Featured Artist in Endangered Exhibit

 I am excited to have been chosen to be the Virtual Artist in Residence for the exhibit Endangered promoted by the non profit group Art4Apes. Link to my bio and information is here. Link to the virtual gallery is here.

Endangered is "a team of art and photography lovers who believe that art, in all its forms, can reach people all over the globe and win hearts and minds for the cause of preserving all forms of life and the environment. To this end, we organize exhibitions, contests, and other events to focus attention on all that is ENDANGERED in our world.

We believe that reaching out to Young Artists and encouraging them to express their concerns for the environment and endangered species through art is important if we are to safeguard the future of our planet."

The Center for Great Apes is a non profit corporation whose mission is to provide a permanent sanctuary for orangutans and chimpanzees who have been rescued or retired from the entertainment industry, from research, or who are no longer wanted as pets. The Center provides care with dignity in a safe, healthy, and enriching environment for great apes in need of lifetime care. Please visit the website to learn more. ALL donations go directly to support the Center. 

I am also thrilled to have won 2nd Prize for my colored pencil drawing Endangered White Rhinos and 3rd Prize for my colored pencil drawing Majestic in the Endangered Exhibit. 

Art Fluent Award

 An artist friend suggested I enter the Art Fluent Animalia exhibit so I sent in a few of my safari drawings. I was really excited when I learned that this drawing Majestic won one of the two Director's Choice Awards!

We met this beautiful elephant in Amboselli National Park in Kenya. We were riding in our safari jeep when he came out of the bushes and stood in a field not far from where we parked to observe. This elephant proceeded to put on a show for us by throwing dirt on his back to cool himself off as well as swaying and moving around. We must have stayed right where we were and watched for at least thirty minutes. I had plenty of time to study and photograph this beautiful creature. 

Image size is 13x14", colored pencil on rag mat board.

My Exhibition 'Into the Wild'

Here are several photos from my exhibit Into the Wild at the Providence Art Club Dodge House Gallery. The exhibit ended in mid April but was so rewarding to me. I spent over a year preparing and pretty much spent the last six months drawing, painting and framing. It was quite a journey, at time frustrating but in the end, very rewarding!

The opening was well attended by family, friends, colleagues and new friends. I was so thrilled to talk to the guests about my work and my safari travels to Africa. 

The last two photos are of my artist talk a few days before the exhibit ended, which was also well attended. Again I enjoyed talking about colored pencil, my work and my experiences on safari. 

I was thrilled to sell eight pieces during the exhibit and I am donating a portion of my sales to Lewa Wildlife Conservancy  Lewa focuses primarily on conservation of the white and black rhinos, Grevy’s Zebra and elephants. Lewa also promotes things like education, healthcare, clean water and youth empowerment for its community.

I thank everyone who came and supported me and my work and also to you reading this post!

 

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.

Sailing the Seas Book Sculpture

I have an Ocean Racing & Offshore Yachts book that someone gave me and had an idea to recreate a similar book sculpture I created a few years ago. I hand colored that other book sculpture with watercolors and later wished I had let it remain the natural whites of the pages. I created this piece with sculptures cut and folded from the pages in this book. Wow! It really is fun when I get going and good use for old books and old plastic drinking straws so they don't end up in the ocean!

I am part of an Altered Paper, Prints and Books exhibit that opens June 23rd, 2021 at Warwick Center for the Arts, Warwick, Rhode Island. The exhibit runs through July 24th with an opening reception on July 1st, 6:00 - 7:30 pm. Here are a few of my altered books.

 

Two Prize Winners & One Happy Artist!

I am really excited because two of my works of art have received recognition in art competitions in November! I've been staying home so much more this past year due to Covid as I know everyone else has been doing. No traveling and social distancing has given me much more time to focus on creating art in my studio. As I mentioned previously, I have been focusing on my collection of tea cups and setting them up in different ways in which to draw.

My colored pencil drawing A Fresh Start (left) was accepted into the Colored Pencil Society of America 28th Annual International Exhibition in the summer and in November it was also accepted into American Artist Professional League 92nd Grand National Exhibition. I was even more thrilled when I learned that it had also been awarded the Alma M. Preede Memorial Award for Graphics in the exhibit. 

There are some incredible works of art in the AAPL 92nd Exhibition in all different mediums. You can link and view the exhibit here. You can link to all of the award winners here.

This past week I learned that my colored pencil piece Hot Spots (right) was one of only 25 pieces accepted into the UArt 2020 on line Colored Pencil Competition. The contest is sponsored by UArt Sanded Paper Company and was open to any artist working with colored pencil on UArt sanded paper. You can view the 25 accepted entries here.

I send my congratulations to all other artists accepted into art competitions, working hard to create and exhibit!

Fine Points Drawing Exhibit at Bristol Art Museum

I am really excited to have been asked to guest curate this drawing exhibit at the Bristol Art Museum, Bristol, Rhode Island. I invited six artists who are proficient in their mediums and profound in their works of art. They are Deborah Friedman, Holly Bedrosian, Elizabeth A. Patterson and Susan Tait Porcaro (colored pencil), Kathie Miranda (colored pencil, silverpoint) and Tatiana Flis (graphite, colored pencil). You can click on their names to see more of their works on the individual websites. 

I am also exhibiting some of my handmade books containing colored pencil drawings. 

The exhibit opening reception is Friday, July 26 from 6-8 pm. I am hosting a Curator's Chat at 5:30 mp just before the opening on July 26th. 

The exhibit is open for preview Bristol/Warren Art Night Thursday July 25 from 5:30 to 8:30 pm. See the flyer below for more information and all of the Art Night stops.

The works of art in this exhibit are amazing, please stop in and you will surely be impressed by the wonderful drawings! Five of us are members of the Colored Pencil Society of America.

The exhibit runs through September 1.

Collecting Shells - Handmade Book in a Handmade Box

I just finished this handmade accordion book that folds up into a handmade box. I drew the seashell and sea life illustrations with black and white Faber Castell Polychromos colored pencils and Caran d'Ache Supracolor watercolor pencils on Strathmore Toned Tan drawing paper. I wanted to create this artwork using only tones of black, white and grays.

I built the box using book board and made the book cloth with this lovely fabric I found at a local fabric shop. The accordion book folds up into the box but can be displayed on it's side with the pages fanning out.

I enjoy creating small sketches and drawings and looking for new ways to present them instead of just in a sketchbook. I decided that I can create the drawings into handmade books and display them. This piece is going to be exhibited at the Bristol Art Museum, Bristol, RI. I am the guest curator of an upcoming drawing exhibit that opens Friday, July 26. More about that in my next post!

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 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. 

Exhibit at Gallery 175 Pawtucket, RI

Here are photos from our opening reception Sunday afternoon May 6, 2018.  Our exhibit is titled Three Draw and the following is the press release sent out by the gallery:

Gallery 175 will be showing artwork of three artists who use drawing to make highly creative visual statements. Drawing is often a tool used by artists to sketch or explore ideas that lead to finished works of art in another medium. But the drawings of Mary Dondero, Tatiana Flis, and Kendra Ferreira are developed as finished works of art that stand on their own.  Joan Hausrath, who curated the exhibit, selected the trio of artists based on their unique ways of working both technically and thematically. 

Mary Dondero’s drawings capture energy through gestural movements that convey a fundamental human quality that transforms feeling into meaning. Filling the field of her paper, Dondero choreographs a buildup of spontaneous marks into complex webs, tangles and patterns that connect with the viewer at a powerful, instinctual level.

Tatiana Flis, on-the-other-hand, draws delicate forms and images that explore relationships between the human psyche and moments of chaos, solitude, tension, excess and absence. Employing a surrealist language, she combines diverse imagery of the built and natural landscape in unlikely ways. The meshing of the fluidity of water media with the tightness of ruled architectonic forms hovering in empty spaces infuses her drawings with intrigue.

Skillfully working with colored pencils, Kendra Ferreira depicts ordinary subjects in focused, heighted and extraordinary ways. Colored pencils permit her to fuse the expressiveness of painting with the control of drawing, and by doing so, she is capable of conveying emotion, luminescence and compositional rhythms. Her drawings are bold and delicate, transparent and sturdy.

The public is invited to enjoy the art work at Gallery 175, located at 175 Main Street in downtown Pawtucket in the Blackstone Valley Visitor Center.  The gallery is open daily free to the public; the hours are 10 am to 4 pm.  

Pictured below are Joan Hausrath (gallery director) and the artists Mary Dondero, 

Tatiana Flies and myself.

Tatiana Flis graphite pencil and gouache works (above). 

Tatiana Flis and Kendra Ferreira works. 

Works by Mary Dondero

My artwork, shells and beach stones.

More works by Mary Dondero

My latest colored pencil work focusing on wrapped candy apples.