Art Quilts In Process

I now have so much fabric, I feel obligated to do something with it before it takes over the entire house.  So I am doing a lot of quilting these days.  One of my self imposed guidelines requires each quilt include some original art and/or photograph, which further expands the fabric library.  The top two images are for a giant quilt tentatively called "Birdmen of Marin," because it will ultimately include 80 2x2 photos that I shot in and around Marin County, combined with 4 wooden artist model photos done in an applique rose fabric + some original bird art.  The third image down is for a different quilt of funky birds in primary colors.  The one featured here is blue.  The final in process quilt depicted here is called "Magnolia from Bud to Flower" and includes magnolia photos printed on silk, then cut up, together with some applique magnolia buds and flowers in a mix of cotton and silk that is still being worked on.

Shooting Suburbia at Midnight

The flickering screen of a neighbor's giant wall TV, seen from a distance at night, has always fascinated me.   So when the rain cleared last night I was motivated to capture the scene, then modified it with various color filters.  It spookily reminds me of a scary TV show I watched as a child at my grandparents house (we never had a TV in our house) which gave me nightmares until my mother discovered my secret vice and cut me off.

Some New Winter Seattle Art

Top to Bottom:
1.   Pen & Ink and Watercolor portrait of sulky grandson Cole Taylor.  His nose is too long in the painting, as can be seen from the photo below it.  That might have been because we were reading the book Pinocchio!  Cole was not as willing to pose as his twin brother so this is the only time I had to paint him.
2.  Watercolor painting of Wilson, which doesn't do him justice, as can be seen from the photo of him above the artwork.
3.  Pen & Ink and watercolor and pastel pencil portrait of Wilson in his sport shirt.  He looks a bit like a Nazi youth in this picture, which Wilson said was "creepy."  It does not look much like the photo of Wilson above the art, holding up the world with his dyed red Mohawk hairdo. 
4.  An Abstract, inspired by going to Discovery Park in Seattle, one of my favorite places to hike
5.  A Memory Abstract of my week in Seattle ends the tableau.

Pink Diamond Owl Trees

My first wall hanging quilt! 

Some New Fabric and Paper Art

Top to Bottom:
Paper Art Collage:
"Flamingos and Yellow Roses" Paper Collage 22" w x 19 1/2" h

Fabric Art Quilts:  (photos could show the final work better)
Wild Animal Baby Quilt 49" w x 49 1/2" h
Wild Animal Baby Quilt back with various Minky fabric patches
"Under the Sea" 48 1/2" w x 71 1/2" h (includes batik fabrics bought in India, photos and various other applique art)
"Robin Walking Away From Chaos" 47" w x 68" h.  Tons of hand embroidery and a wool punch bird!

Illustration of a Summer Cold

Getting sick in the summertime has never seemed fair.  But it  recently happened to me.  I decided to try to tackle how it felt by doing another mixed media collage.  The (for now) final version is at the top of the page, an earlier version below it.  So what's the backstory on the elements used in this new creation?  The photo of me in the collage goes back to a Christmas in 1971 when my sister  Susan came to visit me while I was living in Madrid, Spain.  As I was often sick during the two years I lived there, I'm pretty sure I was sick that Christmas.  I was also pretty poor.  I always liked the moody photo Susan shot of me in front of the wall calendar.  To illustrate my sore throat, I used another little piece of my new red Japanese washi paper.  I didn't have any picture of viruses to throw at the image so sampled a few I discovered Tal Danino had created and posted on his twitter account (link here)  I could have used my own bacterial design which I created for a Spoonflower (link here - although they aren't showing all of my designs anymore) fabric design contest - a Paenibacillus done in 2015 because it looked cool, but I didn't because that wasn't what was infecting me.  Finally, I spent too much time trying to create a brain image using various photos (from the ocean in Pt. Reyes to the Botanical Gardens in Berkeley.)  I'm not too happy with the resulting brain but think it is time to move on from this project.

Japanese Popsicles Artwork Backstory

One of the few benefits of being older is there is some personal history now I can pull from when creating new artwork.  My latest craze doing mixed media collage is benefiting from various other expressions on similar subjects done in the past.  Case in point:  In 2004 I did a watercolor of some orange ice cream and multi flavored popsicles (because I used to love to eat them).  In 2009 I turned that painting into a digital composite with some scanned buttons (art using scanned buttons kept me entertained for about a year.)  Now, I used some new Japanese washi origami papers to create the ice cream/popsicles and placed them onto a recent landscape photograph of trees printed on Hiromi kozo-shi paper.