Glorious Glass...

 

For this post, my blog will be like a travelogue or a gallery tour. I had the wonderful opportunity to travel to Asheville, NC, to visit The Biltmore House and the Chihuly at Biltmore exhibit. Oh my, I love Dale Chihuly glass creations. I've seen them before at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, AZ, and the Chihuly Collection in St. Petersburg, FL. But they are worth seeing again and again! Near the entry of the exhibit we saw this spectacular array of colorful Navajo design wool trade blankets, many made by Pendleton Woolen Mills. Chihuly's collection of the vintage blankets inspired the vessels you'll see next. 

You can see the influence of the woven threads that were created with thin glass rods in these cylinders. They are part of his "Navajo Blanket Cylinders" series.

Native American designs of the Pacific Northwest later appeared in the glass vessels when he captured the soft sag of native baskets in his Soft Cylinders series. The shadow on the wall illustrates how translucent these colorful glass cylinders are. From the left are Pyrol Orange Soft Cylinder with Verditer Blue Lip Wrap; Rose Soft Cylinder with Forest Green Lip Wrap; Sun Yellow Soft Cylinder with Green Lip Wrap; and Verdant Green Soft Cylinder with Poppy Lip Wrap. So there's a new technical term for you- lip wrap! Just beautiful and the lip wraps provide just the right color accents.

Here we have Black Vivid Yellow Soft Cylinder with Scarlet Lip Wrap and Black Chartreuse Soft Cylinder with Forest Green Lip Wrap. Even the darker glass allows the light to shine through.

In another part of the exhibit we were treated to Chihuly's Icicle pieces. Each icicle is blown glass and then the individual pieces are assembled into either a tower, like this one, or a chandelier which hangs from the ceiling. Just imagine transporting and assembling these glass structures!

This is Radiant Yellow Icicle Chandelier with Royal Blue Icicle Tower in the background.

Is one Icicle Tower not enough? Are you wanting more? OK then, here are three of a kind- Serpentine Green Icicle Towers. Just amazing. I'll stop now, but there will be a Glorious Glass, Part 2 coming soon. Chihuly's work is so electrifying!

Trash-tastic...

 

Yes, trash-tastic is a made-up word. But still... the Upcycle 2: Turning Waste Into Wonder exhibit is pretty fantastic. It's true especially when you know the art entries had humble beginnings as items that most people throw away! Textile artist Josephine Leyte-Vidal fashioned two jackets. "Fancy Patchwork", left, and "His Jeans and Ties", right- are shown here in front of "Grouper", a wallhanging made from scrap wood and metals. The creativity on display was varied and fun.

Take, for instance, plastic bottles and packaging. They never looked so good. Artist Elizabeth Eichelberger fashioned them into "Ladybug Landing," so dainty and glass-like.

A number of pieces are metal assemblages. Andrew Nichols made "Rapanui" using a shovel head, horseshoes, and rebar. And feathers. Would you say he is fierce or friendly?

I'm always drawn to fish sculptures. This one contains all kinds of familiar objects like keys, license plates, metal roofing, and even a dog's rabies tag. "Ferromagnetic Bass" by Kenneth DeMoliner is mounted on reclaimed lumber.

"Industrial Fowl" is by David Kellner and is formed from metal strapping on a brake pad base. Check out the beak. I had to read the card info to realize it's created with pliers! It's a surprisingly graceful bird given all that metal. The red stickers on the info cards indicate that the piece has been purchased.

A second piece by Elizabeth Eichelberger is "The Tree of Life". She created it using a lampshade ring, copper wiring, and beads from a discarded necklace. Each entrant could submit two upcycled entries for consideration.

These two shadow boxes are made by Rodney Acosta. At left, "The Temple of the Sun" is assembled using a dresser pull, a painted wooden box, plastic and metal figurines, and glass bottles. At right, "The Throne of the Queen Bee" began with a resin home dec curtain holder, a painted wooden box, assorted brass trims, and metal figures.

I had my picture taken by my entry- "Bodacious Graffiti Heart". See the little red sticker? It's going home with a new owner. You can see how I made the heart in my previous post here.

Brick City Center for the Arts is located in downtown Ocala, FL, and the exhibit is still on for a few days next week. Check the link, and call ahead to confirm open hours if you'd like to see all of these entries and more. There's a lovely gift shop section in the gallery, too.

Trashy Vibes...

 

It's time for Upcycle 2: Turning Waste Into Wonder. Our local Marion Cultural Alliance (MCA) is once again sponsoring an exhibit at Brick City Center for the Arts in Ocala, Florida, during Earth Month. The exhibit was so popular last year, that the board decided to bring it again. I entered two projects, both of which were accepted and are on display now. This is the "Bodacious Graffiti Heart" wallhanging. The upcycled materials include the fabric from a discarded blue umbrella, "plarn" (twisted plastic bag yarn) for the hanger, pink foam fruit wrap sheets for the rose embellishments, and a yarn and fiber tassel that includes the label from the umbrella. It was great fun to envision and make!

Here's a closeup of the foam sheet flower that I stitched and gathered. The heart shape is sewn from the umbrella fabric and stuffed with dry cleaner plastic bags. I used fabric and acrylic paint on the umbrella fabric prior to sewing.

My second entry is this "Trashy Journal". The pretty pink floral print is a shipping bag from a fashion retailer.  It's stitched onto a bubble mailer bag to give it a squishy softness. I then decorated the cover with a corrugated cardboard collage from yarn, lace, trims, and a cute girl image cut from fabric scraps. The heart beads on the spine decoration are made from cardboard packaging material. And inside there are "Franken-paper" pages pieced together from security envelopes and other mailers.

Here's a section of the umbrella fabric in process with stenciling and other painted techniques applied.

MCA members who wanted to participate in the exhibit this year were invited to visit Florida Express, a local recycling center and sponsor of the exhibit. I wasn't sure I'd find much in the way of fiber at the site, but I went because I was interested to see the facility. Upon entering we saw these mega-pound bales of shredded materials all compacted and ready to ship to the industries that will turn the material into useful objects. I was impressed with how tidy the facility is.

A mountain of shreds awaits baling.

The assemblage artists on our field trip enjoyed dumpster diving to find their treasures. Hard hats were required for safety. I'll show you what they fashioned in my next post after I visit the exhibit.

The waste trucks back into the warehouse space and drop their loads. Workers then sort and separate what can be shredded from the metal items. It's a well-run operation and was an education that made the visit worthwhile. That, and finding the lonely blue umbrella awaiting its transformation! The workers at the site were all interested and helpful, wondering what the artists would find and make from all this trash. One of them obligingly and carefully cut the fabric from the umbrella frame for me. 

Less is More- Keeping it Simple...

 

Our month-of-February lesson for Fodder School 3 was taught by artist/instructor Jennifer Wilkin Penick. I'm sharing the work I did in her classes here. But first off, I'll offer a bit of info about Fodder School 3. It's a year-long series of classes in mixed media art. There is a new teacher and project each month. During one half of the month, students get instruction in the artist's special and favorite techniques for creating papers and elements referred to as "fodder." 

Then, in the other half of the month, the elements come together in a creative project. The variety of projects and methods keeps Fodder School always interesting. 

Jennifer's lessons focused first on painting and embellishing an assortment of papers we would use in our projects. The lessons certainly helped me to look at paper designs in a different way. We even used magazine paper and old book pages.

Modifying the papers once they were painted was a fun endeavor, and it only added to the many choices we'd have once it came to making our projects. I'm always a fan of recycling the liners from security envelopes, and popping a few of them into the mix became a really nice accent. 

A close look will reveal that the vase in this still-life began as a sheet of music paper. 

Jennifer titled her project Simple Shapes Sampler. Starting with a simple shape and then building a collage arrangement from them was very relaxing and creative. These little shapes remind me of tongue depressors. Pretty simple! 

Floral designs were fun.

And just picture the blizzard of paper scraps generated when we began to cut these pie shapes. Putting them together in colorful wheels was more fun than cleaning up the workspace afterwards.

One flower leads to another. The variations on a theme could go on and on.

And here's the entire project- a concertina book. It's a challenge to photograph one of these as they stretch out across the desk. But you get the idea. 

A feature of a concertina book is that it can showcase a lot of these collages in a small space, and then it folds up nicely. This was such an enjoyable project. Would you be surprised if I told you that I have plenty of little shapes left over with which to make even more delightful collages? It's true!

Hearts Can Be Art...

Vintage photos- always a fan! When a friend posted some family photos recently, I was quite taken with them. This is her grandmother, married at 15 and then following her life's work as a mother and a baker in an Italian bakery. I thought the pose was so graceful and serene, and the photo very expressive. So I printed out a copy and made this Valentine gift to send her. A little lace, some pearls and other embellishments and this mixed media project came together nicely. Size-wise it can be hung on a door knob or drawer pull as a decorative accent. 

Another friend in a local sewing group shared her family photos, too. This portrait of her grandmother was so strikingly artistic. Quite often the people in old photos are staring fixedly at the camera with stoic looks on their faces. But this one looks as if it could have come from a modern-day photo shoot for someone's Instagram page! I thought it was uncommonly pretty, so again made a copy and put together this tag. Those rosy pearls are also a family treasure so I included part of the strand with all the lace and trims. These photo projects are such fun to make and a way to pay tribute to people from the past.

 And in a more current trend, this post card is one of several I made in Alisa Burke's online class titled Graffiti Love. We learned to play with paint layers and messy, expressive lettering and symbols in our art projects. There are ten affordable lessons in the class, and it's another source of mixed media learning and fun! I've just scratched the surface with this one. 

Green Acres is the Place To Be....

 

Farm livin' is the life for me. I had to hum that song from the old Green Acres tv series while making this peaceful quilt. The center is a beautiful painted image digitally printed on fabric. And the surrounding border blocks are the ones I made from scraps. I have stacks of those blocks, which I learned are called Switch Plate blocks. An apt name. Having them on hand makes putting together a quick quilt like this one quite easy. The only thing I needed was to piece square units for the corners. I showed another Cowboy panel quilt quickly made with similar blocks here. My husband Jack has claimed this pastoral quilt to hang in our home because it reminds him of our horse farm. We don't have big red barns here in Florida, but we do have green pastures and contented animals.

Here's one of those contented animals. Other than horses, our critters are rescues that have found their way here one way or another. This is Scooter. He arrived at our barn one October morning over a decade ago. Shivering and full of fleas, he melted our hearts. The vet estimated his age at the time to be only about 12 weeks old. So I'm not sure where he came from, or how, but we just love our Scooter. He has enough mixed breeds in him that we just call him a Florida Brown. What would be your best guess at his dominant breed? Would it surprise you to know that his DNA test results showed Weimaraner? It did surprise us!

Iggy, the Silver Tuxedo cat arrived after running out in front of our daughter's car on her way to work. She took him home and secured him for the day, but knew her two cats would not welcome a kitten. So we took him in. I shared his story and "baby pictures" in this post. 

Freckles the Quarter Horse is the one horse we have now. After Jack broke his hip in a fall two years ago (not horse-related he is quick to point out), we were unsure if he'd be able to ride again. The good news is that he is able to, and Freckles gets ridden nearly every day. Part of Freckles' mission has been to take part in competitions with the University of Florida Western Equestrian team. Student teams from several colleges draw for the horses they will ride in each class. The horses are loaned to the home team by various supportive horse people. The students love to draw Freckles as their ride, and he's been a popular guy. He's retired from that now that he's aging.

But he's still up for his daily rides in the paddocks at our farm.

Another resident of Oak View Farm is Abby. Abby came home with Jack from her mis-adventures as a drop off near the Interstate. Very thin, young, and needing some TLC, she's been here for nearly 10 years now. From time to time we discuss whether we need to down-size from our 10 acre farm as we grow older. But this crew is a big part of our consideration, and they love it here! So we all agree- we'll stay for now.

A Trip to The Appleton Museum for Art Deco...

Our local museum in Ocala, The Appleton Museum of Art, put on a very well-done exhibit titled "Skylines to Hemlines: Art Deco." It began with a poster describing Art Deco as a movement in arts and architecture that was internationally popular during the 1920s and 1930s. It might be thought of as "between the two World Wars". The style originated in France, but its popularity quickly spread worldwide. And the characteristics include streamlined shapes and clean, simple lines. Symmetry like that seen in the graphic image above is also a characteristic.

The exhibit also began with a timeline showing the span of popularity for Art Deco, and it highlighted important historical events. In our case locally, even the filming of the Tarzan movies at Silver Springs (home of the famous glass bottom boats) throughout the 1930s and beyond was featured on the timeline. The wool tapestry fragment above depicted scenes of warfare, including the powerful searchlights used to spot enemy aircraft during nighttime raids.

This textile fragment from the late 1920s shows a military transport Zeppelin along with US and Japanese flags.

This colorful portrait poster was the work of French artist jean Chassaing and featured celebrated performer Josephine Baker, an American-born singer who spent her career primarily in France. According to the information with the poster, even her hairstyle, known as an Eaton cap, features the clean, simple lines of the Art Deco era.

Of course fashion reflected the Art Deco era as in this silk chiffon and velvet dress.

Woolen swimsuits, mostly one-piece style, were on display.

The appliqued designs in the woolen suits (also waterproof) fit the style.

Here's another example of symmetry, line and shape that mark Art Deco architecture. It's very pleasing.

 This was one of my favorite images in the exhibit. The architecture and fashion were certainly expected features in this event- they were both in the title, after all. The surprise to me was the number of everyday household objects that were included to reflect the Art Deco style. There were radios, beds, dressers, mirrors, hairbrushes, brushed chrome and brass coffee pots, cigarette cases, jewelry- so many common yet familiar items. With music of the era playing in the background, the exhibit was a pleasure to view. It's on until the 14th of January, so there are a few days left if you can fit a trip to the Appleton into your schedule. But if not, do enjoy these photos!