Featured Artist Exhibit

Katharine Butler Gallery Show

February 18 - March 14 -- 

Opening February 20th 6-10pm

Sweet Sustenance, 24x20, mixed media collage

My Featured Artist Show, is right around the corner now! I have been working like crazy on new Paper Paintings and have just photographed the final four pieces, bringing me up to 25 pieces for this show, 75% of which is new work. This has been a very productive past couple of months for me, indeed!

Sweet Sustenance is an image of strawberry picking. Plant City, FL is the strawberry capitol of the world, and they are in season now! I went strawberry picking with my family a few weeks ago and it inspired me to do this piece, as well as a close-up of strawberries which I will hang with it.

The show has an agricultural feel, as those of you who have been following along know. In addition to Barnyard Friends and Fowl, I have also included some plants and trees, nests and even a bowl of apples entitled Flavors of Fall.

My collages will occupy all of the wall space in the main room of the Gallery. The director Chris Falk joked with me and said that my name was going to max out the space for lettering on the wall! 

Up until now the KB Gallery has only featured my roosters.  With any luck they won't be calling me the "Rooster/Chicken Lady" anymore after this show!

Rays of Hope on eBay

Click to Bid

Eve of Inauguration Art Auction

A Brighter Future--Rays of Hope, 18 x 23.75, mixed media collage on panel

On the eve of this historic presidential inauguration, I have decided to put A Brighter Future -- Rays of Hope up for auction on eBay. I completed this art on election night, 11/4/08 (see older posts).

I recently read a Time magazine article which featured several portraits that had been done of Barak Obama, and let me tell you there were tons of them, in a huge array of styles and media. I was impressed with the creativity and artistic ability that was featured. 

Obama's got some great supporting of the arts and art programs up his sleeve as well. I am happy to say, "Yes We Did!" Here's to many more artistic interpretations of our 44th president.

Calling All Collage Artists

Collaboration and Collage

Online I have had the opportunity to meet some wonderful artists from all over the world. Kaite Matilda from Australia commented on my blog, and so I went to her blog, Yarngarden. Here we got to chatting and Kaite and I decided to swap collage supplies! She sent me a bag full of canceled Aussie postage stamps, and I sent her an envelope full of paper, among other tidbits...hand made paper by my friend and local artist, Judith Segall.

Jo Reimer commented on my collage work, and when I visited her blog, One A Day, and found that she was hand painting many of her own collage papers. Now I do this as well, but often find I end up with the same color palette and some of the same solutions, so I asked Jo about trading some papers so that I could open up my creativity by using some hand painted papers that might take me out of my normal comfort zone. Jo and I traded, she sent me some really amazing papers with writing and marbled paint, great stuff! My recently posted cupcake, Something to Celebrate, includes not only some of Jo's paper, but also some of Kaite's stamps!

So to all you artists out there, I propose this: Contact me if you want to swap a 9x13 manilla envelope stuffed with some of my favorite papers, for some of your favorite hand painted papers and we'll see just what we kind of collage work we can collaborate on!

New Gallery Representation

Something to Celebrate!

12x12, collage on panel

Just this past week I was confirmed as a gallery artist at the Celebrations Gallery in CT. This is very exciting for me as my good friend and fellow artist Robin Maria Pedrero is already there, and we do love working and exhibiting together! In fact, it is thanks to Robin that I got in to the gallery in the first place! We are currently planning to have a featured artist exhibition together at Celebrations Gallery in May. Some of you may remember that Robin and I did "Chalk Paper Scissors" together in downtown Orlando, as well as our Seminole Community College show in Sanford. Being two New England girls, we look forward to revisiting our roots!

I created this cupcake to celebrate the beginning of what I anticipate will be a great relationship! Celebrations Gallery has a confetti theme going on with their logo and website, so Jackie asked me to send a few cupcakes. I created this one just for them.

Sentimental Barnyard Friends

Lockerbie Inspired Sheep

20x24, collage on panel

Back in October I went up to Syracuse University for their annual Remembrance Week honoring the 35 Syracuse University students killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. I was an SU student in London that semester, however I went to Germany for Christmas rather than return on December 21, 1988.

At Syracuse I met Lawrence Mason Jr. and Melissa Chessher, who published a beautiful book of photography highlighting  Lockerbie today, 20 years after Pan Am flight 103 came crashing down on this small village, killing 11 people on the ground and all 259 passengers on the plane.

I found a great YouTube video where you can listen to Lawrence "Doc" Mason Jr., townspeople, and SU students talk about the people and town of Lockerbie, if you have a minute, take a look.

I asked "Doc" Mason if he'd mind that I did a Paper Painting after his book's cover photo of the sheep, and he said he'd be flattered. He inscribed my copy of the book: "We at Syracuse University, never forget the victims of Pan Am flight 103."

I lost many friends and fellow students in the tragedy, so I too was honored to make a collage of the Lockerbie sheep. If you would like to purchase this beautiful photography book from Syracuse University Press, you can buy it online –– the authors are donating all profits to the Remembrance Scholars, each year 35 kids get a scholarship at SU, each in the name of one of the students who died on the flight, a worthy cause, a beautiful book, a great combination.

More Progress – Barnyard Friends and Foul

Just off the Easel

24x20 as yet untitled, collage on panel

I recently did the head of a peacock and sent it up to Juxtapose Gallery in NJ, they sold it within a week. Then someone said they would like to see me do more of the body of the peacock in order to show the famous feathers. My very first tattoo was of a peacock, because of my love of Art Nouveau. So I set out to do a more complete peacock and this is what I came up with. 

I enjoyed incorporating some book pages and wrapping paper in the black/white/gray area in the lower right. I also incorporated some printed material concerning birds, migration patterns and their coloring, throughout the background. I enjoy hiding papers with relationship to the subject matter in all of my work, the longer you linger, the more meaning you will find hidden in the layers of torn paper.

Making small feathers is slow going, the yellow area took the most time but I am very pleased with it. In order to make this simplified area look believable, I used what I call "directional ripping" I tore the pieces and glued them in the direction of the 3-D shape, changing the size and angle as I wrapped around the shape of the back. 

Creating the famous feathers was indeed fun, I used a variety of blues and dark blues to create the "eye" in the feather. Several of them were created with nursery book pages from that old book my father gave me from my childhood, published in 1971. This is a little bit of personal history woven into the feathers of one of my favorite Art Nouveau icons.

It's in the Details

How Now Brown Cow?

Here I am showing more close up details of this work in progress. 

• PHOTO ONE: details my use of Starbucks bags to create the pasture grasses, I love how when you rip this paper, the rough edge is brown, from the paper bag. That brown edge is so much more interesting combined with the green, I make extra tears just to show it off! Notice how the cow in the pasture is simple without much detail, I use only solid white and no type for her spots, I want to keep her in the background with simplicity.
  
• PHOTO TWO: highlights the eye. Since every face I do is some version of a self portrait, I have given my cow blue eyes! I use many tiny bits of paper for a more expressive and realistic feeling here, I never make the iris from just one color or just one piece of paper, the movement of many little pieces gives more life.
• PHOTO THREE: highlights the little illustrations I found in the French text book, especially the one of the horse which I incorporated just below the cow's chin. The French textbook pages are off white, almost yellow and I use them for white areas which would be in the shadow, rather than the highlight.
• PHOTO FOUR: details the wonderful texture of the handmade paper I used for the nose, paper made by local artist and friend, Judy Segal. I tried to save some text that says "in his father's barn" for the bridge of the nose as a treat for anyone looking very closely!