my favorite season of the year.  They say autumn on the East coast can't be beat, but I've always been stunningly happy with autumn in Colorado.

 

2nd Place Winner!

I recently entered this piece in the "On My Own Time" art exhibit for State employees.  The exhibit is being shown at the Metropolitan State College, Center for Visual Arts, in the Santa Fe Art District of Denver.  Its a really nice gallery in the major Denver arts district so I am really happy to have a piece of art hanging there for a couple of weeks.  But even better..... I won 2nd place in the fine crafts category!  The competition is a two part deal.  The first part was the current exhibit.  They juried these entries to determine who will go on to the second part of the OMOT exhibit that will hang in the State Capitol building from December through May.  I'm very excited that this piece will be shown in our State Capitol.  My mother took a REALLY bad picture of me holding my ribbon at the reception and since it is my only documentation of the event I will share it in spite of how horrible I look.  I blinked.  Can you tell?

And a close up of the label.  Hey, I'm no where near jaded yet.  Got to document those successes you know!