more red

I made more of the acrylic coated tissue using warm colors. I just love the process of applying it, but I wish I could remember to wear rubber gloves. My hands are a mess!

finish

start

or not

Another step

the last step

I think I'll call this 1,000 TRICKS because that's a piece of comic book embedded in the lower corner and that's what it took for Ann and John to put the Beehive back together!

art for the Beehive

Ann chose this piece of art for the living room of the Beehive. I'm so honored. It needs a few finishing touches which it will get today.

the Beehive

This place has deep Tosebo history, but a few years ago it was just an old place ready for the wrecking ball. Ann and John have made it a showplace! It took an unbelievable amount of work but it was a joy to watch it!

other art in process

I think this one is done. Title? Jubilation perhaps.

us

This doesn't even look like the same people, does it? The top photo is us in disguise at our son's wedding (lipstick?). The bottom picture is taken at Camp Tosebo and may be one of my favorite photos of Fred and I together.

a set without titles

I don't think these are done, but I like where they are heading.

results without a title

Two versions of another piece done in the workshop last week.

from the workshop

This is a piece I did from start to finish at the Kathleen Conover workshop in Lowell. She is such a good teacher! This is my third class with her and I think I had a breakthrough. We painted the tissue and worked on collage. It was wonderful. And I just saw the face in it- darn, now I won't be able to see anything else!

what's up

I'm in the middle of an inspiring week with Kathleen Conover at the Fire and Water Gallery. It's a great workshop so far. We have five artists and Kathleen tucked around our worktable and some marvelous stuff is coming out of the experience.

We spent Monday painting tissue paper and yesterday we spent starting collages with that paper.
The gallery is open that rest of the week. You could come by and visit! 11-4 Wednesday and Thursday and 11-7 Friday. I'll be working at the gallery from 11-4 on Saturday. Come on down!!

I should take some pictures and post some.

the sign in place!

My friend Kris took pictures after her husband Steve hung the sign on the Clubhouse! Ah, it looks good!! That is satisfying to see!

The Glory of True Love

The Glory of True Love!! This is an all time favorite for Fred and me! John Prine is amazing! this is a top-of -the-lungs kinda song!!

a big painting finds a home

I never did get a good photo of this piece. It's 36"x48". Now it's found a home as a 2009 Mother's Day present for a very special lady and a former student of mine! I painted it thinking of the path up the hill at our beloved Camp Tosebo. It's so fun to find out where these pieces actually belong!

entries for the Muskegon Regional

My friend Mary Andersen and I are rolling the dice today and driving some paintings over to see if they are accepted in the Regional exhibition.

I'm entering BLOODLINES (above) and REDEEMED #1 (left). We'll see if one or both or none get in! There's no predicting it. I look at all my work from the last two years and it's hard to pick. BLOODLINES won a people's choice in Lowell last year. REDEEMED #1 has gotten good comments from people I respect and I like it a lot. Another thing to consider is the juror. Her work has a spiritual element, so maybe mine will resonate with her.

Next week I need to decide which 4 things I want to enter into Festival in Grand Rapids. Then there's another show in Lowell.

Tosebo sign process

Here's the process the sign went through and the finished product.

Art?

You may wonder what I'm doing in the art world with all these family photos flooding my blog. I'm actually back in the 'sign business'. I'm working on a new sign for the front of the Clubhouse at our beloved Camp Tosebo. I've photoshopped an idea of what it will look like onto the top pic- the bottom is the way it looks now. What an incredibly beautiful place! Can't wait to get back up there!

Next week I'm going to an art workshop that will hopefully lead to a flood of new work.

Lizz and Colin

These are pictures I got from Lizz. Very cute. I tweaked them on photoshop a little bit.

Danger!

Here we are being silly at the edge of the river in Iowa City after we got married. Coralville, actually. We had our wedding dinner at the restaurant that was in the old power and light company. We've 'negotiated the rapids' pretty well for 31 years with God's help. We wish the same for Lizz and Colin tomorrow!

July 1983

Here we are with Lizz - her impending nuptials tomorrow are making us wax nostalgic! She was - and is- such a cute kid!!

wedding thoughts- 1978

My daughter Lizz and her fiancee Colin are tying the knot on Friday May 1 in Denver. We won't be there, but that is a bit of a tradition in our family. Fred and I eloped, July 27, 1978. Here's a few wedding pictures! I can only hope they will be as happy together as we have been. God bless them!

spring!!!

My husband said that if plants and buds made a sound as they were coming out we'd all be going deaf! Things are just jumping out of the ground! And the greens are astonishing.

Auction for Kabala Christan School

These are two of my pieces that are part of the art auction at Church of the Servant CRC to benefit the new Christian School in Kabala, Sierra Leone. I have a few more pieces in the auction and Steve Huyser-Honig and Jim VanderMolen will also have some of their photos. The driving force for the the whole thing is Jan Carpenter who is a wonderful painter and paints expressly for this purpose! Remarkable! She had a show like this a couple years ago and really helped with the initial building of the school.

It will happen on Saturday, May 2, at 9:30-noon. You're invited! Should be fun and we hope to raise enough money to add an addition to the school for two more grades.

languages

I'm making some banners for a new Basic English worship service at our church. It's a way of welcoming the people who are struggling to learn English with something familiar. I've done some in the past, but we didn't have these two. The top is Nepali and the bottom is Burmese. I'm absolutely astonished by the shapes and designs! The next step is to show them to a native speaker and see if I copied them correctly. I caught a mistake as I was putting marker over the pencil lines. I skipped a whole section! After much erasing and re-examination, I think I did it!

The quote is Isaiah 9:1: " The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light." We've used the banners in our Advent worship as a way of tying ourselves to the church universal. We also have a set of languages with the furit of the Spirit.

ArtPrize

For all my artist friends that may not have heard the news, Grand Rapids is site for the ArtPrize scheduled for the fall. See this link for news!

I just perused the ArtPrize site and blog. It sounds like a real boondoggle. Each artist has to pay $50 and may submit only one piece!! And then they have to negotiate with a venue to show their work. Why not make the fee smaller and give a bit of a smaller prize? First prize is $250,000! And the prizes will be voted on by the public. What if the winner is a picture of various dogs playing poker (painted on black velvet)? Each venue that hosts the art must pay $100. If the artist isn't satisfied with the venue they can take their work and leave the competition...that's it, not recourse. They are also in charge of their own installation. There's an information meeting on Monday. That should be a piece of performance art in itself.

JESUS CHRIST THE LORD

The fascinating thing about painting two icons that start from the same drawing and utilize the same colors and techniques is how they can turn out different! These are the same but have different expressions. Time to turn my brushes toward other things!

St. FRANCIS of ASSISI

I've used up the rest of my icon panels, so these are the last for a while. I also did two icons of Jesus that I will post tomorrow. These are variations on the St Francis icon I did in the fall. Some tiny tweaks and I'll be able to varnish them and move on to some other kinds of art. I love painting icons, but the process is so labor intensive, slow and proscribed that I'll be happy to get into some things that are more spontaneous. I'm getting pretty dangerous with the ruling pens! I used the ruling pen for the halos and for the straight edges on the top piece. The edges on the bottom one were done by hand with a rigger brush.

update: after varnishing the St. Francis icons, it occurred to me that the robes looked a bit like the coat of a Shar-pei! So I redid the robes (top two photos- reflections off the varnish prevent a good photo) and now will have to re varnish. I think they are better.

HURON COUNTY BIRCHES

This piece is hanging in a local gluten-free bakery. Coco Charlotte is at 2481 32nd St SE. It's a tiny place with wonderful products. I have 3 paintings there and I'll change them to a more summery theme in June.

This was a glorious early spring morning with the trees just budding. That is what's happening outside now. One good rain and everything is starting to flourish. The forsythia are covering the city with areas of bright yellow! It reminds me of the poem:

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

-Robert Frost

Finished signs

The Tosebo signs are done and just need to be sprayed.