White Oak Studio

Today I visited a site called G2 Gallery www.G2gallery.com with a tag line of “Supporting Art and the Environment.” The site was filled with artwork made by “environmental artists.” I found it through a link provided by the wonderful environmental awareness boosting website www.emagazine.com

The photographs on this site are truly beautiful. And, they do call attention to the beauty of the natural world and support “the appreciation” of the few pristine wild places left. They also do generate general awareness of the environmental issues we face.

But where some artists take beautiful color photographs of the last wild remaining places on earth, I can’t help but wonder how much fossil fuels it took to get them to their remote location, for example? And what kind of wear and tear took place at the site during his or her visit? Also, how many chemicals did it take to produce and develop their film? Or if digital images, what about the inks and papers it takes to print them, then finally to matt and frame them?

Is this really being supportive of the environment?

Where is the niche for an eco conscious artist like myself who does very little to minimal damage to the earth/air/water/wildlife in our art making process?

I am a mixed media artist who grows and uses my handmade plant papers in my artwork - collages of handmade paper on canvas. My home-grown plants are grown in my National Wildlife Federation certified garden or my Monarch Waystation garden. No chemicals are used in the growing of my organic plants that I turn into acid-free, highly textured handmade plant papers. I am very careful to gather and harvest only non-protected plants. No toxins are used to make my artwork (with the exception of the acrylic matte medium I use to protect the collages surface.) The leaves and processed low-tech and are mostly hand pressed in an old, repurposed telephone book. The stones, twigs, seapods or beach wood I pick for my collages on canvas are gathered from my frequent walks in the forest or nearby Lake Michigan.

I may be responsible for some wear and tear on the earth from the canvas and acrylic medium I purchase and use, but the only actual fossil fuels are used in the delivery of art to my galleries.

My vision is that my artwork will play a key role in bringing awareness of environmental issues to the public. Does not my artwork deserve to be listed in the “Supporting the Earth” Category?

This is the time of year I am busy checking in with my galleries.

I am determining;

• Who is still open for business?
• Who wants my work this season?
• How many pieces will they want?
• When will they want them delivered?
• Which gallery is having a “Spring Gallery Walk” and what are those dates? (so I can deliver before then.)

• What are you terms (what is your mark-up)?
• When you like work delivered?.
• How you like work delivered?
• Do you need a written inventory listing?
• Approximately how many pieces do you want from each artist?
• When is your first “opening” event? Do you want work delivered before or after that?

I’ve gone through all of the steps…1) Creating new work, 2) Creating a detailed written inventory with prices, sizes and titles, 3) Calling the gallery to tell them I will be delivering on a certain date 4) Making a two hour drive when gas was $4.00 a gallon only to arrive at the gallery ONLY to be told…”we don’t have any wall space for your work until after this weekends opening” can you deliver it next month?” Needlessly I thought, “You have got to be kidding me!!”

Please, help us help you sell!

The next few months will be busy with gallery and outlet work for 2009.

Here is my “To Do” list:

1. Purchase new promo folders - DONE
2. Prepare new promo folders  - DONE 
3. Make contact with galleries I hope to consign with in 2009  - DONE 
4. I am hoping to place my work in two new galleries with three will be repeat galleries from 2008
5. Get appointment to show my new work  - DOING
6. Swop out old work for new  - DOING
7. Make inventory lists and deliver artwork  - DOING

I am just coming out from an intense period of creative work in the studio. I have been deeply immersed in the creative process for the past two months.

This new grouping of work began with a comission for a South Haven woman who wanted me to use the plants from her wonderful, wooded property not far from Lake Michigan’s shores. That “jump started” a new series I am calling “Gift of the Dunes.” These designs and materials of this new work draw their inspiration from the Lake Michigan dunes and uses plants, stones and driftwood gathered along the lakeshore area.

Titles of work includes;

• Singing Sands
• Calm Water
• Time and Tides
• Shifting Wind

Today I finally began to work with the ornamental grass flower head from the hops plant. This plant has an especially lovely flower head that has a wonderful shape, serated edge and matures into a unique shade of pale green and bronze. I picked these from my garden last autumn and let them air dry in a vase on the three-season porch in anticipation of using them in paper this winter. I am filled with excitement about this new project.

I begin by making a base of well beaten hosta, flax and abaca to which I added the flower heads, whole on the thin panacels and some, broken into tiny pieces, for interest. I let the sheets of paper dry overnight to see if they are going to ”bleed.”

When I checked on these sheet this morning, they are dry, with minimal bleeding but unfortunately the flower heads also dried a uniform, golden tan color - no more shades of bronze and pale green. Rats!  The paper is still quite lovely and will be useful in canvas projects.

It was quite successful to leave some of the flower heads on the thin stems as they look lovely that way when dried. However, today’s lesson learned….no matter what one does Mother Nature is the one truly in charge!

After some time away from the studio dealing with an “art slump” I have been working on a new project - the Warshawsky canvas commission. Gaining this commission and the ensuing excitment about designing a one-of-a-kind, original piece has apparently ended my art slump, at least for now.

This customer asked me to use plant materials from her property and to incorporate them into a unique canvas design - a fun and exciting project.

After several meetings and plant gathering expeditions I now have enough leaves picked and pressed to create a nice canvas. In this particular case, it was tricky because most of the plants on this couples rural wooded property were either too small in scale or were no longer pristine. I expect to use the Sasafrass leaves, which are large and graceful on a 24″ X 36 canvas in the allowed space.

This customer is also “open” to the idea of using “natural” found objects so I may be able to incorporate stones, shells, seadpods, sticks and twigs into this piece for some added interest.

My original thumb nail sketch and idea was to create a series of four narrow canvas’s to be viewed as one larger canvas but the client apparently did not want to invest that much into the work as well as space to hang the larger work was a major issue.

This week I began to make sheets of handmade paper, experimenting with several different fibers. It is always a bit of an experiment with the first batch and I must experiment over an over until I get the right combinations of fibers and colors.

SHEET ONE:
I worked with a base of unbleached abacca to which I added Oregon seaweed and kale and dried, uncooked dracea fibers (from Florida) to create a paper in a mid-range tone with flecks of tan and black for visual interest. Seaweed is the only fiber that gives me this unique green/black color. Even when soaked in soda ash and cooked, seaweed is very “hard” and difficult to blender to a fiberous effect.

After 20 some sheets of this paper is completed, I pla to use these taupe sheets as the canvas base with the lighter sheets as accents onto which I will adhere the leaves.

SHEET TWO:
I worked with a base of abacca, flax and hosta to which I added a lovely Hops ornamental sead pod is from the Chasmanthium species. According to Nancy J. Ondra, author of Grasses, this unique sead pod is a true “raceme” which is similar to a spike but the flowers are attached to the central axis by a short stem called a Pedicel.

This seed pod dries to an incredibly beautiful and delicate green bronze color and I am hoing that it will remain true to those colors once in the dried paper.

I am struggling with keeping my own excitement going in my art career, much less my clients interest. Have you ever felt this too? What did you do?

When I owned a working studio with public gallery I had to get certain things done every day in order to be ready for customers. I spent the winter months coming up with new ideas and works of art before we opened in May.  I had to fill the gallery with some 30 to 40 pieces of new works (handmade paper on canvas) each and every season! Then when work sold, I had to make more work to fill the empty spots on the wall.

Now that the gallery is closed, and art is moving v-e-r-y slowly in Michigan’s lousy economy…I’ve lost my incentive, my internal drive for keeping the artistic wheels moving forward. I am in my first ever art slump!

When I was a writer, I’d read about writers block, but in all honesty I never actually experienced it. While I read about it “intellectually,” it cetainly did not speak to me personally in the same way as having experienced it is now doing.

WHAT HAVE I DONE:

• I have been looking for a 3-D papermaking workshop to help lite the fire under me, but have not been able to find the one I want. They are all to basic and for beginners.
• I’ve been looking for an apprenticeship experience to grease my wheels…but have come up dry.
• I’ve set a goal of finding two news galleries every year. I find them but either they close or they disappoint me as either they do not take enough work to make it worth the work to be allowed to exhibit there. Or it costs so much to drivethere (when not enough work is selling) that I can’t justify the expense.

One of my art goals this winter is to do better at my blogging. So I’ve been doing some preliminary research on how to do just that.

I found one article, “Writing A Better Blog Post” written by Art Coach, Alyson B. Stanfield alyson@artbizcoach.com NOTE: All the credit for this great article goes solely to Alyson.

I “think” what I am writing is of value for other artists…but how do I know this for sure?

Write a Better Blog Post

Someone–perhaps I–told you to get a blog. And you did it. Now, you aren’t feeling the love. Your traffic is almost nonexistent, and your posts are boring even you. If you’re intent on building traffic for your blog, here are some tips for you.

1. Write with respect for your readers.
You can write anything you want in your private journal, but if you want traffic to your blog, you can’t forget your readers (or potential readers!). If you want to write about what you had for breakfast, make it the best darned post about breakfast food in the history of posts about breakfast food.

5. Write with illustrations.
Don’t forget to post images of your art and images that help illustrate your topic. We like pictures and we want to see more of your work. Got video? Post it to your blog, too!

I received a telephone call today from one of my galleries, Khnemu Gallery www.khnemustudio.com to tell me that a 12″ X 24″ canvas titled,  ”Season of Sasafras” had sold. How do you spell excitement! She said that one her regular customers had been in the gallery and saw the canvas and just fell in love with it. This confirms what I have been suspecting this year, that there is a trend happening; and that the more unusual size canvas’s are selling right now instead of the more common, larger sizes of the past.

I had a “feeling” that smaller price points would go better in this current economy and as a result began to work on 12″ X 24″, 16″ X 16″  and 5″ X 5″ square canvas’s and that is what has been selling the past two years.

After a piece sells I always want to be the “mouse in the pocket” to go into the buyers home and see where and how the piece has been hung. Thank you!!