Nopales

Cactus Salsa

In November I am going to be part of an exhibition at Mission Trails Regional Park in San Diego California along with my online critique group: Louise Sackett, Katherine Tyrrell, Gayle Mason, and Vivien Blackburn. 

The show is supposed to reflect the wildlife in the park. Here's a snippet from the Mission Trails website:

Mission Trails Regional Park encompasses nearly 5,800 acres of both natural and developed recreational acres. Its rugged hills, valleys and open areas represent a San Diego prior to the landing of Cabrillo in San Diego Bay in 1542. 

It has been tough for the group to come up with subject matter for the show as all but Louise lives far from the area. I live in New Hampshire, on the east coast, which seems mighty far away, but Katherine, Vivien and Gayle live even further away in England, so I am not going to complain. 

On the Mission Trails website they have listings of pretty much all the plants that live in the park. One was the prickly pear cactus (the one and only cactus in the park) which I am very grateful for! So when I went back home to Illinois this summer I visited a Mexican grocer and got myself some prickly pear cactus! I know... show in California, I live in New Hampshire and I picked up the subject in Illinois... at a grocery store. Well you do what you have to do!

So to end an unnecessarily long story, my cactus has been getting browner and browner in the fridge so I had to do this piece now! Its a collection of ingredients for Nopales Salsa! 

I'll be doing a couple of more pieces for the show soon... thanks to my stepsister Lisa who lives in San Diego and who sent me a bunch of goodies she and her son picked up for me! 

Since Art in the Park I've gotten one artwork finished, but its not something I can show you presently... sorry about that. Its Top Secret for now. :)

So on to other things...

I was asked to participate in a fundraiser for our local arts theater: the Colonial Theater.

It is one of these dinner/art auction/raffle things that they have every year. They always do themes for it and the artwork auctioned goes along with the theme. One year it was "Tray Jolie" and we decorated trays. This year the theme is:

 “Birdland” : Birdland was a jazz club founded in New York City in 1949 by Charles Parker, a noted saxaphone player. The club still exists today but not in the original place.

So of course we are applying our artwork to birdhouses. Mine is the one that I am holding above. Ignore the face I am making - that is the face you make when a 7 year old is trying to take your picture and is taking a long time.

I have never drawn on wood so my daughter and I practiced today on little $1 birdhouses I piked up at the craft store. The wood is rougher than the wood on the nicely crafted house I will be using but it allowed me to try out which pencils worked and how much detail and layering I could get.

I found that the waxed based pencils worked best. I preferred Derwent Coloursofts over Prismacolor because they are very soft and covered the wood much more quickly. The Prismas worked fine but would take longer to over the wood.

As far as details and layering goes - they both performed the same: not that well. The colors go on bright and pretty but you will only get a maximum of 3 layers on there. So I think my design will have to be pretty stylized which is okay.

I am thinking about doing apples in a tree for the birdhouse so that's what I did for practice:

Art in the Park was a lot of fun... but windy. Look for some new pieces of mine at the Monadnock Fine Art Gallery in Keene... soon.

Updates

Updates!  Another kitsch piece finished! I am hoping to get one more done before Art in the Park on Labor Day weekend. That is our local art fair that happens in town that same weekend every year. I missed it last year with it being my first year teaching but will be back this year! Hope to see you there!

A Bird & a Feather

8" x 10"

This portrait isn't quite finished. I'm still working out the likeness that is a bit off, but its close!

 I did nail his hair and t-shirt though! ;-)

Let's Get Synthy!

My brother-in-law just got married this weekend, so I've been in festive mode (which really isn't a good enough excuse for the bad title of this blog post).

Ben and his beautiful wife Caitlin had such an amazing wedding at an estate in Harrisville, NH. It is at the top of  a hill overlooking Mount Monadnock, Harrisville Pond and countless tree topped hills; with a full panoramic view of it all from the estate's deck and lawn. 

I took several photos standing in one place on the deck but turning my body so I could get as many continuous shots of the panoramic view and today I created a  Photosynth of the scene; which I just found out about at a recent edcamp unconference in Keene (thanks Matthew). 

Here's a description from their website of what photosynth is/does:

"Photosynth takes your photos, mashes them together and recreates a 3D scene out of them that anyone can view and move around in.

Different than static photos and video, Photosynth allows you to explore details of places, objects, and events unlike any other media. You can’t stop video, move around and zoom in to check out the smallest details, but with Photosynth you can. And you can’t look at a photo gallery and immediately see the spatial relation between the photos, but with Photosynth you can."

Here it is below! Go ahead and click the Photosynth tips box off after you read it so it doesn't block your view. Okay now to look at the view just click the right or left arrow since that is the only directions that I turned. Then if you are looking at a photo you like and want to zoom in hit the plus button - even a few times to get right in. 

Of course I instantly can see how great this gadget would be for art shows/galleries. Instead of taking a shaky tour with a handheld video camera you can take shots all around the room and allow the people to walk around. You actually don't have to do a circle like I did too - as long as the shots have some overlap the program can stitch them together and you can meander around the space.

I searched their site for "art gallery" to see if anyone is doing this and found loads:

HAEA Faculty Art Show by Chanbliss
& a simpler one:
SB Art Gallery 

Another great use for Photosynth is making a 3D rendering of a statue or object like Matthew Ragan did below. I would imagine for a gallery, you could even do this with smaller objects so people can really take a good look at a sculpture.