Made It: Rouse

After the big hullabaloo of the Women to Watch | Metals opening at the Kemper, I decided to dive back into making.  I so loved how the painted background turned out on this one that I chose a design that wouldn't completely obliterate it.

Rouse48 inches tall x 36 inches widealuminum, paint, vinyl

Lots of details ahead...

That little blue peeking out, the brushstrokes, the silver edge...mmmmm.

 When it was time to put vinyl to aluminum, I took some inspiration from a tiny collage I made a couple years ago.

Pink Fire
5 x 4 inches, paper collage and vinyl

At first it sorta turned out like a mountain, which didn't float my boat.

Floater

So I peeled off some outside orzos, contoured it, added some more here and there, and I was much happier.

The title wasn't taken from poetry, I did some good old thesaurus work with ideas of fire.  "Rouse" like "aroused" like "growing" and whatnot.  I can come up with them on my own sometimes, see?

CHECK OUT MY INSTA FOR FUN STUFF.  It's fun to me.  Lately it's mostly ceramics because it's too cold to work outside and I have to sand outside so I don't die of particulates and whatnot.

Made It: A Border of Memory

Another very big piece.  Complicatedly simple.

A Border of Memory40 inches tall x 66 inches wide

 This little piece was my inspiration.  This was one of the first non-clock orzo sketches I tried out three or four years ago.  It's about 8 x 8 inches.

scrap wood, paint, tea bag papers, vinyl

 The layers were all shades of black with a hint of crimson here and there.  I dragged a scrub brush through the wet paint to add texture.

All white vinyl.

 As I went along I decided to start adding in reflective silver orzos into the design.  Without a flash or other bright light source it's barely noticeable, but if you use a flash on your camera you get a whole new perspective.

Surprise!!

 Look at that glow!  Magical.

The ridges really show up in this picture.  If you buy it you can touch it all you want.

Booth shot

Title from the eponymous poem by Florence L. Snow.

Made It: Flock

You know those big circular railroad crossing signs?  I get them without any signage on them and make them into art.  

You're familiar.

Working with a circular substrate is fun but sometimes a little hard to get started on.  I decided to use the curved edge in the design but kept the background paint marks straight.

 I kept fighting the look of a black and white cookie and tried to hug the edge without just tracing it.

Greys and silvers on yellows and greens.

 It took a long time to decide which direction is up on this one.  Certain positions made it look like an ocean wave or moon, which I didn't want.  

Flock, 2017
36 inch diameter
aluminum, paint, vinyl

 I titled it "Flock."  You can guess why.  Around this time I watched The Birds but I'm not sure if it was before or after...or if one had to do with the other.  Abstract/non-living birds are better for indoors than the other, more annoying/loud/pooping kind.

detail

Made It: Summer Bends and Smiles

I loved the colors on this one from the beginning and tried to keep it throughout the process.  You may notice some little designs here and there stamped into the paint.  I made some stamps to be used in my ceramic pieces based on some clocks I made a few years ago and sized them wrong, but decided to see what would happen here, and I loved it so added the design into many of subsequent pieces.

Blank canvas, sort of.  Three or four layer of paint here.
24 inches wide x 36 inches high

Glamorous life of an artist.  Notice my paint mug has orzos on it, too!

 First layer of masking vinyl.

Painted, peeled, sanded, painted again.

Vinyled, painted, peeled, sanded.

Vinyled again.

Painted, peeled, sanded again.

At this point I decided I was done with the background and wanted to add the final layer of permanent orzos.

detail

detail

Summer Bends and Smiles

I was inspired by "Tempting Feast of Good Things," although I'd made several in between the two.

Title taken from a line from "Sunflowers in the Corn" by William Wattles

Made It: Tempting Feast of Good Things

Oh, hi there.  It's been a while.  I've been doing some stuff.  And also not doing anything, which is the way things go this time of year.

Since September I've been working on several large pieces that were installed mid-December at the University of Michigan Medical Center through the Gifts of Art program.  They'll be up until mid-March.  I took some progress shots while working on the collection (called "Prairie Mantras") and I'm going to share in the coming posts.

First up: Tempting Feast of Good Things

48 in wide x 36 in high

I primed and painted many aluminum pieces at the same time, looking at color combos.  The red one there is what ended up being the above piece.  Here I'd only primed and put on maybe two layers of paint.

Juveniles.

Then I put on vinyl as a mask in an orzo design and painted over.

I got to use up some ugly green vinyl this way without feeling bad.

Peeled!

 After I peeled off the vinyl I sanded the surface to soften it up and bring back some of the under layer.

Sanded!

 Rinse and repeat.

Round two.  Cream and blue over top.

 After the second layer of applying, painting, and peeling, I painted and sanded again, this time with blues.  Then added more vinyl AGAIN. TWICE.

The little ones really started making me feel some mania.  Again, I got to use some
basically useless vinyl (it was printed on and weird, some of the scrap pile's dogs).

 Paint, peel, sand, paint...I really wanted all the layers to show up so I added more of a wash at the end, the purple and blue really got the other colors to pop.

 I felt like I was channeling Maxfield Parrish and didn't want to screw it up, so I just added some lavender orzos as a little hill on the bottom to create a dreamy, under-big-trees-in-summer feeling.  I'd like to visit that place.

And, once again, here's the finished product:

The title, as with most of my work nowadays, comes from a book, "Sunflowers: A Book of Kansas Poems," I found at my grandma's house.  Published in 1916.  The particular poem is by William Allen White called "Where a Lovely Time Was Had."

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Mixed Media Quickie Number Twenty-Nine

Percent Change
magazine and catalog cutouts, wallpaper bits, found paper with type
8.5 x 11 inches

No reason to change your clothes...just wear them all at once!  She seems to like it.

Mixed Media Quickie Number Three

Queen of the Castle
craft paper, painted found newspaper, vinyl, marker, painted paper
approx.  11 x 11 inches

I'm getting a lot of traction from the negligee section of Sears' 1969 Spring/Summer catalog.  Who can sleep with all the scratchy lace on their skin?  Remember, this is before Lycra was blessedly mixed into every fabric on Earth.

Mixed Media Quickie Number Two

Sleep Walking
craft paper, book cutout, magazine cutouts, painted paper scrap,
catalog cutout, wall paper, vinyl
approx. 11 x 14 inches

You can see that the craft paper here was on the back of a framed piece because the framer smartly labeled it with their sticker and info.  I like to think this one is a collaboration with the person who placed that sticker there from the Colony Bistro Art Gallery and Frame Shop sometime in the '60s or '70s.

Mini Collage Number Thirty-Six

Small Ideas
vinyl, French textbook page, painted newspaper, found
magazine images, matboard
4 x 5 inches

Made It: More Experiments

I've been on a tear playing with new materials and throwing caution to the wind!

Let's start with the skeletons (all sizes are 5 x 7 inches unless otherwise noted):

matboard, tea-stained old book page, acrylic paint, vinyl

matboard, found sheet music, acrylic paint, vinyl

I painted over the vinyl and tried to scrape it off...works better on the thick black vinyl.

matboard, painted found sheet music, vinyl

squiggle time

matboard, painted found book page, vinyl

matboard, found seed catalog page, paint, vinyl

8 x 10--salvaged wood, acrylic paint, vinyl
I actually have a tentative title for this one:
"Fill My Hollow Bones"

9 x 11.5--salvaged wood, acrylic paint, fabric paper, vinyl, gel medium

Gotta finish those edges!

Hearts!

matboard, found book page, vinyl, acrylic paint

matboard, painted found book page, vinyl, acrylic paint

 I painted over the top of this and then scraped it off, sgraffito style

matboard, layers of found, painted, and/or made papers, vinyl, paint

 throwback:

matboard, found painted hymnal page, vinyl

matboard, found and painted collaged paper, vinyl, acrylic paint

domestic goddesses:
matboard, music pages, paint, vinyl

 I have so many ideas, and I'm just not going to settle for one image style.  I love the weird, macabre skeleton and heart images, because everyone brings something different to those, depending on their history and feelings about health, guts, death, life, color, whathaveyou.  And the retro images just make me happy.  More of a Pop Art feel comes from those, and having some levity in a line of work isn't a bad thing.

I have a one day show this weekend in Lee's Summit, MO, during a bike race--Tour of Kansas City-- so I'm pumping out lots of stickers and other fun cycling-related paraphernalia.  Plus, it's the first day of summer, and I love spending the solstice outside all day.

Here's to the makers out there.  Keep plugging away!