October 2, 2015

October 2, 2015

Car songs were big in the early 60s.  Remember ‘Hey, Little Cobra’, ‘GTO’, ‘Drag City’, ‘Little Deuce Coup’, Mustang Sally’, ‘409’, or ‘Route 66’ to name a few.  Well I decided to do ‘Little Old Lady from Pasadena.’  I wanted to put her brand new, shiny red, super-stock Dodge at the corner of Colorado Boulevard.  So I looked up images of the street and of a super-stock Dodge.  I worked on the piece for a couple of weeks and put it aside.  I had put myself into a tough spot by using a 1 foot by 3 foot canvas to get the length of the street.  The lines of perspective were difficult to maintain with the buildings and road.  But after a 3 month hiatus, I knew that I had to get back to work and figure out how to complete the piece.  So I ignored the street and buildings and worked on the cars first.  The car bodies are collaged from road maps painted with Twinkling H2O paints.  Of course the little old lady’s Dodge is done on maps of southern California—you can see Pasadena on the side of the car.  After doing the cars, I decided that my mistake was in painting the buildings.  All of those long straight lines were difficult (for me) to paint, so I went back to collage.  The buildings are now a mixture of paint and collage.  I used vellum for the glass on the cars as well as the building windows.  The little old lady is waiting at the light and two young men in the next car are ready to race.  I hope this piece brings back memories for those of us who grew up in this era.  (Go granny, go granny, go granny, go.)

October 1, 2015

October 1, 2015

In 9 days all of the work has to be taken to the gallery for installation.  I still have to create the labels for the records which will be the tags for the work.  I have recorded the songs onto the small recorders.  Now I have to figure out how to attach them to the back of the records and to put the button to push in a good spot where it will not be pulled off.  The recording sound is not great, but it is OK.  I keep telling myself that it is just there to jog memories.  If you remember the song, you won’t have to use the recorder.  The entire record with recorder on back has to be attached to the carpeted walls.  I expect that I will use Velcro.  I just hope that they stay up. 

In order to complete the labels I need to have prices for the art.  I think that pricing is one of the most difficult things for most artists to do.  Art is more than the cost of the canvas, paints, brushes and all the other things that I stick in.  There is a tremendous amount of time involved.  That includes thinking time as well as creating time.  We all say that we don’t get anything for our time and that is close to the truth.  We pay membership fees and the gallery takes a percentage of the sale price.  If I have a piece for $100, by the time that I pay the gallery costs, the materials costs, and miscellaneous costs (ie. framing, transporting, etc.), I may net about $30.  How many hours did it take me to make the piece?  At $100 it was probably a small piece which takes 2 or 3 days.  So I am getting $10 or $15 a day.  They may or may not be 8 hour days.  But you get the idea.

Some of my work takes several weeks, most of the pieces that I have in the show are in the range of 2-3 weeks, a couple of the items took over a month.  How do I price that?  In the end, it is just a best guess.  I make up a price.  I don’t have a formula to keep track of my time and charge so much per hour.  I would price myself out of any sales; especially in Springfield where art sales are lukewarm. 

Why do I do this?  Obviously I am not in it for the money.  Yes, it is therapy of a sort.  I enjoy creating.  I enjoy making people laugh and think and look beyond their daily lives.  I feel that it is my calling at this stage of my life.  It makes me happy and I have fun doing it.  (But sales are always good; they validate what I am doing.)

September 30, 2015

September 30, 2015

After finding a piece to do for the Rolling Stones, I was still without a Beatles song.  I considered lots of Beatles songs.  Several do not lend themselves to a visual, several are extremely depressing (and I am currently working on one of those—more on that later).  I settled on’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ but something happened on the way to the club, and I ended up doing ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ instead.  Now Lucy is a crazy song with strange images.  I looked at 5-year old Julian Lennon’s original drawing which inspired the song (or rather the title he gave it inspired the song.)  I looked at some surrealistic versions of the image that other people created.  I decided to be true to the words in the song, but to also be true to the child’s viewpoint of the world. 

My Lucy is in the sky, in fact, she is on a separate canvas slightly right and above the main canvas.  She is wearing a dress made from holographic paper which flashes diamond shapes and she also has diamond straps for the dress and diamond earrings.  A close-up of her kaleidoscope eyes is on a smaller separate canvas which is off the left side of the main canvas.  And the third separate canvas is of the newspaper taxi.  So you are getting 4 canvases in all, 3 are smaller and are firmly attached to the large scene. 

The large canvas shows the front of a boat on a river moving toward a small English village.  There is a “marmalade sky”, tangerine trees, and giant green and yellow flowers of cellophane leading up to the bridge and the fountain.  I thought long and hard about the rocking horse people and rejected several options.  (By now you have realized that I do not have the full scenes of my pieces completely worked out before starting.)  Should the people be sitting on rocking horses?  Should their bodies be like centaurs?  Well, I like my solution and wish that I had planned it from the beginning.  I put a pub in the village called ‘The Rocking Horse’, so of course, the people who go to the pub are the “rocking horse people”.  They are probably in there eating marshmallow pies right now.

This is a difficult piece to photograph since it is not rectangular.  However I am going to show you the small canvas of the kaleidoscope eyes.  I think that the holographic paper makes them look very much like a kaleidoscope image.  Come and see the entire piece—from a 5-year old’s viewpoint--at the Prairie Art Alliance starting on October 17^th.  [ I am not sure if I meant Julian Lennon or me with that one!]

September 29, 2015

September 29, 2015

A favorite Simon and Garfunkel song is ‘Bridge over Troubled Water.’  I had no thoughts of illustrating that piece.  However again, I got an image in my head—an image of an angel offering God’s support to a troubled woman.  As a teen, I believe that I thought the help was being offered by a friend/boyfriend.  Now, at 68, I am looking at it from a different perspective.  I believe that God’s help is there for all of us, but we think that we are in control and that we can manage alone.  We hate to give up control.  We hold on to our problems and relive them over and over.  If you can turn off our ego and turn things over to God, it will “ease your mind.”  The angel has golden wings which were originally tea bags; I put layers of different colors of the Twinkling H2Os over them.  So the wings glow offering bright color in the darkness swirling around the woman.  It is quite different from my other 60s song images.  I hope that you will be able to come and see our show, Now, Then, and Again, which opens October 17, 2015, at the Prairie Art Alliance in the Hoogland Center for the Arts.

September 28, 2015

September 28, 2015

I have told you that I wanted to cover as many of the 60s musical genres as I could, as well as certain artists.  It was not easy to find music that could be illustrated for some of my favorites.  The Rolling Stones were especially difficult.  Some of my favorite songs just did not have appropriate images for my type of art—or Springfield.  Think about the lyrics to ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,’ ‘Get off of my Cloud, or ‘Jumping Jack Flash.’  I listen to Sirius 60s in the studio and one day they played ‘She’s a Rainbow.’  EUREKA!  I saw a girl wearing a rainbow of color.  I painted her standing on a rock overlooking the ocean.  The background is all done in grey tones so that she comes alive on the canvas.  Her caftan is painted with Twinkling H2Os, watercolor paints that have mica in them so they shimmer.  I use these paints for a lot of my painted book pages.  The shimmer adds a richness and vibrancy to the paper.  I hope to see you on opening night, October 17 (5:30-7:30).  If you cannot attend opening night, please come by during gallery hours through December 3.  (Prairie Art Alliance Gallery, Hoogland Center for the Arts, Springfield, IL).

September 27, 2015

September 27, 2015

Twenty days until opening night!  When I started writing about this show on September 17, I had seven pieces to complete.  Today I am down to just 3.  Last night I finished my last two dimensional piece.  It was just about six weeks ago that Linda Post-Lucas (the other featured artist) asked me about my 3 dimensional work.  I told her that I was told that I could not have any 3D pieces because of the wood workers show using the floor space.  She said that I was known for my quirky 3D pieces and that I should do them.  So I checked, and as long as they were not large, I could do a few 3D items.  But my show was approaching fast and I had not been planning or thinking in three dimensions.  However there was one piece that I had wanted to do for years.  In fact, I have had the elements in a baggie set aside for the job for over 4 years.  Then my friend, Mary Ann Defend, gave me a wonderful piece of wood that she knew I could use in an art project.  It was just what I needed to complete the piece.  So my first 3D work for this show is – TA DA – The Strawberry Fielders!!  Yes, I know it is terrible, but, if you know me, you know that I love puns and humor.  I had to search to find something to make the hats from.  The crown of these hats are made of kids’ party poppers.  I had to order a gross in order to get 9 of the same color.  (If anyone needs 130 poppers, I have them.) 

September 26, 2015

September 26, 2015

The featured artists are asked to donate a piece to the Prairie Art Alliance for a raffle.  Chances to win are $1 each or 6 for $5.  I decided to make my raffle item early so that it would not be a last minute idea.  I made an image for ‘Joy to the World’ (3 Dog Night).  Jeremiah (the bullfrog) is leaning back in his red beach chair, chilling with a bottle of mighty fine wine.  One of my friends really liked Jeremiah and wanted to buy him.  So, with an actual sale in hand, I decided to make a new raffle piece.  So I did an Octopus’s Garden (Beatles).  But an Octopus’s Garden turned out exceptionally well.  It is entirely collaged made with hand-painted papers (more on that process in another posting).  And I thought that this is also a piece that someone might buy.  So I had to make a 3^rd piece to be the raffle item.  I did ‘I am the Walrus’ (Beatles) and, if I say so myself, it is pretty cute.  The walrus is made from hand-painted papers collaged to the canvas.  But I decided that there had to be an Egg-man too.  First I thought about painting egg-men all around the edges of the canvas.  Then I thought about having a flat egg-man peeking around from behind the canvas.  But finally I came up with the best way to do the egg-man—he is 3-dimensional sitting on top of the canvas, looking a little worried about the water and the walrus.  I felt sorry for him, so I gave him a life preserver (but it might be too small for him which adds to the worry.)  I hope that you will come to the show at the Hoogland Center for the Arts (October 17 – December 3) and buy a chance to win the walrus and egg-man.