Vegetation + light

Lately I've been thinking about lighting – I want to wrap all the trees around my house in sparkly white. These are a lot smaller than that. Adding light to beautiful paper and lots of x-acto work is making me happy.

Paper-wrapped votive, 2" diameter x 3.25 inches.

Snow on the mountains

Here's the smallest pop up I've attempted, about 3.5 inches high. They remind me of a sparkly Advent calendar we had when I was a child, how I loved the daily ritual leading up to Christmas, opening little doors and windows to reveal a treat, a treasure or a secret ...

Pop up

I've been making some pop-up sculptures lately, mostly from bad, or maybe just not wonderful drawings (of which I have quite a collection). It's nice to recycle when I can.
There's something really satisfying about successfully cutting out delicate curves and shapes. It's a no-mind sort of process, once I get the panels, elements and folds worked out (definitely a not-no-mind process).

This is a small piece, about 5 inches square when it's flattened out, made from a mixed media drawing on watercolor paper. I'm calling it Bones I, more to come.

My new favorite artist is Kirsten Stolle

Hal and I were wandering around Asheville NC last week and came across a few wonderful small wax paintings hanging in a cool restaurant (called The Junction, I think). They are sweet, detailed map-sort-of-images and I couldn't stop looking at them. Love the detail, the tiny drawing and the humor. Check out her web site: Kirsten Stolle's web site or
www.dolbychadwickgallery.com/painters_html/stolle_html/stolle61.html

Small worlds

Today is a day for organization, archiving and 'show entering.' These are three recent pieces in a series called "Soil Sample." (You can see a couple of others in the March 12 and April 5, 2011 posts)

As usual, some more successful than others – the reason I like to work in series. Underdrawings of ink pen were layered with paraffin, china marker and a few bits of color to ponder again the worlds of fragments that make up everything.

I like how the drawings seem to be progressing from passive, floating environments to more active, almost battlefield-like scenes.

Soil Sample III, IV and V
Ink pen china marker, paraffin and crayon on paper, 14" x 11"