This week, one of my students came in and needed hands-on practice using her camera.  I grabbed a vase of flowers that I had sitting around, shone a strong light on them and walked her through how to use her camera.  We took a lot of pictures, so that hopefully she will feel more confidence with her camera.  The following are two photographs that I snapped.

When one is enraptured with beauty, sometimes physical concerns such as warmth are ignored. I soon realized I was quite cold, and scurried back inside to warm up…hopefully there will be more searching later!

Early this summer, I was approached by the Arts Council of Indianapolis to produce six works similar to my Patterns In Flight butterfly series for their 2010 ARTI awards. The ARTI Awards are presented annually to celebrate and commemorate the outstanding support of the arts in our community. This year five ARTI awards are being presented to businesses and individuals this Friday at the Start With Art event. To attend Start With Art, register at the Arts Council of Indianapolis’ website. The event is from 11:30 am – 1:30 pm on Friday, September 3, 2010 at the Indianapolis Marriott Downtown. Individual tickets are $60.

The six works commissioned by Arts Council of Indianapolis include:

• Dusk, Oil on canvas, 14″ x 14″
  
• Wandering Ochre, Oil on canvas, 8″ x 12″
  
• Summer Flight, Oil on canvas, 12″ x 9″
  
• Long Wing, Long Life, Oil on canvas, 14″ x 14″
  
• Appear, Disappear, Oil on canvas, 10″ x 10″
  

For a larger version of these paintings, visit the entire series, Patterns in Flight, in my portfolio. Two paintings, Long Wing, Long Life and Dusk, are hung diagonal.

If you were unable to make it in August, you have another chance to view the Patterns in Flight butterfly paintings art show. This Friday the butterfly series, Patterns in Flight, will be on display at Wug Laku’s Studio and Garage. The series opening will be September 3, 2010 at 6pm-10pm during the IDADA’s August First Friday and the series will show through September 25. Wug Laku’s Studio and Garage is located at 1125 Brookside Ave #C7 Indianapolis, Indiana.

If you cannot make it to the opening, Wug’s gallery hours are 12-4pm Friday and Saturday or by appointment. To make an appointment, call Wug Laku at 317-270-8258.

From the gallery owner:

This exhibit is a spectacular display of freedom in motion. Spend enough time in the room with these paintings and you’ll feel the air begin to vibrate and move about you. Although the nominal subject is butterflies, the real subject of these paintings is how powerfully color, line and composition can combine into patterns to create a vibrant, dynamic, even explosive viewing experience, thereby introducing us to a new experience of our everyday world.

The painting series is about journeys: the journey of each butterfly, but also my journey. Patterns in Flight provokes thoughts on time, refined beauty, and overcoming struggles. It contains a variety of butterfly species: painted ladies, a blue morpho, malachites, a citris swallowtail, postmans, a variable cracker and a zebra longwing.

RVSP today at the Facebook event: Patterns in Flight at Wug Laku’s

It was more than a year ago that I began my butterfly series, Patterns in Flight. It’s now ready to break out of it’s cocoon (so to speak).  RVSP today at the Facebook event: Patterns in Flight at Wug Laku’s

The entire butterfly series, Patterns in Flight, will be on display at Wug Laku’s Studio and Garage. The series opening will be August 6, 2010 at 6pm-10pm during the IDADA’s August First Friday and the series will show through September 25. Wug Laku’s Studio and Garage is located at 1125 Brookside Ave #C7 Indianapolis, Indiana.

If you cannot make it to the opening, Wug’s gallery hours are 12-4pm Friday and Saturday or by appointment. To make an appointment, call Wug Laku at 317-270-8258.

The painting series is about journeys: the journey of each butterfly, but also my journey. I have transformed from being called the “bone lady” to the “butterfly girl” over last last year. Three paintings of this series were selected by the Arts Council of Indianapolis. Working with the Arts Council led to a few small commissioned works for the ARTI awards. My macro paintings have been compared to Georgia O’Keefe –whether that comparison is true or not. I have learned much about myself wondering around butterfly wing veins and cells for hours on end. And now I am excited to finally place these paintings in public view at Wug Laku’s Studio and Garage which is at the Circle City Complex.

Patterns in Flight provokes thoughts on time, refined beauty, and overcoming struggles. It contains a variety of butterfly species: painted ladies, a blue morpho, malachites, a citris swallowtail, postmans, a variable cracker and a zebra longwing.

While you are at it, why not make it a special date? Past students have made my art classes part of a night for them and their significant other. You could make it an art themed date. After taking a class, visit a museum, photograph downtown, or paint “plein air” at a nature park.

Custom gift certificates designed by my husband are available for every occasion.

For more information, visit the Art Classes section of my website.

Sight/ Insight will be at the Stutz Art Space from November 6-25, 2009.  The show incorporates a variety of styles ranging from abstract slashes of paint, abstract quilted fabric, exaggerated recognizable forms, jewelry, and paintings and photographs that display clearly recognizable subjects.  The artwork is juxtaposed leading the viewer to flow back and forth between the styles creating a dialogue amongst this diverse set of visual ideas.  It is a conversation between eleven different artists, with different modes of visually communication, and different perspectives on the same subject.

The curator, Carol L Myers, chose artists whose work fit the theme of ‘inspired places’.  Carol herself has lately focused on drawings. She states that her “vocabulary is natural form, but inspired place happens between pencil and paper.”  She finds that drawing is a form of praying.  I was attracted to one of her quilted painting pieces entitled, Boardwalk.  The painting in the work gives the piece a sense of space and light.  On top of the painting, sewn rectangular shapes overlap and break up the space, while the process of sewing the material draws the fabric and adds slight texture.

Below I’ve chosen a few of the types of work represented at the show:

Photography: Ginny Taylor Rosner speaks through her abandoned building photos in South Stairwell.  The stairway leads upward from the bottom right side of the page.  Light is entering from the landing at the top of the stairs in the upper left corner.  The image beckons the viewer to enter, walk up the stairs and into the light.

Abstract: Kate Oberreich’s collage, Map of New York, (on right above) is about repetition.  There is a small section of a city map in the piece.  The map contains repeated rectangular city blocks.  There are repeated circles in the upper left part of the work.  Simple vines with repeated leaves flow around the map.  Even a few drips in the piece seem to repeat themselves in color and shape.

Surreal: Home, by Lydia Burris, is a collage that juxtaposes a home and a tree in a forest with the light shining through the trees paralleling the warm light shining out of the windows of the home.

Landscape: The gallery also holds a collection of landscapes that are produced with varying levels of abstraction.  These invite the viewer to walk into nature in a place of trees, water, and immense skies.  At least one of the landscapes is a piece of jewelry by artist Leigh Dunnington-Jones entitled Sunrise on Central Avenue.  Look at both the front and the back of this piece.

Other artists who are not previously mentioned:
Susan Brewer
Karen Land
Colleen Lauter
Susan Mauck
Jerry Points
Martha Vaught
Julia Zollman Wickes

Join the conversation about inspired places starting this coming First Friday November 6, 2009.

Butterfly Clover

Three Daisy Jazz

During the month of November, stop by Wug Laku’s Studio and Garage to see, Nerve, a collection of some of the gallery owner’s personal work.  His drawings and paintings are worth an extra trip downtown when his gallery is not crowded with people and conversations, but if one only has time to view them during a First Friday, stop by the opening on November 6th.

The drawings and paintings deserve more than a cursory glance.  Do not pass them by as minimalist renderings of form, but envision the works as simplified mirrors reflecting both physical and metaphysical thoughts. Open and honest communication is at their core. Parallel to his work, his artist statement is a simple poem that opens Laku up to the viewer and leaves room for abstract ideas to breathe.

In the gallery’s main area, he has work from 1993, inspired by a county road north of Zionsville, IN (and a Burger King cup).  Within this group, he juxtaposes negative/positive space, layered paint, planes of solid color, and value transitions.  One can see a simplification of nature–very direct, concrete but beautiful in Butterfly Clover.  This piece has three sections.  1) The background is a completely smooth green color. 2) The butterfly is a simple triangle that contains a slight amount of brush strokes.  3) The purple clover is the focal point.  Here alone, the color changes in value and the strokes are free and visible.  This group is connected to his later work (mostly from 2001) that is found in the red room through the conscious simplifying of nature.

The later work refines the simplification. The work’s referent is less obvious, but not less important. The color palette and texture of the images are limited, yet they are not minimal–only simplified. Three Daisy Jazz (located in the red room) represents the continuity, journey, and conversational quality of the entire show.  This medium-sized painting shows process with its un-erased graphite lines, leftover tape, straight and jagged edges, and additive pieces.

Based on my visits to Laku’s gallery over the past year, he appears to enjoy displaying multiple stages of an artist’s work. This both contrasts and unites one body of work to another to showcase the development that defines an artist’s style. Laku continues this practice with two prior bodies of his own work.

While you are viewing Nerve, be sure to check out Nancy Lee’s beautifully designed metal jewelry.

A small disclaimer: Laku has represented my work at his gallery, so I am not a complete stranger to him.

My three latest butterfly works, After Thistles, Fluttering Cosmopolitan, and Cynthesis will be on display this Saturday, October 19th from 8pm to 2am at Oranje, a contemporary art & music event. Wug Laku of Wug Laku’s Studio and Garage is representing my work at booth 17.

Wug will be displaying his drawings, digital art prints, light boxes, and furniture along with the jewelry of Nancy Lee (I’m sure she’ll be there, too!) and the mixed media of Cagney King –among others. They will be recreating the feel of his gallery in their 22′ x 24′ mega-booth for an intimate discussion with the artists. This past weekend, they were practically living there getting the space ready.

Tickets to the event are $20 and is only open to 21 and older.

Oranje
Wug Laku / Booth 17
2323 North Illinois
Indianapolis, IN 46208

I have three of my butterfly paintings in the 2009 IndyFringe Festival. Thistles, Fluttering Cosmopolitan, and Cynthesis were mentioned in my prior post, Trio of Painted Lady Butterflies. You can see thumbnails in that post. These works can be seen at Henry’s on East, 627 East Street, Friday, August 7, 5 – 9 pm.  Cafes, theaters and spaces along Mass Ave. have been transformed into art galleries for the IndyFringe Festival. Add it to your usual IDADA First Friday Art Walk on August 7th. I hope to see you there, but if you can’t make that Friday, then the work will be on display until August 30th.

You can vote

Make sure to stop by the temporary galleries to vote for your favorite piece of art to become one of those “Be Indypendent” stickers you have seen on your neighbors’ cars. Complimentary Barefoot Bubbly champagne cocktails will be served at each Fringe gallery, too.

The 2009 VisualFringe galleries are: Mass Ave Wine Shoppe, Theatre on the Square, Franklin Barry Gallery, Henry’s on East, Hoaglin To Go Café, Herron School of Art and Design at The Earth House, and the Fringe Gallery. Visit IndyFringe for more info and full gallery addresses.

Opening Quick Facts

August 7, 5 – 9 pm
Henry’s on East
627 East Street