paws for coffee and art

A Creative Life, animals in art, art exhibit, art gallery, artistic inspirations, creative thinking, dog portrait, Dogs in Art, drawing as thinking, fine art, visual thinking

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

Paws for Coffee By Clancy 16 x12 x 2 inches Hand dyed paper, found paper and acrylic on cradled board

Sue draws dogs

A Creative Life, animals in art, art gallery, art techniques, Sue Draws Dogs

I’ve kept sketchbooks for many years – and I have drawn dogs a lot. I sketch and draw in ink almost every day. Some time ago my wife Judy saw some of my dog drawings in my bound sketchbook and said “I really wish you’d do these on good paper.”  The phrase ‘good paper’ in our house means handmade paper.

So I did.

After a while I had a lot of drawings-on-good-paper. Then Judy said “I wish you’d show these to Amy.” Amy is the gallery owner of Caplan Art Designs.

So I did.

And now Amy has been selling my dog drawings almost as fast as I can make them! I love being this busy!  To make my drawings I use fountain pens and brush-and-ink. Occasionally I’ll use a very sharp pointed pen-nib and the ink – for very fine lines. I use that when a dog has lots of whiskers.

Then Judy said “I wish you’d post some of these regularly on your blog.”

So I am….starting now.

pickles72

Pickles by Sue Clancy (ink on handmade paper)

pug a cherry

A Creative Life, animals in art, art exhibit, art gallery, art techniques, artistic inspirations, collage, fine art, handmade papers, psychogeography

In a recent blog post titled “art inspired by ice cream” I wrote about the unusually hot weather here in WA and posted pictures of some in-progress-artwork, describing my working process and that it was inspired by (ahem) ice cream. Well, here is the rest of that story:

After thinking of the cool pattern of the marble walls in my local post office in Vancouver on the aforementioned hot day I went for an ice cream cone. My ice cream was ‘marbled’ creamy vanilla with dark chocolate swirls.  While walking around with my dripping cone, thinking of snow covered mountains, snow falling, skiing – you know, cool thoughts – a cute pug dog and his friendly person passed by – they were a “cherry” capstone to a very good – tho hot – day out and about.

That’s the full description of the inspiration behind this piece that I’ve just finished and titled “Pug A Cherry On Top”.  I’m sure you can see why I titled it that.  Anyway, it’s destined for my upcoming one-person exhibit in October (2016) at Caplan Art Designs (see the events page at www.caplanartdesigns.com).

I created it with my cut hand dyed, hand marbled papers and… the full description is below if you want it… here’s the art.

PugACherryOnTop72

Pug A Cherry On Top By Sue Clancy 7 x 5 x 1.5 inches Hand dyed paper, hand marbled paper, ink and acrylic on cradled board

art inspired by ice cream

A Creative Life, animals in art, art exhibit, art gallery, art techniques, collage, fine art, handmade papers, psychogeography, sketchbook

As I mentioned in my last blog post – there’s been a rare hot day or two here in Washington. In addition to drinking ice tea and thinking cool thoughts I’ve also eaten ice cream. You are shocked I can tell. But wait – there’s more! The two flavors I had were swirled together in a marble-like pattern – and there were candy sprinkles on top! So guess what I did… yep, before the ice cream melted I sketched the two patterns in my sketchbook.

Back at my art studio I marbled a piece of paper using the Suminagashi Japanese paper marbling technique. When the paper was dry I cut it in the shape of a mound of ice cream. You can see a bit of that paper in the edge of the photo to the left – and then the same paper glued on the board on the right. Then I cut other shapes out of other papers I’d made into a pug (a patron saint of ice cream… right?)… and in the photo to the right you can see me gluing on the sprinkles in a pattern.

I’m loving the contrast of the two random patterns; one swirled and one dotted! The glue will have to dry, more layers glued on… basically lots of work to be done before this fine art collage is finished. So my next blog post or two will probably be about something else – then I’ll post again about this project…anyway, whenever this ice cream piece is done I’ll come up with a fun title, photograph it, do the paperwork – and then it will likely go to Caplan Art Designs for my exhibit October 2016 (see the events page at Caplan Art Designs  www.caplanartdesigns.com)

CompositeIcecream

Sue Clancy working on a fine art collage inspired by ice cream – and cherries and sprinkles…

 

 

 

Upick Book Farm Art

A Creative Life, animals in art, art exhibit, art gallery, books, fine art, handmade papers

Finished a new art piece destined for the Caplan Art Designs gallery one-person exhibit I’ll be having in October!  The opening party will be a 3 course wine dinner party at The Daily in The Pearl. You can get more info about that on the Caplan Art Designs events page  – look at “Cooks, Corks and Co-conspirators”. Yep, I’d be a considered a co-conspirator. Anyway, here’s the info about this newbie art piece:

U-Pick Book Farm

By Sue Clancy

12 x 9 x 1.5 inches

Hand dyed paper, handmade paste paper, hand woven paper, found paper, acrylic on cradled board

And, if you missed my prior blog post where I told and showed about this artwork in progress here’s a bit about my thinking behind it:

U-Pick Book Farm by Sue Clancy

Combining the concepts of local u-pick fruit and vegetable farms with local libraries that have baskets for a patron’s book harvest and adding the burrowing, digging instinct of a dachshund.

UpickBookFarm72

U-Pick Book Farm By Sue Clancy 12 x 9 x 1.5 inches Hand dyed paper, handmade paste paper, hand woven paper, found paper, acrylic on cradled board

 

the art of a book basket

A Creative Life, animals in art, art exhibit, art gallery, art techniques, books, fine art

Here in the Pacific Northwest I am able to go to a farm and “U-pick” my own fruits and veg – often the farmer will hand me a bucket to hold my freshly picked produce.

Recently at my local library had about 16 books balanced between my hip and my arm while I used my other hand to look up something on the computer. A librarian saw me standing in this awkward pose and held out a basket saying “Would this help?”. Wow a basket to hold my freshly “picked” books!

Both of these situations inspired some art I’m currently working on for an upcoming one-woman art exhibit via the Caplan Art Design gallery in Portland Oregon.  Anyway, here’s a photo of me arranging my cut hand dyed papers to make a basket full of books just prior to gluing them together. Each paper was hand dyed to be the color and pattern it is – and the “basket” is handwoven hand dyed paper.  Not pictured are the “plants” the books are being harvested from!

Sue Clancy assembling  a fine art piece with her hand dyed papers that have been cut out in different shapes.

Sue Clancy in the process of assembling a fine art piece with her hand dyed papers that have been cut out in different shapes.

 

 

 

 

de wine inspiration

A Creative Life, Art Apparel, art exhibit, pattern design

As readers of my blog and facebook posts know I recently had an art exhibit opening at Burnt Bridge Cellars http://www.burntbridgecellars.com/ a winery in Vancouver Washington. The wine inspired some new art… You see, during the opening party the sunlight streamed in through the large windows opposite the tasting room bar. In between talking with people I enjoyed watching the sunlight play on the wine as it poured from the bottle into the glasses. So over the next day or so I experimented with paper marbling techniques in an attempt to “catch” my memory of the light on pouring red wine. Eventually I had a pleasing-enough pattern design. Here is my pattern – and here’s a photo of a scarf I made with it that I’ve titled “Red Wine Pouring”. You can get that scarf – or view my entire art-apparel collection here: http://shopvida.com/collections/voices/sue-clancy

A pattern design by Sue Clancy inspired by red Wine being poured at Brunt Bridge Cellars.

A pattern design by Sue Clancy inspired by red Wine being poured at Brunt Bridge Cellars.

Scarf with a pattern design by Sue Clancy titled "Red Wine Pouring" http://shopvida.com/collections/voices/sue-clancy

Scarf with a pattern design by Sue Clancy titled “Red Wine Pouring” http://shopvida.com/collections/voices/sue-clancy

books music and Ivan

A Creative Life, animals in art, art exhibit, art gallery, fine art

Due to popular demand from my friends who live in far-flung places but knew about my current exhibit (a prior post re – https://sueclancy.com/2016/05/31/fine-art-and-fine-wine/) – here are a few of my artworks currently on exhibit at Burnt Bridge Cellars www.burntbridgecellars.com via Caplan Art Designs www.caplanartdesigns.com :

Exhibit Teaser Stories

A Creative Life, animals in art, art exhibit, fine art, public art, words and pictures

Click on one of the images in this blog post for a slideshow of 5 (out of 21) artworks currently on exhibit at Burnt Bridge Cellars.  Since I think things (!) while I’m designing each of my visual stories (aka artworks) I’m including a short sentence about my thoughts behind each piece followed by details of media, size etc. – contact Caplan Art Designs directly www.caplanartdesigns.com if you’re interested in one of these works. (BTW Caplan’s will ship art anywhere in the world.)

Relevant links:

www.burntbridgecellars.com

A blog post here: https://sueclancy.com/2016/05/31/fine-art-and-fine-wine/ containing details about the opening reception (food! wine!) at Burnt Bridge Cellars Friday June 3rd 2016.

www.caplanartdesigns.com