Monday, December 31, 2012

Gratitude: a top 10

Instead of the normal top 10 moments of 2012, I thought I'd post Top 10 Thanks to ...

The Grand Tour: Submerged (sold)
... art buyers near and far for buying my art, sure, but also for buying any art.




... the warm and welcoming members of the 5th Street Gallery for not only inviting me to show at the gallery, but, also asking me to join the cooperative.



... the gallery and shop owners who took a risk and began carrying my greeting cards, or continued to: Sharon Butler (The BonBonerie), Emily Buddendeck (NVISION), Carolyn and Mike Deininger (MiCA 12/v), Lynn Kahle (The Framery) and Wendy Smith (Redtree).



... the Brazee Street Studios artists and staff who make going to my studio so much fun. I love my new space on the first floor.



... the Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center, for honoring me by offering limited-edition prints of collages from my Grand Tour series as a membership gift. And to its gallery director Bill Seitz for asking me to show in annual The Art of Food exhibition, and, for challenging me to think bigger as I head into 2013.


... the writers covering/reviewing the visual arts for Aeqai, Cincy, Cincinnati Magazine, CityBeat, The Enquirer and Express.



... Celene Hawkins for including my work in the Flora & Fauna exhibition at Bromwell's Gallery, a show that pushed me to create more shadowbox collages (sample, above). And the women of The Studio Collection for inviting me to be a guest artist at their 18th annual sale. Wow. It was huge.




... local framers who are artist-friendly: I take my work to Lynn Kahle of The Framery and Tim Leslie (above, working on the Victor Victorian series) but there are plenty of others around. These two have been super generous with advice, tips, etc. You know your framer's a gem when he or she talks you out of spending more money!



... my husband, Mark, for the gift of an archival inkjet printer (first prints from it, above), the countless hours spent reconditioning my letterpress and his undying support of my third act.



... all the people who generously recycled their old paper - from S&H stamps and antique books to vintage greeting cards and paper dolls - via Paper With a Past. I promise to use it wisely, well, and maybe not so wisely. LOL.



Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Last-minute shopping? Pop into the studio ...

One of my Santa collages reproduced in
the "SANTA 6-PACK" postcard set.
Just in case you're still browsing for gifts, I'll be in my studio at Brazee Street Studios
  • 11 am - 5 pm Wednesday (12.19) and Friday (12.21)
  • Noon - 6:45 pm today (Tuesday, 12.18)
  • Noon - 7:45 pm Thursday (12.20).

On Saturday (12.22), look for me behind the counter at the 5th Street Gallery from 10 am - 2 pm. So, if you are downtown, pop in and say hi. And if you want to shop, too, well, that's up to you! 

Monday, December 17, 2012

Save the date! My first exhibit of 2013.


The Carnegie's Pulp Art exhibit has popped up in the blog a few times recently, so I thought I'd share the official postcard announcement. The exhibit will fill all six galleries with paper art, from large installations to more intimate work.  Here's a complete list of the artists with links to the web sites I could find. I think it'll give you some idea of what to expect ...

Mary Gaynier
Jennifer Grote
Peg Rhein
Carl Schuman

Oh, tickets for opening will be available at the door, and can be ordered in advance by phone (859.957.1940) or online. Hope to see you there.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

A holiday surprise in the studio ...

Finally got my "Stuff I can't bear to cut up" print bin together - just in time for this weekend's Open Studios (5-9 pm Friday 12.14 and 10 am-3 pm Saturday 12.15). It's kicking off with 11 original Fortune magazine covers from 1932-33. These are NOT reproductions, and they're in mint/near mint condition. 

They're matted in archival mats and ready to pop into a standard 16" x 20" frame. Great gift. I checked online and they're selling for $75 to $200 each. Mine are bargain priced at $55. 

Have to start de-stashing ... but I am keeping one for myself, along with the rest of each magazine. Yes, they were entire issues with some great art inside that I don't feel quite so bad about cutting apart. Well, I may mat some of the car ads - they are pretty fantastic - to sell.






Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Tag mania! Holiday style.



Just finishing a couple dozen holiday collage tags. This morning, I'll seal, trim and punch them, then, add hand-colored reinforcements and vintage seam binding for the ties. The images - all the original paper, as always - run the gamut, from the Victorian era through the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

I used vintage greeting cards, antique postcards, recycled grocery bags (Trader Joe's shoppers will recognize the woman on the bottom left from the store's holiday bag), vintage Christmas seals, antique and vintage sheet music, vintage sewing pattern illustrations, snowflakes punched from old greeting cards, antique endpaper, recycled wrapping paper (yes, I save all the bits and pieces leftover from wrapping).

They are glued onto recycled manila folders and coasters (the large round ones are the end of a lot of letterpress coasters I bought years ago to use as tags but didn't).

Northside's NVision - newly expanded - will get a batch on Thursday, the rest will be in the studio for my Friday and Saturday Holiday Open Studio.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Latest find: teeny-tiny photo album, circa 1860


I spotted this petite photo album - it measures 5" x 4" - in an antique store in Hillsborough, N.C. a few weeks ago. The cover was falling off. The pages were coming apart. Some photos were missing. Even so, there were hundreds of images in it. Hundreds of teeny-tiny tintypes. Many hand-tinted. A few rare ones of animals. And, rarer still, African-Americans.

Just had to have it, and at $45 it was a bargain. There is no identification on the images and no text anywhere in the album to give an idea of who these people are. I suspect it may have been a photographer's sample album. It's easy to tell from the clothing and hair that the photos were taken in the late 1850s/1860s, when tintypes were just becoming popular.

How will I use these? No clue ... yet.  




Monday, December 3, 2012

Garden of anatomical delights


Tender Cares. That's the name of the collage this detail is taken from. (Yeah, still have a larger scanner on my Wish List.) It's part of an untitled series in which I give genteel Victorian/Edwardian era illustrations of women a sharp twist. They're for the exhibit Pulp Art, which opens at The Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center on Jan. 11.

The original engraving was actually titled Tender Cares - and by the time I finished the piece it seemed like an apt - and wonderfully ironic - name. The image was plucked from The Royal Chatterbox (1881), a beautiful, oversized picture book for children spun off from Britain's Chatterbox magazine. It's been languishing in the attic, because I just couldn't take it apart. I'm, obviously, over that.

The cutting is more complex in these collages than anything I've attempted in the past. The anatomical illustrations are from a variety of antique books, including a few different editions of Gray's Anatomy. The background is another one of those made in 2010 at a Greater Cincinnati Calligraphy Guild workshop on creating background surfaces. Everything created then was stashed away in a box that I rediscovered while was working on the bomb series.
 
One more thing: These collages are larger than past ones. Not huge, mind you, but bigger. I expect them to be 18" x 22" when framed.