For the Birds

Hope I, II, and III ©St. Hilaire Nelson
"Hope is a thing with feathers" – Emily Dickinson

A triptych of three robins at various stages of nests. I submitted them separately to the Birds Nest Invitational at the Quinlan Visual Arts Center north of Atlanta. They chose one of them for the show, the nest. Afterward I was thinking... do you submit a triptych as ONE piece? or do you submit it as three? Do you sell the pieces individually if a patron is only interested in one of them? or do you insist they stay together and list it as a triptych with one price?

The nest, if it sells at the Q, will break up the happy family. Now I'm faced with a dilemma of hoping that it does not sell, so that it can be reunited with the rest of the series.

Does anyone have any advice?

Peacocks Completed

©St.Hilaire Nelson
Poised Peacock 1 & 2 | 20x24 | collage on panel

I gave you all the details on these birds in my last post, but I thought you might like to see them completed. Tonight I will be framing them and tomorrow they'll be delivered to Grand Bohemian Gallery downtown for delivery to their Asheville location!

Peacock Pair

Art in progress ©St. Hilaire Nelson
Speaking of peacocks in print publications (I do love alliteration) I should mention that Geri at Juxtapose Gallery in New Jersey sold two 20x24 peacock collages this month, and Asheville Grand Bohemian Gallery sold their 20x24 peacock collage in February. The Grand Bohemian Gallery in Orlando sold two of the 9x12 peacock heads from the series I worked on at the dance competition (see older post).

In light of this success, I'm working on more peacocks for my Asheville featured artist show (May 18-June 13) and workshop. I wanted them to be a pair, so I am working on them at the same time. I am taking the same paper and applying it back and forth to both pieces to create harmony between them.

I have always said that I do not work on more than one collage at a time and I don't really consider this to be an exception. I am really treating these two birds as one big piece (and believe me, I remember why I don't work bigger than 20x24, it's taking forever to complete these two!) I have them on the easel side by side. The heads and necks of the peacocks are still paint, I am working on the tail feathers and the background first. My intention is to leave some of the drippy paint at the bottom and the wood grain showing through on both collages, but I am never sure until I get there.

Marketing Makes It!

Celebrations Gallery in Pomfret, CT was chosen by Yankee Magazine's Reader's Choice Poll as top gallery in New England. I was floored when they decided to use my peacock collage as the signature image in their ad announcing this distinction.

NAVIO Artisans Collective Show

Connecting with a Collage Artist
The opening of my show at NAVIO Artisans Collective on April 3 was great, the gallery had a wonderful spread of wine and cheese, crackers and snacks. They were well attended and the area around the gallery had such charm! They sit on a cobble stone street just up from the New Bedford Whaling Museum. My Dad informed me that he  used to go to New Bedford a lot when he was younger, selling insurance. He said he bought my mother a lot of scrimshaw jewelry there.

I was surprised to meet up with Wanda Edwards (pictured in photo) at NAVIO, a fellow collage artist and someone who has followed me on my blog for a while. She did not tell me she was coming and she really challenged my short term memory! But when we started talking about the fact that she goes by "Wonder Wanda" on her blog, it all came back to me.

My family was wonderful to me as well. My Aunt and Uncle and cousin Jennifer attended the opening all the way from Maine and my Cousin Mark and his wife Jennifer came up from Cape Cod to see me and my fabulous sister at the gallery opening. My fabulous sister drove into Boston to spend Easter weekend with me. Not only did she pick me up from the airport and take me to New Bedford and back, but she was an awesome shopping and art gallery companion on Newbury Street on Saturday, we had a blast!

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth is also located in New Bedford, the MFA students are exhibiting their work there now, which brings out more art lovers.

If you are anywhere near New Bedford, you might like to join them for their AHA! (Art, History & Architecture) collaborative cultural night with 61 downtown venue partners this week and every second Thursday of the month. NAVIO has asked me to stay on with a few pieces of work there after the April show.

Music Collages

Muse ©St. Hilaire Nelson
Here is another wildly cropped violin I did for the Music show. This is 10x22. I bought three panels this size and decided to do something different than my typical 20x24. I decided to use oranges for the top of the violin. Violins actually come in many different colors. The violin I played as a child was very brown, the one I play currently is much more of a golden orange. I also enjoyed infusing a little purple with the orange in here. The drippy background is fluid acrylic over clear primed wood panel.

Again, sorry for the lousy photo. I will replace with a better one, so check back soon.

Music Collages

Sul Ponticello ©St. Hilaire Nelson
Rest assured, even though I have not been blogging much about my Music show, I have been working on it! I have some lousy iPhone photos that I took at the crack of dawn when it was still dark outside. I have yet to get good photos, and maybe that's why I have not been blogging about it. What I need to do is take the iPhone photos of the work in the daylight, then I'll be all set.

I play the violin with the Maitland Symphony Orchestra and so you will be seeing some violins, due to the personal connection. I have been playing since I was in the third grade, through the public school. I never realized how lucky we were to have stringed instruments available to us in public school in New England. Here in Florida, my daughter had to wait until middle school and no strings, just band. AND they choose the instrument for you.... I digress.

I'll replace this with a better image, but I just wanted to give you a taste of what's been going on with the music. The strings on this violin were created by tearing very thin strips of white paper and then rolling them together between my fingers to form a raffia like strand which I glued down with my gloss gel medium. I had thought about using real string, but I think this is more "pure" being that it's paper. the background is drippy fluid acrylics with spattering over clear primed wood, you can see the grain through the paint.