Above & Beyond Exhibition

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I'm exited to announce that my piece "Reflection" was accepted into the SAQA Above & Beyone Exhibition which opens at the Lakewood Cultural Center on January 22nd.  The LCC Main Gallery is a really nice venue for an art show and I'm certain that the pieces on exhibit will be excellent.  This show is all about the vast variety of techniques and approaches that art quilters are taking with their work.  I submitted "Reflection" because the techniques include an image printed onto silk with my home computer and printer, unusual materials such as Lutradur and acrylic paint and fabrics that I had designed and either dyed or painted myself. This medium is so exciting and versatile, which is why I love it so much!

Inspired!

Not long after I took that workshop with Deborah Fell, I heard about an upcoming call for entry for a show that will take place in 2016.  I don't want to say too much about this because I'm not sure what the status of  this show is at the moment, but between the techniques I was using after the workshop and the call for entry, I was hugely inspired!  The "theme" I chose to interpret was my personal vision of Colorado.  There was a ton of leftover material from the workshop that I wanted to use, but in the end I had three large pieces in mind and had to make even more materials.  A surface design superstorm hit my studio when I got out the Gelli Plate, stencils, stamps, and any other mark making tool I could find.  When I thought I had enough collage material I painted some canvas and began collaging.  When everything was dry I cut the collaged canvas into 6 inch squares and combined the colors into the background for a quilt.  I forgot to take photos of the original canvases but I did take some of the second round. Here are some pictures of the uncut canvases and one of the backgrounds that I assembled.

I had 3 thermofax screens made & you can see all 3 image in this photo.

Award of Excellence!!

Graffiti Lilies

I entered this piece in the 2013 Inspire show being put on by 40W Arts here in Lakewood, CO.  This year the shows theme is recycled art or vivid color.  Happily for me I had this piece in the works.  This is made on recycled inter office envelopes, with newspaper, paint, tissue paper, various pens and grease pencils.  I mounted the collage onto a black fabric background that I pieced out of fragments of cloth leftover from some other project.  The background is quilted and trimmed with black satin ribbon.  I think it fits both of the shows themes!  Much to my delight I was asked if they could use my artwork for some of their outreach efforts and I won an Award of Excellence at the show.  My very first award!

Here is the thing about this piece..... it came together rather intuitively.  This never happens to me and finding that inner voice has been such a struggle.  I just wanted to play around with techniques one day so I started layering paint and newspaper on these envelopes and then tearing the paper back off to reveal layers.  When I decided I was done I had a background that I really liked.  But as usual I had no idea what to do with it.  It hung around on my design wall for several weeks while this teeny tiny little voice in my head kept whispering " add lilies made of more inter office envelopes".  I resisted.  Resistance is my specialty.  But I kept getting the same message and eventually I caved in and went for it.  This is the first pieces I've made that my husband genuinely likes.  The first piece that won an award.  Hmmmm.  I'm guessing that that intuitive voice in my head knows what its doing.  Now I just need to learn to hear it better.