Studio Play Time: Don't Think, Just Do

I needed a break from preparing for my upcoming show and my friend Shelby needed a dose of adult play time, so we got together for a few hours last night to play in our visual journals. We started with some blank pages . . . and from nothing created something.


Here are some of the pages I futzed with last night:





I like to splash unused paint onto my journal pages and here's what I cobbled together from yesterday's painting session.


Shelby and some of her amazing pages.

Sneak Peek: Strange Voices From the Abyss

The opening of our art show is fast approaching (here's a link to my last post about the show with information about the opening) and there is still work to be done, paint to be flung. I'll be posting about the opening, but I wanted to share a bit of the back story about our upcoming show and how it came to be. We got the idea to do a collaborative show back in February when we submitted a piece to the juried 100th Monkey Studio show, Duets. We had so much fun creating a piece together, that we created another piece for the Portland Love Show, also in February. But we weren't ready to be done working together so we came up with the idea to do our very own collaborative show, which turned out to be our current Strange Voices From the Abyss.

Here is a description of how our collaboration works:

My studio is located right next to Destree’s home. Some of our pieces were created with us working side by side (or with one of us reaching over the other to add a dash or dab of paint, usually urgently). Other pieces were created separately: I would work on the pieces and splash paint during the day, and then, under the cover of darkness at the end of the day and usually after I had gone home, Destree would pop over to the studio and add her vibrant touches. We left notes for each other like were back in sixth grade - these notes have been attached to many of the pieces we created.

The majority of our pieces are molding paste and acrylics (and sometimes a found object or two) on wood substrates. Here's a glimpse into the creation of several of our pieces.










Somewhere along the way, we decided it would be fun to do some large canvases. So here's a peek at how our canvases came together.










The status of our pieces as of Tuesday evening.







We decided earlier this week that it would be nice to offer some smaller pieces for sale, so we're in the process of creating five little 8x8 molding paste and acrylic paintings on wood substrates. Oooolala, they're cute!

PS The talented young woman helping us in some of the photos is Destree's 7-year old daughter, Olivia, who is obviously a budding artist.

The Artist's Way: Discovering a Sense of Strength

My Artist's Way was a wee small group last night with three of my five ladies not able to attend. But the two ladies who did show up, soldiered on and somehow we still managed to use up our allotted time!

Our creative activity was an introduction to blind contour drawing. This is a technique where you draw only the outline of an object and the blind part means you don't look at what you are drawing. Because a person can't look at what they are doing, it takes away the pressure and makes it more light-hearted and fun. For the first portion of the exercise, I had the ladies draw the outline of an art mannequin.



I then had the ladies use blind contour drawing to do a self-portrait. Using a mirror (and again without looking at their paper), they drew themselves.



Our next exercise was using the blind contour drawing technique to draw each other.



(I was only able to take a photograph of the artist who used the red crayon; the other artist used a very pale green crayon and I couldn't get a decent photograph no matter how hard I tried.)

For the final part of the activity I had each woman write for five minutes on what it was like doing a series of blind contour drawings. They were fine with the writing exercise -- until I told them they had to write with their non-dominant hand!

Strange Voices From the Abyss: A Collaborative Art Show

I'm so excited to finally share about my upcoming show at Venti's Cafe with my friend Destree. The show, Strange Voices From the Abyss, has been in the works for a couple of months and we have been madly working (and playing) and producing during that time, especially the past few weeks. We even have beautiful show cards that Destree designed and had printed (pinch me). Our show will feature mostly pieces with molding paste and acrylic paints on wood substrates, but we have a few surprises as well. For now, I'll post a few photos of us working, but photos of the finished pieces will come a little later in the week . . . for now, here we are working on some of our canvases.

Artist Reception

If you live in the northwest, I hope you'll stop by our Artist Reception on Saturday, May 1st, 6:30-8:30 pm (all ages welcome) at Venti's Cafe, 325 Court Street N.E. (check out their blog post about us here. You'll get to see all of our pieces, listen to music, and nibble on some of Venti's delicious appetizers -- oh, and you'll get to visit with the artists!