Magnolia Still Life

Here is my newest painting that is currently untitled. Anyone have a suggestion for a name? Now that I've photographed it I can see some changes that need to be made but for the most part it's finished.

Wow, another year has disappeared and tomorrow will be 2008. This is a good time to reflect upon our life and the direction we have chosen. Life is good and I'm looking forward to a New Year!

Party Animals at the Library

My party animals caught their fish and also picked up a clam along the way. Now they are visiting at the library. Who says you lose your imagination when you get older? Carla, my painting buddy, and I have been having a blast setting up these still lifes. She paints faster than I do but I have the advantage because it's my studio so I can paint every night if I wish.

This painting is larger than the previous ones. If I remember correctly it's 18" x 24". We have already setup another still life and I'm using the same size canvas but I'm not ready to post a photo of it yet. We retired the party animals but you never know they may show up again in the future.

Still Painting

I'm still working on my still lifes. This is a photo of one I posted earlier but I made a few changes. I think it's finished now......it's hard for me to determine when I'm finished with something. I have to 'live' with it for awhile because it just takes a little brush stroke here or there to make a remarkable improvement. Party Animals is 20" x 20" and I like that size. I'll have to order more canvases in that size.

This other piece is Party Animals - Gone Fishing which I also updated. I'm finished with this one....it told me to move on. I like the vase in this one but I'm not crazy about the rest of the composition.

I seem to get better with each painting so I'll continue in this vein for a while longer.

Portrait of Laryssa

This is a portrait that I painted of my great niece, Laryssa Nunn, when she was two years old. My niece, Jenny, took a photo of her daughter Laryssa at her dance class while she was tired and leaning up against the mirror. It was such a darling photo so I wanted to capture it in oil on a canvas. This is the first portrait I've ever painted so it's not perfect but it actually looks like Laryssa so I'm pleased. I just hope her parents like it because it's their Christmas present!

Lots Wife

Lots Wife comes home after touring the country for four years. I was invited by Ruth Harris to participate in a traveling exhibit that she named Women of Biblical Proportions. I was instructed to choose a woman in the Bible and construct a quilt that was exactly 22" square. I chose Lots Wife because that was one story in the Bible that had made a lasting impression on me as a child. I think there were 50 quilts in the exhibit that toured the US from 2003 thru 2007. It's nice to have it home but I decided to gift it to a good friend, Cherri Willis, that is a manager at a local religious radio station, KMSI 88.1FM. Cherri will hang it in her office so it is going to a good home.

Another Professional Photo

Here is another professional photo by Photo Factory, this is "In Kandinsky Time". It's a felted piece that has been sewn to a painted canvas. The canvas is deep with wrap around edges so it doesn't need framing.

Professional Photos

This is the professional photo that I had taken by Photo Factory of "Another Place In Time". They do excellent work and are very reasonably priced. This one is framed with a black wooden frame as pictured.

I really enjoyed making this felted piece.

Party Animals - Gone Fishing

Here is a second oil painting that is almost finished. I've named this one Party Animals - Gone Fishing. Once again, this is a still life. The ceramic fish and the funky ceramic vase were purchased at the City Arts Center pottery sale. They teach pottery lessons and have this sale once a year as a fund raiser. Some of the pottery is made by students and some by the teachers (I believe), anyway they had some great pottery pieces at rock bottom prices.

Party Animals

I'm a fiber artist by heart but I also love to paint so I've taken up oil painting once again. Carla Houston, a good friend of mine, has been coming over to paint with me and also offers her expertise. She has been a big help and it's so much more fun to have a painting buddy. We have been setting up still life's like the one pictured here. The funny little wooden carved animals in the painting are called Party Animals that I bought at a World Neighbors Festival. The set contains 6 animals that are setting on chairs around a table in the shape of Africa. We only used three of the Party Animals in this still life setting and added a ball of silk yarn and merino roving.....we had to throw in fiber! I have four paintings started so I'll upload the others when they are finished. The one pictured is almost finished.

More on Taos

Now I'm not a weaver or a spinner and I'm not familiar with woolly animals but I think these cute little creatures are Lama's, right? I took this photo at the Taos Wool Festival along with another of two Alpaca's but it was too dark to upload. I wish I had taken photos of the cute angora bunny rabbits that were in cages at several different tents but I was too busy shopping.

Shirley and I stopped along the highway between Taos and Santa Fe at a little fruit stand and bought some items to bring home. I took a photo of the adobe house that was next to the fruit stand. We don't see things like this in Oklahoma, it was so charming but it was right next to a busy highway. Nice to look at but I wouldn't want to live there.

Taos Wool Festival

I actually got to take a four day vacation and attend the Taos Wool Festival the first weekend in October. This is an annual outdoor event in Kit Carson park in Taos, NM. My friend Shirley and I left around 6:30am on a Friday morning and arrived in Santa Fe around 2:30pm where we had a bite to eat, visited the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum and 3 or 4 galleries in the plaza area before heading up to Taos. It's a beautiful drive through the mountains between Santa Fe and Taos. Saturday was a gorgeous day and we spent all morning walking through the tents at the Wool Festival fondling all kinds of wool products and spending money! I bought a beautiful felted purse, a wool batt, a couple of bumps, various wool rovings, curls and Lincoln Locks to name a few items. Shirley and I had a great time and both came home very inspired by all the art we had seen in the numerous galleries. We are looking forward to a return trip next year only we need a whole week! I'll post some pictures from the trip tomorrow.

More Experimenting

This is a photo my current Embellisher experiment. The solid red fabric in the background is pre-felted fabric from FiberFusion. The oriental fabric on the left was placed face down on the red felting fabric and then needled punched with the Embellisher. This created all the texture that you see on the piece in the fore ground. The felting needles pushed the front side of the fabric into the pre-felt fabric and created loops of threads. Since I was felting from the back side of the cotton fabric and the single thin layer of pre-felt fabric was on the front side you can slightly see the pattern of the fabric through the pre-felt. I love all the texture it created and can't wait to use this technique in my next creation!

End of Temporal Works

My exhibit at the Metcalfe Museum in Durham, Oklahoma ended August 31th. "Time Worn" (9" x 14") is the only piece that sold. It was purchased by Lynn Deal, the art director, and even though it is one of my favorite pieces I know it has a good home now.

The FAD Group is planning to have a group exhibit in the fall of 2009 at the Metcalfe Museum. That should give the group enough time to have new pieces to exhibit!

Another Place In Time

"Another Place In Time" is my latest felted piece that has been sewn to a painted canvas and framed. The frame isn't pictured but it's a plain contempory black frame. I painted black stitch marks on the canvas to correspond with the stitching on the felted piece. It has been wet felted, needle felted, and machine needled felted then hand embroidered and beaded. It's made from a merino wool batt, merino felting fabric, and wool roving.

I really like this piece. I don't make decorative items so most of my wall hangings don't match my decor but I actually think this will look nice in my living area (if we ever get finished with the remodel!).

I'm sorry, I still haven't figured out how to arrange photos in Blogger. Maybe one of these days I will learn how.

Inspired by Kandinsky

I've been busy working and haven't updated by blog lately. I'm currently finishing up two new felted pieces. I was going to name this piece "In Kandinsky Time" but now I'm having second thoughts. It was inspired by a Kandinsky painting and he was also a musician so the 'time' alludes to his musical abilities.

The background is made from Harrisville carded wool and Felting Fabric. I machine needle felted the background then lightly needle felted pieces of the felting fabric before wet felting the entire piece. After I completed the felting I added hand embroidery, silk roving, and beads. I'm in the process of sewing this to a canvas that I painted with acrylic paint.

Photos of Fiberworks 07 at IAO

Fiberworks 2007 exhibit is now showing at the IAO Gallery until June 30th. They have some photos of the exhibit on their website. I don't know why but they chose to show a close up of my Time in Space so I'm honored. http://www.iaogallery.org/htmlpages/events/fiberworks07.htm

Felted Nuno Scarf

Here is the felted nuno scarf that I made in Lynn Craigie's class at Studio Mid Del. Lynn is a great teacher and it was a fun class.

This is all wet felted and was not machine needle felted. It is very thin and light weight. It has a layer of black cheese cloth sandwiched between layers of merino wool roving. The back side is black and the front was a mixture of black and gray roving with added strands of gray silk noile covered with purple roving.

Fiberworks 2007

We had the opening reception for Fiberworks 2007 on June 2nd. Heather Winslow was the juror and she did an excellent job. Here is a photo of Heather on the left and Karen Collier on the right, who is the president of Fiber Artists of Oklahoma. FAO sponsor's the show and Karen presented the $3900 of awards to several artists.

I entered three pieces, had two accepted, and won a General Award of Merit ($250) for Time In Space. It's an excellent exhibit and will be on display at the IAO Gallery in OKC until June 30th. Time Marches On is the other piece that was accepted but I haven't taken a photo of it yet. A friend took this photo of Time in Space and sent it to me, thank you Shirley!

Metcalfe Museum Gallery Talk

I was invited to show my work at the Metcalfe Museum in Durham, Okla. this summer. I have 18 pieces that will be on display from June 9 to August 30. The opening reception was yesterday and I had to give a gallery talk. Now let me tell you, I have a terrible fear of speaking in public so this was not an easy task for me but I survived. The people in attendance seemed very interested in my work and asked very good questions. It was a pleasure to see all my work on display in a gallery.

The Metcalfe Museum was built around 2002 so it is a new facility and it was built to house Augusta Metcalfe's art work. You can read about the gallery on their website at http://www.metcalfemuseum.org/ and see Augusta's work.

Nuno Felting Sample

I took a class last night with Lynnie Craigie and this is the little sample of nuno felting that I made. I'm looking forward to the second half of the class next week when we will make a scarf.

Time Marches On in progress

This is the piece I'm currently working on. I have completed the felting but I'm still adding hand embroidery. I used my jelly rolls in this piece. I cut slices and then decided to pull them apart and open them up. I left some of the slices intact and needled felted them into the background. I need to get this finished by the 26th of this month to enter it into Fiberworks.

Our cat, Dudley, is surveying the new floor. The wall we started on is 58' long. We have installed 10' of flooring from the wall.

Dudley has been our supervisor. He watches our every move to make sure we are doing a good job!

You can see some of the boxes of flooring on the floor and the cutter on the right.

Installing the Floor

Ron and I have started laying the floor in our loft. It will be so nice when it's finished! I was getting tired of plain dusty old unsealed concrete. This is vinyl plank flooring that is 6" x 36" in a hickory color. It's a floating floor system so the planks have glue where they interlock with each other but they are not glued to the floor. It's really easy for a novice to install and believe me we are novices.

Work in Progress

I'm working on a new felted piece so I will have something to enter in Fiberworks 2007. I haven't decided on the title of this yet but it will be something about "trying to contain time". Any name suggestions, anyone? This is made from my Felting Fabric and embellished with hand embroidery. I'm painting a canvas to mount it on and then it will be finished.

Felted Jelly Rolls!

I made felted jelly rolls this weekend! Aren't they cool! I will use them in a needle felted project very soon (I hope!). This is my first attempt at doing something like this so I still have a lot to learn and want to make the next ones differently. They are made from prefelt fabric that I purchased from Outback Fibers online and I added wisps of wool roving in the orange/brown roll on the right and wisps of silk roving in the black/purple/green on the left. The silk roving didn't show up like I wanted it to.

Abstract Challenge - Orange

This is the little piece I made for the Abstract Challenge list that I belong to. The word this month was "Orange". The center orange piece is painted tyvek and it reminded me of the texture on the outside of an orange. The next two layers of teal and orange are painted cotton batting, the yellow is wool felt, and it's mounted on a painted wrapped canvas.

What a Mess!

Here are more photos of my messy living area. You really need a big imagination to see the potential. We have ordered vinyl plank flooring that looks like hickory wood. We will have to move all the furniture and boxes to one area so we can start installing the floor. The problem is it won't fit in one area so we will be moving all this stuff several times to get the floor layed. We ordered 2400 sq. feet of flooring so this is a large area. I only posted photos of the central section.

Painted Walls

I have painted walls after living 2 years with textured sheetrock! I'm still living in a construction zone but at least the walls are painted. I chose Cinnamon Cherry for the dining room area.

The bistro area has taupe walls and the other walls are a blue/gray. We have furniture and boxes everywhere. It's really a mess but I can't unpack until we get the floor layed. The flooring is on order and should be here in a couple of weeks.

I still can't get my photos posted in the position I want them! There should be a way to move them around. Oh well. I have more photos but I'll post them later.

I have the furniture covered with old blankets because of the cats. One of these days I hope to have new more modern furniture but that will have to wait.

OWA Mixed Media Video

I know I shouldn't publicize this video of myself because it's really poor quality and I'm not experienced at talking about my work in front of a camera (or anyplace else for that matter!) but here is the link if you want to watch it http://www.sonarta.com/event/video/38 . Sonarta is a relatively new organization in Oklahoma City that has been visiting a lot of gallery shows in the area. They take photos and shoot videos of the artists and publish it on their website at http://www.sonarta.com/ . So if you are interested in what's happening in the art scene in Oklahoma City, OK take a look at the different videos. We have a lot of wonderful artists in the area and many opportunities to exhibit. I know Oklahoma isn't known for having art so I'm glad they are trying to get the word out to the public with this website. This isn't Sonarta's main focus and the videos aren't the best quality but I appreciate their efforts, their love for art, and their community.

Moving Day

Whew! I hope I never have to move our residence or our business again! If there is a next time I will only take what will fit in my car and drive away. We bought this commercial property a little over three years ago and have been remodeling and moving ever since that time. Our business and all of Ron's machinery and tools are on the bottom floor and in the two warehouses. My studio and our living quarters are upstairs which is about 5,000 square feet. We did some work on our house before putting it on the market to sell and moved all the equipment in the 3 car garage and a few essential things that we needed to our loft. We have been living in the loft/warehouse for two years but we left the house furnished. It took 17 months for our house to sell. We close on the house tomorrow at 1:00pm so I'm thrilled! We almost have everything moved from the house. This has been a major undertaking because it was full of stuff we have collected over the 29 years we have been married.

I was going to keep this blog art related but moving and selling our house has really influenced my art work......or should I say hindered? A huge burden has been lifted and this phase of my life is over so I feel a new beginning emerging. I just noticed a bird outside gathering twigs to build a nest in the little holly tree by the front door. It's Spring so it's an excellent time for a new beginning! Praise the Lord!

MWC March 2007

The FAD Group has a display at the Midwest City Library. Six of us met there to install the exhibit last week that we titled "Purchased or Handmade?". We hung our art work on the long slotted wall and filled the three glass display cases with more work and educational material about felting, spinning, and knitting. We had a fun afternoon at the Library and we seemed to generate a lot of interest with the patrons and the staff.

FAD members pictured from left to right are; Carla Houston, Marilu Benton, Marie Miller, Shirley Conaway, and Lynn Craigie. We are taking a well deserved break in the lobby of the Midwest City Library where our exhibit is on display.

OWA opening reception

I attended the opening reception for the Mixed Media Collage exhibit yesterday at the Norick Art Center in Oklahoma City. Kathleen Blake won the $500 Best of Show award for "Listening to the Silence". Regina Murphy and Bert Seabourn each won $200 Award of Merits. It's a very nice show with 71 pieces by 27 artists and I am proud to have my work included. I guess I should have taken my camera to take photos of the opening but I was in a hurry to leave and didn't even think about it. They had a crew there taking photos and interviewing the artists with a cam recorder to be published on the web. I reluctantly agreed to be video taped. It was pretty painless but I'm sure the severe pain will set in once I watch the video! I really need to learn how to speak intelligently about my work! I don't think I will post the link here on my blog until I have a chance to watch the video myself. I may not want to advertise it, LOL!

OWA Mixed Media Collage Exhibit

I found out yesterday that the three pieces I entered in the Mixed Media Collage show sponsored by the Oklahoma Watercolor Association were accepted! The opening reception will be Sunday, Feb. 18th from 2 to 5 pm at the Norick Art Center on the UCO campus. The pieces are "Edges of Time" , "Documents of Time", and "Time Reaches Out". I'll add photos of the work but I still haven't figured out how to add text so that it will appear under the appropriate photo.

The black and cream piece is "Documents of Time". The red, green, brown, & black piece is "Edges of Time" and the blue & golden piece with the tree is "Time Reaches Out".

I'm brand new to blogging and I haven't gotten the hang of it yet. I can't seem to get the posts in the right order so I appolgize for the confusion. Maybe I'll figure out what I'm doing in a few weeks!

Here is another piece from the Speakeasy exhibit, "Say It With Music". The following photos are the other two pieces in the show. "Dance Tunes" and "Under Lock and Key". Hopefully, I've named them appropriately so you can tell which one is which.

The Speakeasy '07 exhibit will be on display until Feb. 24, 2007.

I currently have 4 art pieces on exhibit at the City Arts Center for the Speakeasy '07 exhibit. The City Arts Center is located on the State Fairgrounds in Oklahoma City. I was one of 34 artists asked to participate in this fund raising exhibit. It is a theme exhibit and we were requested to enter pieces that reflected the atomoshpere of the roaring twenties era. I chose to make pieces with an Art Deco flavor. Champagne Gusher is the largest of the four and it was made in tribute to a famous oil gusher, The Wild Mary Sudik.