Solo Exhibit at Providence Art Club

I'm excited to have been asked to display my colored pencil drawings in a solo exhibit at the Providence Art Club Dodge House Gallery. The exhibit opens on March 26 and runs through April 14. My exhibit is titled Into the Wild and features drawings of animals and scenery from our safari trip to Kenya and Tanzania, Africa.  I am donating a portion of sales proceeds to Lewa Wildlife Conservancy  an organization that works toward to conservation and protection of its animals particularly the white rhino. 

See the invitation below for more information about the show, opening and artist talk.

Drawing at the RISD Museum

The spring semester of 2022 I took a class through the Providence Art Club which was Drawing in the RISD Museum (Rhode Island School of Design) lead by instructor Frances Middendorf.  Frances has been living in Italy and teaches at the Rome Art Program so we are fortunate to have her teaching through PAC. 

For our class we were given assignments and a group of artworks from which to select one or more to draw in pencil while observing and studying these work(s) at the museum. Each week we had a different assignment and each week we were to incorporate our lesson into a piece for homework and critique. Below are some of the my drawings from the 8-week class which I really enjoyed and I feel this class has helped my artistic style to grow. 

This Mary Magdelene (left) was painted by Lippo Memmi in 1330. On the left is my drawing of this painting. I chose it because I like this style of gothic painting inset in the fancy gold leaf panel. This panel was once part of an alterpiece in a church possibly in Siena.

This sculpture in the RISD Museum called Standing Figure was created by artist Arnold Price, carved from soapstone. For my homework project I chose to draw it among a grouping of vases.

For our landscape assignment I chose to draw this Louis-Jules-Frédeéric Villeneuve painting titled Aqueduct near Tivoli, 1827. I wanted to portray the beautiful light shining on the stone arches against the dark of the sky.

This lesson was in conjunction with an exhibit called Trading Earth, Ceramics, Commodities and Commerce. The exhibit focuses on global trade, ceramics made to store and serve, and luxuries of commodities such as sugar, tea, tobacco and alcohol. It looked at the trade routes for production, trade and consumption and the diversity of classes. We talked about oppression, slavery and exploited labor. In my drawing I have included three of the objects in the exhibit as well as the wealthy persons turning away from the realities of slavery. 

For this small colored pencil drawing, I chose to put my small still life objects on a print out of tapestry we studied and drew in the RISD museum. 

The top pencil drawing of the tulips is from an etching we studied by David Hockney. The vase of tulips were in front of a window. In my bottom drawing I have recreated the tulips in front of a window and added a scene. Our assignment was also to show the tactile qualities and textures of the objects we drew.

I drew this Japanese print by Utagawa Hiroshige in pencil then in colored pencil. The original print is a long vertical but I chose to make it into more of a rectangle or square format. Below is an Indian (attributed) drawing called Circle of Rabbits.  I recreated this drawing with colored pencils on textured paper. 

My final drawing (below) is one by Vincent Van Gogh titled View of Auvers-sur-Oise. I chose to draw this piece because I liked the contrasts of the rigid buildings against Van Gogh's traditional dramatic brush strokes in the sky and foreground. Drawing this colorful painting in black and white pencil can be a challenge getting values to correspond with colors in the painting. 

Relief Monoprint Workshop with Frieda Dean

I've been regrouping after curating the Bristol Art Museum Fine Points exhibit so I am finally getting around to sharing these photos and writing about a Relief Monoprint workshop I took with artist Frieda Dean at the Providence Art Club in July. Frieda Dean is the sister of Angel Dean who - besides being an artist - coordinates Event Planning and Member Services for the Providence Art Club.

Frieda began by explaining her process of inking small, medium and large stencils on two sides and layering them between two sheets of printmaking paper (like a sandwich). We learned that we needed to plan out our composition and layer different sizes, thinking about both front and back as they would be sandwiched between two sheets of paper. This allowed us to pull two prints at one time.

The workshop was great fun!

 Here is my inking area, I was experimenting with different oranges and yellows on my artichoke stencil.

 Above is one of my stencil layouts on paper ready to print, below it is lying on the press ready for me to add a top sheet of paper before running it through the printing press.

 It is a messy process and takes up a lot of space but great fun! Below are three of my finished prints. I have added some colored pencil embellishments to all three. The bottom print is created on Asian rice paper with a texture.

Three New Folded Books

Here are three new folded books that I created last week. I'm teaching an altered book workshop at Providence Art Club in a few weeks so I decided to sit down, fold a few more books and write down all the instructions for my students. 

I will credit Johwey Redington's website for the instructional videos to create these three sculptures. Click on the link and you can see the different folded books on her website. I added my own ideas to the books I created. The Yin-Yang book (middle) was a colorful book containing some maps and map images on the inside covers. I tore out a few pages so I would have just enough to fold so the end inside cover illustrations would show. 

I did the same for the last book here with the red end pages, I tore out a few pages so the red would show at either end.

Altered & Handmade Book Talk Tomorrow

Everyone is invited to my book talk tomorrow Monday June 17 at 3 pm at the Providence Art Club, 11 Thomas Street, Providence, Rhode Island. It is free and open to the public. I will be talking about my process of altering used books and turning them into book sculptures. I will also be talking about my handmade books that incorporate mediums such as colored pencil, watercolor, printmaking and collage into the illustrated pages. I will also be showing a PowerPoint presentation of my works and examples of other artists' works to show just what can be done with the art of books!

Handmade Book & Book Sculpture Exhibit

I had an incredibly exciting and well attended opening reception at the Providence Art Club last Sunday afternoon. I have been working so hard on writing the book on colored pencil (coming out in October!) and preparing for this exhibit, plus doing commission work for clients - so I haven't had my own art exhibit in quite some time.

This exhibit of my handmade books and books sculptures allowed me to talk about my work and interact with all of my guests at the opening reception. I had forgotten how much I enjoy connecting with people, talking about the exhibit and listening to their stories, their comments and feedback on my work. I talked continually to guests for two hours straight and never even left the gallery for a glass of water! Here are a few pictures of my work in the Castelnovo Gallery at the Providence Art Club. For those of you unfamiliar with this gallery, it is a small, intimate gallery upstairs at the Art Club and a perfect space for exhibiting my works of art.

I was also thrilled to already have sold 8 of the 15 exhibiting works of art!

For anyone who is reading this and in the RI area, I will be giving an artist talk at the Providence Art Club on Monday, June 17 at 3 pm. I will be talking about my work and my process as well as showing a short presentation of other book artists' work that I have seen. The talk is free and open to the public, so please come if able!

Handmade Accordion Book With Etchings

Last fall my husband and I took a trip to Amsterdam Holland and I was really intrigued by the wonderful characteristics of the Amsterdam canal houses; colors, shapes and how many are leaning forward or against each other. It was explained to us that property is taxed on its width not height - thus the reason the houses are so narrow and so tall. We were also told that canal houses were built on swampy land along the canals many years ago. Time has passed and many are starting to sink into the wet land as well as their support beams are decaying causing them to begin to lean. We saw construction on many houses that foundations were being replaced and newer support beams were being added for support.

I took many photos of the different houses and returned home thinking of how I could create art  with images of these wonderful houses. I decided to create an accordion book illustrated with colored intaglio etchings. I enrolled in a solar plate etching class and created six etching plates from graphite drawings that I had done of the Amsterdam canal houses. I even added a car, mini bus and some bikes. I experimented by printing the plates with different colored inks and on different types of papers. I created some with  chine-collé rice papers (glued) onto the printmaking paper as I ran the etching through the press.

I took the finished prints and cut out the canal house shapes and hand colored some of the windows, door and facades of the houses for added interest. I then decided on an arrangement and glued the canal houses onto a house-shaped accordion paper. The top photo shows the many cutouts I worked with as I decided on a layout for the pages.

The final step was to create a "house" shaped box in which to fit the accordion book. I shaped and glued book board into the box and covered it with handmade book cloth. I added a little door knob to the box.

I worked on this project from January though April of this year. It took me a while to create and execute the concept but I really enjoyed it and probably have enough prints for another book. 

I hope you like it also! It will be part of my upcoming exhibit at the Providence Art Club, Providence, RI opening Sunday, June 2nd in the Castelnovo Gallery.

Handmade Books & Book Sculpture Exhibit

I'm really excited to be exhibiting just my handmade books and book sculptures in an exhibit titled Bound and Unbound at the Providence Art Club, Providence, Rhode Island from June 2-21, 2019. I have my own small exhibit upstairs in the Castelnovo Gallery, which is a small intimate space perfect for my books.

Other exhibiting artists are Marilyn Saabye and Roberta Segal in the Maxwell Mays Gallery and Donato Beauchaine and Lorraine Bromley in the Dodge House Gallery. It will be a lovely exhibit of all the different artworks!

Please join us Sunday, June 2 from 2-4 pm for the artist reception. I would love to hear comments and feedback on my book sculptures!

I named this book Inner Circle. I created it from a book I purchased in Prague that is in another language and I'm not quite sure what language. The shapes of the letters intrigued me to create a sculpture in which the type could still be read. I folded pages, punched large circles and added buttons to create this hanging sculpture. I had great fun creating it over the last several weeks. I hung it and added pieces and took away pieces until I liked the finished result. 

Harmony, Colored Pencil

 I began  working on this piece back in the summer and posted the top image previously on my blog. While I was working on writing the colored pencil book, I was also learning or brushing up on the structures of artworks such as composition, design and color theory. I was intrigued to try working on some colored pencil drawing in harmonious colors. Harmonious or analogous colors are next to each other on the color wheel. I had taken this photo of cabbages growing several summers ago and was curious to give it a try using only harmonious colors – green – blue  violet. I began by layering colors to create a blue/violet underpainting. I added various greens over the blues and violets but not covering up all of the blues and violets or allowing them to show through layers of green.

I am thrilled to say this finished piece received a Merit Award in the Providence Art Club Winter Members' Exhibit going on through February 15, 2019. Approximately 175 pieces were submitted and only thirteen awards were given out so I consider myself very fortunate!

Scroll down to see the piece in various stages and also one photo of my color notes on the borders.  I layered Faber Castell Polychromos under and over Prismacolor and Caran d'Ache Luminance colored pencils. The Polychromos are a harder pencil and mix nicely with the softer Prismacolor and Luminance pencils. Polychromos will help to fill color so less of the paper will show through. I burnished with a bristle brush and also a Prismacolor colorless blender pencil. This drawing is on Strathmore Drawing paper.

 

I used a mixture of different brands of colored pencils: Prismacolor, Faber Castell Polychromos and Caran d'Ache Luminance and made color notes to choose colors and help me remember which colors I had used.

My Newest Book Sculptures

 I have been negligent about writing on my blog this past year. In May I was contacted by GMC Publications in London asking me to write a book on colored pencil for beginners. This book will consist of basic colored pencil information, step-by-step projects and a few focus features and should be published sometime by the end of 2019. In a period of six month, I have written all of the content, drawn all of the illustrations and diagrams which was quite a lot of work. But I was really excited to have been asked to write the book on colored pencil for GMC's fine art series of books! And will be more excited to see the finished project so bear with me as we are still in the editing phase.

Meanwhile ... I have also been working on a different sort of books ... recycled book sculptures.The top two photos are a sculpture (front and back) that I created from a sportfishing book I found in a flea market in Maine. I was intrigued by the illustrations of all of the different fish. I cut out fish from the pages and then folded the remaining pages and glued the fish back onto the sculpture with a few added extras including fishing line, netting, bobbers, flyfishing flies.

I am very excited because this book sculpture was accepted into the Newport Art Museum Annual Member Exhibit 2019. Only 90 entries were accepted out of 265 entered. The opening is Friday February 1 from 5-7 pm and I am excited to attend and see all of the works.

 This book sculpture is created from a book I found that is all about growing fruits in the garden. I liked the colorful illustrations of the different fruits. I cut out many of the fruit and leaves and folded the pages then glued the fruit back onto the pages.

I exhibited this book at Imago Gallery's Community Exhibit in January and was thrilled that it won a Recognition Award. 

 The two sculptures above, lady bugs and butterflies were created for two different ladies in memories of each one's mother. Every time Judy sees a lady bug it reminds her of her mother and every time Ann sees a butterfly it reminds her of her mother. These two books will be permanent memories to be displayed in their homes. Both the ladybugs and the butterflies were cut from book pages that I had watercolored in various colors. I added the black paper and cut out spots with a hole punch for the ladybugs. Some of the bugs and butterflies are suspended on wire and some are glued onto the pages.

If you look closely in this cabinet you will see my two masted sailing ship book sculpture (on the left). I created this book sculpture of a ship riding the waves and a whale diving into the waves. My customer who purchased the book sculpture is displaying it in this cabinet and I think it looks perfect with all of her lovely curios!