So I Think I Can Draw Now

 ...at least, I'm happy with my style, or my "handwriting" as my terrible-except-for-a-couple-things first drawing teacher called it.  I'm most comfortable with flowers, of course, because that's what I've been focusing on.  But I think I could pull off other still lifes (lives?) competently.  I have never, and doubt ever will be, the kind of person who can draw what I see in my head.  Reference materials in real life, please!

So...here are some of the completed drawings from the last year.  After I went back to ceramics in the fall/winter, I neglected putting lines on paper for a while, but they ended up on clay, which I'll share more of soon.

Big Dogwood
34 x 23 inches
ink on painted paper

Big Dogwood detail

Titles for these are hard because I could just name everything in them (long), pick and choose (simple but boring), or make up something esoteric and thought provoking (would be a lie somehow??). 

Big Iris
19 x 15 inches
ink on painted paper

Big Iris detail

Iris, Salsify
22 x 9 inches
ink on painted paper

Peony, Hyacinth, Spiderwort
22 x 9 inches
ink on painted panel

Cinquefoil, Coreopsis
34 x 23 inches
ink on painted paper

Cinquefoil, Coreopsis detail

Spiderworts, Peonies
42 x 9 inches
ink on painted paper

Spiderworts, Peonies detail

Due to the nature of painting paper and the non-flatness of my materials, the drawings are hard to accurately photograph, and I am also not very good at that skill to begin with.  I'm not set up with a big wall in a light-controlled area (nor do I ever think I actually need a tripod), so I'm going to spring for a professional one of these days to do that.  I know my limits.

In September I'll be in a show with the flower pieces at the KC Artists Coalition!  Pretty excited to have them up together.  Now, to figure out how to present them...

Music Dots Series #1

Welcome to fall time here at Eighty Acres Art!  

After a 7 week run of art shows, I had some time to regroup and prepare for a busy holiday retail season.  I've been making some popular simple-yet-fabulous pieces out of antique piano music and paper dots on a grid.  Some grids are straightforward squares, others are off-center, diagonal, or on arches.  Please enjoy the new pieces and contact me if you are interested in purchasing!  I'll be taking a majority of these to the City Arts space at the Wichita Art Museum for their Gifts in the Gallery Holiday Boutique.  Others will travel with me around the KC and Lawrence area to the pop-ups perfect for cold weather shopping.

A family friend's mother was a piano teacher for decades and she generously donated many books to me for art purposes!  I have enough paper to live several life times and not use it all, and I keep all the little bits and pieces from various applications.  Trying to use them up, I found my trusty hole punch from the early vinyl clock days and started at it.

Without further adieu...

Four Most Popular
antique sheet music back cover (1908), pencil, misc. paper dots
approx. 11 x 14 inches

Four Most Popular detail

Don't forget, I'm on INSTAGRAMMMMM!!!

Mixed Media Quickie Number Twenty-Three

Peeping Tom
black on white photo on matboard,
cutouts from books/magazines/calendars/posters, vinyl
10 x 13 inches

His name probably isn't actually Tom.  Probably Herald.

That parasol, though.

Mixed Media Quickie Number Fourteen

Coffee Break
painted found newspaper, book and magazine cutouts,
vinyl
approx. 10 x 13 inches

This one did come together quickly, but in all honestly its components took a while to make.  The building is from a Swiss Modern architecture book that was one of the first things I kept from the sheds at the farm.  The newspaper was painted over the course of weeks as I was making other works and just had it around as blotting paper.  I cut out the strawberry dessert over a year ago from a Reader's Digest scavenger hunt and kept it around.  This is how I work.

Mini Collage Number Twenty-Eight

Pink Fire
cut vinyl, torn paper, fabric paper, painted paper, matboard
4 x 5 inches

I made a bunch of stickers once while sitting in my booth in Minnesota.  This is one of them.

Mini Collage Number Twenty-Seven

Looky Here!
painted matboard, cut paper from antique kids' books
4 x 5 inches

Mansplainin' in dapper clothes.

Mini Collage Number Twenty-Six

Take a Walk
painted paper, vinyl, punched and hand-cut paper
4 x 5 inches

Mini Collage Number Twenty

Tear Out
vintage coupon, magazine cutouts, matboard
4 x 5 inches

Collages

My first collage was five or six Dubble Bubble gum wrappers glued to a piece of paper measuring approximately 3 x 4 inches.  This masterpiece was gifted to my Kindergarten teacher, Miss Becky (awesome person).  This action spawned artistic gifts from my other classmates, but I started that trend (just like I did with overalls in the early '90s--YOU ARE WELCOME).

The first collage I made that made me think, oh, this is an okay way to make a thing and you can't tell I'm a child, was in 3rd grade.  It was a lady with body parts pulled from different images, including mismatched eyes and different limbs.  I feel like I've been chasing this particular dragon my entire life.

The last couple weeks I've been making collages with my plethora of ephemera.  I'm looking at this as an exercise in getting back into the swing of things for 2016, but it's completely possible I could actually try to make some money from this endeavor through an online reproduction-selling entity (Fine Art America, Zazzle, Society 6, etc.).

Here's some of what I've made recently (all are 12 x 12 inches):

matboard, color pastel, vinyl, paper

matboard, paper, vinyl, color pastel, colored pencil

matboard, colored pencil, fabric paper, paper, vinyl

matboard, paper, vinyl

matboard, paper, vinyl, charcoal, colored pencil, color pastel

matboard, paper, fabric paper, painted book page

I can guarantee all the found paper I use is older than I am.

Here are some of my favorite artists I follow on Instagram right now:
The Daily Splice
Mountain Cur
Spinner Web
C.Pic 

Instagram is a never-ending rabbit hole of wonderful art, so be careful!

Found Cards and Names

As is the way of our family, one does not throw out old cards or envelopes.  It just doesn't happen.  So I get to time travel occasionally when I find these treasures of yore.  

Found in a Russell Stover box, these cards and other papers are in decent shape.  Musty, but usable.

Six cards left...I wonder how many family members got RD subscriptions that year.

Fun fact: hawthorn is the Missouri state flower, which you can see here.

Names on the back of anniversary card: April 25, 1951
Jeanette
Catherine
Kathleen
Harriet
Elizabeth
Ruby
Shirley
Katherine
Henrietta
Blanche
Paulina
Dorothy
Catherine
Elizabeth
Kathleen
Ann
Marie
Irene
Lois
Agnes
Mary
Mildred
Edna
Julia
Thelma
Margaret
Nancy
Edith
Laura
Jean
Marie
Elsa
Ann
Barbara
Irene
Carol
Bessie
Grace
Gladys
Violet

What goes around comes around!

I have no idea whose anniversary this is for, since the envelope is labeled in SHORT HAND.  Thanks, aunts.  Helpful.  But it's a safe bet that it's a friend of theirs at Ma Bell telephone company.

This weekend: 4TH ANNUAL OPEN STUDIO//AMY MEYA + FRIENDS, 3345 Baltimore Ave, KCMO.  Come see us, buy art, eat brownies, drink wine.  

What's the deal with the hearts?

I started making small mixed media pieces with an image of an anatomical heart a little over a year ago.  They were debuted at the OKC Festival of the Arts, and with that came the question, over and over again,

"What's the deal with all the hearts?"

I wasn't prepared for that.  I'd been seeing anatomical diagrams used in art for a long time, especially collage, and had even been selling some bovine medical imagery through The Retro Ranch, so I just thought it was cool and everyone understood it.  Silly, silly artist.  You live in the monkey house!

It started with trying to get over my fear of "cheating" by doing the same design twice.  I have this great digital cutter now, so using the images I've worked hard on in multiple ways only makes sense.  Printmakers do this everyday, so what's the problem?  I can mix it up, add different colors and textures, and each piece is its own individual entity.

This exercise has also been a bridge between my picking life and my art life, and a real stepping stone to my newest line of work, especially the imagery.  Using the wood I had from a worn, defunct fence from my own backyard, no one was there to stop me from using all the sanding pads, leftover paint, and "fabric paper" I had to make something new.  Also, it turns out that I really love woodgrain.

What happened when I started talking to people about how THEY felt about the hearts was enlightening.  My customers and visitors brought much more to the pieces and images than I had ever imagined.  One of my first sales was to a woman who wanted to commemorate her husband's TWENTY-FIFTH anniversary of a heart transplant.  (I get goose bumps every single time I talk about it!)  Some love the color combinations, others are drawn to a particular design or piece of music that I have on the paper background.  In any case, I learned so much more about how a simple thing can become a very meaningful thing in someone else's eyes.

Okay, enough with the words--pictures!

Here's how they're made...

1) Cut out the shapes.  I feed the vinyl sheet into the vinyl cutter and my
blade is run digitally by a computer.  I nest them together as much as possible
to limit wasted material.

2) Take a painted piece of wood and adhere to that a piece of
paper cut by hand in the heart silhouette shape.

3) Place the cut vinyl over the paper to fit appropriately.

4) Take application tape and...

...peel it back, picking up the vinyl decal. (It's sticky like masking tape.)

5) Move decal background out of the way and get ready to
stick that sucker down.

6) After laying decal on paper, carefully pull back application tape so only the
decal sticks to the wood and paper.

7) Stand back and smile!

Make and make and make!

I've had requests for hearts on clocks, so sometimes those make an appearance in my Etsy shop or the walls of my booth. 

Big Things Are Happening...

I've been making BIG CLOCKS.

30 inch diameter; weighs 5 lbs.

All hand-cut salvaged vinyl, naturally!  And sanded aluminum behind.

24 x 24 inches; probably weighs about 5 lbs., too...

PAINTED aluminum (and sanded twice) with hand-cut vinyl scrap!
I love the look and will be making more with this technique.

I've been making BIG ART.

Close Your Eyes 'Til You're Blue in the Face
Salvaged 100+ year wood flooring, paint, 1960's
Prevention magazine paper dots, vinyl
16 x 35 inches

There are still some nails in the wood, too.

Big Smoke
Two panels salvaged wood shelving, paint, hand-cut vinyl, hand-cut paper
23 x 37 inches

I've been preparing for a BIG SHOW.

Oklahoma City Festival of the Arts!!
Sixth year running, crossing fingers for zero storms/high winds/clouds of locusts.

I have a million different ideas and have been discovering new ways of making art, fumbling my way through, as usual.  I'll be showing both types of mixed media (abstract and imagery) as well as clocks at my season opener in OKC starting April 21st.  Pushing my scale has been fun and scary, and hopefully it won't literally push away the kind of customers I usually enjoy while there.  The smaller versions will be with me as well, so there's something for everyone!