process: oil painting

Hooray for oils! I have been painting with acrylics for the last forever, and after watching some Bob Ross courtesy of Josh Carter, I have felt inspired to try oils. I don't like Bob's paintings all that much, but I am in love with the way he uses his tools and how the paint blends when applied wet on wet. I bought some supplies and have been at it for hours! Unlike Bob, I think my paintings will take days. In the past I have had trouble working big, but I am finding that working from sketches instead of from my head has proved a great help, and my compositions and color choices are coming out great!

Below are some pictures of the first stages of my painting. More coming soon :D

sketches: Jan/Feb 2010

I am excited to report that I have recently felt a surge of creativity and have been experimenting with new mediums, exhibit ideas, and thoughts about my future. Over the holiday it became clear to me that my next step in education should be an MFA. This year I will work on preparing my portfolio so that I can have a solid shot at some good scholarships. I plan to apply to several schools (yet to be determined) and whichever school offers me the most money is where I'll go. I am still undecided on low-residency vs. full time. I am leaning towards full time, so that I can really soak up my learning experience, build a strong network, remain more focused than I might otherwise, etc.

Part of building my portfolio this year will include applying for a Penland scholarship so that I can attend one of their fabulous workshops sometime this year (I think I have a solid shot at it). I will send in my application on Tuesday. I am also applying for a Rasmussen Grant in the hopes that I can experience exhibiting my work in some place other than Juneau.

Below are some sketches I've been having fun with:

inspiration: jennifer maestre

What can I say? I love it. I want to know how she got it all to stick together and look so clean. More at : http://www.jennifermaestre.com/

reflection: exhibition

For those of you who have Facebook accounts and are interested in viewing photos from the "Call and Response" Exhibit, Rick has posted a series of pics. Thank you, Rick!

reflection: exhibition

The Call and Response exhibit at the Canvas is a great success. I don't think I (or anyone else at the Canvas) has seen so many people come through on a first Friday - the crowd never died down the entire evening and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive (no one tried to convince me I am secretly a lesbian this time around either!). It sounded like a lot of people were inspired by the project, and there were a lot of sales. Rick and I ended up with 71 joint pieces (about 80 pieces of art for me), so our expectations (as far as production for the show went) were met and all of the walls are filled to the brim (I'll post pictures as soon as I get around to emptying out my camera's memory card).

Aside from the exhibit coming out a success in the end, there were some glitches in final preparations. For one thing, preparing 150 individual frames for hanging can be a lot of work when most of the frames are not equipped with proper brackets for hanging. I wasn't prepared for the amount of time and expense that went into preparing them all. Also, measuring each piece to ensure it would line up to the proper wall height took forever and a half (having to subtract the distance of the hanger from the total height of the exhibit to ensure a straight line across the tops of all the frames took soooooo long). And then nailing in the 150 nails... oh how my arms hurt! I also think Rick didn't anticipate that writing his pieces out by hand would take so much time either; we ended up having to print out about a third of the writing pieces. But it was all worth it, and by the time 4:30pm hit for the opening, we were ready.

The large "call and response" abstract people I painted (with arrows following from one to the other) were possibly my favorite part of the entire exhibit; I liked how it evened out the wall coverage and provided relief for the eyes (the exhibit otherwise, I think, is a little overwhelming with all its small pieces).

Well, onto the next great adventure. Public Market. While not fine art oriented, the Public Market is a creative venue nonetheless. I plan to showcase some of my mad crazy sewing machine and book-making skillz. YEAH. I also want to sell bows and magnet sets: all my items for sale will all be made from recycled materials.

art: exhibition

art: drawings for october exhibit

I have been meaning to post more pictures for the exhibit, but never got around to it until now! So, here's another sampling of the art to soon be on exhibit at the Canvas: