effie yeaw

(Meeting an art student to begin our short three-week stint to go through my basic process with her; great thing to get me out in the world again, too...)

May 24, 2011
morning
Effie Yeaw Nature Area

sunny, warm (but not too warm) no clouds, slight breeze
still very cool for this time of year here -
predicted to be upper 70's today, normal temperature would be a good ten degrees higher

Lots of birdsong, but not really any human noise - it's been too long since I've taken time out to just "be" like this.

Ground is dry and hard as I sit on it - next to the well worn footpath - grasses in various stages of drying out, from pale green to straw colored. Little fotxtails are eager to catch themselves in my book or bag or clothes to hitch a ride elsewhere.

[woodpecker knocking in the distance]

Looking out across the path, vetch & grasses reach as much as two or three feet in height - attracting the brief attention of big black velvety butterflies. Most of the grasses are pale straw in color while the vetch is still green with it's purple flowers.

beyond the grasses - live oaks grow next to the river, about 50 feet below, still high on it's bank

(Photos in pocket:)

Looking out over the river, sunlight sparkles on the moving water

Walking back...

Learning what my new Nikon D3100 will do...

yosemite: valley of heaven

Been too busy working under deadline to post, but here's the twenty-fifth and final piece for the 20/20 Show at Kennedy Gallery Art Center. It's called "On Mist Trail," and has a piece of map where it's roughly located on it, as well as my requisite sketch & organic material. You can see the whole series at the Kennedy or in my Facebook album.

fuzzy fotos

April 25, 2011
early afternoon
Gibson Ranch
mid sixties, big puffy
cumulus that create a
game of hide & seek
with the sun
light breeze
out with Dee & friends,
both dogs
everyone has a camera -
girls shooting for class
I'm using my half broken
Nikon coolpix, sometimes
focuses/sometimes not -
mostly not -

oasis completed

A final shot of "Oasis" before delivery - now I just need to get to the next deadline - twenty five pieces on the theme of Yosemite...

sparky sketch

work in progress

Work on this commission piece is coming along. I'm thinking it's going to be called "Oasis," as vernal pools are much like an oasis in the desert of the valley grasslands...

vernal beginnings

With my taxes done, I can get back to the work table and the next commission I need to finish, nearly a full year in the making. I shot the photos for this piece featuring a vernal pool at Mather Field just about a year ago. It's taken a bit for all the pieces to come together but I got the initial composition collaged and textured today, so I can start applying color tomorrow...

outside the box statement

“Where Your Heart Is” marks the beginning of a new series of work I plan to display in the fall of 2011. Through this artwork, I am beginning to explore the concept of home as the complex layering of memories, relationships and place:

the scent of a specific flower

a particular palette of colors

the song of a certain bird

how the light filters through the trees and falls on the ground

the heat of a summer morning

a bond of shared experiences

a tugging in the human heart

Simultaneously, I am delving into the hope of an eternal home, perfect and complete, without any of the pain that overlays all that we now know.

In this piece, we peer through the gritty reality of earth hoping to see the light of heaven, to get a small foretaste of what will be, like the scent of dessert cooking during the evening meal.

new look

I finished my piece for the Outside the Box show with plenty of time to spare; I have to deliver it on Tuesday. It's actually harder to shoot this piece, now that I've ventured into the third dimension, but this will work.

This piece will be donated to the PlacerArts as part of their annual fundraiser. They'll be on display & I'll try to attend for Auburn's Art Walk on Thursday, April 14th, but I'll be missing the live auction on Second Saturday, May 14th... too bad, because this is a landmark piece for me, marking my first piece in this series.

If you don't win this piece, you can look forward to more in this series, which I'm planning for this November when I'll be featured at the Kennedy Gallery Art Center.

sketch sketch

working on more sketches for the Yosemite series

studio work

Slowly but surely, I'm making progress on my Outside of the Box piece; this is what it was looking like yesterday morning. I'm building up the layers of color and working on the final compositional elements...

Sunday I attended a little workshop at church on typography & have been wanting to incorporate more sophisticated text into my pieces. So I worked on this text & have now used it in the piece. This is the theme & title of this pieces, and speaks to the concept of home, both our home here and now and beyond.

Playing more with the concept of home, I'm toying with the idea of adding a birdhouse to this piece. I found a small one at a craft store, which I thought would be cool if I hung it outside & let it weather before I used in some piece at a later date. It apparently wasn't meant to be outside as the first rainstorm completely loosened all the glue & it fell to pieces on the ground... it's a little too big for this piece, so I traced all the pieces & now it's my pattern for a smaller house I'm going to build & see if it works. (A total experiment, you may never hear of this again.)

studio shot

This is what the progress looks like on my piece for the Outside of the Box show; I'll start painting next! (And I just put the branch in to see what the composition is looking like - I don't collage & color & paint around it, so it's in & out alot.) You can see the sycamore seed pod that's been coated with acrylic medium on the table above the piece and my dog Mopar laying on the floor, wishing I would play with him...

basic box composition

This is where the Outside of the Box project is now - I've got the basic composition laid out & I'll work on putting it all together today, as well as prepping & teaching, and seeing if I can make headway on the other projects in the studio as well...

where my heart is

Working on my Outside of the Box piece (this is the photo that will be in this box) & my mind is racing ahead to a new series... likely showing in November 2011 when I'm featured at the Kennedy Gallery. I'm seeing pieces similar in construction to this current piece (I've already begun what my daughter dubbed my stick collection.)

The imagery will be a little different than what I've been doing lately - I'm looking at homes and exploring the concept of "home is where your heart is" and all that might entail. I don't want to say too much yet but I do want to put out a call for anyone within driving distance that has a "home" that I might want to photograph...

You can comment to this post, contact me via Facebook or Twitter or email me from my website at www.judithmonroe.com.

outside of the box

I've been wanting to work more three-dimensionally lately and when I saw the call for Placer Arts 4th Annual Outside of the Box show, I was completely ready to jump in. So I got a box, which is 15"x15"x3" and almost immediately knew what I wanted to do! The deadline is only about three weeks away, so I finally got started with the physical aspect of working yesterday, which is what you can see here.

With my paltry woodworking skills, I managed to drill a properly sized hole to put my little tree branch into - I am so proud of myself! Next step is to gesso & work more on the final composition. I'll post photos of progress, have no fear...

still sketching

sketch book

Some days feel less successful than others...

putting it out there

One of the hardest things I do is submit my work to juried shows. It's nerve wracking, handing my soul to a stranger to judge, hoping that they'll like what I do, validate me, accept me. It doesn't matter how many times I've gotten into a show or how many times I've been rejected, it's always the same gut-wrenching rock in the pit of my stomach feeling.

This time the show is St. John's Religious Art Festival, a biannual show here in Sacramento that's been going on for nearly seventy-five years. Last time I was not only accepted, but awarded first place for my Mustard Tree piece but this time the curator is Scott Shields, the Chief Curator for the Crocker Art Museum - no pressure there at all...

So I'm dropping off these works today to be judged and scrutinized and I'll try not to be too anxious about the whole thing.