8×5″ acrylic block printing, ink on sketchbook page
I printed a series of block prints (whole and partial) with acrylic paint, then wrote the quote with an ink marker. I was tempted to do a background color, but decided against it.
Today’s quote is by Laurie Elizabeth Talbot Hall who was featured in both the Iowa women artist’s project and the Beyond 9-11 project. Last I knew she lived in New York City, but I interviewed her in the Riverside/Iowa City area.
5×8″ acrylic, ink on sketchbook page
This image (the second in the “just make art” series of daily janes) is loosely based on a mosaic work by the artist I am quoting today, Marcia Joff-Bouska. Marcia lived in Council Bluffs at the time I interviewed her (and may still live there). You can find out more about her and her work here. Again, you’ll probably have to click on the image to show the full view in order to read the quote. Be kind to yourself!
8×5″ acrylic, ink
This may be the first in a series of little artworks with inspirational quotes by Iowa artists I interviewed back in the late 1990s and early 2000s as part of the Iowa Women Artists Oral History Project and Beyond 9-11: The Art of Renewal in Iowa. I may do this for the month of October in my daily janes. Or I might make it a regular feature every few days for the rest of the year.
This quote is by Barbara Robinette Moss, an artist born and raised in Alabama who lived in Iowa City at the time I interviewed her. She wrote two well-received memoirs after we spoke: Change Me Into Zeus’s Daughter and Fierce. In 2009, I was saddened to hear that cancer had taken her life. Too soon, too soon.
I have written a book collecting quotes like this called Just Make Art using Barbara’s line as inspiration. A published book may or may not happen, but a daily jane series probably will.
For this piece, I swirled around different acrylic colors on a sketchbook page, then went in with some ink markers for the words. Don’t forget to click on the image to see the full version (and hopefully to make the writing readable)! Enjoy!
5×8″ acrylic, ink on sketchbook page
I started with a blockprint using acrylic in the center, then drew similar lines with a blue ink marker above and below that. I added vertical lines with another ink marker, then filled in the lines with two colors of acrylic paint. The final pass was a watered down transparent glaze of magenta over the blockprint/drawn shapes in the middle. And that finishes the month of September—and the third quarter of the daily janes!
scanned film photograph
Unfortunately, my film-camera night sky photography experiment did not yield very good results (at least not yet—some of my film wasn’t scanned by mistake so I have to take it back to the store). On the positive side, this photo, while not focusing very well on the moon, caught a fleeting peek at the UFO on the left. 😉 Other time-consuming tasks today make this film capture of the alien ship with the moon my daily jane for today. I’ll try to do better tomorrow.
digital photo
I had a hard time deciding between this image of the super moon post-eclipse this morning, or a photo from last night during the full eclipse with rust moon and part of our house. I love the color and the form of the house in the one from last night, but the moon is definitely blurrier and the night sky is lit from a nearby streetlight. So, I opted for this morning’s better moon.
I hope you were able to experience this beautiful phenomenon live and in-person. I plan to post more photos on my artwork facebook page, including the one I describe above.
I also took some photos of the moon last night on my old film SLR camera. I’m not sure they were focused well or whether they’ll turn out at all, and I won’t find out until the film is developed and printed! Remember when we always had to wait to see our photographs?
5×8″ acrylic, blockprinting
This began with some blockprinting (with acrylic) to finish off paint I had already printed with on another piece. I pressed a scraping tool that had some leftover paint onto the piece, then scraped that paint a little (creating pseudo-fishy forms—surprise!). I diluted some brilliant blue with acrylic glazing liquid and water and went over the whole piece. I added some additional blockprints of the green vegetation. Then went over certain areas with more diluted brilliant blue.
It’s so funny to me when a form appears that takes on a life of its own and becomes something that wasn’t at all in my mind when I started.
9.5×6.5″ acrylic on matboard
I repurposed an older scraped painting with a few new scrapes, trying to salvage it. I’m not entirely convinced that it’s salvaged or given a higher purpose. Yet. But it’s today’s daily.
Perhaps I give in to the daily posting pressure too often, settling for something less than I would like. But…I’m trying to accept the failures as well as the successes, and to show some of both. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
14×14″ (framed) mixed media: currency strips, ribbon, thread
This is also not really a “daily,” but it is part of the daily art-making I’ve been engaged in over the months. I posted an extreme close-up of the weaving earlier this year as a daily jane. This is what the full piece looks like now. I framed it up yesterday and in a couple of weeks it will be displayed in the Heritage Gallery’s Greater Des Moines Exhibited show downtown (2nd & Walnut, Polk County building). [post-publication note: this won an honorable mention at the Clay Fiber national show at the Octagon Center for the Arts in Ames in 2016!]
12×16″ mixed media: acrylic, screen, yarn, thread on canvas
This is not technically a “daily”—it’s been in the works for years in one form or another. But I added some paint today that I hope finishes it. Yet to be determined, of course.
This began its life (as far as I can remember it) as a sort of study for a larger painting. I was experimenting with using screen material for texture but also as a “loom” structure for weaving, so this has a little bit of everything.
After the experimenting was done, it went through a couple of different iterations (at least), until more recently I focused on and smoothed out (somewhat) the blues and purples and turquoises and arrived here.