Time to Create

I have mentioned to others that the amount of time I spend creating new images is probably 10% of the time I spend printing, matting, framing or generally working on the business end of being a full time artist. A woodworker I mentioned this to didn’t know how I survived emotionally not being creative more often.

After reading the blog entry of Daniel Sroka, an artist whose work I admire, I started trying the at least one-hour-of-art-a-day plan. If this works out to being true even 4 days a week, I’ll be way ahead of where I was.

The trick to it I think is to create without purpose. Allowing myself to simply explore visually as I please and not worry about what to do with any particular image I make. This will free me to be creative just for me. Who knows what will come of it, but I do sense already that when I am in the field in a position to create, I will be more well-tuned and in creative shape to do my best work.

Here’s a piece I made in our front garden after a morning dew (on chives). I find water drops endlessly fascinating and have used this garden fairy statue before as a muse. Something about her face is appealing to me. I desaturated the image and added a sepia tone. The image was made with one of my favorite lenses, the Canon 100mm f2.8 macro, handheld while sprawled out on the ground. Being that I was working in the front yard, yea, neighbors were watching.

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Animal Totem

Yea, well, last time I did a totem quiz, I was a deer. I can live with that. I like deer.  At FlavorFEST last weekend, a woman came into my booth and asked if I had any pictures of dragonflies. I did have one and she liked it. She told me her animal totem was a dragonfly.

I think dragonflies are beautiful creatures and mesmerizing to watch in flight. There are certain animals I feel more of an association with than others, I have no idea what it means. The idea of animal totems is that they are symbolic of the qualities you associate with yourself or have an affinity for.

Dragonflies are symbolic of change, deep thought, and living life to it’s fullest. I appreciate that the image of a dragonfly I made created an affinity in someone for my print. Now, when thinking over the symbolism of dragonflies, the woman who came into my booth at FlavorFEST may be looking at the print she purchased from me. That’s kind of cool.

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FlavorFEST this weekend

That’s where I’ll be, the Mount Hope Estate and Winery, for FlavorFEST 2009. I will be set up with he Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen on Sat. and Sun. for this fun outdoor event.

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Pennsylvania Society of Ornithology (PSO)

I spent Friday evening and Saturday at the Annual Meeting of the PSO held in Morgantown, PA exhibiting my work with a fellow artist friend. We were provided a nice space and the opportunity to offer our work to the meeting attendees. I was invited to exhibit by the President of the PSO, a lovely woman who knows her birds (and especially loves hummingbirds). She was very supportive and very interesting to speak with. 

As I do quite a bit of imagery of birds, I was eager to receive the reaction of serious birders (the best in the state they say), and also to confirm a few bird IDs I needed help with. The event turned out well for me and I walked away having created a couple new connections.

The PSO President, Arlene Koch, selected a couple pieces including this landscape print made at Hawk Mountain (a raptor migration sanctuary here in PA). The image was made at sunrise at North Lookout. I hiked up to the lookout in the dark and climbed an ice-covered rock-stairway. Remind me not to do that again.

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Texture

As I’m mounting and matting prints, I get a chance to really look at the image as well. It gives me a chance to see them repeatedly and up-close without distraction. Sometimes I realize that a certain image excites me more than it had previously. Today, while preparing for an upcoming event, I realized that I really enjoy texture. Actually, what I realized is that what I like about some of my work is that it has interesting texture.

I’m not sure that I appreciated how drawn to texture I am because I like clean, texture-less backgrounds as well. This past winter gave me an opportunity to work with texture in the form of snow and ice. Whether it was an ice encrusted tree or a frozen pond, the fine or coarse texture filled my images. My experience has been that once I become aware of a sub-conscious attraction, I become more atuned to it when in the field.

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The Other Windy City

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania that is. The Bethlehem Fine Art Show was a pretty well attended show. I met some folk who had purchased my work in previous years or other shows, and a good number of new people as well. What really defined this show unfortunately, was the wind. Saturday night must have been pretty bad as several of the lighter weight canopies were totally destroyed. My steel-leg canopy which is high end, and weighted on each leg with 40 lbs of sand, moved two feet into the street. I had no damage, put had quite a bit of reconfiguring to do inside. I was lucky though as others with high-end steel construction canopies had broken or bent legs and/or beam’s to deal with. Several artists/crafters left Sunday morning for fear of continued high winds.

Set-up across Hotel Bethlehem as in previous years, it is always interesting to see what’s going on inside this fine building. This show is popular among people who can stroll through at no charge, walk their dogs and take in some excellent work. The variety of dogs I saw was sufficient for a photo essay by itself. There were a few incidents between dogs, no police were called.

My bird imagery was well received and made up a good percentage of my sales. The image below though of a fiddle head is new and sold for the first time. It is a print I do in the 5×7″ category, matted to 11×14″. It is priced at $32.

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Flowering Trees

A favorite sign of spring for me are the flowering trees. Apple, Cherry, Pear, Dogwood, and others serve as great backdrops for bird imagery and landscapes. Sometimes though it is the flowers themselves that I want to explore visually. The Crab Apples are one of the prettiest and most abundant in the parks I frequent. The flowers grow in clusters so I work to isolate a group against a background that is clean or muted to give a sense of location.

In this image I wanted enough depth to keep the entire cluster and it’s leaves in focus and the background soft enough as to still give dimension. The sun was just coming up above the treeline so to still be soft , yet provide some vibrancy. I used a Canon EOS 40D with a Canon EF 300mm f4. L IS on a tripod.

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Bethlehem Fine Arts Show – Next Weekend

Over 80 Regional, National and Local fine artists and crafters will be lining the streets of the historic district of Bethlehem, PA next weekend (May9-10). This will be my third year participating in this show. I will again be set-up across from the grand Hotel Bethlehem. During my first year in this show I had Henry Winkler in my booth. It wasn’t until he spoke though that I knew who he was. He was doing a book signing at the Moravian Book Store.

This is quite a nice show as the streets are closed to traffic and patrons can comfortably walk the wide avenue. A new piece that I will be exhibiting for sale is called Tulip Stems I, a rather abstract image with a different take on a popular subject. I took my time with this subject and truly got lost in the forest of long green stems. The image was made at Longwood Gardens with a Canon EF 70-300mm DO lens which I particularly liked for this kind of work as it allowed full-time manual focusing.

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