My Featured Artist Show!

I have had people ask about my Featured Artist Exhibit, so I am posting photos of it here. This was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. Just six months ago -- maybe even three months ago! -- I wouldn't have been able to show my art in such a public "Look At Me!" way.  Thanks to the constant encouragement and support of my family and my mentor, Sandy Davies, and of the people who read my blog and leave positive comments, I've grown to the place where I can do something like this. There is a big art festival in about 10 days and Sandy is encouraging me to set up a small booth. I don't know if I'm ready for that, though!

The above picture is my little corner. On the right, hanging from the ceiling, are three strands of ATCs. There are 45 ATCs total! Lots of hard work, there. Some of them are more simple than others and some are more sophisticated, but all of them are labors of love. You know, how I feel about the art form. 

I hung 14 pieces and had one table top item. Three pieces sold. Yay for my first exhibit!

To give credit where credit is do, my father-in-law took most of these pictures. He took an over-all picture of the exhibit and then zoomed in a little bit on the artwork itself. I thought he did a good job documenting my exhibit. The clipboard with my name on it is one of my altered clipboards, based on a technique taught to me by Martha Foster. I meant to put a price tag on it and mark it for sale, but I never got around to it. The red background with the printed page on it is my biography. Hubby-John wrote that for me. It was very nice.

The bottom left piece is one of the first pieces that I made. I was practicing techniques out of Claudine Hellmuth's first book, Collage Discovery Workshop. I love that book. 

The orange dots on the labels denote that an item has been sold! I also sold the table top item, a paper mache bust that I decorated, again with techniques from Claudine Hellmuth's book. There is a wide variety of techniques demonstrated in my show. I'm kind of a technique junkie. I play with a technique until I'm bored with it (which may be one or two times!) then move on to something else. 

Here is another altered clipboard with my press clippings. I was interviewed by two of the local newspapers. Usually artists have to do their own press releases, but because of the concurrent ATC Show-in-a-show, I was a person of interest, I guess. The book on the table is Life is a Verb. I have some of my collages featured in the book as illustrations to four of author Patti Digh's essays. 

My display area in the Gallery is basically L-shaped. These are the pictures on the short end of the 'L'.  The greenish one with the black frame (bottom left-hand corner) uses a picture taken by TonivS; I got the picture off of Flickr and it's used under the Creative Common License. Thanks Toni!

This picture was taken by Sandy Davies the evening she and I hung my show. We are mostly done, so it was picture time.

This is on the front panel as soon as you walk in the door at the Gallery. Usually an artist puts a painting or other piece of work, but I had ALL my work in the back. Plus, my work is fairly small and I'd have to have put two on the panel to make any kind of impact, and I just didn't have the inventory to do that. So Sandy and I (translate: mostly Sandy) came up with the idea of making a poster out of some of the items that I use in my art. There are lots of papers and rubber stamped images and photo copies of images that I might use in image transfers. There is even some colored cheesecloth!

This was taken the morning of my reception. This is Kim, Tammy and I. Kim is a friend who used to work at Collective Journey. Tammy is my oldest friend and she is visiting from out-of-town.

Finally, here is the reception table. That's my mother-in-law in the background and Tammy in front of her. Tammy is, I believe, looking at the beautiful, colorful watercolor painting of flowers on the wall to the right of the table (It's a Julie Evans.). The gorgeous yellow roses were from my husband. He's in the National Guard and had to be at drill that week-end and so couldn't be at the reception. He sent the flowers to stand in his place. While I'd have rather had the pleasure of his company, the roses were much appreciated!