October 11, 2015

October 11, 2015

Nine days ago my inventory list had to be turned in.  I typed up my pieces, both finished and not started, and I was upset that I only had 20.  How did that happen?  I’ve been working for a year.  And my other shows (2007, 2009) had 40 to 60 items (many small things).  Well, I have 8 days before I have to have the work at the gallery and I have ideas for two pieces that should be easy and fast to do.  So I added them to the list.  I could have taken it easy and stuck to what I had but where is the fun in playing it safe?  I really do produce well under pressure. So when I said that I was down to 3 items, it became 5.  I did really well and got four pieces done by Thursday.  BUT, I had sent an inquiry to the SJ-R (local newspaper) about doing an article about the show.  And the reporter wanted to come on Thursday afternoon.  Great news, but now I had to clean the studio instead of working on my last assemblage.  So I spent about 10 hours clearing the clutter which went back about 4 months.  I was still working up to 10 minutes before the reporter came.  But she was delightful and easy to talk to; and Linda Post-Lucas showed up about 15 minutes after the reporter.  We had a very nice interview session and I had a clean studio.  But I still had one piece to do and in order to assemble an assemblage you have to have LOTS of stuff to choose from.  So that very night I started pulling boxes and bags of potential items out of storage.  I started playing with the pieces, trying various combinations to create a face, a torso, legs, feet and arms.  It truly is play and is fun but it is messy.  I worked on it all day on Friday, part of Saturday morning, then I had to take the work to the gallery with my long-suffering friend Mary Ann’s help.  Everything went except for the assemblage which was not completely assembled.  This piece is ‘Come Together’ (Beatles).  I kept saying that Come Together was not coming together very well.  However after coming home from the gallery, I kept working on it and it came!  I really like this assemblage which uses (among other things) wood, a feather duster, cholla cactus, a raccoon bone, wire, rusty pieces of metal, sausage casings, a funnel, a woodblock letter, a cobbler’s shoe mold, driftwood, and seashells.  I had all of these items so it may help you to understand how much storage space a mixed media artist needs.  ‘Come Together’ is one of my favorite Beatles’ songs and I did not like it at all in the 60s.  Back then I was way too literal.  Over the years I have become more open to a variety of things and after becoming an artist, I started appreciating this song.  It came to me that the song was like an abstract painting; it did not have to make sense, it just had to BE.  And to me this song is like a beautiful abstract, enjoy the rhythm, enjoy the beat, don’t try to make sense of the words.  I hope that you enjoy my assemblage, Come Together.

October 10, 2015

October 10, 2015

We are only one week from opening night!  Today I am taking my pieces to the gallery. (Except for one 3D piece that is not quite complete.) That is a relief.  However I still need to complete the record tags with the recorders.  That has to be done by Monday when I will go in to help with hanging my work.  Yesterday I took my finished 3 dimensional works over to Linda Post-Lucas’s house and she took pictures of them for me.  She has a nice set up with a lovely backdrop which is has the color gradated.  It gives a professional look to the photo.  So I want to thank her for taking time from her preparations to do me a favor.  I saw some of her lovely work while I was there and you are in for a treat with her beautiful glass boxes and amazing kaleidoscopes, as well as some wonderful wall art.  I love her heron painting.  I have five more pieces of my own to write about which will just about cover the coming week with a couple of extras.  Our opening is Saturday, October 17, and we will begin with artist’s talks at 5:30 until about 6:00.  The gallery will be open until about 7:30 and wine and snacks will be served.  But if you cannot come on that night, the show will be up until December 3 during regular gallery hours (Tuesday through Saturday, noon until 7:00 p.m.). 

October 9, 2015

October 9, 2015

I am going to admit that I like Bubble Gum Music.  If you aren’t a 60s child, you may not know what that is.  It was light, catchy, upbeat music with simple harmonies and it was aimed for the younger audience.  I was not exactly in that category being 20 the year that the bubble gum sound started, but I guess that I looked it.  The next year, at 21 I went to Marion Jr. High to do my student teaching.  I told the secretary in the office that I was to be with Mr. Stobel.  She got the forms and started enrolling me in the 8^th grade to my great embarrassment. Bubble gum music is happy and cheerful, the words were simple, the refrain was catchy.  Most of the bubble gum sound was created by studio groups hired by a producer and given a name just for that song.  The Archies may be the most famous of these studio groups; they were named for the comic book characters.  If you check out their hit, ‘Sugar, Sugar’, on u-tube you will see a cartoon with Archie, Jughead, Betty and Veronica performing.  I loved Tommy Roe who had bubble gum hits as well as the Monkees who were a studio group hired to have a television show about an imaginary rock group.  They actually became a performing band because they had such great songwriters. Boyce & Hart and Neil Diamond wrote hits for the Monkees and they eventually became a real rock band.  Anyway I wanted to include a bubble gum song and I decided to make it a 3D piece with a small manikin.  I decided to go with ‘Sugar, Sugar’ and she is full of it!  Her dress is collaged with candy wrappers, sugar packets, cupcake papers and candy images.  There are some adult visual puns which are not hard to find.  I wanted her hair to look like icing or cotton candy.  Come to the show to check out the puns and see how I made permanent icing for her hair.

October 8, 2015

October 8, 2015

I already mentioned that three dimensional work was not a consideration when I first started preparing for this show one year ago.  So I had not been going to garage sales and looking for possibilities.  However, as a mixed media artist, I have a gigantic space full of potential treasures.  (This is the reason that this new house is perfect for me.)  I started looking among the stash and found a violin.  Violin = music, a nice match.  But what 60s song do you think of when you think violin?  I asked my daughter, Lisa, and she said “Eleanor Rigby.”  Of course.  What a depressing song.  Who wants to buy depressing images?  Well, I hope that someone does, because that is the only song that I could come up with for the violin.  First I painted the violin with purple and grey shades, then I studied the song lyrics for images.  The front of the violin has the church and a cemetery scene with only Father McKenzie present at Eleanor’s burial.  The back of the violin has Eleanor (faceless) with her face in a jar—no, make that 7 faces in jars by the door to choose from.  I decided that she could choose her mood and expression for the day by picking a face.  I have already been told how warped my sense of humor is.  Actually I really think that my humor leans toward stating the obvious which is what I do for the Family Album cards.  If you look at them closely I am only picking up on what the picture shows and verbalizing it.  With the violin I took the words at face value and created an image to go with them.  Come to the Prairie Art Alliance to see this and other unusual 3D pieces which I will tell about in the week to come.  Again, the show runs from October 17 until December 3. 

October 7, 2015

October 7, 2015

I lived in southern California in the early 60s.  It was my favorite place of all the places we lived.  The early 60s were great years to be there.  The weather was perfect, the communities and roads were not yet overbuilt and overcrowded.  We lived in Camarillo which is north of L. A. and near Ventura.  In those days it was a quiet little place.  My mother once sat next to Hermione Gingold in the beauty shop (bet most of you have to look her up.)  And Mom was a census taker for the 60 census.  In those days the census takers went house to house recording the information.  She took the census at James Arness’s and Eve Arden’s homes and Eve told her to bring the kids over to swim.  (We did not do so.)  A classmate of mine lived next door to Steve McQueen.  We would jump on his diving board trying to peek into Steve’s backyard.  And I was a Beach Boy’s fan and had to include one of their songs.  I decided on Surfin’ U.S.A.  I have depicted a beach with surfers, as it might have been in the early 60s. This painting brings back a lot of memories for me.  And even if you did not visit the California beaches in the 60s, the Beach Boys and surfing songs were popular all over the country.

October 6, 2015

October 6, 2015

I decided that I should have an instrumental record in my collection.  I loved a lot of instrumentals during the 60s.  Remember Telstar, Classical Gas, Grazing in the Grass, Pipeline, Walk, Don’t Run, Green Onions, The Stripper, Taste of Honey, Yellow Bird, Hawaii Five-O and so many others.  I decided to do Green Onions.  I had a vision of a row of green onions in a chorus line doing a can-can.  I could not find fake green onions locally, but I saw a set of five on eBay and bought them.  When they came I was very disappointed.  They were papier-mâché—even the green stems which were bent and cracked.  They also had unattractive little strings hanging down like a strange beard.  So there will be no green onion chorus line—at least not for this show.  Then Sirius 60s played Baby Elephant Walk—a song that I had forgotten, by Henry Mancini.  So I made a 12” x 12” baby elephant scene.  I bet you have to play this recording when you come to the gallery, it is not one that we remember.

October 5, 2015

October 5, 2015

My work has to be in at the end of the week.  I am in crunch mode!  It is not just the art, but figuring out how to make the tags from records with the recorders attached with the button in place for activation.  I finished two pieces this weekend and am still working on 3.  The art can be turned in on Friday or Saturday.  I am sure that I will be a Saturday person. 

One piece that I wanted to do from the beginning was ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs.  I pictured a couple of teens from late 50s/early 60s era.  The boy is in a black leather jacket; the girl is wearing a short red headscarf (remember those?) and has a red sweater tied over her shoulders.  The boy is in a gang called “The Black Sheep” with the logo on the back of his jacket.  (“I’m going to keep my sheep suit on until I’m sure that you’ve been shown that I can be trusted walking with you alone. Owoooooooo!).  It was a fun song, not as big as their hit ‘Wooly Booly’ but easier to illustrate. 

Anyhow I actually saw Sam the Sham in a dance club in Quincy.  It was a small venue and they played and everyone danced.  Years later when my husband and I were talking we discovered that we were both at that concert.  I was there with my friend, Cindy, and he was there with her brother, Marty.  We didn’t meet until a couple of years later when he transferred to SIU-Carbondale.  It was also a dance—a mixer held at Woody Hall where I was an R.A.  If nothing else, this show will bring back memories for those of us who remember the 60s.