"City Commute"

The Tool At Hand: Milwaukee Challenge
Guidelines: Create a piece of artwork using only one tool.
Exhibition date: Saturday, March 17th at Sweet Water Organics in Bay View WI.

Here is the finished piece I created for this challenge:



Title: "City Commute"
Date: March 2012
Size: 24" x 32"
Materials: Acrylic paint, 16, 20, and 22 gauge wire on stretched canvas
The One Tool: American Painter Golden Nylon Round #3 Paintbrush
Concept Idea: To create a bicycle silhouette made out of wire using a paint brush as my tool for shaping the wire. This wire sculpture will then be attached to a stretched canvas which I have created the scenery/backdrop for by using that same single paint brush.

I spent about 4 weeks working on this piece. The background was first painted black, and I worked the rest of the colors up from that. The brush I used was very small; I picked it so I would be able to get a slightly detailed painting, but also force myself to use many layers of paint to build up the colors of the scenery. Once I had the painting completely finished, I started working on creating the wire bicycle sculpture. My original idea was to just have the silhouette of the bicycle attached to the painting, but after I finished the bike and held it up to the canvas I realized it needed to have a rider to give the whole piece a sense of action. Luckily I had chosen a small brush, who's thin handle provided a starting point to wrap the wire around to create hair for the rider. Safety first - the rider was also given a helmet. The final touch of wire added to the piece was the radio tower I attached to the top of one of the buildings. This helped connect the city scape in the background to the wire bicycle rider in the foreground.

No piers, wire cutters, or tin snips were used (or harmed) in the making of this piece. Guidelines adhered to; mission accomplished.

Socks: 1 Year in the Making

You read that right: 1 year in the making. Last year for my birthday, Zac bought me a sock knitting loom. I was all excited and picked out some fun colored yarn to start the project. Starting the project: not so easy. Read the "instructions" that came with the loom a few times through, thinking perhaps they forgot to send a page with the info on how to start the socks. Good thing we have internet these days, and multiple websites with information on pretty much every subject you could ever want. This time, YouTube was the most helpful, since other people found it necessary to provide some instruction on how to use this loom. "Cast on; got it. Knit in the round until you reach the desired length of the ankle part of your sock. Ok, this shouldn't take too long."

Fast-forward about 10 months.

"Alright, well since I have no idea how much yarn I've already used, and how much more I'll need for the rest of the sock, I guess I'll make these ankle-length socks." (That equates to about 3" completed in the last 10 months.) Back to YouTube for the lesson on how to knit the heel. "That makes more sense than the instructions they sent. This should go pretty quick." Heels on both socks finished in approximately 2 evenings.

Continue knitting in the round for the arch of the foot until you reach 2" less than the desired length of the foot. "Crap. That's 7.5 more inches. This is going to take forever."

Fast-forward to February 2012.

"Ok, if I can just get the 7.5 inches finished before my birthday, I'll declare this project successful." 4 inches, 5 inches...."this is taking forever"...6 inches..."So much for finishing before my birthday."

That brings us up to March again, almost exactly 1 year from when I started this project. Finished up the last 1.5 inches of "arch" this week, and hopped back on YouTube for a refresher on how to knit the toes. Both toes completed last night before and after watching a few episodes of Star Trek. Today I lost an hour (daylight savings) but woke up and sewed the toes together to complete my 1 year sock project.

Bad news: socks take a long time to knit.

Great news: finished knitting my first pair of socks, and THEY FIT!

Sneak Peek

Here's a sneak peek at part of the art project I'm making for the "Tool at Hand: Milwaukee Challenge" put on by the Chipstone Foundation. Finished piece will be on view for the public to see on Saturday, March 17th from 1-5pm at Sweet Water Organics, 2151 S. Robinson Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53207 (Bay View neighborhood).

One Week Painting - Feb 12, 2012

Here's a recap of my first "One Week Painting" I completed at the Art*Bar in Riverwest.

Last week's painting, done by someone else:


Start of my painting:


Finished painting:


View from the floor:

Drinks for You, Paint for Me

Here's the deal. So the Art*Bar has this canvas that gets painted on by someone different every week for the entire year. The painting morphs, changes completely, and in the end, is probably about an inch thick with paint by the end of it all.

I have been invited to paint on this canvas on Sunday, February 12.

If you'd like to come hang out, have a drink, watch me paint or even distract me so the picture turns into something completely wild, I'd be more than happy to see your smiling faces. I'll be there at 4pm and stay until I'm finished (perhaps by 8pm, maybe later). Stop in whenever you can, stay for as little or as long as you want. If you ask nicely, I'll keep the paint on the canvas and out of your hair.

Hope to see you there!

ArtBar is located in Riverwest, 722 E. Burleigh, Milwaukee, WI 53212

Getting Ready

Top priority on my list of things to do this weekend: finish up the 6 mini paintings I started a few weeks ago. It's strange how excited and enthusiastic one can be at the beginning of a project, and then work gets in the way and all the things you really want to do get pushed off til another day. Yesterday was that "other day". The best part is I have most of my creative energy in the morning, so when I got up, I got right to the painting. Ivory insisted on helping.


A few hours later and a walk down to the lake in between, the end result is 6 similar, yet different, small paintings that will be heading over to Shorewood in March to be sold at a new shop opening up called Waxwing. I was excited when the owner approached me at an art fair asking if I'd like to show/sell some of my art in her shop. Accompanying these mini paintings to the shop will be a few pieces of my jewelry. More details later about the grand opening party/reception for the shop, but pencil in Friday March 16th if you'd like to check it out!

Starting Off 2012

It's been a busy month, to say the least. After reading "Born to Run" I've decided to take up barefoot running. I was already signed up to do the Lake Minnetonka 1/2 Marathon with some family members in May, but now my goal, provided training goes well, is to run it barefoot. And I'm not talking about wearing those Vibram 5 Fingers barefoot shoes; I mean actually bare skin touching the ground. I've started training for this outside, when it was 40 & 50 degrees earlier in the month. Now that there's snow and much salt (and other random chemicals) on the ground, I'm running barefoot at work in our underground parking garage. So far it's going pretty well. Well enough for me to have signed up for the Summerfest Rock n Sole 1/2 Marathon in June. I plan to do that one barefoot as well.

It's also been a busy month for art. I've had 5 paintings up at the Briarwick Apartments rental office (coming down this weekend), and an assortment of my Trees and Grid Painting series hanging on display at the Riverwest Co-Op & Cafe through January 29th. All of these are for sale - if you are interested in any, let me know. Just finished up this week is the newest installment of Little Bits: Trees paintings to be shipped to NC for distribution in Art-O-Mat machines somewhere across the country. Here are some photos of a few of the pieces in that shipment: