KVIE and something new to work on

The KVIE art auction GALA night this past Monday was totally a great evening...took my daughter Jennifer and we had a ball....smoozed with all the artists and art collectors all evening long.....and it was great to see my work with a jurors award ribbon in it...and by the end of the evening I had earned a first place in Contemporary Classics, total surprise to me...$100 award check also.
The Art Auction begins tonight and I have my eye on a few items for me to purchase and my piece will sell along with the others in the gallery on Sunday, 3-3:30...can't wait to see what my piece brings into for the KVIE donations.

I have always loved things in a circle and seems to drift towards this shape in a lot of things I do...I saw a Craft in America series this past Saturday where they talked about Circles of Healing and that struck a cord for me as I feel I'm in a healing stage over my estrangement with my husband since this summer.  So I pulled out all my reference books on shapes and ideas and came up with working up three different circle designs. 

 The first step was creating the design in 1/8 of the circle, then creating a mirror image or 1/4.
Then I went to my trusty scanner and PC..increased the scanned size to fit 11x17 paper, printed four of each section. 

 Taped the sections into halves and then  into whole circles, cutting them all out and taping them
all together.

The end results was three wonderful 32" circles with the total design over the entire piece so I could see what it would look like once pieced together.  Now that I see the total design, I'm probably going to NOT make each 1/8 section and piece it together as I don't like the look of the seam work.  So I'm going to cut the total circle as one piece and then cut the images and shapes as whole as possible and fuse them onto the circle, stitch, then surface design stitch the completed circle.  Along the way I have to figure out how to display the round finished piece, but that will happen along the way.  I can always create a hard surface circle shape and fit it into the back of the piece or half of the shape or something....my head will figure that part out as I work on creating the full circle. 

A new idea, new challenge along with all the other ideas floating around in my head. 
I'm still weaving every day on my new loom and really enjoying it...once warped the weaving goes fast and the play with the yarns is wonderful.
I'm also experimenting with using gourds as a base along with fiber...friend Cindy Lee gave me about five gourds, I'm going to cut them in half and work with the base to see what happens. 

And this morning, I got notice that one of my newest pieces, Walking for Water was accepted into the Art League of Lincoln's exhibit happening in October....fantastic news. 

New Exhibit, New Ideas

 "Map It Out" at Blue Line Gallery....the art is up on the walls and the reception is coming  up this next Saturday, Sept 17....hope folks can come and enjoy.


And I'm working on new ideas for an upcoming exhibit at Blue Line...30x30...thirty pieces of new work 6" c 6" in 30 days....it's a huge challenge, but I do love a good challenge.  Last year I produced thirty pieces in less that thirty days while sewing my daughters wedding dress, a bridesmaid dress and flower girl dress...so I think I can handle it again this year without those extra distractions.

Leaf Pounding....I've worked with this many many years ago, but through about how beautiful it can be when done in a "simple" way....KISS....keep it simple, stupid...I mean, sweetie.  I don't like the word stupid. 

Anyway, this morning I did some practice pounding..leaves onto silk noil....they are now drying and then I"ll enhance them a bit and possible put my sewing machine to work a bit..then I'm going to stretch them onto a solid piece of canvas board to see how they come out and if OK..then I'll submit them as my idea for the upcoming 30x30...You aren't automatically accepted..they do jury your ideas.
Here's some photos I took while doing this exercise:

Leaf pounding goes back a ways in history...American Indians used this technique..of course they didn't have hammers or silk noil, but they did pound leaves for design.

 Peeling the top cotton pieces away from the bottom with the sandwiched pounded leaf in between..you have to flake off the leaf residue, let it dry, iron it and then I'm going to outline it a bit to give it a life.  I might even sew around them or inside..I will wait and see what happens.

I like they way these gave off a different color.

With fall starting to happen, I need to find leaves that cast off different shades of

green, red, gold...perfect time of the year to work on this project.

Marni & Jason

Our gallery put on a social evening for all the members along with celebrating the upcoming marriage of one of our hardest working officers, Jason Branz....we celebrated by having an "Artful Wedding Shower" showering them with hand made/art related gifts for their new home.  The piece above is what I created using one of Jason's favorite images of the two of them...Helps that Jason is a photographer, but it also helped that there were two great people.  I printed this image off onto cotton fabric in black/white and then I colorized the image using colored pencils....Marni's hair was the most fun, even more fun when I started sewing all those curls.  It's all about the sun glasses and the hair in my opinion.  They loved the piece and they are back home working out all the wedding plans for their ceremony that happens the end of this month.  Congratulations to Marni and Jason...

Also finished my first long piece of weaving last night...it's drying out in the back studio where it's warmest.  I also acquired a new loom this past week...my friend Cindy Lee from the gallery offered me one of her older looms,  a 20" rigid heddle floor loom and I took her up on it immediately....this loom rolls the woven piece in front as you weave, where the smaller loom that I start with does not...the older loom weft gets pulled when inside the area where it's kept taunt and I didn't like the look when competed.  Waiting for the warping pegs I ordered (they act as a third hand helper) before I warp the new loom.  Excited as I can move the loom into the living room and I can weave and watch/hear the TV to help pass the time while I weave.  The weaving process is very relaxing..you develop a rhythm and the color designs just knock my socks off.  Really enjoying the learning experience.  I think this is one of those processes where you are always learning.