It’s Good to be Blue – one of the many pieces available during my Open Studio days. Everything will be 20% off. Do stop by for some shopping. Dates/times are:

 Tuesday, Dec. 6, 11 AM-2 PM

Friday, Dec. 9, 11 AM-2 PM

Saturday, Dec. 10, 11 AM – 2PM

Tuesday, Dec. 11, 11 AM-2 PM

Friday, Dec. 16, 11 AM-2 PM

Saturday, Dec. 17, 11 AM – 2PM

Tuesday, Dec. 20, 11 AM – 2PM

Thursday, Dec. 22, 11 AM – 2PM

Doug Nielsen, the minister of my church, First Parish in Saco, Maine, had his last service on June 5, 2016. At a party celebrating his 12 years with us, he was presented with a memory scrapbook. I made the cover for the book. It was based on the photo on the left which Doug took near his home. The final piece is 12 x12 and is on the cover. Sky is hand-painted and heavily thread painted. It was a fun piece to do. Now that he’s received the book, I can share the finished piece.

The past few days have been busy with delivering artwork to various upcoming exhibits.

Three of my pieces were chosen for the Contemporary Landscapes exhibit at MacPage. Pieces in that show will be Entwined Banyons, Morning Coffee,Afternoon Tea,Evening Wine and River Sand Dunes.
Opening reception will be Thursday, May, 19, 2016 from 5-7 PM.

Two pieces were chosen for the 10×10 exhibit at Engine in Biddeford. Opening reception will be Saturday, May 14 5-7 PM. Pieces in that exhibit will be Biddeford Pool Rocks and Sunrise Glow.

I also delivered inventory to Seaside Creatons on Bailey Island. They open on Saturday, May 7.

Next week I’ll be delivering inventory to The Birch Canoe in Casco.This is a new location for me. I’ll let you know more about it after I drop things off.

After a wonderful trip to The Netherlands in early April, I’m back home in my studio working on new ideas and inspirations. While I was away, WMTW-TV aired a piece on my work and me that Steve Minich did. You can find the link here  at http://www.wmtw.com/news/old-orchard-beach-woman-stitches-together-beautiful-works-of-art/38890392

I was really pleased at how well the segment came out. Steve did a great job of capturing what I do and where I work.

Now on to new work inspired by all those beautiful tulips in Amsterdam!

I’ve started playing with all my fabric scraps to see if I can make backgrounds to be used for mini landscapes. This is one layout that I did. And the next picture shows the three minis I made from that piece.

Minis are mounted on 2×2 or 3×2 canvasses and displayed on small easels. They’ve been a big hit with my customers.

This picture from Lynda Rasco of Harvest Gold Gallery spoke to me. I loved the juxtaposition of the moon setting and the sun rising. Since I needed a series of works in progress for the upcoming show at the Yarmouth History Center,

I decided to use this picture and do it in three different sizes.    

 

Step one shows the fabrics laid out and ready to be stitched. This one will finish approximately 12×20.

 

 

Step two shows some stitching, but not yet completed. This one will be wrapped around a 12×9 canvas.      

 

 

 

Step three shows the completed piece. There’s stitching and some painted highlights. This will be wrapped around 10×8 canvas.

Commission done for a client inspired by a Childe Hassam painting, Isle of Shoals. It reminded he and his wife of a favorite spot at Reid State Park in Maine. I added more waves and the flowers are beach roses, not poppies. He and his wife loved it and the piece brings many happy memories to them.

Vegetable series – fabric wrapped 6×6 canvas

$50

 This the third piece I did for Wendy from some of her mother’s clothing. She wanted a vase of flowers for one of her aunts. For this piece I remembered to take pictures of the process which I’ll share with you.

To the left is the finished piece. Notice the vase says Home Sweet Home. That was cut from a bathrobe. The borders were from a blouse that had butterflies and little flowers. The inside trim was a nylon nightie and the outside trim from a tiny orange/white checked blouse.

 

I started by laying out a wall and table. The table is from a sweatshirt and the wall  is from a nylon nightie. Needless to say, both these fabrics were very challenging to use.

 

I did some thread painting for the background of the wall to simulate wallpaper.

 

Then I added stems and some leaves for the flowers in the vase.

 

 

Lastly I added flowers cut from a bathrobe and blouse. Three dimensional blue flowers were from a smocked nightie.

 

Stay tuned for the final piece………

In the pile of clothes that Wendy gave me was an orange/white checked shirt with beach chairs and an umbrella. Wendy definitely wanted that shirt worked into the piece for her. The sky and water were done with a knit nightie. The top had smocking – perfect for beach waves! Rocks were made from various pieces of other clothing. I added some of my own fabrics for the other parts of this landscape. Piece measures 10×16 and Wendy loves it!

I’ve been working on a new Artful Memory series for my friend, Wendy. Her mom died a couple of years ago and this past fall, she was ready to have some memories made. The first piece I did was for her dad as a Christmas gift. Wendy shared that her mom liked to play Bingo and the slots. She was a good cook and loved her family. The piece that evolved is a Bingo card made of favorite recipes and fabric from a blouse. Photos of her parents were used as the Bingo markers. I included important dates and squares that looked like a winning slot machine! Wendy’s dad was quite touched by this wonderful gift from his daughter.

My granddaughters took a class at Maine Quilts this past weekend. They made a travel tic-tac-toe game. Here they are concentrating on their sewing. Lydia on the left is 10 and Yolanda on the right is 13. They had a great time.

 

Lydia also had her quilt hanging in the show. This is her second quilt to be shown at Maine Quilts. This one is called Weaving with Batiks and fits on her full-size bed. She did a fabulous job piecing it, quilting and sewing the buttons. Just look at the grin on her face – she’s very proud of her work, as she should be!

Our word for June was WOW! I had a difficult time with this word, because I was feeling like I wasn’t getting anywhere with whatever I was working on. So I decided to keep track of the work I actually did. That was an eye-opener and a WOW for me. I accomplished a lot in the four weeks between our meetings.

I completed the piece at the left, Soltice Sunflower. Also completed the labyrinth piece shown last month. I made about 20 fabric collaged cards and 20 paper Iris cards. I also completed 35 fabric key rings using yo-yos made from my scraps. I stained and/or painted the small shadow boxes and filled ten of them ready for showing.

So all in all, I decided that I did have a WOW month and completed much more than I had originally thought.

After I posted about my show on the Fourth of July and the success with the shadow boxes, someone asked me to post a picture of the boxes.

They are 5×7 wood boxes that hold either a matted piece or a piece mounted on foamcore. I also have 8×10 boxes. They are either stained brown or painted black. There is no glass so you can easily see the texture of each art piece. In my booth they are displayed as Hidden Treasures of Maine with each box showing off a small part of Maine.

They were quite popular at my first show of the season and they’ve also been selling well at a gallery in Kennebunkport.

Several years ago my minister introduced me to labyrinths and how they are a means to meditate. Since that time, I’ve seen many different kinds of labyrinths.

The word for this challenge was labyrinth and I immediately thought of this stenciled piece that a friend had given me. Background is splattered with gray and black paint. I stitched radiating lines round the labyrinth and then used a silver cording for walking the path. Beads along the way allow you to stop and meditate. There’s a hint of blue in the beads and that blue is picked up in the narrow piping at the binding edge.

Size is 14×14.

This piece started as a painting on fabric. The background was ok, but the sunflowers just didn’t look right. So I started cutting out petals from fabric and adding them to the flowers. Then I found this great fabric for the middle – it was something I’d bought in Budapest and it was perfect! Beading in the centers added another layer.

The actual fabric piece is 14×11 and it’s mounted on an 18×14 canvas.

I knew immediately what I was going to do when I got the word, shadow. I have a small 6×6 picture of my granddaughters walking hand-in-hand. I scanned the picture, then, using Photoshop, I made it a black and white picture and printed it on fabric. The entire piece is done with stitching with black, white, off-white and gray thread. Not only does it have shadows in the picture, but it’s a play on the younger sister as the shadow of the older sister. It is one of my personal favorites. Actual piece is 6×7-12 mounted off-center in a 20×14 mat.

Next word in our series was entwined. When the word was announced, I knew immediately what I was going to do. Several years ago, I took pictures of banyan trees in Florida. I loved the way they twined around each other and how the roots hung from the trees down to the ground. I used paint, yarn, painted fabric, and lots of stitching to get the effects I wanted. I really like this piece – it’s one of my favorites so far.

The fabric piece is wrapped around a 16×12 canvas and is ready to hang.

Our word for January was community. I wanted to try some weaving so decided to use fabric and paper in related skin tones. I actually was thinking of another quilt I’d done, Step Into the Colors of the World , where I’d used skin tone fabrics. Once the fabric was woven, I decided to make a circle with organza people images. Working title for this piece is Different, but Connected. The people are connected by variegated yarn and stitched onto the woven background. Piece measures a 12″ circle.

Third word in our Fearless series was luminosity or luminescence. I tried to depict the luminescence of the full moon  on the ocean at night. I wanted to do this using fabric that was not shiny and a little bit of metallic thread.

When you walk on the beach at night, it really does feel like you could walk on the luminous path right to the moon.

12×14

Second word in our Fearless Designers series for last October was reflections. It was the perfect time of year to think about colorful leaves. I saw some floating on a river and loved the reflection of the trees from overhead and the swirling water. I tried to work with a sheer which was new for me. The actual tree reflections didn’t show through too well, so I ended up using oil paintsticks to fill in the trees. A friend suggested calling this “Ripples in the Water.” Nice title, don’t you think?

13×19

I belong to a group called Fearless Designers. It’s a group of ten women who have been meeting once a month for a few years. We have worked hard to learn about design principles and offering constructive critiques during our times together.

This year we decided to challenge ourselves by interpreting a different word each month over a ten month period.

Our first word for last September was Jubilation. For me this was a very difficult word as my husband died in July and I was not feeling particularly jubilant during that time. But as I thought about his death, the calling hours and the services afterwords, I realized that there were these waves (circles) of friends who were there offering support in a variety of ways……….client friends, friends from church, book club members, quilting group members, church friends, organization friends, neighbors, family and so on.

My husband and I met under the Ferris wheel in Old Orchard Beach, Maine and one of his favorite sayings was “We’ve been going round and round ever since.” So I used that Ferris wheel and the circles of friends that sometimes intersected and sometimes did not to make my interpretation of jubilation. For it’s with the support of our friends that we get through the difficult times.

This piece, A Slice of Trap, won first prize in the fiber/mixed media category at the Maine Women in the Arts show in Kennebunk, Maine, this past weekend. To top that off, it also won Best in Show and was sold! It was a very good weekend.

Today I dropped off several pieces to a lovely gallery in Lovell, Maine, Harvest Gold Gallery. The setting is beautiful and the gallery has many wonderful items. You can see the following items there: Salmon, Radishes, Trillium, Tumbling Lilies, Bird of Paradise and Poppy.

 

I haven’t posted for a long time. My husband was sick and my family and I were spending a lot of time at the hospital and nursing home. He passed away in July without suffering for too long. So now the long journey back to a new “normal” for me.

Since he was a big supporter of me doing the outdoor art shows, I returned to them in August. It’s been good to share my art once again, but bittersweet as I miss my “set-up guy.”

In August at the Art Guild of the Kennebunks show, Aurora Borealis won first place in the mixed media category. Then on the same weekend my booth won first place in the mixed media category at the Brunswick, Maine Art Festival. I was thrilled about both awards.  I’ve had several other awards this summer:  Boats at Rest – Honorable Mention, Saco Bay Artists Show in July; Tumbling Lilies – Third Place, Saco Bay Artists Show in August; Out for a Stroll – Honorable Mention at the Saco Bay Artists Show in September; and A Pop of Purple – Marea Lehman Prize at the Saco Bay Artists Show in September.

So there are some positive, heart-warming things happening. I’m back in the studio working and looking forward to finishing the outdoor show season in mid-September.