Saturday, November 15, 2014

Getting Ready for Idea Furnace! Molds 1 & 2 of 4


Getting ready for December's Idea Furnace at Pittsburgh Glass Center! Glass Artist Jason Forck will be creating a Radium Girl, which will glow by way of a bulb inside the Radium Girl's skull, which will be green. Below is an image of the original project concept. We've moved the opening for the light into the neck area, as we'll pass a bulb up into the center of the skull.
In anticipation of Idea Furnace, we're in heavy mold-making mode here. This morning, we poured the plaster for the skull. Next, I will be sculpting the face and hair, as the Radium Girl--let's call her Doreen--will be three dimensional. Here's what our basement looked like this morning:


Michael made adjustable mold boxes that we secure with clamps

Savannah fixed the clay neck to the front of the skull. This wide neck
will create a channel through which a light bulb will be able to pass.

The back of the skull is in a separate mold box. Saran wrap still covers
the clay, since we don't want it to dry out. I'll need to dig the clay out
of the plaster mold once it dries completely.  

Fussing with the front of the skull. Fuss, fuss, fuss....

Creating a crisper neck line...it's super long on purpose.

...and we had a whoopsie here. Savannah is fixing it.

Michael adjusts the molds after we measure so that we get each head half
exactly centered.

We 'bunged up' the inside corners with clay so they won't leak plaster once
it's poured.


Savannah wrestling with the plaster bag to open it.


And the poured molds....we'll take them apart tonight and
Savannah will start digging the clay out.




 
We'll be pouring the molds for the Radium Girl face and back of her head soon. Stay tuned!
 

Sunday, August 24, 2014

The Dream Chair.....completed.


Oh, I know the video is sideways....I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to alter it and still have it be a Windows Media Player file. But here is the Dream Chair, which I first started creating in 2012.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Stacks, Paintings, Ink!

 
 
 
The cover of my 8-page 'zine for the Stacks exhibition at
Light Grey Art Lab in Minneapolis, Minnesota


Page 2 & 3 from "The Year was 1988" 'zine


Page 5 from "The Year was 1988" 'zine.

Page 2 from "The Year was 1988" 'zine.


"The Pirate's Lover" is finally done and ready for the
October exhibition at York Arts' City Art Gallery. The
exhibition, Women in Water, will benefit Animal Rescue
in New Freedom, PA

"The Pirate" will also be part of the Women in Water
benefit exhibition.

"Autumn" and "Loretta" in the Pittsburgh Print Group's Ink exhibition
at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh until October 31, 2014

Michael snapped a pic of me at the opening on August 21.

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

And fun things abound....

The all-consuming beard....underway!
Stay tuned for an update on what I'm working on!

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Exhibitions and doin's...

Three pages from my Blair Mountain comic now appears at HIVE artspace on King Street
in York, PA as part of the "Illustrated" show. So excited to be part of this!

A pile of soft sculptures and clay masks that will appear in my solo
October show at City Gallery @York Arts

I've been making new works for a show with the
Pittsburgh Print Group this August....more on this
soon!

And....I've been making more collages. This one is called "Look Here, Young Man!"
 

Friday, June 20, 2014

Paintings, both almost complete and underway....

"Pirate Lover" (almost finished)

Something new....a mermaid box! The underpainting has begun.

Another angle of the new mermaid box....

The pre-tattooed and in-progress "Pirate," complete with Blackbeard's candles.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Upcoming Exhibitions and new collages....

My postcard for the October exhibition in York is being printed now!
A glimpse of one of the pages from my 'zine, which will be on
exhibition and for sale at Light Grey Art Lab in Minneapolis in August!
 

"The Well Dressed Pickle," now for sale at Saatchi online!

"Apokalypse. Himmel.," now for sale at Saatchi online!

Friday, May 30, 2014

New Paintings & Collages....

So, I think I have fallen for collage-making....I was never excited about it in the past, but lately, so many possibilities have opened themselves up, and I can create moods and combinations that I can't achieve with painting or drawing. Here are a few of what I've produced so far....
"She Dreamed of Willow Ware" (2014)
vintage paper and cyanotypes on paperboard

"Que La" (2014) vintage paper, original drawing, and sheet music
cover on paper.
"Weimar" (2014) vintage paper, sheet music,
and cyanotypes on paper. (an homage to
my graduate study specialization...1920s
German art).

In other news, I continue to work on paintings for the Animal Rescue benefit exhibition that I'll have in York (details to follow very soon because I will need to produce post cards and press releases). Here's a glimpse of one of the paintings as it is in progress (it should look familiar, as I posted the underpainting steps before .... and even before-before, as it progressed).

"The Pirate's Lover" (in progress) and on the easel.

The pirate....more on him soon. I just have the
most basic underpainting started here.

Friday, May 23, 2014

New Work and a glimpse of Blair Mountain...

"Gee if" (2014) original collage

"Que La" (2014) original collage

"Train from Berlin to Munich, April 1998" (2014) original collage

My submission for the Arthouse Co-Op's
May 23, 2014 Challenge - Draw Your Town's Mayor

A page glimpse from "The Battle of Blair Mountain" comic, which will be part of an upcoming
issue of Cartoon Picayune.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

So many things goin' on!

My 5-minute collage, with found materials, for The Sketchbook Project!
#CAfoundcollage
Over the past few weeks, I have been super busy. This week, I have several looming deadlines for ongoing projects, and I'm getting works ready for my benefit exhibition at York Arts' City Gallery. Why do I call it a 'benefit exhibition'? Because fifty percent of every sale will go directly to Animal Rescue in New Freedom, Pennsylvania.

The other things I've been busy with are: 1) the Blair Mountain Comic, which I am finishing up (pics to come, pics to come!) for Cartoon Picayune and 2) the 'zine for Light Grey Art Lab's exhibition. I need to get all of the pages finished and cleaned up in Photoshop so I can get 75 copies printed and get them on their way to Minnesota. Ein volles Program, as my German professor used to say at the beginning of each class.

I also have pictures of Michael and me suffering through the making of horseradish. The picture are pretty humorous, even though we were both crying through the whole process and had to take turns spooning the horseradish into the little glass jars. :-) Still, we had fun doing it.

Stay tuned! More to come shortly....

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Excited to be in Wild Woman Rising!


I'm so excited that "Miss Quentin Compson (from Faulkner's The Sound & the Fury)" is part of this month's issue of Wild Woman Rising. You can see the actual page here: http://www.wildwomanrising.com/21-women-in-water-miss-quentin-compson/#more-5168
And You can see the entire beautiful gallery and issue here: http://www.wildwomanrising.com/category/art-gallery/

Friday, April 25, 2014

Wayne White at Marketview Arts in York

Michael is in the foreground here and gives you an idea of just how big that corn cob pipe
and those smoke rings actually are!
 Mixed-media artist and puppeteer Wayne White, who was a set designer and puppeteer for Pee Wee's Playhouse, currently has an exhibition, titled "FOE," at Marketview Arts, located at 37 W. Philadelphia Street in downtown York. We found it by chance when Michael and I went to York Arts' City Art Gallery (at 118 W. Phila. Street) to get measurements for the exhibition in October. (Sadly, there was no show at City Art Gallery, so it was closed, but we did peek in the windows, and Michael and I measured the front window from the outside, which, because of the way we were doing it, probably looked very strange to passing traffic.

Anyway, we were toddling along, found an open market on the street, where I got some hand-dyed silk scarves for my Mom and me and a neat pin for my Mother-in-law. After strolling around Central Market for awhile and buying some loose tea at one of my favorite stores Cherie Ann (who makes me want to be a fiber artist so much with all her gorgeous wool skeins, colorful scarves, and awesome knit hats), we wandered into a building with art in the window and the letters F.O.E. (which stands for Fraternal Order of Eagles) in the stained glass. Downstairs were selections from, I think, York Art Association artists, some of whose studios were downstairs (and into whose studio windows we got to peek). We continued wandering, not really understanding that something was actually on the upper floors. At first, I found the York College printmaking department, which was deserted, and I would have walked around the area more, but it felt wrong, like we were invading some place not intended for us. And then up one more flight of stairs, from which we could hear banjo music, we found the Wayne White exhibition, which was amazing. The scale and Cubist-style detail of the figures was incredibly impressive. I just have a few pictures here, but the figures were based on an event that happened in York, involving the Confederate demands for goods, during the Civil War--hence the picture below of a soldier taking a pig and a pie. The title of the show, "FOE," is a reference to the stained glass sign on the building's façade, which refers to the Fraternal Order once headquartered in the building, and the idea of an incursion by opposing forces.
Look at the amazing detail here...the ridges in the toenails, the buildup of cardboard to
indicate bones, calluses, and corns, and the bristly hair on the scrawny leg!
 Everything is made out of cardboard, and in a few instances, one could tell what had once been in the boxes. There was a frozen crinkle-cut fry box and a box with Amazon Prime tape still visible. The close-up of the leg and foot above (which belonged to a figure putting on a boot--which you could move by way of ropes) shows just how detailed the figures are.
A Confederate soldier with a pig in one hand and a pie in the other. Sadly, my picture is so
blurry....this was so fantastic in person. It towers over the viewer, extending into the mini-dome
above the gallery space.