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!"
 

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.

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.

Weaving and new work....

Remember the images of work on the loom? Here it is! The finished scarf....

Something new taking shape in the studio...more on this to come....I used an old original illustration from
my 2004 book The Famous & The Anonymous as a collage element.

And another new piece taking shape....also with an illustration from
The Famous & The Anonymous

Two tiny canvases taking shape, too.....far from being complete, though

My studio is a mess, but it's a happy place.....



I have discovered the joy of using a sewing machine on paper. "The Astronomy Professor"
is getting an application of red thread. He has since been mounted on
a 6" x 6" sheet, further embroidered and hand-colored, and will be on his way to the
 Rochester Contemporary Art Center for their 6 x 6 x 13
exhibtion by the end of next week (with a few other works).

 

I've started a new series of works, intended to be seen together. Additional
pictures follow this one. Is my studio a mess? Um, yes. 




More of my studio mess. Find the schanuzer with the shirt on in this picture.
Nah, it's not a fashion statement, it's to keep the little lad from scratching
himself silly. Long story...involving K9 Advantix, which is some
bad stuff, let me tell you.



I am so, so excited about this new project! It involves
scanned vintage post card pictures, segments of one of my
drawings from 1999, and cut outs from 1920s sheet music.
Things have only just begun with this series....



Bacon and Eggs Abstraction and working with cyanotypes...

In the spirit of fun, I've made a funny little art jewelry piece called "Bacon and Eggs Abstraction". It's a cute little work where the eggs float and cast shadows behind two large strips of bacon, heavily marbelized with fat (made all the more...shall we say enchanting?...by the addition of irridescent painting medium to the fat marbeling and egg whites...so much like pixie dust!) And because, back in October/November, I got that beautiful, gi-normous bead and jewelry-making lot from an auction in North Lima, Ohio, I've started adding beads to my work. With the beads, I offer further visual interest and 'kitsch-ification' of the pin's subject: some dangling bead charms. Actually, it looks pretty neat when it's on the jacket lapel, if I do say so myself. :-)

"Bacon and Eggs Abstraction" (2013)
art pin made of polymer clay, acrylic paint,
varnish, seed beads, and faceted glass beads
Click here to see it in my shop!

"Bacon and Eggs Abstraction" pinned to a jacket.

In 2-D art news, I've been inspired by Cathy Cullis' works, like "House Quartet" and  "Garden of My Mind", and consequently, I continue to experiment with embroidering paper. With "Snow Blankets" (below), I've begun adding cyanotypes to the underlying etching. What's a cyanotype? It's a what is more commonly known as a sunprint. "Cyan" is blue and "type" meaning, roughly, print. I made these cyanotypes back in, I would say, 2007 or so at my parents' house. Michael had gotten me a little packet of them, and I did clover leaves, palm fronts, and doilies. I've had them in a little plastic bag in my studio since then. Now, they're very handy and will figure into the next several works-on-paper that I do (a glimpse of something even newer is just below "Snow Blankets").


"Snow Blankets" (2013) embroidered etching with gouache,
oil pastel, black ballpoint pen, and cyanotype on paper.



This one isn't titled yet and is still in progress....stay tuned! Let the embroidering
begin tonight!



New Totem Necklace and Something Flowing...



"Something Flowing and Ungraspable" (2013)
oil pastel, gouache, and black ink on embroidered etching collaged
with cardstock ink drawing and sunprint
What's the writing? An excerpt from my story, "Flooding the Memory River"



"Star Chart" Totem Necklace
New in the shop!

Check out the listing here.



A week of snow and....

It's been snowing on and off here, and sometimes it looks as if our house is in the middle of a snow globe. It's wonderfully dramatic to have these big flakes swirling around outside. I've also been, very happily, making a lot of vintage sales and 'tidying' my shop and my stock, taking pictures, and also fighting a bout of feeling under the weather. I started on "The Dream" (below) on Saturday night, but because I felt so terrible on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I didn't finish it until early this morning. This is the last segment of the giant aquatint I'd done at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts back in 1999. I have another etching, about the same size, downstairs in a folder. I'll bring that up and cut it into pieces and work into it next....as well as continue with some art jewelry and forge ahead with the Radium Girls graphic novel. 

Speaking of graphic novels, Michael and I spent some time at Barnes and Noble in Robinson on Sunday night, after he was done with his usual 3rd Sunday systems engineering assignments. We filled our bellies with Red Robin goodness, and then went over to hang out in the comic book section. I picked up Craig Thompson's Blankets (for the 3,000th time) and his Habibi (for the first time). His work is dynamic, and I learn quite a bit just by looking at his line work and use of space. 

For now, I present the new mixed media work: "The Dream"....

"The Dream" (2013) collage on aquatint, with ballpoint
pen, white watercolor, oil pastel, and purple embroidery thread
Now in my shop: www.savannahschrollguz.etsy.com 

"The Dream"

"The Dream" (back side)

Camille and Claude and new work....



Monet, "Camille Monet, Death Portrait"

Right now, in the evenings, I'm reading the novel, Claude & Camille by Stephanie Crowley. In the portion I'm reading, he hasn't yet Camille, but is simply finding himself as a painter, having moved away from the somewhat lucrative production of caricatures to landscape painting on a challenge from the older painter Boudin. 

I find it a terrible twist of irony that Camille--who died of virtual starvation, tuberculosis, a botched abortion, or pelvic cancer, depending on whom you ask--never got to see Monet's success or experience the cuisine at Giverny, cuisine that was filled with more sugars and fats than she had likely seen since she was a child. When I started to study art history, my Mum bought Monet's Table, which is rich with photographs of Givery's lovely yellow and blue kitchen. Its blue and white delft tiles are bright in the mid-day sun, while shafts of light gleam on copper pots. Several images show the opulent dining room table heavy under the weight of food: big, goggle-eyed fish; jellied compotes; pots of butter. I didn't think about how terribly ironic Camille's death was until I saw her death portrait (pictured above) in my college Impressionism course. I remember my art history professor saying that Monet himself explained that he couldn't help but to paint her, when he saw her lying there, enshrouded. The light and shadows on her face were too beautiful. Certainly, I understand that people grieve differently, but that statement struck me as somehow insensitive, even back then, when I was in my early 20s. Giverny and its rich cuisine was still relatively far into Monet's future, but I then began to put together the difference between his life when Camille was alive with his life after Camille's death.





Claude Monet and his first wife, Camille Doncieux
Photo credit



I never got to see Giverny when I had the chance to visit Paris, since I was there in March (of 1998) and it closes for the winter for part of each year. I'd like to back and see the gardens that are dedicated to Camille, who was Monet's principal supporter in his leanest times, who ultimately gave her life for his art.

In my own studio, a few things are brewing: 1) a label for our honey products and 2) a watercolor and ink collage, or as I like to call it, 'fun with india ink and paper'. The honey label features my husband's paternal grandfather, known by the Polish nickname for grandpa, or 'Dziadek' (pronounced, at least in our family as "Judgie"). Originally, what was at the end of the reins was a large, black horse. I had a little fun with Photoshop and replaced the draft horse with a bee. We're raisining bees on the farm now and selling honey after all! Here are the images:



Guz Bees honey bottle label, featuring Thomas Guz
a.k.a. "Dziadek" (Polish for grandpa)



Savannah Schroll Guz, "Super Nature"
watercolor, india ink, ballpoint pen, paper collage