Mark your calendars for THIS weekend, both Friday & Saturday evening there will be activities at the Sugar Creek Art Center in Thorntown, Indiana. Here’s the scoop:
Tag: Friday
Abstract & Mixed
Last month I posted the first image of a new series I had started working on, musing at that point how the rest would turn out. Well, I’m done musing and done with the other pieces as well! Here are images of the other four:
It was fun incorporating the used parts and recycled materials into these compositions!
All five of these pieces will be for sale at the Holiday Art Show, TOMORROW, Friday, December 11th. Be sure and come visit me there between 10 a.m. and 9 p.m. at the ArtsGarden in Circle Center Mall! There will be about 20 local artists all displaying their work for your holiday shopping enjoyment. Remember, it is one day only (and you’ll be sorry if you miss it)! For more information you can CLICK HERE.
Happy shopping!
Lynne
Playing with “skins”
Part of the art project that I am doing with the artists at Noble of Indiana involves the use of acrylic paint “skins”. These are basically a layer of acrylic paint that is left to dry on a non-stick surface and then peeled up to use within other artwork. Here are images of a few skins we created during my visit there:
The front/top side (that you see in the pictures) dried to a matte type finish but the underneath, when peeled off of the plastic, is very shiny and has an even more interesting pattern than the top. These will be intermixed with drawings done by the Noble artists as well as some other images, laid in a grid-like pattern. Or that’s how I am proceeding at the moment, it is always difficult to say where I’ll end up! 🙂
I had read about paint skins in a few different forums and then saw some in action in Martha Marshall’s blog (a wonderfully inspiring blog with loads of yummy images!). They just looked like too much fun to resist!
To see the finish project join me at a Noble “Ode To The Beatles” present by Noble of Indiana and Wheeler Art Center. Enjoy art collaboratively created by Noble artists paired with local artists & arts organizations, all focused on the theme of the Beatles and other prominent 60’s musicians. Live music, dance performances and more are on tap for the evening, all to the sounds of The Beatles! The opening is this Friday, June 5th, from 6 to 10 p.m. at the Wheeler Art Center. I had the pleasure of collaboratively creating an art piece featuring Mick Jagger/The Rolling Stones!
Hope to see you Friday!
Lynne
Do over!
Every once in a while some creations just need to be revisited. Maybe at the time they seemed complete, or perhaps just “good enough” because nothing else was coming into your imagination. Then later, for whatever reason, a thought pops into your mind and you immediately know what it was that needed to be done. I love those moments! (The ones when you realize, not the ones when you don’t have a clue!) If you’ve looked at my website you know that I make collaborative art pieces with my husband, Mark, using metal. Most of the pieces are created from discarded parts and other recycled materials. Last year we created three new wall sculptures, including the one that just got a “do over”. One piece was specifically for a commission and the other two (including the do over) were the Plan “B”s – in case the client wasn’t as pleased with the original piece as we hoped or (even better) wanted additional pieces. They stuck with the original piece that they had commissioned (show here after it was installed):
One of the parameters for the commissioned piece was that they wanted the metal to be sealed, unfinished, instead of painted. So we finished all the pieces like that. The piece that I still wasn’t completely happy with traveled around a bit and then ended up back home, hanging in the garage next to the entryway into the house. So I saw it everyday until it just became part of the background and I didn’t pay that much attention to it anymore. Then a week or so ago Mark had a request for a piece to be hung in an upcoming show. That piece fit the bill but I couldn’t let it go out again until I was happy with it. One thing that bothered me about it was that it was very “flat”. It had some dimension to it as the pieces were welded on top of each other but basically it laid flat against the wall. Had we been at square one then welding it in a more curved fashion would have been the answer but now I would have to figure out a different approach. The pieces on the outside of the sculpture were fairly thin & flexible so I was able to bend them to where they curled up and away from the wall, adding some of the dimension I felt it was missing. Okay…it was getting better but is still just wasn’t there. Then I remembered a diferent metal wall sculpture that recently sold and how taken the customer was with the way it was painted. Ah ha! That might just be what I was looking for. I am a big fan of the ‘hammered metal’ type of spray paints…it is shiny but also very textured and it keeps with the metal appearance of the pieces. So out came four cans of that in various colors and away I went. I love to layer & blend with spray paints just like I do with acrylics, ink, paper or even pixels on the computer. First a coat of one color, then a highlight of another, a spritz of a different one, some dark followed by some light and a drizzle of paint drops here & there to add interest. After working it for a while I let it sit, went back to it and did a bit more work and, FINALLY, I feel like it is now finished! Here is a photo of the complete piece plus a close up detail so you can see the painted finish:
It will be on display along with it’s “sister” piece that is already hanging at the Continental Office Environments showroom, 9202 East 33rd Street, Indianapolis. On Friday, March 13th from 5 – 7 pm Broad Ripple Art & Design will have it’s “Second Friday Opening” there!
Retro Friday, revisited
A few weeks ago I posted some older art images and declared it “Retro Friday”. Here we are again with a perfectly good Friday to show off some old stuff. (This is what happens when I spend too much time working on marketing, communications and promotion…no new images to show you!) WAY back when (okay, maybe not that long ago) when I was beginning to pursue art again as an adult my first steps started with my camera. It didn’t take terribly long to expand on that topic and add in some alternate processes and films, Polaroid transfers (hmmm, something for another retro-Friday?) and hand-coloring black & white photos.
It’s a bit of a lost art now that it can be done more quickly & precisely (with a lot less mess & fumes) and then be printed at any size, in any quanitity you’d like by digital means. Although I’ve embraced the technology there is some undefined quality to the actual hand-painted photos that is just more appealing to the senses, at least for me. Maybe it just invokes some hidden memories, hard to say.
Along with using the photo oils, pencils and other techniques (did you know you can stain photos with tea, coffee or even kool-aid? That’s where the blue background on the first image came from!) I also scanned some black & white images, adjusted the opacity and contrast, then printed them onto watercolor paper and painted them with watercolors.
Totally different look & feel than the ones that were painted directly on the photos!
Until next time…
Lynne
A Randomly Creative Blog 