A new series

 I decided to recycle some Virginia Museum of Fine Arts monthly magazines. I created this series using bits from the publication. It was a lot of fun matching faces with backgrounds. And then I just had to add a word or thought bubble. I make myself laugh when I do this. What do you think? 

Mail Art, Creative Sprint AND Slow Art Day 2016

2016 #43b

2016 #48c

2016 #50

 Here are a few pieces of Mail Art that I recently added. The two with the b & c are ones that I'd made earlier and was going to frame but then decided to turn them in to Mail Art, so I had to fit them into the numbering scheme I'm keeping.

So this is day 6 of #creativesprint and it's a lot of fun and keeps the brain going. There's still time to join us. Go to the website and sign on. http://creativesprint.co

 This triptych shows three pieces of work from the VMFA McGlothlin collection. I'm hosting Slow Art Day there for the 5th time, on April 9th.  If you're in the area, join us. Just send me an e-mail to let me know you're coming and I'll have enough handouts ready. More about Slow Art Day HERE.

This image was, also, part of my #creativesprint. I used it for Day 3.

So there are two things you're invited to participate in with me. The first one - you can be anywhere in the world to be part of. The second one - you've got to be in the Richmond, VA, USA vicinity.

Hope to see you on one or the other or both!
Happy ART time!

Mail Art, some baby stuff, and a weather-gram.

 My friend Andrea in the U.K. makes these super weather-grams and she sent one to me. I hung it on the bush by my front door, where I, also, hung a pine cone given to me a couple years ago by one of my tiny neighbors.  Andrea's fun site is Found-Art. Check it out and see what she's up to.

 I did it, I made a baby sweater. I haven't made one of these in a loooong time. The pattern is from 1986, the size is for a 6 month old baby, and I used cotton yarn from Greece. I'm so happy with how it turned out. Now to wait a bit and see a baby in it!

365.2 #277

I was so happy to find a perfect match for this pier. It was just the right angle and subject matter. 

365.2 #278

I'm feeling fortunate to find so many small paintings that are at angles so that I can fit them into a landscape. I have to sort through many of them to find just the right shape to get the effect of a large painting in the landscape.

365.3 #127

The colors for this rough river scene made it a good match for this painting. I was going to add a shadow behind it, but there were no distinct shadows in the image, so I let it be.

3653 #128

This rocky outcropping presented a bit of a problem until I found a painting with coloration at the bottom of the frame that fit exactly with the shaows on the rock. Amazing! Perfect. Again, I didn't add any shadows behind the painting, before scanning it. I may add them now.

Monday Mail Art and more, of course.

365.2 #274

365.3 #124

 Here are my Saturday Mail Art cards.

They just tickled me so. I really like how the woman appears to be bathing in the painting by the stream, or lake, in the woods. A perfect fit.























 I baked some tofu for a mid-day snack Sunday. I posted the recipe here.

It was yummy.

365.2 #275

365.2 #276

365.3 #126

Here are my Sunday and Monday Mail Art cards in my Beautifying the landscape series.
The red Rothko painting was positioned just right in the desert landscape. Travelers enjoyed the shade that it provided.

The large shore side painting gave the fisherman something to contemplate while waiting for the fish to bite.


A painted wood panel complemented the snowy landcape. It would be a different story come spring.

365.3 #125

To get the painting to span the lake was an amazing engineering feat. It was worth it. People loved it. Tourists arrived by the boat load and the economy boomed.

We decided to take a walk to Carytown yesterday to buy some greeting cards. Yes, I know, I do make cards all the time but, my Honey had something in mind for a get well card that didn't quite mesh with my cards. It was a lovely day for a walk.We saw how the gardens were changing, so much growing. It's spring time for sure.  One of the neighbors fixed up their tiny front garden with tiny, fun bird houses. 

New Mail Art and more tiny-ness

365.2 #272

365.2 #273

 Oh I'm just on a roll with my landscape alterations. What a good way to use the vintage postcards, right? It's been fun looking for images of paintings that are in the right perspective to fit along the roadways.







I'm seeing this as a highway beautification project. Instead of wildflowers, large paintings!

365.3 #122

365.3 #123

Imagine how startling this would be in reality.











This is one of my more successful ones, I think. I have several more of this particular view. It's quite a boring postcard, really, when you think about it. Who would find this strip of road and view particularly interesting. The painting definitely improves the view.

 What a surprise in the mail last week. A Mail Art friend in Texas sent me this book. I'd seen some of the photos and now I have my very own "album" of them. I love them - tiny people in settings. The opposite of Tiny Town! And fun text to go with the images, too. Thanks heaps to Limner.

Here's another surprise. We were going through boxes stored in the area above our bedroom closet and found one box with some clothing from when our "kids" were kids. Isn't this tiny shirt adorable?  Hopefully, another little kid will be wearing it in a couple years.

Thanks for voting for the kitten's name. There seems to be a landslide so far for Bizoo. Keep the votes coming.

Day 365 of my project - whew!

 These three little books contain the record of my output for this past year. A piece of mail art daily, that was the commitment, though some days there were more; because it turned out that I've sent out 704 pieces of mail art this year.

I can't believe that I met my goal, that I stuck to it, and that it's done.

There are a few things left to do. I'll clean up my area, I'll pack up the scraps and bits and send them to people who are still working on their 365 (and doing collages,) I'll scan the received mail art that I've neglected lately and just piled up on a surface in my studio, and I'll organize all of the addresses of my mail art recipients into an alphabetized list. Okay, so maybe I won't do the last item, which seems a bit much. But here goes on what happened over the year: the best thing was that I got into my studio EVERY DAY. Before this project, I'd let myself get distracted and not set foot into my studio for days. I found that a daily practice was very grounding. I realized that making something everyday centered me and kept me from getting depressed about what's going on in/on/ our poor little planet. I had a group that was supportive, and a few people on the same path, at the same speed. I loved that people would be surprised and happy to receive mail art. I never told ahead of time who the recipients were going to be. I loved getting comments and having people make up their own titles, when I didn't post the titles. Not only did I send out mail art, but I received mail art. I haven't counted the number of pieces but as I'm scanning and sorting and archiving, I might get a count. It was terrific to find my mail box full of such fun. There's more, and I might write about it as the days go on, or not. Since I'd just finished a series of 20 tiny landscapes for the Art-o-mat, I decided to continue with that theme.  Here are my final pieces of my MailArt365 project.

There'll be more Tiny Town, folks. I have more of those Utrillo postcards to alter so the adventure will continue until the cards are used up. See you in Tiny Town and thanks for all of your comments and support during the past year. 

the Art-o-Mat project and mail art

 This morning, I finished the sides with white paint to give a finished look to the pieces. The labels are on the back. I need to write the series numbers, 1/20 etc, then wrap with the clear wrapper once the pieces are thoroughly dry., probably tomorrow morning. Yay. I deliver them on Monday morning and Wednesday they get loaded into the machine to be kerplunked that evening. Yay, again.

#360

This painting is inspired by a Kandinsky painting that I saw at the Guggenheim. The installation was more than the painting on display, as it included information about how the painting was done, why it was done the way it was, about the time in the artist's life, all very interesting. 

#361

This painting that I just completed, is inspired by the work of Cy Twombly. We saw a large piece of his at MOMA and a selection of his white sculptures.

This is the second painted Mail Art piece for today, day 361 of the project, oh my, only 4 days to go!! It's inspired by the work of Franz Kline. I've always loved the boldness of this paintings and the minimal quality. I stopped myself from doing anything else with this piece, which was done on cardboard from a cereal box. I like the natural color of the carton as the background.

#79 with a story.

 Today is the letter "P" in the month long project that is part of  MailArt365. When I went into my studio, I pulled all of the letter "Ps" that I had cut out and then began to look for things that might represent the letter.

 I pulled out an old magazine, The Artist's Magazine. It probably had been at my friend's place and I took it when she moved into the nursing home in 2009. It was from October of 1986 and was full of "how to" do things with water colour paint, acrylics, etc. I pulled out the pages with water colour samples thinking I use those for P.

 Then I came to the article about the acrylic paintings of Patti Cramer. I just loved how fun they were, colorful, charming, humorous. Wow, I thought, I want to write this woman an e-mail to tell her about how much I like her work.

 I looked her up on the internet. Sure, enough, a couple of entries for her, one an article in a newspaper in Denver.  Within one sentence, I knew I'd never get to write to Patti. The verb used that was the clue: WAS. Patti had died this past October.  I felt so sad. I didn't know her, and had only just tonight really paid attention to her work in that old magazine.  This series, which I did little to alter, is in her memory, using parts of her paintings.

 This is the magazine cover, a page showing water colour swatches, my letters "P."  That's a self-portrait painting by Patti Cramer.

 This shows her process for creating the painting of the man in 4 steps.

Here's what Patti looked like in 1986, and here's the title page of the article.

Rest in peace Patti Cramer. I sure do like your paintings, illustrations of joy and fun.