In the Mail

Another (small) batch of rune stones on their way to Traverse City, for the Dennos Museum shop.

In the Mail

During the recent International Society of Experimental Artists exhibit at the Dennos Museum Center in Traverse City, Michigan, participating artists were invited to offer small pieces of their work for sale in the museum store, an opportunity I was pleased to accept.

I was even more pleased to accept the offer to continue making my work available after the show closed and even better, the request to send more, due to the number of pieces that had sold!

The twelve pieces above, are in the mail to Dennos: they represent a northern Michigan herbarium.

Each started with a botanical photograph, shot here on Mackinac, one for each month of the year. The photos were transferred onto silk and then overbeaded, using a variety of beading techniques. They are mounted on small wooden bases and labeled with both their Latin and common name.

Playing Telephone - or the Artistic Response Chain

We all probably played the game "Telephone" as children - in which one person whispers a message to another, which is passed through a line of people until the last player announces the message to the entire group. Errors typically accumulate in the retellings, so the statement announced by the last player differs significantly, and often amusingly, from the one uttered by the first.

But what happens when a group of artists (composers, poets, painters, etc.) play the game?

An Artistic Response Chain!

Tess Miller, musician, asked that question and set the game up. It started with her husband, Scott Harding, who's "message" was the first movement of his suite Scenes of Mackinac, called North Shore at Dusk, which evokes the sound of the waves lapping against the beach on Mackinac Island at dusk.

An interview with Tess and Scott can be heard here, as well as a portion of the inspiration music.

It then passed to poet, Jim Bogan, who wrote "Antiphon", which definitely focuses on the water surrounding our island. And remember, this was inspired by only the sound of the music.

The next team in the chain, Amanda and Joel Wyse, created a large diptych in collage, based only on the poem.

And then I was next...






I was very excited to be asked to participate in this project; the entire concept was so unique, especially the combination of visual art, music and the written word. I was also more than a little bit nervous about participating – it’s quite intimidating and somewhat presumptuous to attempt to interpret another artists’ work and the time limit was a huge concern, as it takes many, many hours to combine thousands of tiny glass seed beads into a finished cohesive piece.

After seeing the diptych created by Amanda and Joel, I chose to focus on four aspects of their work:

1.) The gridded background

2.) The colors blue and rust, and

3.) The map imagery.

Water and boundaries are frequent themes in my work, for this piece I decided to focus on the interaction of the Island’s rocky shore and the surrounding water – after all, an island is defined by water. I collected stones from the beach and created a beaded bezel around each one, then joined them together vaguely in the shape of the Island as shown on a map and then added beaded water. This was mounted on a rusty wire grid, left over from the construction of our home. This in turn was mounted on a piece of driftwood, which was again found on the shoreline. A small compass and a reproduction an antique tintype depicting both sail and stem driven ships docked in the harbor finished the composition.

The piece is titled “Charting the Boundaries” and while it was intended to be an interpretation of the preceding diptych, I also wanted to express the intent that is needed to reach Mackinac – you don’t end up here because you took a left instead of a right, it usually takes planning and effort. But sometimes if we allow ourselves to drift, like the base of my piece, we may end up here. You have to want to be here, but sometimes, like the driftwood, something out there says you need to be here.

Due to my tendency to see things very differently than most people, I was concerned that the project would take a massive left turn when it reached me, afraid I might send it in an unintended direction. At the first reveal, Scott shared his intent that his music sound like waves reaching the shore and I was thrilled – He started with water and my piece continued that theme exactly!

 

Pam Finkel, painter, was next. In her artist statement, she commented the following:

“What struck me,” about Mrs. Dorman’s artwork, “was the sense of nostalgia and melancholy— a longing for times gone by,” which harkened back to how Mr. Harding described the feelings expressed in his song that initiated the game.

“Kelly included a small, oldtime compass in her piece, so I used the compass image around her representing all the roads leading away from her, but she remains in the middle, holding down the fort, with the feeling of home, sweetness, and comfort to which we may always return.”

Next was another musical piece, by Alex Graham, who was inspired by the compass points of Pam's work.

This was followed by filmmaker Rob Kalmbach used to direct him while filming a six-minute, winter documentary of Mackinac Island, which can be seen here.



Mauve Croghan, felt the film expressed the warmth of the community, and chose to use warm colors in here painting seen above.

Those warm colors and plant life depicted in the painter inspired, potter Julie Porter to create a large serving platter of stoneware pottery meant to be used while sharing a meal with a group.



The final artist in the chain, was another composer, Whitney Ashe.

He said the flowers painted around the platter’s border largely inspired his piece “Last Call.”

“Also important was the way that the stems are positioned on the outer parts,” he said. “They lend a kind of spiraling, swirling motion to it so that the overall effect of the piece becomes one of something essentially serene juxtaposed against a subtle yet inconsistent motion, like the wind off the lake as it passes through a flower bed...The piece itself begins in an almost perfect stillness before being transformed through the swirl of eddying winds that lift it to its peak before allowing it to fall away at its end.”



At the first reveal, it was amazing to all involved that the first piece of music evoked water and the final piece of music subtly echoed it - different, but yet the same!

The discussion after the reveal was quite interesting, looking for all the echoes of the initial inspiration music and it was fascinating to see all the pieces all together.

An article with more information is available here.

It was a fantastic project, and I'd love to do it again - but not to soon!

Earthy Abstraction

I was very pleased to have "Reading the Runes:Stones of Power" accepted into the Earthy Abstraction show in North Carolina.

A Juried Competition, March 27 – May 16, 2015

Arts Council Galleries at

301 Hay Street, Fayetteville, NC

 

Ellington-White Contemporary Gallery (EWCG) in partnership with the Arts Council Fayetteville/Cumberland County invited artists to submit entries to a juried competition entitled Earthy Abstraction.  This exhibition features artists that work with or incorporate elements of natural materials such as soil, clay, wood, stone and other materials into their visual practice.  The works have a direct connection in theme, texture, and materials with the natural world.

 

Arts Council Gallery Hours
Monday - Thursday: 9 am to 5pm
Friday: 9 am to noon  •  Saturday: noon to 4 pm

The natural materials in this piece include stones, driftwood, an acorn cap, natural indigo dye and rusty metal.

The stones rest on a complex cloth, which I first indigo dyed and rusted. I then did some image transfers and some painting. There are five stones which represent the following powers: Growth, Decay, Drift, Persistence and Ice.

A Charming Reveal

Three Pines Studio, in Cross Village, Michigan, started the summer season with a show that had Emily Dickinson  and her "Gorgeous Nothings" as inspiration and have chosen to end the season with another poet as inspiration: Walt Whitman.

From the call for entry for I COLLAGE MYSELF: Contemporary portraits of Ourselves and Our Experiences. A Tribute to Walt Whitman:

 "Poetry is important...It continues to stand the test of time maintaining its relevance. Its readers during Florentines of Dante's time found its phrases just as enthralling as the hipsters of our time. Poetry paints, sings, whispers, tests and twitters. The poet, Walt Whitman, continues to offer us a portrait of ourselves within the words of Song of Myself. Whitman embraced an art of fragments that encouraged him to 'cut and paste' his lines into ever-evolving forms based on what he called 'spinal ideas.' It is this method that relates to our current everyday collaging of interests and opinions on social media such as Facebook. Walt Whitman created portraits of our collective self - slices of life, farmers, sailors, dock workers, soldiers, etc." 

"It was his creative process of collaging phrases that hinted of the work of visual artists (who used the same technique with paper collage) such as Matisse, Braque and Picasso; who like Whitman, communicated thoughts and ideas through simple visual forms of color and shape. Creating their works of art and speaking to the reader or viewer through the visual fragments collaged created a whole. It is with this in mind that we are inspired to create our won art and invite others to do the same."

"In our call for artists we don't necessarily mean a self portrait. We mean a portrait of our lives today. Portrait means a collaboration of parts that come together collectively in the expression of works - whether in objective landscapes, figurative work or no-objective abstractions. It is the synthesis of these creative parts that create the whole."

For my piece, "A Cautionary Tale", I chose to focus on the concept of "fragments making a whole".

The piece is a vastly over-sized "charm bracelet", with each charm representing a life experience, a mental attitude or  just a view point on how we should live our lives. Each has a very particular meaning for me, but I'd prefer not to reveal those personal meanings - you may see/feel something entirely different when viewing the charms, based on your own personal life experiences.

Each charm is made of found objects, some man-made, some natural and lots of beads. They are simply, even roughly attached to a wrought iron ring - life is NOT pristine or perfect!

The show runs through October 30th, do visit if you're in the area.

Charms - Sneak Peek #2

Charms

I've been working on a new project; I'm not ready to share too many details just yet, but it involves creating "charms" representing significant life events or words to live by - I'll be sharing some "sneak peeks" with the final reveal coming at the end of the month!

Too Late, Too Soon...

The Natural Resources Preservation Fund of the Mackinac Island Community Foundation is presenting a juried art exhibit July 3rd - July 29th. 

16 pieces, created by 12 artists were selected for the show.... and two of them are mine!

In my ongoing effort to use beads in non-traditional ways, I created two mixed media pieces. The first is titled "Beautifully Invasive: Hawksbeard". Right now this is a familiar scene on the Island, the darkness of cedar forests, blanketed in a carpet of bright yellow. I was surprised to learn that in Michigan, hawksbeard is only seen on Mackinac at such high concentrations.

I created the piece by using gel medium to create the tree trunks (lots of texture), painted the canvas and then beaded right through the canvas to emphasize the flowers.

The second piece, "Trillium" focuses more on the native flora and was started in a similar manner, using gel medium and paint, but the bead work was first completed and then added to the canvas.

The goal of the show is to be both visually pleasing and thought provoking - consider what may happen to any environment if invasive plants and/or animals overpower and destroy the native ecosystem. History shows many examples of what can happen and it is unfortunately becoming an increasing common problem in our modern world. 

Touch-Stones

"Touch-Stones" is definitely a statement necklace and is my latest beaded piece. Even better, it's actually for me, not for sale.

Each of the three pendants is a stone collected on significant journeys in my life: Isle Royale, Montreal and Gloucester.

I used several beading techniques, including twisted tubular herringbone, right-angle weave and peyote stitch.

In a Natural Vein - January 2014 Art Bead Scene Submission

"In a Natural Vein" is my submission for the January Art Bead Scene monthly challenge. Here's the inspiration piece:

It's a textile design for cretonne (a heavy unglazed cotton, linen, or rayon fabric, colorfully printed and used for draperies and slipcovers), circa approximately 1928. It's by Lois Mailou Jones, in tempera on paper.

Loïs Mailou Jones wanted to be remembered as an artist, not an African-American or woman artist. Her life spanned almost all of the twentieth century—a time of unprecedented changes in American history—and she was an active participant in the development of African-American influence in the arts. She was a trailblazer, a respected college professor, an artist ambassador, and an international expert on culture who documented everything she saw and did as a painter in the Harlem Renaissance, as an illustrator for Carter Woodson, a colleague of Alain Locke and Langston Hughes, an educator and mentor, and a champion of black artists in Africa and the Caribbean.
I was fortunate to have a perfect focal piece in my stash for this month - a porcelain cabochon by Nancy Schindler of Round Rabbit. It not only had the veined leaf motif, it also had the black and grey of the predominant design of the inspiration piece; I surrounded it with a beaded bezel in black and chartreuse. I used veined grey and black jasper beads and black stone nuggets for the bulk of this asymmetric piece. But it needed a bit more color...

And of course, I to find some more chartreuse!

The enamel over copper clasp and bead are from BeadSwedeSupplies and proved to exactly the punch of color this piece needed.

Available for purchase here.

Hidden in the Snow

If you look closely, snow isn't really white - those bits of crystallized water show every color possible!

"Hidden in the Snow" is my submission for the Art Bead Scene December monthly challenge. Here's the inspiration piece:

It's Winter Landscape by Wassily Kandinsky, circa 1909. He certainly understood that snow isn't white!

I've not been a very active participant in the monthly challenges - the time frame is a large difficulty for me, as I seldom seem to have an appropriate "art bead" in my stash (beaded beads are not allowed for some reason). With no local bead store - the closest is 3 hours away - I have to rely on online bead shops and by the time I order and actually receive my focal bead, there's not much time left to create a submission.

I've increased my stash and hopefully this will allow me to actively participate more in the coming year.

This necklace does use beads from my stash, combined with freeform peyote stitch and an Italian mesh wire base.

  

Available for purchase here.

History: On the Table

My work has been gradually moving in a more mixed media direction, but always with beads as the centerpiece. "History: On the Table" is my most ambitious example of this concept to date.

The piece was originally created for the 2013 contemporary exhibit at the Richard and Jane Manoogian Mackinac Art Museum, this year's theme was "People of Mackinac". My intent was to represent ALL the people of Mackinac, from beginning to the present in a mandala form.

Alas, the piece was rejected by the juror!

But it WAS accepted for the 2013 Crooked Tree Art Center Juried Fine Art Exhibition - YAY!

The Island itself is represented at the center, by a piece of the brecciated limestone. It's held in place by a beaded "bezel", that extends up and over the stone.

An island is, of course, surrounded by water and so is my representation - I used over twenty different colors of beads in an attempt to capture the ever changing nature of the lake.

The first people to represented are literally the First People in this area, the Anishinaabe (Ojibwa) Indian tribes were some of Mackinac Island's first known inhabitants, who considered the island to be the sacred home of the Gitche Manitou, or the "Great Spirit".

Originally, Native American beads were carved from natural materials like shells, coral, turquoise and other stones, copper and silver, wood, amber, ivory, and animal bones, horns, and teeth. Glass beads were not used until colonists brought them from Europe 500 years ago and were quickly became the the beads of choice.

The traditional motifs were curving, especially a double curve and often included abstract floral designs. I chose to not replicate an original design, but created my own pattern, keeping the established motifs in mind.

My design is stitched on black wool, using opaque size 15/0 beads.

The next people to be represented were the French fur trappers.

I used actual beaver fur, cut in scallops and also created my own fur trade silver pieces, using PMC.

The black wool and the silver crosses were also used to represent the Jesuit missionaries, who established the first mission on Mackinac in 1670.

The next ring in the mandala  depicts the British presence with red wool I purchased from a gentleman who constructs reproduction British redcoat uniforms as well as shiny military buttons (not in this picture).

Soon after the British lost  possession of Mackinac, the fur trade was over and the residents farmed and  especially fished - the waters surrounding Mackinac teemed with fish, particularly desirable whitefish. The wharfs, warehouses and workforce that so effectively served the fur trade were easily adapted to commercial fishing.

I created beaded nets for the next round:

And linked the nets with a school of image transferred whitefish.

As with furs, the fishing industry also crashed, due to over fishing. The residents of the Island needed a new industry and steamships and trains brought to them - the tourist trade!

Tourists have become a dominant people on Mackinac starting in the 1850's and continues to the present day.

I was at a bit of a loss on how to depict such a long range of time: 1850 - the present, but decided to emulate an old fashioned photo album. You might recall the style: black paper pages, photo corners and notes made with a white pencil.

A new question arose - how to display this assemblage?

The answer - more assemblage!

I had an old, broken Victorian era table that I've been hauling around for years, to my husband's dismay.

The table top was square, but we cut it into a circle, perfectly sized to hold the mandala. Then a beat-up metal wheel was inserted in place of the broken shelf, as a reference to the wheeled vehicles we use, bikes and buggies.

After placing the mandala on the table, all I could think of was a doily, albeit a rather eccentric doily. And doilies usually have an edging or fringe, so mine did too!

My fringe pulls together past and present, after all, the present is deeply rooted in our past - thus beaded roots with beaded mirrors, to make the viewer a part of the people of Mackinac.

Here's an overall view:

It's all there, the history of a place and the people who have made it: "Our History: On the Table".