"Go Out and Play!" Exhibit at Sears Gallery, Dixie University

YOUNG QUILTERS

I have been trying to get into the Sears Gallery Invitational shows, at DSU, for several years. To my great surprise, they invited me to participate in the Fall 2016 show entitled, "Go Out and Play."  Before my acceptance, I had to call the curator to let her know what my theme was--to eliminate duplication of the same ideas. When I told her I was doing a painting about children sewing, the response was, "Great! We haven't had that idea yet. " 

Of course this idea comes from my own love of making things with fabric, and living in the quilt and doll design world for so many years. The little girls are my own little grandchild, Olive and her good friend Italia. I thought that having them sitting near the old Featherweight Singer would be a great touch, since it's more 'child-size' than my big old Bernina.

I started with a good photograph, then made this charcoal sketch. After I had it almost the way I wanted, I traced it onto my canvas, which had been previously painted with acrylic layers, then sanded smooth. 

The next thing was to add more background color, then start putting in the flesh color....

The shadows were added, and the black machine....and the beginnings of a button jar!

I went back into the background, and added some of my favorite green tones.... and fabric backgrounds, and clothing colors....

Then layers and layers of colors and shadows and highlights, then altering the background, adding a window on the back wall.... This is really the fun part!

Adding details on the clothing and fabrics is something I really love to do! It makes the painting come alive! Hope you like it!

Mixed Media Experimentation--the Class

Earth Mother Madonna

This is the latest in my creative efforts in Dennis Martinez's wonderful Media Experimentation class at Dixie State University. Dennis always gives his students permission to be whatever kind of artist they want to be, and the results are amazing! Right now, most of us are thinking about what pieces we want to submit to the student art show.

The criteria for this piece--as instructed by Dennis--was to make a 3-dimensional piece of art. He showed us a few samples of things--a series of wooden boxes with bas-relief artwork on the exterior, a wooden chair, painted and embellished...all good inspiration! I decided to start with a plastic bottle found in the grocery store. It held almond milk, which I drank, and I added a wire armature to make a head and arms from paper clay. There is no picture of this attempt. I threw it away, after feeling that it was going nowhere. Instead, I came back to my favorite medium, which is cloth! I put together a fabric doll from several wonderful prints, stuffed them with pipe cleaners (for fingers), bamboo stuffing (from Fairfield Processing, maker of all sorts of stuffings and battings), then sculpted a nose on the face of both the mother and child. The child fits nicely into a pocket attached to the mother figure. 

Once I painted the faces of the figures, I wired them to a canvas base. First, though, I adhered a fabric with a printed series of little houses--very primitive and cute! After the fabric dried, I painted over most of it, leaving just a few of the houses sticking out. I made a cardboard cottage, and gave it a little thin roof, a quilted fabric door, painted it, and attached it to the backdrop. I painted some of the fabric on the figure as well, just to make it my own.

Last month, I used more quilting to make a 'painting.' It was great fun. The tree trunk is corrugated cardboard, with some of the paper removed to expose the inside. The bushes are pieces of a burlap bag that used to hold Anasazi beans. The leaves are made by mixing paint with  vinyl spackle compound, applied with a stiff brush through a commercial stencil. I stitched little abalone-shell buttons onto a strip of silk ribbon which I glued across the bottom edge. It seemed right. 

The indigo fabrics made a perfect and dramatic background to the white stitching and acrylic paints. The figure was made using a trapunto technique--making slits in the back of the quilted piece and inserting additional stuffing (bamboo, again). This piece is called Mama Washes Away The Blues, and celebrates the wonderful solitude of a soaking tub. Water is calming; The time of night in the piece is twilight, which is a very magical time, just as the first stars are starting to appear. If I could build the kind of soaking tub I'd like, it would be outdoors, screened by a high wall and the leaves of trees for the roof. Perfect place to hide away!

At the Beach

You haven't heard from me for a long time.....and this is the reason for that! I have been working on this for months, and months, and months! It started out as an idea for a living room re-do. Carly (my daughter-in-law) told me she was wanting to change her living room. She was tired of the old 'look' and wanted something new. We talked about the colors she wanted to incorporate--pale blues, sea-foam green, pale teal, tan, white--and she said she wanted a painting to put in the alcove that had been designed for a television set. She and I are of the same mind there. Living rooms are no place for a television set, unless there is no other place! The space was quite massive, so we figured a painting that was about 40" square would be a good fit. I have never painted something that large, but wanted to give it a try! She said that just a contemporary bunch of colors--abstract would be fine, but I knew I didn't want to do what we term 'couch art,' so I told her I would come up with something.

It started with a photograph of Carly, Carson and Jace in the local water park. There is a wonderful splash pad and 'lazy river' in the downtown St. George park, so we went down and let the kids play. I took the picture. Tom and Talia were elsewhere. In fact, I'm thinking that Talia wasn't even born at that time. I started with a sketch of the original three, then added something that I had taken of my other son, Clint, who was holding his baby boy. Later, I had to have Tom pose with Talia, to get the picture to look more like him.

Now a true professional portrait painter would never do what I did. They would take a picture of the whole group, and pay strict attention to the lighting, and go from there. So, this has been madness from the inception of this idea. It was fun, though, to start with the background, and do something that had the feel of a day at the beach. I was careful to use the colors we picked in the fabrics for the new pillows.....

So, on and on I went, adding more paint, layer after layer, and then it came time for the people. Now, that was the really difficult thing. You must have every nuance right, if it is to look like the person, and I am not quite as skilled as I would like. So, I began with Carly, and ended with Tom and the baby. I have decided that I know why 'folk art' has such weird-looking babies and children. The painters made them look like they were dwarves, instead of babies and children. It's difficult not to. I can't tell you how many times I have painted, and re-painted Talia. Endless.

So, like any good artist, I am going to give it a rest. It is as complete as I can make it right now, so it is going to Las Vegas to live in Tom and Carly's house, to cover the space in their television alcove, until I decide how I can make it better, and take it home for a weekend to make the change! You realize, of course, that it may be like this for posterity. Sorry Talia. I tried. I really did. Your granny is just not a portrait painter! The most I can hope for is that you will know that it is made with a great deal of love!

So, I'm off to Quilt Market for the week--where I will surround myself with artists of a different kind. Once I am back from Pittsburgh, I will decide on a new painting. Hopefully it will be one that won't take years to complete. Forty inches square is a lot of canvas to cover, and I have always liked to do layers of paint. Gives more depth. So, the next one won't be quite this big. Don't think I'll do any people I want to be recognizable for a while! Ha ha. Still hasn't killed the joy of painting! If anything, it has deepened the desire to be a good painter!

Detail of Carson and Jace....

And Carly. I love these people!

Mother Earth

One of the galleries I am working with to display some of my paintings liked my 'people' paintings, but wasn't interested in religious art, so I decided to use some of my pencil drawings as the basis for a new series. I like the idea of 'Mother Earth.' As a mother myself, I know what sweetness it is to bring a new life into the world, and love all the aspects of creating. I believe that Mother Earth symbolizes all these maternal instincts and abilities.

I started with a plum-color underpainting, and sketched the body and plants on with a white pencil (see foreground). I have enjoyed creating all of the elements of this painting, and look forward to seeing it all finished. However, as I began working on the figure, she started having a life of her own, and when I finished, she didn't look as much like Mother Earth as I had first envisioned. In fact, she looks more like Mother Earth's daughter.

That thought triggered another--the story of Persephone and Ceres (or Demeter, as she is sometimes known). Ceres, the mother (and Mother Earth figure), was the wife of Zeus. Persephone was his daughter, but was abducted by the underworld god, Hades (Pluto), for his wife. Ceres walked the earth mourning for her daughter and refused to attend to the growing things on earth. Without her care, they turned brown and died. Ceres was finally able to get her daughter back, but not before Persephone had eaten pomegranate seeds. As a result, Persephone had to go back to live in the underworld for several months each year--during which time, Ceres let everything die again, and established Fall and Winter forever. That's a romantic little tale, isn't it?

So, here is my version of Mother Earth's Daughter. I have plans to work on Mother Earth next. Maybe Mother Moon after that.....

I have never eaten a pomegranate without thinking about this story.....