ArtFest Projects

ArtFest was awesome, as usual. House 15 at Fort Worden was a happening place, what with all the incredible art we made during our classes, all the junk food and wine we consumed and some laughing-til-we-cried moments. My Day One class (Cave of Pages)  was with Michael De Meng, an assemblage artist, known for his slightly dark themes. I knew this was going to be a stretch for me, but in a good way. We took cigar boxes and using Michael's custom paint schemes created layeres of foamcore, thick paper and whatever odds and ends caught our fancy. The texture on the layers was made using specialty papers and Dap Kwik Seal Tub and Tile Adhesive, which dries quickly and can be painted.

The final layer was a filmy piece of fabric I had left over from Halloween, giving my vintage nude lady some modicum of modesty. The black half circles inside are old typwriter daisy wheels cut in half. I coated the sides with the Dap and using very thin washes of color was able to get this cool marbled effect.

Fantastic class and now I totally have an art crush on Michael De Meng.

Day Three was with Jill Berry (Three Letter Words), a very talented lettering artist. Using 3 small canvases painted with black gesso we traced some roman capital letters and then painted around the letter, using dry brush techniques and adding images by painting negative spaces. My word was "Sun", I have not finished it yet,  but am showing all three for continuity.

We painted the edges of the canvas too.

Day three was with Bee Shay, more of a technique class than a project class so I will post photos when I get an actual finished piece done.

So, another successful ArtFest, I shopped, I ruined my fancy french manicure with paint, I ate way too much candy, and was completely exhausted by the time I got home. Managed to pick up a nasty bug somewhere and have spent the past two weeks fighting sinusitis and bronchitis, but am out of the woods now and not hacking up a lung every 5 minutes.

Altered Shoes

Off to ArtFest first thing Wednesday morning. Completely changed my mind as to what I wanted to put into the gallery, I originally was going to do some encaustic pieces but when I tried to decide which way to go the encaustic muse decided to take a three martini lunch and not come back to the studio so I went with really makes me the most happy and that is.....SHOES....of course!

For me the shoes come the easiest, there is some planning involved, I usually I have a basic idea in my head but they really just flow out of me once I get started on them. First up is "Cinderella's Party Shoe", once the glass slipper was off and tucked away in the castle vault this is my interpretation of what she would wear to a fancy ball.

The shoe was covered in specialty paper, the inside is simply green tissue paper glued down with white glue, buttons, rhinstones, fancy trim, ribbon and some pieces of an old rhinestone necklace I had laying around finished it off. The heel is glass pieces colored with Pinata ink and some jewelry findings all glued together with E6000 (a super strong multi purpose glue for non-porous objects).

Since the theme for ArtFest is Once Upon A Time I thought if I had Cinderella then I better have something on the other end of the spectrum, so this next one is my shout out to all the "evil" ladies in fairy tales, although I am sure they were very misunderstood and just needed a group hug. Struggled with a name for it and have tentatively settled on "Wicked".

The shoe was covered in some black netted fabric and adorned with chunky glitter, fancy black and silver trim, the heel was the most challenging part, I glued on pieces of that glass you use for mosaics.  The decoration on the top is just two 5/8 washers with some microbeads glued into the center.

I think I am almost ready to go, there is a large pile of art stuff on the studio table to be crammed into my rolling craft carrier, lists laying everywhere, and cats are starting to freak out because they know Mommy is going somewhere and of course the best way to help her is to plant their furry butts in the middle of the open suitcase.

Finally, I am asking my readers to send out a prayer for my very dear friend, Sherri, who was going to ArtFest but ended up having to have quadruple bypass surgery yesterday, which went well thank goodness, but she has a lot of recovery time ahead of her.

Encaustic artwork

It's a glorious sunny Sunday here in Western Washington, the weather goddess kind of faked us out for while and sent some winter weather but the good stuff is back now. I finally finished my web design classes at the community college and have the software loaded up in the computer and am working my way through my huge manual. It is actually quite enjoyable, I love the "a-ha" moments when I do something right and it looks all purty. It will take a while before I have one designed for myself but I will get there.

ArtFest is just around the corner, the chatter on the Yahoo Group is reaching a fever pitch like it does every year. They have a gallery where you can display up to three of your pieces and I decided I might do some encaustic (wax) stuff. One of the classes I took last year at ArtFest was with the wonderful Judy Wise, a encaustic guru, the techniques I learned there along with the Encaustic Workshop book by Patricia Seggebruch  led me to these two pieces. Basically it is fusing specialty paper with encaustic medium (melted white beeswax and damar resin), adding layers of images, stickers, rub-ons and some texturing with oil paint, and more layers of medium. Finished touches were some gold foil detailing and addition of a micro-bead border on the blue piece. Great fun except the studio smelled like wax for a couple of days! Spousal Unit wanted to know what I was burning down.

The theme for ArtFest is Once Upon a Time so I am going to apply myself to making at least two pieces to take with that idea, perhaps something with fairies or dragons.

Last but not least I have to leave you with what seems to be my increasingly frequent cat pictures (Crazy Cat Ladies Unite!) but this was to cute not to share. Picture of Apollo is slightly blurry, I had to take it through the studio window, before he proceeded on to some other important thing, like chasing bugs.

The motto for this one is, "If you really don't have anything better to do, just sit and stare through the hole in the fence".

Sage that survived the winter, also a test from my mobile device, trying to get it to post to my blog.

Artist Trading Cards

I am lucky enough to be part of a group of artists called the Sister's in Art Society (SAS), this month we had our annual Valentine's party and exchanged ATC's and other wonderful handmade items. Here are some samples of my cards, the backgrounds were made using Distress Inks that had been watered down. The blank cards were pressed into one wash, dried with an iron and then pressed into another wash. I added specialty paper, the stamped face, rhinestone embellishment and fibers to finish it off.

Close ups....

I love these Distress Ink's by from Ranger. They were developed by Tim Holtz, he has some great demo's on his website here.

I am still grinding my way through my website design class, there are episodes  of extreme panic followed by "whew, maybe I'm not a dumb as I thought" moments. I foresee extended periods of hair pulling and wine drinking when I actually do sit down and attempt it on my own. Til the next time I leave you with this slightly out of focus studio cat picture, enforcing the motto that one's feet (paws) can never be too clean. Apollo has a slightly obssessive compulsive thing about keeping his toes clean. He likes to sit on my lap while we watch TV and it's a little distracting when you are trying to watch Lost and he is gnawing away at his toe jam.

Now on Facebook!

Well, I finally did it and set up a facebook page, as soon as I get my new cell phone (hopefully soon) I can get on Twitter too. Started my website design course at Whatcom Community College also so my poor brain is pretty full with all this computer stuff. Of course you need to know that when I was in college, those new fangled things called the PC and Mac were just coming into vogue. I remember the college computer being some big giant thing that took up a whole room, and boy that was pretty cool! And since I am on the technology nostalgia road now, what about the first cell phone I ever had? Remember the "brick" phones, yup, I had one and thought I was all that. You could have used that thing as weapon and killed someone with it if you hit them over the head. Of course now my phone is so cute and petite half the time I can't find it in my purse when it falls to the bottom. And you don't even want to know what the Spousal Unit and I paid for our first home PC....gah!

The youngsters today take it all for granted, but for those of us who are little more "vintage" learning to use all the hardware and software and techno toys that have come along in the last 20 or 30 years has not been so easy sometimes! Of course that being said I cannot live without my cell phone, computer, DVR, iPod and Wii and long for one of those Roomba vaccuums.

Mixed Backgrounds

Finally, a new post! I did go off the grid for a while, Studio Cat #1 was pretty sick for about two weeks with a bad sinus infection, so I was nursing her back to health, including having to force feed her three times a day. Good news is she is mostly back to her normal, bitchy princess self. I did manage to spend a little time in the studio and started messing around with some backgrounds, using stencils, foam stamps, crackle paint and distress inks. Here are my favorites.

Spray inks and liquid watercolor work great when sprayed over a stencil, very messy though, wear gloves or say goodbye to your pretty french manicure. The green and lavender patterns on the center and upper left tags are foams stamp inked up with some acrylic paint.

Progress has also been made on the ArtFest trades 40 down and 60 more to go! Charms are always a common trade so this year I took 3/8 metal washers, colored them with Pinata inks, stamped with some Brilliance ink, wrapped them with two colors of craft wire and finished them off with a jump ring. They kind of remind me of that circle thing that Iron Man has in his chest in movie, but with way more flair!

I went to our local harware mecca, Hardware Sales to get my washers, they are the antitheses of the big box stores, family owned, closed on Sundays and the employees actually want to help you and know where stuff is. The store is also huge, all the parts of it cover almost an entire city block so for the mixed media freak like myself you can spend hours in there discovering things in nooks and crannies and thinking about how you can alter it. Dryer vent filter....hmmm....lets cut that up, spray paint it, throw on some glitter and a voila, you have some neat embellishments. Never mind the nut/screw/washer aisles, holy cow, there are hundreds of possibilites there. Of course the nice helpful nut/screw/washer man always asks me if I need assistance after I have been wandering and pondering for an hour, thinking I must really not have a clue because obviously the spousal unit sent me here for something and now I can't find it. I tell them I am collecting things to make mixed media and art pieces out of and they seem a little taken aback because this artsy fartsy chick has invaded this manly bastion of serious hardware stuff and instead of these washers being used for a important purpose, like fixing a leaky toilet, now they will be defiled with paint and rubber stamps? WTH? Hey, that sounds like a great class, making art pieces just using stuff from the hardware store, I think I'll start working on that.

And now on a more serious note I want to send good karma and hugs to all my art friends who have supported me, helped me keep the faith in my work and said they liked my stuff even at the time I knew it was dreck. Last week was a not a great week for me, there were some folks who were not very nice to me and even though I know it is supposed to be water off the proverbial ducks back it still stung. In thinking about it over the weekend I realized that in the big scale of my life, the side with my dear friends is heavy and full, while the side with the nasty people is light and small. So, that is my profound thought for the day and my love to not only my friends but to those people in this world who choose to take the high road and make their interactions with their fellow woman a positive one.