Here’s a sneak preview of my exhibit at Burnt Bridge Cellars that I’ve titled “Dogs in the Winery”! We’d just finished installing it. The “we” being me, Kim and Judy. (Kim and Judy are seen on the video talking and waiting for me to quit filming. 😉
This coming Friday evening my exhibit opens and people will come, the wine will be poured, the food will be served, I’ll sign copies of my book “Dogs by Sue Clancy”… and we’ll all relax and enjoy ourselves!
I’ve been getting all of the artwork packed up for delivery to Burnt Bridge Cellars for a one-person art exhibit there. Some of my artwork is also coming from one of my nearby galleries. So what you see in the photo is just what art is coming from my studio. And the artwork in the photo is in stages of being gathered and wrapped in prep for putting it in the car for delivery.
4 things I’ve learned about delivering artwork by car to a nearby destination:
Here’s another new artwork for my upcoming exhibit at Burnt Bridge Cellars http://www.burntbridgecellars.com – it’s titled
Paws For Coffee by Clancy – 16 x 12 x 2 inches – hand dyed paper, found paper and acrylic on cradled board.
Here’s what inspired it: I can sometimes get so busy that I forget to take time to be present in the moment, to pause and smell the coffee. This is me – remembering.
The diamond motif is because I was thinking of the maze-like labyrinth quality that a busy life sometimes has. I chose a dachshund character for that breeds digging ability, chosen as an inspiration for me to “dig out” from the (a)maze-ing world what’s really important to me.
Paws for Coffee By Clancy 16 x12 x 2 inches Hand dyed paper, found paper and acrylic on cradled board
As you know from other posts I’m getting ready for a one-person fine art exhibit to open June 2nd at Burnt Bridge Cellars www.burntbridgecellars.com. For this art exhibit I’ve been meditating, you might say, on how important it is to practice enjoying ordinary life. When I have a glass of wine I’m reminded to breathe, taste and savor everything – not just the wine. I chose a Labrador dog as my “character” actor in my art (pictured) because a Labrador’s restrained-alert-excitement reflects how I feel while tasting some wines.
Here’s one of my artworks for the show:
Lad by Clancy – 30 x 22 inches – sumi ink on handmade paper
On my website page https://sueclancy.com/artist-books/ you can find a link to a sketchbook titled “Glad to Be Alive Sketchbook – drinks and music edition 2017” where you can download, for free, my sketches that inspired this work.
You can also see some greeting cards with this image – and others – here https://society6.com/sueclancy
I’ve been working on an exhibit statement for my upcoming one-person exhibit at Burnt Bridge Cellars http://www.burntbridgecellars.com/ via Caplan Art Designs http://www.caplanartdesigns.com/index.htm and making it as visual as possible. Here’s what I’ve come up with (with slight variations for my on-line only audience):
Dogs In The Winery by Sue Clancy
I’ve been inspired by many of the drinks, restaurants and music events in Vancouver and the Pacific Northwest. Whenever I am inspired I make notes in my “running around loose” sketchbook – real-life observations – that often end up on a page looking like this:
Back in my studio I run those notes through my imagination and do a new sketch, in black and white, that uses elements of what I’d seen in real life but transforms that real-life data symbolically. In this way, my work becomes a visual story about enjoying something. For me drawing is thinking – and storytelling. My newly imagined art-sketch becomes something like this:
Pierre by Clancy (ink on handmade paper)
Then I add to my story concept thoughts of color, patterns and textures – to create a surface design on handmade paper that reflects my thoughts/feelings. In this step, I’m designing and creating hand-made patterns onto handmade papers using a number of techniques. Each pattern is designed to be another story element.
I put together the real-life data – my re-configured imaginary sketch idea and my color/pattern surface design thoughts – by cutting shapes out of my handmade papers and literally gluing the cut paper pieces together to create my fine artwork.
To show you what I mean here is a picture of me making a surface pattern design on handmade paper:
Sue Clancy creating a pattern on paper using a stencil-paste paper technique
And here I’m using an Xacto knife cutting out shapes from paper that was previously dyed:
Cutting dyed paper into a shape
The end result is a multi-layered fine art piece in color – like what you see in this exhibit or that you can see on my website fine art page https://sueclancy.com/fine-art/ Or like this finished fine art piece titled “Café Paix”
“Café Paix” by Clancy – 14 x 11 inches – hand dyed paper, handmade paste paper and acrylic on cradled board
This exhibit shows a progression of my artistic thoughts about life in the Pacific Northwest – a visual story collection – with various dogs as symbolic characters. For me a dog represents an exuberance, a gladness, about being alive and is a fitting representative for pleasant life experiences.
You can download, free, 18 pages from my “running around loose” sketchbook – the real-life data that inspired this exhibit from my website here: https://sueclancy.com/artist-books/ I’ve titled this (free eBook) sketchbook “Glad To Be Alive Sketchbook – drinks and music edition 2017”. Direct link to the free eBook here: https://sueclancy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/gladtobealivedrinkmusiced.pdf
The imaginative art-sketches developed from the “Glad to be Alive…” sketchbook can be seen in the printed book “Dogs by Sue Clancy” (available in this exhibit or via Amazon and other booksellers or here: https://store.bookbaby.com/book/Dogs-By-Sue-Clancy ). If you are able to visit my art exhibit at Burnt Bridge Cellars I’m sure you can identify (in “where’s Waldo” puzzle fashion) which sketchbook page led to which black and white art-sketch and which of those became color fine artwork.
For a “mind map” of my thinking process see the diagram here: https://sueclancy.com/2017/05/16/mind-map-of-a-clancy-art-exhibit/
I’ve been busy getting ready for my one-person art exhibit to open June 2nd at Burnt Bridge Cellars – a winery in Vancouver WA. Part of doing an exhibit is to write an exhibit statement. But before posting my finished exhibit statement I wanted to share my thoughts behind my art exhibit design. Here’s a sketch diagram, a mind-map:
For the last year I’ve been running-around-loose in the Vancouver WA and Portland OR area documenting, in my sketchbook, my experiences at local music events, restaurants, wineries, cafes and pubs. You can see a free eBook of my sketchbook titled “Glad To Be Alive – drinks and music edition 2017” here: https://sueclancy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/gladtobealivedrinkmusiced.pdf
Then I processed through my imagination all of that data I’d collected in my sketchbook and for each pleasant thought I imagined a dog character-actor and made a new sketch/visual story, an ink study, using a sumi brush and ink. You can see a printed book, titled “Dogs by Sue Clancy” with of some of these ink sketches via Amazon or here: https://store.bookbaby.com/book/Dogs-By-Sue-Clancy
After doing a whole bunch of these dog portrait studies, almost 100 of them, I selected several and refined them, adding color and pattern and shape thoughts to my visual story describing metaphorically my experiences in real life. These refinements have become finished fine art pieces that are in color using my mixed media cut handmade paper technique. Both some of the finished color artworks and some of the black and white ink pieces (framed) will be at my upcoming exhibit.
My artistic inspirations are elements of ordinary life – so I’ve extended my art-exhibit making to the above mentioned books. Books are an important element of ordinary life so having authored two of them and making them available adds another layer to my art exhibit.
After doing some of the fine artworks I’ve also done some “illustrated things”: I’ve applied some of my artistic thinking for my exhibit to real-life clocks, napkins, tea towels, scarves and many other ordinary consumer items. This extends my art exhibit thesis to yet another layer or dimension. You can see some of the items I’ve designed on my web page titled “illustrated things” here: https://sueclancy.com/pattern-design/
To put my exhibit thesis plainly – I think it is very important to remember to enjoy and actively participate in the present moment, to relish ordinary things, places and friendly people. Once upon a time I lived in a place where quality music events, good restaurants, wineries and pubs were rare. Certainly they didn’t exist in the variety and abundance that they do here in the Pacific Northwest. So I’m aware of what a gift, a treasure, it is to have those things now.
It is also fitting to have my exhibit at a winery – where the people who come to see my artwork can also enjoy award-winning wines and food.
But back to my mind-map: generally at the exhibit my thesis will be available only as a visual story, not spoken or written in literal fashion. I have a reluctance to preach or otherwise belabor a point. Besides instead of writing/speaking didactically I’d rather draw.
Now you know.
I’ve been inspired by many local coffee shops – as well as the local dogs – and I’ve been making notes in my sketchbooks and creating fine art in prep for my upcoming art exhibit opening June 2nd at Burnt Bridge Cellars www.burntbridgecellars.com. (Free downloadable eBook sketchbook full of my inspirations available via this link https://sueclancy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/gladtobealivedrinkmusiced.pdf)
As part of my upcoming exhibit I’ve also created some dog-art-as… napkins and tea-towels. It fits with the dogs and drinks theme…
Here is a photo of the cloth dinner napkins – available via this link only https://roostery.com/p/amarela-cloth-dinner-napkins/6388800-two-dogs-coffee-by-sueclancy
The tea-towel looks like this (photo below) and is available via this link only:
https://roostery.com/p/orpington-linen-tea-towels/6388800-two-dogs-coffee-by-sueclancy
A photo of a fabric swatch with this pattern is on my blog here: https://sueclancy.com/2017/05/11/coffee-dog-art-on-fabric/
You knew, I’m sure, that it was only a matter of time until I tried putting my dog drawings onto fabric… and you were correct! Look what came in the mail just now – a fabric test swatch for my approval. (I approve!!) Tea-towels and napkins here we come…
Here’s the swatch as it came out of the mail-envelope… the rulers are to show scale:
I’m getting ready for a one-woman fine art exhibit held at Burnt Bridge Cellars and set up by the Caplan Art Designs gallery – and part of getting ready is writing an “exhibit statement”. I prefer creating pictures to writing non-fiction/prose so I’m making my exhibit statement as visual as possible. One thing I’ve done is collect some of my sketchbook pages into a free downloadable eBook. This eBook relates to my exhibit… more about that in future posts. Here are pages from my “Glad To Be Alive Sketchbook – drinks and music edition 2017″… you can see more information and download it from my artist book webpage here https://sueclancy.com/artist-books/ or via this direct link: GladToBeAliveDrinkMusicEd – Enjoy!
www.burntbridgecellars.com www.caplanartdesigns.com
The grandmother I grew up with was a quilter. I spent many a childhood day going through Grandma’s carefully-organized-by-color fabric collection and re-sorting them into different color combos. (Not sure Grandma approved.) Later on my adopted mom was also a quilter.
In my fine art I’ve been designing the “fabric” my characters “wear” in my artwork (as well as the wall paper, the china tea cups, the clocks, chairs and whatever else is part of my visual story).
So it seems fitting that I begin doing art-designs for real-life fabric that can be available for quilters and seamstresses of all kinds. You can find my designs on Spoonflower here – https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/sueclancy
More designs will be coming online soon – and I’m making more… I’ll keep you posted.
I figure I owe it to my grandmother – and my adopted mom – for all the times I “messed about” in their fabric collections! And I want to give my currently-using-fabric quilter/fabric artist friends something new to create with…
Here is a photo of my first test swatches (8 x 8 inches) with my designs on fabric. What you see is exactly as the swatches came out of the envelope a few minutes ago – they’ve not been ironed or anything. The ruler is there to show scale.
These designs, after I officially “approve” them in about 5 minutes, will be available as fabric cut by the fat quarter or by the yard. Also these and other fabric designs I create – will soon be available for application on home-furnishings like chairs or tea towels via another Spoonflower related company. But more about that another day.
