It's Here: Women in Conversation Opens This Friday

Detail, Spring Revisited by Gayle Pritchard

Such an exciting week lies ahead, culminating with the opening of our three-woman Women's History Month exhibition, Women in Conversation, on Friday night.

On Saturday, we unloaded six carloads of artwork into the gallery and carefully unwrapped all of the pieces for the gallery director. The space looks beautiful, and we cannot wait to see the show installed.

We all worked until the very end finishing work, wiring for hanging, adding titles to the artworks, sometimes the most difficult part. There is such a broad array of work from paintings and drawings to art quilts, assemblages, hybrid books and so much more. We created educational displays to illustrate our processes and highlight some of the materials we love to use. We even made a scavenger hunt game. Come to the opening at the Stocker Center Art Gallery Friday, February 28, 4 - 7 p.m. to play! Enjoy the art, live music and refreshments, as well. If you can't be there Friday, join us Saturday, February 29, 6 - 7 p.m. We'll be in the gallery then before the Mardi Gras concert with Terrance Simien begins.

One of the new pieces I created for this exhibition is called Target Family. Here are some images showing my process.

I wanted to create a diverse sense of  the
people who come to this country, so I
looked for eyes of all sorts. Detail, Target
Family by Gayle Pritchard

Here are some of the images I found. I really like how it adds
an edginess to the collage. Detail, Target Family by Gayle
Pritchard

Here is the final piece. My mixed media painting backs the
collage of an official NRA target, an old photograph
that has been altered as shown above. I mounted all on a
painted board, then added the assemblage elements.
Target Family by Gayle Pritchard. 

Loose Ends, New Beginnings

From the book, I Hope You Dance, by
Mark Sanders and Tia Sillers.

It's that funny time between Christmas and the New Year. Today, against all odds in northern Ohio, the sun is brilliant in the sky; even though I slept in, it's the kind of sunshine that makes you want to jump out of bed on a winters' day and greet the world. It makes you want to dance.

I haven't put the Christmas tree ornaments away yet. In fact, I just finished clearing off the dining room table yesterday, finally removing the soiled tablecloth and taking it outside for a good shake before putting it in the laundry pile. I haven't done much in the way of "necessary" work this week: laundry, grocery shopping and the like. I'm on vacation.

Thanksgiving builds its' crescendo to Christmas Eve dinner, the big day at our house, I rise to the occasion, making plans, decorating, preparing pies and special dishes, shopping in local boutiques, trying to find just the right gift at the right price. After the family dinner on Christmas Eve, everyone opens their sleigh gift, and the night dissolves into family stories over dessert, talks, conversations in the corner, and mellow holiday punch. After that, my vacation begins.

I used the time this past week to tie up loose ends. This gets me ready for the new year. I like to start out with a clean slate, or at least a good start on one. I worked on my genealogy piles, scanning pictures and documents, following up on correspondences that have winked at me for weeks when I was too busy to form a reply. I got a good start on thank you notes, returned phone calls, organized my recipe books, returning the loose pages pulled out for the holidays. I gathered stacks of cardboard boxes for the next recycling truck, made a bag of donations, scanned my pile of new books into Goodreads to add to my "want to read" list. I even started reading one of my new books, Michelle Obama's "Becoming."

May Queen, a collage in progress by
Gayle Pritchard

There are plenty of loose ends in my studio, as well. Because my attic access is through the closet in that room, it gets piled up with Christmas boxes, wrapping paper, gift bags and the like. When I'm not working, the table gets covered with piles of collage papers I haven't put away yet, mending projects, and large pieces of artwork that have been moved to make room for a visiting guest or two. I didn't get the table cleared off completely, but I did pull out a few things to finish up.

This collage, I call it May Queen, was started back in July in a play-day with my art group. I made several pieces that day, but I really liked this one. I pulled it out this week and finished gluing the three dimensional elements in place. I plan to darken the blue botanical drawing in the bottom right corner, and maybe add a line of nice blue oil pastel, melted to a lip-sticky consistency, along the curve of the woman's back on the left. I think that will do it. The collage was created on stretched canvas, so I will either frame it with found wood pieces, or find a box or frame to pop it into.

As the new year approaches, I wish you peace and happiness. And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance. I plan to. Happy New Year.

More Inspirations

One intriguing aspect of Basquiat's artwork is how he joins smaller drawings together on a larger surface, and then integrates the imagery. Here is an example from the recent show at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

The reflections make it a bit hard to see, but you get the idea. Fabulous!

There is such a multitude of ways to approach art making. I think you know by now how I promote the unique approach each person can take. No one else can tell your story. It's yours to tell, and you have to do it your way.

Sing your own song.

As I mentioned in my last post, I am working on some new pieces that are very different for me. I found an over-sized book at a library sale full of photographs of every day buildings and people from the olden days, all in black and white. I cut out the images that appealed to me for use in my collage work, and I alter them for my own use. I have written about my techniques for integrating found and throw away photographs in to my work in previous blog posts here.

I used an image of an old house for my piece About a Boy: 

Both found and "throw-away"photography are combined and integrated into a larger piece,
About a Boy, Gayle Pritchard 2017.

In the newest piece I am finishing, and which I showed in progress in my last blog post, I used found imagery of a group of children, which have now been sandpapered, hand colored with oil pastels and stitched with other found papers. I love how it's turning out!

Inspirations

I saw a terrific exhibition at Cleveland's treasure of an Art Museum: Basquiat's Notebooks. I absolutely loved the show, and saw it twice. This box is one of my favorite pieces:

Seeing how he used his notebooks to create his artwork was inspiring. I use my journals and sketchbooks all the time, and am always in motion, creating marks or writing words as often as possible. It was really fascinating to have a glimpse into someone else's process.

New collage in progress by Gayle Pritchard, 2017

Now that our Memories Evoked: Circling Back Home exhibition is over, I am back at work on some new pieces. They are a bit different for me. This is the beginning of a new one, collage and oil pastel markings over painted marks. The antique handkerchief was selected for the color, but also because I knew how cool it would look made transparent with matte medium. I placed the found paper alphabet circle underneath it before gluing it in place, but after I made my marks on top of the paint. I like layers, and hiding some of my marks.

The next step was to add other collage elements, which I will show you next time. After those had dried, I began stitching the edges of the fabric with embroidery floss. I then ran everything that would fit through my sewing machine.

New collage in progress by Gayle Pritchard, 2017. This piece is enhanced by both hand
and machine stitching.

Because the paper is thick, I couldn't roll all of it to fit under the sewing machine foot. That forced me to choose which areas I wanted to emphasize. I can't wait to get it finished!

Building a Composition

Turtle Spirit II, in progress
by Gayle Pritchard

In my previous post, the central panel  of Turtle Spirit II was finished. By showing you the piece on my working wall here, I hope you can get a sense of how the finished composition was built, piece by piece, literally.

As I mentioned before, I sew my compositions in sections on a tear-away backing. This makes it easier to work with the sections on my sewing machine, and it allows me to join unusually shaped edges to each other with ease.

To the base composition, I have added two side panels of African fabric, each of which features one of my hand-made cyanotype prints appliqued in place. I already envision how I want to quilt these side panels with long, broad stitches in perle cotton, and can hardly wait to begin sewing them! Along the bottom of the original panel is a single piece of unusual striped fabric, to which I have pinned various fabric remnants to be appliqued in place. I like this method of working. It is the same process as when I create a paper collage. The elements are auditioned by placing them on the main composition where it is very easy to immediately see what does or doesn't work. The finished art quilt will also have an additional layer of design, which is the quilting stitch itself. Unless you make quilts, it's hard to describe how much adding that line to the surface of the piece can change the surface, directing the eye in unexpected directions. I can also later add additional layers of fabrics and surfaces, such as stitched and printed attachments, to further enhance and complete the composition. I can respond to the composition throughout each stage of the process, adding and taking away until the piece is finished. All of these potential features are in my mind as I place the elements for this layer of the finished work.

The base layer of Turtle Spirit II, almost done!

To the striped bottom edge of the top's center panel, I added a narrow strip of fabric to create a visual edge. Underneath, a section of African fabric matching the top central panel is repeated, edged on either side with an exciting fabric that has a directional design, and more snippets laid on the surface to consider for applique.

Considering future structural problems, I decide that the two bottom side edges need a fabric underneath them to make it easier to bind the finished quilt when the layers are assembled. (Trying to bind those shaped side edges is a problem I definitely wish to avoid!) I don't want the fabric I use to jump out visually, though, because I like the illusion of the sides being slightly shorter than the bottom central panel. My solution is in the next picture. Ignoring the purple and blue backing fabric, which will not show on the front when the piece is finished, can you tell what I added or changed?

Planes, Trains and Automobiles: Artist Travels

Don't forget your journal! This is

one of my refillable matchbox 

journals, made entirely of recycled

materials.

As I prepare to be on the road, I am reminded of one of the workshops I teach called Planes, Trains and Automobiles: Techniques for Traveling Collages. When you are traveling, you cannot possibly bring all of your art supplies with you. I have perfected a little traveling kit that I like to use, and have found over the decades, that both the familiarity of what I pack combined with the limitations of what I am able to pack combine for some fun inspiration. If you only bring one thing, though, make sure you bring a journal / sketchbook!

I made this collage while sitting at the beach.

With just a few supplies, you can observe and respond to your environment through your artwork, and have a special record of your travels at the same time!

So, what to bring? Do: Grab a journal that is a convenient size. Drill, hole-punch, stitch, pre-paint or fold pocket pages into some of the pages. Don't: try to bring large or heavy tools. Do: Make a checklist of what you are packing. This will make it easier next time. Don't: bring any potential "weapons" on the plane, if you are flying. Pack scissors, needles or anything else like that in your checked luggage. Do: Use the zipper pouch in your suitcase for art supplies.

In my workshop, I show students how to make a petal-fold portfolio in any size to hold their art papers. Any little travel bag will work, however. You can add a place to hold pencils, pens, brushes and markers by stitching or super-gluing rubber bands, hair elastics or sewing elastic. If you use buttonhole elastic, you can fill all those little holes with different tools and supplies.

I will take some pictures as I pack my materials to show you what I bring along. If I can, I always bring a strip of self-adhesive photo corners, a few brass brads, some folded waxed paper, small scraps of matboard, a small container of Yes! glue, a few brushes, pencils and pens, a tin of watercolor crayons or pencils, a tin of oil pastels, a sewing needle, including one I can use to poke holes, colored embroidery floss, some Tear Away, a bone folder, a glue stick, a pair of small paper scissors, 1 small container of white paint, 2 mini-spray bottles, one for water and one for rubbing alcohol, a xylene colorless blender with a small metal spoon, some black and white photocopies for transfer, some throw-away pictures and, finally, a few small strips of fine grade sandpaper. It all fits in a tiny little bag, and fits, next to my portfolio of collage papers, right into my zipper pouch of checked baggage. I am good to go!

I applied oil pastels over part of an old painting on
canvas board that I had cut up to bring along on a trip. I
made my collage right on top while I was out on the road.

Speaking of Flying

The past several months I have been very busy with a design project for hire, which I can't tell you more about right now! In the meantime, though, here is a small collage I finished recently, Flying Man. It utilizes found paper, photo transfer images, hand printed cyanotype imagery on paper, hand made crystalline paper, all on a nice, heavy weight watercolor paper background. It sold recently, and has been shipped to the buyer, so I wanted to show you a picture of it while it was on my mind.

The new year is here, and I have high hopes for 2013. Hope it's a great year for you, as well. Here's to making lots of art this year. Get busy!

Flying Man, a collage by Gayle Pritchard

The Art of Collage Opening

Piecing it All Together: The Art of Collage opens Friday night, April 1 at the Valley Art Center in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. I will have seven artworks on exhibition. This is a curated, invitational exhibition with several wonderful artists included: Clare Murray Adams, Linda and Opie O'Brien, Jeff Kallet, Gretchen Bierbaum and Gail Crum, among others. Hope you can make it! For those of you long-distance exhibition gawkers, I will post pictures after the opening. I can't wait!

Getting ready for the exhibition, as mentioned in previous posts, inspired me to finish some new work. On the day I delivered my artwork, as I was gathering up and packaging my work, I spied an unfinished work I had begun a few months ago.

My piece on the postcard here, I Hear Voices, was made about my husband, and was inspired by one of his songs. The piece utilizes the song lyrics, and imagery from his childhood. The unfinished work I pulled out last week, and shown below, was a small collage I made after I Hear Voices. It is also about my husband, and uses the song lyric Tell Me Something I Don't Know. Now I just need to complete the assemblage. Here it is still in progress.

This is just a quick snapshot (and not a very good one!), taken to capture my instantaneous idea as I pulled the rest of my art together to deliver to the show. I'm excited to finish it. Step one, always my way of beginning, is to write the story on the background. I will do that while adding paint and drawings, then begin the assembly process. More to come!

The Art of Collage

A few weeks ago, I wrote about some of the collages I was finishing up. Today I thought I would show you some of the steps involved in preparing for the final presentation of a few of my collages. As serendipity would have it, shortly after my blog post, I received an invitation to exhibit a number of my artworks in Piecing it All Together: The Art of Collage. The show opens on April 1st, so I am pleased to have some brand new pieces to add to the ones the curator selected from my website.


My now beat up travel portfolio, on the far left

 Those of you who know me or who have studied with me know that I never go anywhere without a journal or one of my collage travel portfolio. In the little square portfolio shown here, I keep collage papers and the like, but also squares of canvas,  matboard and other materials, all the same size. They fit neatly in the back of the portfolio, and provide a ready-made working surface for a small, quick work when I'm on the road.

That is exactly where these new collages came from: the back of my travel portfolio. These are two same-sized pieces of raw canvas which I have built collages on the surface of, beginning with journal writing. That was covered with drawing and image transfers, then layers of sheers fabrics and papers, even metal screening, were added on top. I want to mount them onto pre-stretched canvas, but first I have cut some beautiful unryu paper to stitch them onto.


This wonderful paper has just the right amount of body for stitching.

I love the weight and body of this paper! It provides a great working surface, and here, a nice background. It is also easier to sew through than pre-stretched canvas. Before I stitch the second collage down, I need to remove the edges of the Tear-away on the back of the collage. I am also never without Tear-away. I use it as a background for most everything I do, including wall pieces I am designing. If I am making a quilt, I remove it prior to hand stitching, but for these collages, it provides something to hold on to while stitching.


I am trimming the Tear-Away from the collage on the left, prior to stitching it onto that beautiful blue paper.

So....tonight I will finish stitching the second collage in place. Later in the week, I will show you how I attached it to the canvas.

Getting My Head Around it



Detail of Gayle's collage, Sacred, in progress

 Something is going on. The ground is shifting. I see it on the faces of the people on the news stories about the Middle East; I see it in my friends faces; I see it in my face when I look in the mirror. For awhile, I just couldn't get my head around it.

As an artist, I have trained myself for decades to try to stay in the moment and to respond to what is in front of me without knowing where the resolution lies. It is part of trusting the process, a deeply personal way of trusting oneself. The way I tap into that part of myself is to just keep working, because much of the creative process involves problem solving, asking the "what if" question, remaining open to the answer. When I am fortunate enough to be fully engrossed in this process, I continue to work on the problem at hand even when I am sleeping. My journal is full of dreamed notations waiting for action.

This is where I find myself right now: working, thinking, dreaming, working. This process has never failed me, and serves as an anchor for me when the ground beneath my feet is shifting.


Detail of Gayle's collage, Lady Blue

 

Detail of Gayle's collage, Blue Landscape

I have spent months feeling blue, discombobulated. Fortunately, my trusty journals remind me that this is also a cyclical part of my process. It doesn't keep me from working, usually, and this is fortunate as well. I am designing like crazy, as I focus with renewed energy on my line of Magic Baby designs.  I hope to start a separate website and blog for that work as soon as I have some time to sit at the computer all day.

I am also itchy to do free painting, so hope to get to that soon. In the meantime, I am finishing up the three collages shown here. I will be offering all of them for sale in my etsy shop as soon as I finish stitching and mounting them. Stitching away by hand, which is what I do most nights, is my preferred form of meditation. My thoughts are freed up while I work to think and dream, to get my head around it.

Playing With Image Transfers

One of Gayle's collages incorporating image transfers

I taught a class this past week on using image transfers. I have loved playing with transferred images since I first discovered as a kid that the funny pages could be transferred onto silly putty! Back in high school and college art classes, we used lighter fluid on printed magazine pages to release the ink and put it onto another surface. I was hooked by the layering, and have spent the last 35 years exploring that process.

From sunprinting to transfer paper, the possibilities are endless. One technique I hadn't played with for awhile is disperse dye transfer. Disperse dyes, paints and crayons offer opportunities for endless playing and experimentation.

Over the next weeks I hope to show you many of the techniques I have loved over the years. Unfortunately, today, blogger is (once again) not cooperating with me as I try to add new images. Does anyone know what is going on with that?

Anyway, I invite you to stay tuned, ask question, share your own experiments using image transfer. Enjoy!

To create this collage, I drew with oil pastel on matboard, then added cyan prints and heat transfers on top.

Experiments and Getting it Done

I found this poster in Galway, Ireland several years ago. When I travel, I like to find stuff to use in my artwork.

There is nothing like teaching a class to inspire some quick work in the studio. Tomorrow is Week 3 of my class Unraveling the Stories: Narrative Fiber Collage. Each week, I like to present a few new approaches in addition to the creativity exercises I hand out as 'homework.' I also like to develop a new artwork over the course of the class, so that students can see my process. In addition to giving me something to work on while the students are engrossed in their own projects, making an artwork "live" also provides an easy opening for shyer students to get their questions answered. For all the students, it helps to alleviate any fears they might have about experimenting and just starting to work.

Anyway, I have wanted to do something with this circus poster ever since I found it in a shop window in Galway. To bring it home, I packed in the bottom of my suitcase, covered top and bottom with the large sheets of paper and mat board that I always travel with. When I got home, knowing I would want to attach it to another surface, (and that would require strengthening the paper,) I fused the poster to Heat-n-bond lite.

In these two pictures, you can see the iron on adhesive on the back of the posted, with the still unremoved protective paper behind it.

The next step was to prepare a surface for the poster. Since my students are working with the same unprimed canvas that I like to use, I decided it would be great to show them what can be done with a couple applications of gesso and paint to create a background surface for other artwork.

I cut a hunk of pre-washed and pre-shrunk unprimed canvas, then positioned the poster where I wanted it, off center vertically. With a pencil, I quickly traced the edges of the poster, then removed it. I applied a layer of gesso and let it dry. Yesterday, I added another layer of gesso, and this time, I added textures to it with a bamboo skewer and a comb from my bathroom drawer.

I still have not adhered the poster to the canvas, because I want to paint it in class tomorrow. I will also want to sandpaper, draw on, collage and paint the poster itself. After that, I will finish the composition, and likely add a lot of stitching, which is something I love to do at night while watching PBS or the news.

More to come as the piece moves along. I have another experiment to show you later, too: hand coloring lace. Stay tuned.

New Classes Scheduled

I am teaching classes locally for the first time in many years: check out the Winter Newsletter at BayArts for more details. (My class descriptions begin on page 11 of the pdf document.) Hope to see you there! Here is the newsletter description for the first one, coming up in January.

Mixed Media - new & cool
Unraveling the Stories: narrative fiber collage - with Gayle Pritchard

In this course, you will learn the elements of design, composition, color use and idea development, along with lots of encouragement to develop the confidence needed to explore.
Using surface design and embellishment techniques, small base images will be created on canvas. Layer by layer, the compositions will be developed through mark-making, stitchery, collage and narrative to create an art object from the stories of your everyday life. No previous experience is necessary. Drop the kids off at school and enjoy a few hours of relaxation, creativity and spirituality.
tuesdays 9:30 - 11:30 am
Jan 12 - feb 9 (5 weeks)

It's a Juggling Act

Altered Book: A Circus Act by Gayle Pritchard

After being away for a week, and without internet access, I feel overwhelmed with 'tasks.' Does that ever happen to you? It's unusual in this day and age to not be online. It reminded me of how much easier it used to be to keep track of paperwork and other such tasks. I could allot one day a week, then ignore until the following week what was still on that list. No more!

This week I hit the ground running, as I prepare for an onslaught of visitors this weekend. As I have written previously, in my priorities list, family comes first. This weekend is no exception. The house cleaning had been put off and put off, but this seemed a good week to tackle it, since I have two guest rooms to prepare. Shopping takes up more time than it used to, as I travel to several stores to find what I need at the right price.

My new in-laws will be here for dinner Friday night for the first time. On Saturday, the family women gather at my house to make preparations for a baby shower on Sunday. The shower is to celebrate the impending birth of my third grandchild, so it will be a festive affair. In preparation, I painted ladybugs last night, the theme of the party. The ladybug quilt I am making will have to wait until June, but will be ready by the time the baby comes.

Truths, oil pastel painting and collage by Gayle Pritchard

To tell you the truth, I love the activity. I love making things with my hands, thinking up ideas for the baby shower, preparing the house for guests. I weeded the front garden on Monday, and remembered how much I have missed playing with my plants.

All of these activities, 'tasks,' make me feel alive and engaged. Yes, I need to get back to my studio. Sometimes, though, time away helps me gain perspective, and makes the work I do seem less like a task, as I remember to find my passion again.

Home is Where the Art Is...uh Heart Is

One of my little collaged paintings

I am on the road tomorrow morning, early. I love beginning a long drive before the sun is fully up, then watching the sky change color as the morning sun emerges onto the landscape.

When I travel, I like to bring along a portable "art kit". I have one my friend Lois made for me. It is currently back at her shop for repair, so frequently have I traveled with it. That little bag, which has a top flap and measures, closed, probably 6" x 9", has been to Mexico six times, all over the west coast of Ireland, the beach in Florida half a dozen times, and numerous other places.

It holds a small watercolor paper block, paintbrushes with built in water containers, transfer pens, collage papers, drawing pencils, a small tin of watercolor crayons, small pair of scissors, a pencil sharpener, small pieces of fine sandpaper stapled to a piece of matboard, a wax resist crayon, small container of "yes!" glue, and several other things I can't remember without my list.

Oil pastel and watercolor collage, sketched while sitting on a beach in Mexico

Yes, I have a list. I teach a class called Trains, Planes and Automobiles: Techniques for Traveling Collage, so I really need to practice what I preach. Be prepared for art. Any place, anytime. I encourage my students to plan ahead for creative work while traveling, and to make a list of their favorite art supplies, so they can figure out a way to travel with at least some of them. As for me, I try not to go anywhere without a least a journal and some collage materials. I am a "found object" junkie. Often, bits of ephermera I find during my travels go directly onto a matboard collage surface, or into a composition in one of my journals.

My favorite journal, which is all but full, is one I handmade years ago. It has a hand bound Japanese stab stitch binding, is thick and full of a great weight cardstock. It is full of writings, collage, and on-the-fly experiments, like, what would happen if I iron this photo transfer onto that oil pastel covered photograph? Cool! It works!!

I covered the open spine with folded playing cards prior to stitching the covers in place. In addition to being colorful and pretty to look at, they serve as spacers for the journal pages. That way, when I want to add junk I find that has some dimension to is, it doesn't prevent the journal from still laying flat.

So these are my thoughts on this Monday, my birthday, as I plan for a road trip. Plan to make art this week!