Sunday, October 30, 2011

Duck Pile


 Hybrid Mallard

 Duck-pile

Crock-o-goose


Sunday, October 23, 2011

Orchid show at the Muttart

Sweetie and I went to view the orchids at the Muttart last saturday. It took him 5 minutes and me an hour. I'm glad they put benches for people to sit and enjoy the orchid display, though Gerald almost fell asleep waiting. He so endearing.
I cannot tell you orchids names and as they are all greenhouse grown I shall not be looking them up, enjoy their beauty!





Stripes, dots and color galore.

The one above and the one below are huge plants, tall enough that the large blossoms loom over head.

This white orchid is placed in front of the water wall so I attempted to capture the water movement behind the blossoms, this is the closest to what I was aiming for.
Stunning displays set with props and stories.

The skull would be great for halloween.




A floral arrangement.









Quite a lot of thought and work have gone into setting up these displays, packing so much into a rather small space.



Artsy fartsy shot using the building structure as part of the composition. I rather like the contrasts and tone of the blue sky and green wall setting off the soft yellow orchids.



After two years of emails and phone calls requesting to be on the list of invited artists for the orchid art display in the atrium and being told I would be on the mailing list, sadly my petition fell through the cracks again, sigh. It says its a juried show though I highly doubt it as they did not put out a call for artists. I have a few beautiful paintings that I wanted to exhibit, oh well, maybe next year.
Hope you enjoyed the orchids, I sure did. Hugs!

Friday, October 7, 2011

So many ideas, so many alternative creating adventures.

I took a break from painting this summer. I could use the excuse it was due all the yard work that needed to be done even though I mostly held supervisor position rather than the worker per say. Truth be told, creativity ever continues as my brain generates many ideas for projects, paintings, mixed media work and I would drive me absolutely stark raving mad were I not creating in some manner. So here are a few items I have created these past few months.

Reuse, Recycle, Repurpose. Every artist needs to make a piece of kitch art in their life time, so here is mine.
Garden art, "Mary Mary Quite Contrary how does your garden grow".
Sea shells, marbles, buttons, etc and Mary placed under an upside-down fishbowl.
 Two blue plastic fish I bought off sweet little six and seven year old gals at their garage sale.  The fish were originally for another piece I am working on but they work rather well teasing at the skirt of Mary.
 The pearl flower was my grandmothers clip-on earring.
 Oh, look at Mary's bow!
From the top down, marbles glued with weld bond glue to an antiquish jar I have had since youth, cheap mardi-gras beads adhered to lip, small glass container, flat glass bead drops glued upon an upside down fish bowl encasing Mary watering her sea garden, all of which sits atop a sandy looking ceramic canister.
It is meant to be a garden piece though I am a bit afraid it may break outdoors in the elements. It may have to go in a sheltered shop.

Our dear ones came for an early thanksgiving and sleep-over. It was wonderful to spend time with our grandchild and our families. As our floors are all stripped to bare cement to ease morning cold foot syndrome I made a rag rug to place by the bedside in the guest room. It took two full days to complete, I have renewed admiration for the work that goes into the Hutterite rugs I see at the farmers market, I now know they are well worth the 60-80 dollars they charge.
My rug is pretty lumpy, bumpy and rustic, though feels good on the feet. I was near completed before I figured out how to slip the pieced strips together with less bulk. Its a three braid rug stitched together with strips of sheeting. I broke the needle three quarters of the way through the project but thank goodness there was enough  body left in it to complete the job.

I love going to garage sales to chat, laugh and enjoy rummaging through other peoples lives. The tiger panel was garnered at such a sale for a mere quarter, wow! Bargain! Ya, and it was brand new to boot. I used it to recover a cushion for extra flop-down sprawl across the floor seating in the front relaxing room. It took me 5 whole hours to design, cut and stitch the cover.  How time flys when I get focused, I forgot to eat lunch I was so occupied.
Another flea market find, this weird shaped piece of wood was in a freebie bin, of course I figured I could use it to create????

With two large circles cut into it it reminded me of an owl, so yesterday I spent all day designing an stylized owl. I used the photos I took at the Medicine River Wildlife Recovery Center as reference, how lucky was I that the owl had fluffed his wings and hissed, just perfect for the cut wood shape.

I'm having trouble with this silly blog "correcting" as I type which is frustrating to the extreme as it keeps changing to words not of my choosing. I need to figure out how to prevent automatized word changing crap otherwise I become too frustrated with blogging. I am slow at writing but this is making the process even slower as I continually have to keep changing words back to what I was trying to type in, grrr, damn technology is getting summer. And to detail expressly what I mean... in the previous sentence I wrote "dumber" and the system changed the word to "summer" grrrr!