Hidden In The Forest

I currently have an exhibition at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery located in the Jewish Community Centre complex in Vancouver (http://www.jccgv.bc.ca/). It's a 2-woman show. I'm showing digital collages depicting forest images combined with faces, thus the name of the show.

Opening night was well attended and we even had a writeup in the local Jewish Independent newspaper.

The show runs until March 9th. I'm very pleased as I've sold 2 pieces already!

ReVision - The Art Of Recycling 2007

Ever wonder what happened to that old trombone discarded long ago, or your mother's stash of buttons, or that pair of water skies stored at the cottage since 1962?

For the past half year I have been organizing an art event that takes place this weekend. Revision - the art of recycling is a 2-day juried show featuring recycled artwork: art made from anything reused, recycled, salvaged, scrounged or found - be it useful, beautiful, odd, playful, or thought provoking. The exhibition is being held in support of Waste Reduction Week in Canada (October 15-21, 2007).

Sixteen artists from across British Columbia will be represented, displaying over 40 works of art, inspired by their creative use of recycled, salvaged and used materials. Art entries will be on display October 27 & 28 from 11am - 5 pm at the Granville Island Hotel, 1252 Johnston Street in Vancouver.

http://www.revision-theartofrecycling.com/



One of my pieces, Stonewashed Orange Pekoe, is a 3-piece cast paper installation. The paper used to make the pulp came from a local paper distributor. The blue coloration comes from the paper scraps, no additional pigments were added. To make the mold for the teapot, I used an old brown betty. The molds for the mugs were worn cermaic slip cast molds. The embellishments are from an old pair of blue jeans.

Passion

When asked to create a piece of art on a particular emotion, in this case passion, I started with a colour theme. Colours that immediately came to mind were red, maroon, purple and black. Yes, I realize that's a bit dark, but besides the warm and fuzzy feelings, for me passion also contains some risque, spur-of-the-moment elements. Once I assembled my tubes of paint, I searched through magazines for images that either contributed to the colour or images theme. These images were torn and placed on my background paper. Once happy with the layout, I started adding acrylic paint, both to unify the images and to further enhance the colour theme. I like to use a large flathead paintbrush and a stencil brush to get the initial colours down. At the end, to finetune things, I use various smaller brushes as well as scraps of diecut papers as stencils to add extra spot colours.

Nick Bantock Workshop

This summer I was able to take a workshop with Nick Bantock. The 2-day workshop was in his new studio/gallery on Saltspring Island, aptly named The Forgetting Room. This was not a beginner course, and all 12 participants had some art background.



Nick is a great teacher and very generous with his knowledge and supplies. Throughout the weekend, we raided his store of magazines, postage stamps and rubber stamps, and constantly picked his brain. It was so inspirational to be creating your own art while surrounded by like minded people amid Nick's fantastic art.

The workshop consisted of a number of collage exercises, each increasingly complex, all a la Nick Bantock.

One such exercise ....
1) We were handed an 8-1/2 x 11 section of a nautical chart
2) And then a small image (mine was a fish stamp)
3) Next we cut a triangle window in the chart
4) And found a simple magazine image to add to the back to show through the window
5) Then we found a number in a magazine to add to our artwork
6) We then created another window (any shape, I chose a triangle again)
7) And added another magazine image to show through
8) And then added postage stamp
9) Then from Nick's rubber stamps, we each chose 2
10) And stamped each once onto our artwork
11) Last we added a 1/2" border of our choice

And here's mine ...

I'm on A Bit of A Roll

Basket of Lemons on a farm in Sorrento, Italy


Backyard fern


Pomegranates and squash in a market in Barcelona, Spain


Local intertidal algae

I'm feeling the need to finish everything before the Nick Bantock workshop at the end of the month. I've admired his books ever since Griffin and Sabin and am looking forward to learning some new techniques.

New Art, New Shows

Thought I'd do some smaller pieces for the 2 shows in August. I've been working away, experimenting some more with the traditional collage and paint backgrounds with laser overprints of digital collages. The first show is at the Granville Island Hotel during the island's "Made in B.C." weekend so I've used some local nature images. The "Blue Parrot Art Show and Sale runs Sunday and Monday, Autust 5 and 6, from 10 am to 5 pm both days. The Granville Island Hotel is located at 1252 Johnston Street on Granville Island in Vancouver. The second is a 2-man show in a private garden at 2836 West 19th Avenue in Vancouver on Sunday August 19th from 11 to 6. Again, I'm keep with the natural theme.


Backyard swordfern


Mediterranean shell and starfish

The more quick sale items will include cards, both the ones with the magnet embellishment and the ones with the 1-inch button pins. For those into 1-inch buttons, I'll also have the Asian ones with the Japanese paper backgrounds with your choice of Chinese calligraphy characters, and the minimalist ones with the abstract backgrounds and 2-word sayings.

Completing the Academy of Hue

Finally finished all the pieces in the series. Then I had to frame them. Since I had inherited 7 frames, I created the pieces to fit. But I got carried away and created 11, so I had to find another 4 frames that would sortof match. Good thing I got the 7 for free, because the 4 I got to match cost a fortune. But, I'm pleased with how they turned out.



Because the series is for an artists open house event in April, Artists In Our Midst, I'm also creating smaller priced items based on the works from this series. So, I've made cards using the images. To add something a little different, I've also created 1-inch buttons that match and are attached to the cards.