New Fun Project

I have not been as attentive to my blog as I had planned to be. My new fun project has been painting barns on frying pans. The project is almost finished. I am waiting for client approval. On the other hand the project consuming most of my time in June and July has been preparing the Crystal Lake Road McHenry house for market. Not art, but lots of painting, fixing, and loads of hard work. Now that it is listed I can get back to things like the frying pan project. I have more reference photos of clouds and sunflowers to work with. I also had a trip to Chicago Botanical Gardens and have loads of flower and Bonsai trees for reference. So lots of new work is planned.

Just Another Sun

I try to make cards for each of my three sons summer birthdays . Since I had gotten into stamping, each year the card has been using a sun stamp. A sun for my sons!

This year I decided to make a small lino-cut and use that for my image. We had a lino-cut workshop led by Erin Nolan at a KVAL (Kishwaukee Valley Art League) workshop June 10th. I was able to pull an artist proof to use for the first of the three summer birthdays. For Bob’s June 15th birthday card I used the first artist proof done using Stamping Up eggplant colored ink.

July 16th and August 18th are the next two son’s birthdays. I will probably edition this fine art print by then or make mono-prints and probably do each one a little differently. Doing this little 3” X 5” print reminds me how much I love printing. I have another block ready to be cut. Watch for the next one. More sunflowers are waiting to emerge on my canvas too. Doing art on a regular basis is reaching a goal.

New Wing AIC

Went to see the new wing on the Art Institute of Chicago June 22 and took a few outdoor pictures. I liked the entrance from Monroe Street which give an opportunity to go to the new wing to the left, straight ahead to American Art with the hall to the old building off to the right. That houses the Asian collection rather the the armor. A big highlight to my experience is the gallery spaces by the print and drawing archive library. On display are drawings from those artists who are on display in the contemporary wing. The new wing has opened up space for more of the collection to be available. I liked seeing more of Georgia O"Keefe's work.