Four Fabulous Females in February

Where to begin? My friend Jami contacted me many months ago and asked if I would like to participate in a show with three other women in February. The title of our merry little band would be Four Frickin' Fabulous Females (we later dropped the Frickin'). We met at a coffee shop and decided our theme would be flora and fauna. As you can see, that is a lot of F's! I started putting FFFFFFFFFFFFF in the subject line of my e-mail posts to the other ladies. The other artists are: Jami Moffet of Off the Hook Studios, Melinda Dalke of Day-Lee Mojo Arts, and Dani Mouser of Dani Photography. We decided the theme could be loosely interpreted as long as it involved some sort of flora or fauna.

Beatrix the Chicken

In addition to our individual work, we decided we would each create a 12 x 12 canvas using the same image. Dani, the photographer in our group, chose a photograph of her chicken, Beatrix. Now I have to tell you, I'm not a big chicken fan and dear Beatrix really flummoxed me. I spent way too long on my original attempts to create my required 12 x 12. I started out by doing a series of nine mini collages on my canvas. I worked and reworked the little pieces of art to no avail. I started to add some 3-D embellishments, but the piece seemed to be getting worse rather than better. So one day, I took my jar of molding paste and slathered a thick layer of goop over the entire canvas, burying the mini collages forever (but I know they're there). I enlarged my photograph of Beatrix 400 times and used just her head to draw into the molding paste. Once dry, I got out my acrylics and began adding some color. She's not my favorite piece by any means, but I have to admit she kinda grew on me.

The Finished Pieces

The titles of my pieces include: Fearless, Patience, Jump, Soar, Swoop, Emerge, Courage, and Twirl.

Breaking Free - One Final Piece

After we hung the show, there was space for me to hang one more piece. I decided to finish up a piece I had started a couple of years ago in a class taught by Lisa Kaus. It already had some bird imagery, so it qualified for the show. I added a few final embellishments, then added a light coat of wax to finish it off.






Hanging the Show

Cafe Noir

This is the space where our show is being held. The cafe is tucked in a small space just on the outskirts of downtown at 610 Marion Street N.E.




Please join us for our opening reception on Saturday, February 6th, from 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.!