Hold-reach

Hi All, Just under the wire here with January's entry. The mandala theme seemed challenging at first but then this funky female just appeared and she HAD to be encircled. Those tiny words on her arms read "hold" and "reach", both of which I seem to be doing a lot of lately-- in my art and otherwise. I am happy and honored to be a part of Project Eight and look forward to the coming months. This is my first "project" and my personal goal is to play, stay out of my own way, and allow whatever wants to emerge.

January Mandala

I'm so pleased to have completed my January piece on time even though I have cut it kinda close. The mandala theme was perfect for me this month; it gave me a chance to settle into myself and settle back into art. I started my piece late yestereday evening and found myself still up working on it as midnight approached, I was totally "in the flow". I finished it this morning and have my February board gessoed and ready for Red.

The base is a thin piece of particle board, a recycled game board. After several coats of gesso, I drew out a mandala design, cut and pasted papers to fill in all the little sections, did multiple coats of gel medium, than begin the painting process. The last stop was painting the piece with encaustic. The colorways are subtle with splashes of brightness, not the pallet I usually choose, but it feels right.

All of the artwork in the project posted to date is so beautiful and diverse, I can't wait to see more, more, more!!!

katie

Here is my entry for the Mandala theme! Ta da!

I had a lot of fun creating this.

I opened a big container of "THE art STORE" gesso from Dick Blick and saw that it was super thick like modeling paste and so I used it to make the petals of my sunflower with my index finger. It is on thick! Then I just added layer over layer of acrylic paint in yellows and light oranges for my petals. I used a little raw umber paint and wiped it off really fast for the shading inside the petals and then outlined them with a black stabilo pencil. I collaged a made up poem from a page of text I ripped out at random from the large print edition of the book "The Girl With the Pearl Earring". It was a very serendipitous choice of page because it mentioned the colors I have here. That was a pretty cool coincidence, I must say.

The center triangle is some aluminum color metal sheet I cut to fit and textured with a tool I got in a repousse class I took from Beckah Krahula. I used dark umber paint on it and wiped it off so the paint stayed in the textured grooves. I used a little orange too. Then on top of all that I used my Neocolor II watersoluble crayons : yellows and white on the petals and bronze on the metal. I am going to make a full size photo stitching this together in photoshop. Then it will be a circle.

Now I am going to go work on "RED". I promise it won't take as long.

Let's Try This Again - RED

Sorry guys. I had to homicide the encaustic I posted yesterday; I wasn't convinced it was going to fly when I did it and when I woke up this morning it had gotten even weirder overnight. This is my replacement. It must be the full moon.

Another Mandala

Here is my mandala. This was a challenge for me as I'm sure it must be to at least some others of you but I like the idea of the themes very much as I think they will help hold a group show together. Now for red. (You guys are killing me. RED!! Ack!)

BTW, this is mixed media encaustic.

January & February

OK, so Laurie inspired me to go out into the FREEZING cold this AM & photograph these!

I finished January & February because Karen from Indie Arts came over the other day to interview me for her DVD magazine. I really wanted to plug our little group & have something to show her. As it turned out, I talked about our group, but not as much as I wanted to & I didn't mention any of your names. I had an incredibly difficult time remembering my OWN name & I was afraid that I would leave someone out, so I said nothing! I'm so sorry about that, I need to ask her if we can have some kind of link to this blog at least, since the issue will be coming out in July & that would be a perfect time to get people excited about our show.
That's if she even uses the footage, it was a terrifying experience for me & I pretty much froze once she got the camera out. She says that she can edit it to make me look "brilliant", I guess I trust her, even though I really can't imagine how anyone could possibly make anything work out of that interview! I was a little bit nervous, but I had no idea that I would freeze up & go completely blank! She was really wonderful to work with though, she has the patience of a saint & once the interview was over, we had the BEST time running around town & trying on hats in the freezing cold! It made it all worth it in the end.
Anyway, this image keeps coming up for me, of a single female figure holding circles or balls, with circles all around her, so I decided to milk it & work with only that image for this project, but incorporating the different themes. I'm going to call my body of work "the 8 faces of joy" since the theme of joy is something that I want to explore more in depth.
I'm also working with this image/figure in my other group, only I'm using clay & carving the figure into it.

January- Mandala (of sorts!)

Hi Project 8'ers,
Well, I thought I would get the ball rolling here and post my "mandala". I use the term loosely as this project totally morphed from the design that I had neatly planned out before the holidays which was rich with symbolism. It looks nothing like that first rendering which really was a mandala. Somehow when I began, I was compelled to glue a map down in the background....maybe because we had just returned from London, who knows! From there it just sort of took on a life of its own and became more of a compass than a mandala! (atleast it is round!) Oh well, the best laid plans.....now it is onto RED! For those of you who are thinking about March, I have a theme....shall I wait until February to post it? Take good care, Laurie

FEBRUARY THEME

Hey everyone, happy new year!
For all of you overachievers, the theme for February is....
RED!
Now, it doesn't actually have to be red, above is some brainstorming that I did about red in my journal....(I hope no one is a therapist...oh dear, I just realized that there IS a therapist among us!) Oh well, maybe she can help me out!!!
Anyway, please have fun with the theme & don't let it limit you.
I'm almost done with January, I just have to put it all together, I'll post a photo when it's finished.
And speaking of Cirque de Soleille... (see, now this is where a therapist would come in handy!) I'm going to see them in Portland on March 5th, would any of you left coasters like to join me? I'm not sure if Dianne will be coming with me or not yet, but it's on my list of things to do before I die & I'm going no matter what!
Happy 2008 everyone!