Playing Favorites: Chapter 11

Welcome to the 5th edition of The Pulse -- The State of the Art -- a survey in words and pictures of the online artist community. The Pulse is a collaborative project that aims to introduce you to new artists, help you get to know familiar faces even more, and allow you access into the creative hearts and minds of a very talented crew of individuals. More than 130 artists have answered a series of questions which make up The Pulse. Their responses will be presented in a series of online posts which will run every Sunday.

Style File, Techniques & Tools, Master Class, and It's Still Life were the first four projects posted and links to all these posts can be found on the sidebar of my blog. The fifth project, Playing Favorites, continues now...

Participants were asked to: share a picture of a favorite piece of art that you have created and explain its meaning to you...
------------------------------------------
David Hayes

"Over the Rhine. I took this from the sixth floor drawing studio at the Cincinnati Art Academy one Saturday winter morning with my Diana camera. I have been taking the same life drawing studio for over ten years...it is in this studio...with the same group of people over the years...that I started to find my artistic style and voice...to stop being so 'careful'. It's during model breaks that I stand by this window and look out over this part of  that has been undergoing a lot of renewal...much like my art."

Gillian McMurray

"My favourite piece is a graphite drawing of my sister's dog, Stanley. It was the first graphite piece I executed after reading the book Drawing from Line to Life by Mike Sibley. I learned so much about graphite from that book and even impressed myself with my drawing of Stanley."

Terry Rafferty

"Rhino II. It isn't so much that this is a 'favorite' piece of art, but that it was a new direction. Ink and watercolor force me to accept what happens in the moment. Here I'm experimenting with non-real color to capture my feelings about the subject rather than simply recording the subject."

Lesley Venable

"I created this altered tin as I was demonstrating to artists at Art is You in Stamford which already adds a specialness to it. I am drawn to the woman in the image...her expression shows a seeking or a looking  beyond what is visible to us. I wanted the viewer of the piece to have that same feeling and the transparency offers that - we see her but we see beyond her through the layers. The fact that you can also see a few of my fingerprints makes me feel even more a part of its creation and uniqueness."

Pat McNally

"I collect vintage mirrors and looking glasses. I saw an old hand mirror that had been Zentangled, and decided to give it a try. I love the way it turned out."

Paula Art

"I made that table. It is one of my favorites because it is all 'trash'. And I had no idea how to make a table. It reminds me that when things are suppose to happen they just DO!"

Denise Aumick

"I knew when I purchased an antique cigar mold that I wanted to fill it with test tubes and create a sense of new from the old, the circle of life. Renaissance of Wonder was further inspired by words from a Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem... "and I am awaiting perpetually and forever a renaissance of wonder".

Julie Prichard

"I get a lot of compliments on this series when people come to the house. I am very proud that it was featured on the cover of Somerset Studio...and I am also super proud that it was a collaboration with Seth Apter and Lynne Hoppe."

Kesha Bruce

"One of my favorite pieces I've made is a one of a kind handmade book about my grandmother Myrtle. For the project I created a series of books based on the lives if my maternal grandmother and her sisters, who lives in houses on the same street in Des Moines, Iowa for over forty years. Each sister is represented by a house. The interior of each house uses a combination of text and images to present narrative about each of their lives."

Rhomany

"My favorite piece is aways the last one I made. I'm not sure why. Perhaps because I'm so closely invested in it at that moment in time. But also, I feel that with each piece I learn something new or improve on something, which makes it 'better' in terms of technique. Rapunzel is part of a set that I was working on when this question was asked. I wanted to make use of decorative borders and I am really pleased with how they've come out."

Billie's Craft Room

 "Grunge board book Christmas design. This is my favourite as it is where my different artistic skills came together in a single project for the first time: rubber stamping, bookbinding and painting."

Roseann Cazares

"My piece best illustrates how I feel about life and my artwork. I create art for me because I have to; creating art is something I do - like breathe."

Playing Favorites: Chapter 10

Welcome to the 5th edition of The Pulse -- The State of the Art -- a survey in words and pictures of the online artist community. The Pulse is a collaborative project that aims to introduce you to new artists, help you get to know familiar faces even more, and allow you access into the creative hearts and minds of a very talented crew of individuals. More than 130 artists have answered a series of questions which make up The Pulse. Their responses will be presented in a series of online posts which will run every Sunday.

Style File, Techniques & Tools, Master Class, and It's Still Life were the first four projects posted and links to all these posts can be found on the sidebar of my blog. The fifth project, Playing Favorites, continues now...

Participants were asked to: share a picture of a favorite piece of art that you have created and explain its meaning to you...
------------------------------------------

Dayna Collins

"The Morning Smelled of the River. This piece incorporates the many things that I love: limestone clay on a wood substrate, which allowed me to paint, scratch, add texture, sand away, and add more layers. It also has a niche, so I was able to add a 3-D element, in this case, a stack of river rocks. This piece represents a peaceful, natural setting brought indoors."

Barbara Kleinhans

"Thicket was one of those paintings that I consider a happy accident. I mixed the background color using the remnants of paint from a very old tube, along with a few other colors. The wet color was shockingly bright and I decided rather quickly that I'd have to paint over it. Then it dried to a beautiful deep curry color. I keep a color journal and had documented my color recipe but have been unable to replicate it."

Dorothy Simpson Krause

"This book, 9/11+5, was conceived in response to the question, 'What can an individual do about the war in Iraq?". It first existed as a drum leaf book, 5.75" x 5.5", with acrylic paste paint and collograph printed pages on Fabriano paper, ceramic covers painted with acrylic and red kangaroo spine. The pages were scanned and text added in Photoshop. It can be seen as a page turning flip book here."

Stacey Merrill

"Carnivore, a Polaroid emulsion transfer, is one of the few pieces I have carried around for years. In the early 90s I took a museum sketching class, which included working from Antoine Louis-Barye's bronze Tiger Attacking an Antelope. Drawing in the museum was a great experience. I found myself really looking at the art plus got over my discomfort with onlookers. Years later I had fun reinterpreting this sketch using the emulsion transfer technique. The fluid nature of the wet film gave me room to play, tearing at the edges to add energy to the piece."

Bonnie Clark

"Decay 1 is a chine colle print created using a solarplate created from a photograph taken in Chinatown of a graffiti covered wall, Akua printmaking inks, and Chinese joss paper. It reminds me that beauty and meaning often lie beneath the surface and aren't always recognizable to everyone."

Julie Shackson

"This Blue Earth is a mixed media collage that portrays the micro and macrocosmic patterns repeated on different scales. It's an old work that I've never parted with because it's where I discovered what I wanted to say."

Lise Hoffman

"This is a part of a piece called Jazz en Ciel, created in 2010. This is a summer night in a castle in France, during a Jazz concert. The piece was reflecting the warm atmosphere and wonderful sky on that night."

Laura J. Wellner

"I want more out of life 2008. The title says it all - I always come back to this one for a benchmark. There are parts of this drawing that are in perfect pitch for me, and then there are parts that are textured meanderings that seem to go nowhere and are seeking, exploring (like the grape vines sending out its tendrils to reach out and grasp and grow) - I love the random nature of it and the depth."

Marianne Konvalinka

"Dream On. The first mixed media piece I did that I really liked. Love the prussian blue, the cards, my handprints, the raven. People see this at shows and stand in front of it and talk about how they could look at it a long time and always see something new. I love that about it. Successful use of transfers, stencils and layers. Good rock n roll name."

Pat Pitingolo

"The sum is greater than the parts."

Marion Bockelmann

"Vintage Woodland journal page. I made this book page for a tip-in project and didn't have any idea at first what to do for a journal with this theme. Then when I began gathering material appropriate for the theme, I began to be excited about it and a whole quiet world seemed to grow before my eyes."

Terry Garrett

"Keys to Contentment. I made this a few years back. It represents the special place my partner and I like to go on the north shore of Lake Superior."

Robert Stockton

"Approaching Fear is a shadowbox (one of what I call my scrapboxes). The title has a double meaning, which is, to me, almost like a question and an answer: fear is approaching someone, but that 'someone' has ways of dealing with, or 'approaching' this fear as well (a negative countered by a positive!)."

------------------------------------------

Next "Playing Favorites" will be posted on Sunday, October 28th and will be the last in the "Favorites" series.

Playing Favorites: Chapter 9

Welcome to the 5th edition of The Pulse -- The State of the Art -- a survey in words and pictures of the online artist community. The Pulse is a collaborative project that aims to introduce you to new artists, help you get to know familiar faces even more, and allow you access into the creative hearts and minds of a very talented crew of individuals. More than 130 artists have answered a series of questions which make up The Pulse. Their responses will be presented in a series of online posts which will run every Sunday.

Style File, Techniques & Tools, Master Class, and It's Still Life were the first four projects posted and links to all these posts can be found on the sidebar of my blog. The fifth project, Playing Favorites, continues now...

Participants were asked to: share a picture of a favorite piece of art that you have created and explain its meaning to you...
------------------------------------------

Theresa Wells Stifel

"She is a new favorite as I enjoy the tension between awkward and beautiful"

Marit Barentsen

"If it be your will. The label 'scrapbooker' never fit me well, and it took me some time to discover why. I found the answer when I found 'art journaling.' That was what I was doing all the time, but in an inhibited way. I somehow knew that what I did wasn't the traditional 'scrapbooking' but I had no clue which way my 'art' should go. After my discovery, I started my first art journal, using songs of Leonard Cohen as my inspiration. This page is from that journal, and it was an eye-opener to new ways of creating."

Katherine Labbe AKA Miz Katie

"Be Still, Child. This comes from a vivid memory I have of my mom, and how she would tell me to stand outside in the snow with a tiny piece of bread on my hand. She said if I was quiet and still enough, a bird would land on me, and I would get to feed him. Aw! Of course I wanted to do that! But I was a hyper little thing and I could never make myself stand still long enough...so I had to create a painting. There! Be still and let the bird land in your hand, child."

Pam Carriker

"I was feeling the DaVinci muse calling and love the feeling this simple sketch has. I've scanned and reused the rough sketch of this face in many other pieces of art and even had it made into a stamp. I love that I've been able to paint it, use it in my journal, stamp it, and create many pieces of art all from one sketch."

Sharmon Davidson

"Dimensional Shift is about intense change, and probably came out of an effort on my party to make sense of the chaos that was my life at the time. The map on the left is the physical world, which gives way to the cosmos and then spiritual realm, symbolized by the sri yantra (configuration of triangles) in the background. The gold figure, though torn apart, is spiritually intact - the chakras are not broken, and the wings indicate the ability to transform and move freely between realities. The darker figure emerging from it is simply the self in another dimension."

Lottie Anderson

"I have finally broken away from painting or mark making to create what the figure looks like but how the figure s feel to me. I am starting to let go, to do less thinking about the work and instead responding to what is happening on the support."

Jacki Long

"She was four. Not a beauty, yet not all the way plain. Tiny, not tall. Brown hair and browner eyes. Probably not unlike any four year old, except for her quiet intensity. A seriousness uncommon to those so young.

A single child, long by handsome parents. But they had their own problems, both individually and together which left the girls with lots of alone time. Time for thoughts and dreams. Maybe, in some ways, she was older than either her parents,but she seemed to accept that as a given.

She could sit alone in her parents closet occupied by her thoughts, oblivious to the shouting coming from the kitchen. She wasn't there as punishment, rather by choice.  She had visions of places far away, exotic people and locals, where she had been or would be..."

Natasha White

"This was a painting that was entered into my first juried art exhibition to celebrate Matariki, the Maori New Year. It is titles Coming Home Bravely and it is about new beginnings and finding our way. Charging forth bravely on stormy seas and having faith that there is a guide bigger than us directing the seas that surround us, bringing us home to ourselves. This come out very differently to how I had originally seen it in my head, but I am glad I followed my intuition and let it come out this way."

Lelainia N. Lloyd

"West Coast. This self portrait was taken on Mother's Day with my then brand new Canon Rebel and it was the first time I'd used a DSLR camera. I surprised myself by capturing something that is so quintessentially me and speaks so clearly to my life here on the West Coast of Canada. To me it's a piece of visual poetry. What made me even more proud of this image was that I did nothing to it - what you see is what I shot."

dorit Elisha

"This collage represents me, my personality and my artistic style. It is done on a vintage map, and although it is very large, it serves as a journal page that demonstrates the busy life of a women artist who is also a mother, a wife, a professional worker etc. Life indeed for me is a five ring circus, which is also the name of my blog."

Kelly Kilmer

"I work in journal form so my work tends to be very persona;. I have built up a visual vocabulary of symbols and images that speak fro me. I am always searching for peace (both in myself and the world around me). This pages visualizes one of those fragile moments where I am searching, yet as I search, I am attaining a small moment of peace as I work quietly in my journal."

Lynn Cohen

"I am Descended from. It's the black and white with photos of the women in my family who came before me and my grand daughter. They are my two grand mothers, maternal and paternal aunts, and mother. The words around the small art quilt say 'I am descended from women who sewed and knit drew painted and photographed...I pass on the you in me to my grandchildren with love...Thank you grandmothers mothers and aunts'."

Liz Hampton-Derivan

"A Night in June was created for a Day of the Dead show at Central School Project Art Gallery, Bisbee, Arizona, in 2009. It is a tribute to my mother who dies of cancer in 2005. The piece is a mixed media/encaustic installation incorporating photographs of my mother, her poetry, and things he loved, such as chocolate, champagne, and white roses. It was a meaningful way for me to express my love/feelings for my mother."

Erin Perry

"I mounted a solo show last year called The Pity of War, featuring mixed media collages of WWI and WWII. These all brought up poignant feelings, but one piece in particular - What Price Safety, What Price Love - grabs my heart every time I look at it. Three young children waiting at King's Cross Station London in 1940, to be taken to the country, away from the horrors of bombing and away from the only home they've ever known. At the show, evacuees, now in their 70s and 80s stood before this piece with tears in their eyes."

Anne M. Huskey-Lockard

"Art, science, medicine and life used to be intertwined. From the days of the Staff of Asclepius to the present, humanity continues to seek healing on many levels but ultimately we are finite creatures. Art is healing."

------------------------------------------

Next "Playing Favorites" will be posted on Sunday, October 21st.

Playing Favorites: Chapter 8

Welcome to the 5th edition of The Pulse -- The State of the Art -- a survey in words and pictures of the online artist community. The Pulse is a collaborative project that aims to introduce you to new artists, help you get to know familiar faces even more, and allow you access into the creative hearts and minds of a very talented crew of individuals. More than 130 artists have answered a series of questions which make up The Pulse. Their responses will be presented in a series of online posts which will run every Sunday.

Style File, Techniques & Tools, Master Class, and It's Still Life were the first four projects posted and links to all these posts can be found on the sidebar of my blog. The fifth project, Playing Favorites, continues now...

Participants were asked to: share a picture of a favorite piece of art that you have created and explain its meaning to you...
------------------------------------------
Kathryn Dyche Dechairo

"Ablaze. The texture represents the many layers to life while the red tree represents love, emotions and strength."

Victoria Payne

"The Mandrake was my first breakthrough piece circa about 2005. He was the first manifestation of my art experiments that joined my figurative drawing and my love of dimensional embroidery."

annie!

"One of my favorite pieces of art is my rendition of Gustav Klimt's The Kiss. I've always loved the original and thought about making it in fabric for years. I used scraps (exclusively) that most would throw away."

Rachel Whetzel

"I made this piece from bits and pieces during my time spent beach combing on the Oregon coast. It reminds me of the time we used to spend on the coast camping when I was a kid, and the hours we would spend looking for treasures there. All of the pieces remind me of all the weeks spent by the campfire, or in our trailer, reading books and drinking hot coco with marshmallows."

Laura Lein-Svencner

"She Walks With Me. This is a picture I made of myself at age 86...which I'm not. It's structure is made of cardboard brown paper bags and denim jeans with yarn and natural found objects. I have always pictured myself as a woods woman from a very young age...that was my safe haven to go, it's where I felt I belonged. 

Stephanie Brouwers

"My favorite piece of art is what I call my Voodoo necklace. It's a never ending piece...a few times a year it gets an update. This necklace is about connections. Connections with the past - some elements are pretty old - and connections with people - some elements were given to me be friends from all over the world and some are part of the history of my family."

Sharon Read

"This is one in a series of 60+ spirals of the soul that contain remnants of fabrics, text. papers, small bits and pieces of prints, and oddments of my life. These little bundles were put together to represent my memories all bundled up and safe within me. Some are bound whilst others were open to see a little of the narrative."

Susan Madden

"This is one of my favorite pieces because I like the layered and dimensional look I got and I also like the texture the thick watercolor paper imposed on the surface. I also like the fact that I haven't nailed this piece down yet (or framed it), as I continue to add marks to it every time I pull it out of the almost drawer."

Maude May

"we only have this moment. An unexpected snow, a lovely midnight walk with my dog, through our silent neighborhood. Capturing moments to create and share my vision is what I live for."

Diane Ferguson

"A double woven tube with Deconstructed Screen Printing is the result of taking a risk. Hand weaving cloth is a time consuming process and using DSP on it is a split second leap of faith. Another Opening reinforced my desire to combine these techniques for unexpected results."

Deryn Mentock

"Home Town is a piece I created for my mom, who also happens to be one of my best friends. It's made with elements that hold great meaning for her...and myself. It's a heirloom piece..filled with memories."

Cory Celaya

"Mauve Morning Cuff. I love to create art jewelry with off the wall and found object materials. Taking odd materials, fabric, paint, and heat, then turning it into something totally different is my passion."

Gail Pierce

"This is the first fabric art piece that wasn't a struggle for me; everything fell into place. Purple and yellow aren't colors I normally choose, but the fabric was on my worktable directly under the black/grey piece of fabric, serenipitious perhaps? The focal point fabric was also on my worktable. The three fabrics used in this piece were either hand-dyed or printed in my studio."

------------------------------------------

Next "Playing Favorites" will be posted on Sunday, October 14th.