Art on Exhibit!

I spent the morning hanging my solo show. I have been working all summer to get ready for this exhibit -- making new work, and matting, framing and mounting existing work. It was fantastic to see it all hanging together on big white walls!

The opening reception is tomorrow night, Thursday September 23rd from 7 - 8:30 pm. The exhibition is held at the Edward J Duffy Art Gallery at the Canterbury School in New Milford CT. The show runs through October 14 and the gallery is open to the public weekdays from 8 -3 and Saturdays from 8-12 or by appt (860-210-3800).


On exhibit are over 50 pieces, including the first public showing of the first half of the Loteria series and many other new works. I've discovered one drawback to working on a small scale - it takes a LOT of work to fill a gallery!

Many of the Loteria series are on display, as well as an assortment of gyotaku fiber and paper collages, insect work in a variety of formats, some new pieces inspired by cell phone photography and a few three-dimensional fiber houses.

I hope you can stop by!

El Cotorro

Lotería Collage Project

24 - El Cotorro (the parrot)

La Luna

Lotería Collage Project

23 - La Luna (the moon)

Finally! A few new pieces in the Loteria series. I'm nearly halfway there at this point and have started matting and framing the finished pieces.

La Bota

Lotería Collage Project

22 - La Bota (the boot)

I'm making progress on this series, slowly but steadily. I have been collecting some wonderful square frames in Ikea to frame the whole collection (with an eye toward a potential show) and yesterday discovered that I'll have to recut all of the mats. The openings on the mats included with the frames are about 1/2" too small. Bummer.

La Mano

Lotería Collage Project

21 - La Mano (the hand)

I love this one. The card is cool and these are some of my favorite colors.

Loteria - first 20

Lotería Collage Project

This is what the first 20 lotería blocks look like next to each other. Progress is being made and things are happening!

This weekend, among other things, I've been working on my first offering of online classes. Stay tuned for the full descriptions and sign-up information. There will be a project class, a process class and a class focused on how to jump start your art career. Whee!

El Pajaro

Lotería Collage Project

20 El Pajaro (the bird)

It feels good to get back into this project. The first 20 of the total 54 are done. I've collected 10 frames from various trips to Ikea and will start matting and framing some of these little blocks.

An update on La Garza from yesterday: I had not heat set the ink on the letters I had erroneously stamped and this morning I tried blotting them with a damp paper towel. Wouldn't you know, they came off, completely and totally! Project save.  I stamped some innocuous flower shapes where the letters were, as the space still needed something.

19 La Garza (the heron) revised

La Garza

Lotería Collage Project



19 La Garza (the heron)

I was all excited to get back to my loteria project and I laid out this block and stitched and stamped away and stepped back happily only to realize that La Garza means the heron in English, not Flamingo, like I stamped along the lower edge. So here's my conundrum: do I re-do the block because, although a flamingo is a type heron (I think), the translation of the Spanish word is not technically correct or do I leave it alone and risk looking silly? Oof.

Postcards from the edge

Okay, maybe not from the edge, but some days are more interesting than others. Still transitioning into a whole new life, still trying to find structure and organization in the midst of change and still trying to get caught up, but I'm getting there.

I'm knocking things off my list and working toward some big deadlines. I have a wonderful group of people signed up for the June Printmaking for Art Quilters workshop next weekend.

And I've nearly finished the postcards that I owe to some very patient people. Postmark'd Art, the fantastic postcard group that I've belonged to for the past 4-5 years, had a theme of mixed media this spring and I used Loteria cards to create mine. Of course, I couldn't just mixed the media, I mixed the cultures too. The red stamp is one that my brother brought back for me from a trip to China. It's really beautiful, I love the scale of it with the Mexican loteria cards.

And to mix more culture in here, I finished a really good book last night, Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah, about his youth in Sierra Leone during the civil war. It was hard to read because of the subject matter but the honesty of the author made it very worthwhile. I highly recommend it.

El Violoncello

Lotería Collage Project



18 El Violoncello (the cello)

My project got slightly derailed by a weekend away and an overload at work, but I'm getting back on track now. Next week I hope to start the matting and framing of some of the pieces, after a trip to Ikea. They have a marvelous 10" square frame that will be perfect.

El Bandolon

Lotería Collage Project



17 El Bandolon (the mandolin)

La Bandera

Lotería Collage Project



16 La Bandera (the flag)

The weather is not cooperating with this project. It's too cold in my studio to work most evenings. Not fun on so many levels, at home and at the store. The pipes froze at the shop on Saturday and burst in two places (it was minus 15 without a windchill in the morning). Plumbers are in short supply because everyone's having the same problem.

I'm very wearily starting a countdown - 61 days until Spring.

La Pera

Lotería Collage Project



15 La Pera (the pear)

La Muerte

Lotería Collage Project



14 La Muerte (death)

El Gorrito

Lotería Collage Project



13 El Gorrito (the bonnet)

El Valiente

Lotería Collage Project



12 El Valiente (the hero)

Not sure what he's warding off, and look, he dropped his hat!

El Melon

Lotería Collage Project



11 El Melon (like it says...)

El Arbol

Lotería Collage Project



10 El Arbol (the tree)

The fact that it's been less than 50 degrees in my studio when I get home from work at night is wreaking havoc with my best-laid plans to post a new piece every day. I probably should have started this when the weather was warmer, but there's something so symmetrical about starting a new project on the first of the year. Tonight I sewed with a parka, scarf and hat on and baby, that machine was COLD to the touch. Brrrr. (Couldn't sew with my mittens on, though I tried.)

El Barril

Lotería Collage Project



09 El Barril (the barrel)

La Botella

Lotería Collage Project



08 La Botella (the bottle)