Some Blog Updates...

    Blogging is motivating to craft and share. It is also record keeping; and I can return to posts for information. I have some updates here.

     On Valentine's eve, Joe and I attended the reception for Winter Break! at University Place in Cambridge, saw painting friends from years ago and picked up Books 'N Laps (see August 29 post). The book club painting finally goes to a new home this week!

     February 14 is Erika's birthday so I made her a soft card. Previously quilts, this time the "card" is soft sculpture, to go with the chef's birthday gift of marble board and rolling pin. Hooked on a Netflix Spanish movie, VELVET, I could binge watch the show guilt-free while embroidering. There is room for Erika to sew well. She closely examined how I had made the rolling pin which pleased me. I stuffed a stitched rectangle for the tube, gathered little stitches at the ends of the stuffed tube to insert the simple handles which I had distractedly shaped backward

    Assigned the birthday cake for the family party, I Googled an easy vanilla cake with chocolate fudge icing at Errenskitchen.com. Beautiful, it fit Erika's order for vanilla cake/chocolate icing. I had to borrow the 8" cake pans and cake decorating spatula or palette knife. Must get because I will make again. Those sculptural  fudge roses were an easy circular swirl explained by Erren at her blog!
Click to enlarge photos.

     Back to Serial Selfies (see February 5 post) chosen for the juried Unconventional Means with some photo updates here. I learned new techniques from theother entries at the show. I'm pleased that CAA publishes a book at Blurb for documenting the show. I ordered the $15 book on-line, because the Unconventional Means was provocative. Mine was an unconventional presentation.You had to hold and touch the paintings to see them all. Not the usual in museums or art shows.










     Adding chocolate paint (fudge influence) , I focused the "yellow house" on the frame for Cacophony (see June 23, 2015, formerly Family Portrait) The painting was fortunate to get in the juried Small Works at the Chandler Gallery in Cambridge. More on that to come, but I like how the frame improved!...Now to think of a painting for a Truth to Power show and another for the Selfish competition. Time flies!

A box for Serial Selfies, Winter 2015

     A  heavy snow day is a good time to update a blog. This week I entered a show entitled Unconventional Means at the Cambridge Art Association with an unconventional presentation, Serial Selfies, Winter 2015.

Top of box...painting fitted

     I entered 14 self portraits from last winter in a glass-topped box found at Michael's. The price was right and the box is a good storage place to store all those paintings from last year on card and canvas board.

     Of course, things don't always go as planned. In framing the lid underside, I broke the glass on two boxes and gave up on a glass finish. Who wants glass on oils, anyway!  In the second photo, you can see the tiny dowel framing around the top piece (to hold the painting in place wo glass). In the third photo, you'll see the tiny lattice work frame around the underside piece, secured to the top. Twelve loose flat portraits are stacked within. There is room for more!

      My blurb for the show:
During the deep snow winter of 2015, getting back to painting after ten years of art quilting, for lack of a model, I painted myself multiple times. The stacks of portraits on card and canvas board shuffling in the studio did not seem to want separate frames. Where would I put them? Then I found this box to house the flat works —the perfect unconventional frame, like the photo file on an iPhone, where the series can be presented, handled and viewed easily.

Box opened showing painting under lid and stack of 12 inside