This week I packed and delivered 25 of my artworks to the Caplan Art Designs Gallery for my upcoming Figures Of Speech exhibit which opens Oct 5 and will run until November. After my one-person exhibit finishes my art will become part of the ongoing Gallery group exhibits.
Here’s what my studio looked like prior to delivering it all.
Here’s Amy, the gallery owner, and I holding some of my art. Amy holds my framed painting “This Little Piggy” and I’m holding my sculpture “Independent As A Hog On Ice”
Amy has a really good “art easel side” manner and we chatted during delivery about the artwork I’d just brought and more generally about my artistic direction. She’s a very good coach, supportive while also giving gentle guidance that inspires me to make more art! I’m very lucky and I know it!
Here are some videos about the art we’re holding in the photo above…
Over on my email newsletter I shared more about my painting Ducks In A Row. Since I began sharing about it here on my blog last week here’s the rest of the story so to speak.
As a reward for getting this far with my Figures Of Speech exhibit my wife and I went to a local used bookstore…
… where I got some suspense novels! I’m going to take a few days to read and rest then I’ll get back to helping promote my exhibit as well as doing more drawing and painting!
I hope your week is pleasant. See you next Monday.
I’m in the home stretch for my upcoming art exhibit at Caplan Art Designs which opens October 5th! There are 22 paintings, 2 sculptures by me that are ready now. Number 25 is in progress more on that in a sec…
Besides creating the artwork itself I photographed each piece for the Gallery’s promotional uses. This week I did more photos of one of my 3d sculptures (8 inch cube) that I’ve titled “Independent As A Hog On Ice”. These photos below show the colors better than the post I did about “Independent As…” when I first finished it.
I’m in this video working on piece number 25 for my exhibit. I’ll title this painting “Ducks In A Row” when I’m finished.
Here below are photos of things in nature where I live in the Pacific Northwest that inspired my new color palette mentioned in my newsletter.
I enjoyed looking at the grey-blue sky, the blue-lavender mountains in the distance, the grey-green-blue of the river… and the greens of the trees…
On a rainy day I enjoyed the grey sky, the deep green trees…
I love the grey-blue and pale grey-yellow colors of river rocks…the flower colors of orange-red and orange-yellow and blue-lavender…
With these real-life colors noted I looked in this resource book about colors so I could plan my palette.
Here’s what a page from this book looks like so you can see how it was helpful.
At my local art supply store I bought a new empty palette with a lid (and another water brush just because I love them).
I also got 2 new tubes of gouache paints: a Paynes Grey-blue and a Vermilion red. All of the other tubes seen in the photo below I already had on hand. This arrangement of color is what’s new.
As you can see by looking between the color chart on the front of the book and my paint palette (and my palette note sheet) these colors are more natural, classic even.
I’ve been rereading “The Overstory” by Richard Powers. In this mind boggling jigsaw puzzle of a fictional story there is a character who begins photographing one tree regularly over a span of time.
Since there are many beautiful trees in my neighborhood that I can see from my front windows …
…. one of the ways I decided to test my new palette is to paint a tree multiple times. The character in the book by Richard Powers uses a nondigital photographic camera to record their view of a tree over time. But me being me I’m going to try to paint and draw some trees by hand…
Which of course led to drawing that same tree in ink.
There’s a few other trees I can see from my windows that I want to draw and paint too… and I realized I have a lot to learn about drawing trees. So I went to my local library for books on the topic.
Here’s a view out my window. The tree I’ve already painted is to the right in these photos. Notice how different the trees are in different times of day due to the changing light? It’s amazingly magical!
I did a couple of efforts at drawing and painting the birch trees to the left in the above photos.
Yes, I’ve got a lot to learn about trees! It’s exciting to be starting a new project just as one project, my Figures Of Speech exhibit, is finished as far as the creative process goes. Figures Of Speech is just beginning it’s life at the Caplan Art Designs Gallery – and is in the early stages of being talked about in a more public sense.
Talking about completed art that’s in an exhibit is very different from creating the art itself. I prefer doing the creating part to doing the publicity part but I know talking about my art is part of it and I find, ironically, that being in the midst of creating art – even when it’s wildly different from the work currently on exhibit – helps me to be able to talk about the art I’ve already completed without too much shyness.
Anyhoo, there will be more about my upcoming exhibit and my new projects in progress in upcoming newsletters and blog posts.
I hope the trees grow well and beautifully in your neck of the woods too.
More progress this on my new 3d sculpture project I started in this post. It’s for an upcoming exhibit via Caplan Art Designs. This week I’ve worked to make my wooden cube look even more like an empty cardboard box especially around the flaps and edges. Now I’m blocking in some colors within the commercial-box style lettering on the outside of my sculpture. Did you do that when you were a kid – fill in the spaces of printed lettering? Anyhoo, I’m also making progress on my elephant character.
My sketchbook page today… and the notion of “un-sanity” which I take to mean being willing to think outside conventional habitual boxes.
This week my wife and I varied our morning routine and we went to the Portland Japanese Garden. I did my morning sketchbook drawings there. You can see all of the sketchbook pages I did, as well as videos that my wife took of me in the process of drawing, on my Substack newsletter. This was my favorite drawing from that day…
Speaking of thinking outside boxes and variations of habits: I read this zany mad-cap hilarious collaboration between Douglas Adams and Terry Jones this week.
I hope your week contains some pleasant variations of your routines.
My exhibit Figures Of Speech went very well! Lots of people came! So many came that I hid in the kitchen watching the winery chef do her magic! Of course I talked to lots of people and gave art tours so when I say “I hid in the kitchen” that was where I chose to sit, whenever I sat, with my wife, our Fairy Goddaughter and one of our Fairy Goddaughter’s friends who we’ve now adopted. Come to one of my exhibits, stay that long and presto you’re family now!! 🤣
Anyhoo, the chef made a watermelon spinach salad that was incredibly yummy! And yes, I brought a sketchbook and pens with me…
The chef surprised and delighted me with some strawberries (one of my favorites) and some chocolate!!
The chef made apple pork burgers with a brie sauce that I started eating before remembering to take a photo.
There was very good live music too… this was what the winery said about the food and music! 👇
I also read my friend Bernadette’s blog… and Audrey’s blog… and Laura’s blog…and Sherri’s blog…as well as several other blogs… it was so good to catch up with friends!!
I spent the rest of the weekend binge reading printed books! It looked like this…
…the studio supervisor dachshund alternated between sunny spots from which to survey his kingdom and his cushy L.L. Bean patio bed throne beside our chairs.
I’m still reading this nonfiction book even after the weekend…
…but I blasted through the following titles and I highly recommend all of them!
This one was a very good ebook I got from the library. 👇
Art events are collaborative acts of community. I hold on to that thought whenever I’m tired as I am now prior to an art opening. I focus on the fact that while I might be a visible part of my upcoming art exhibit I am just one part: there’s the Burnt Bridge Cellars winery and all of the local people who have made the wines, there’s the chef who’ll make the dinner, the musicians who’ll play, there’s the Caplan Art Designs Gallery who organizes things and there are my friends and the public who will come and eat and drink and look at my art. Then there are extended friends who can’t come in person to the exhibit but who will read and comment and share my artwork online. This is a large community of whom I am honored to be an active part! We are all doing this fun thing together! That thought sustains me as I finish packing up the artwork for delivery on Tuesday and as I create one of the last videos and the webpage that the gallery, the winery and my friends can use to share the fun!
Here’s one of the boxes full of my artwork.
Here’s the most recent video in which I talk about what inspired my exhibit.
Clancy talks about her upcoming exhibit Figures Of Speech
Anyhoo, all of this reminds me of the similarities between beetles and artists which I wrote about in a recent newsletter. To sum up the newsletter briefly: beetles work towards the health of our soil and artists work towards the health of our society.
My doodlebugs are a small painting series within a larger series I’ve titled Figures Of Speech and my email newsletter tells what inspired the doodlebugs (hint: it’s wordplay based on a scientific phrase). Anyhoo, here are more of the featured bugs… and the tracks they left 👇 https://sueclancy.substack.com/p/doodlebugs-and-other-figures-of-speech
“Genus: Doodlebug Species: Orange Square Beetle” – by Clancy
Here’s an advance peek for my fans who like my artist books and who might want to take my whole art exhibit home with them: here’s a new printed book containing my exhibit “Figures Of Speech” https://www.blurb.com/b/11594402-figures-of-speech I will be sharing an ebook version via my email newsletter later this week.
To relax and restore myself I’ve been playing with my art supplies with no thoughts of anything beyond having fun. We got new inks from the Birmingham Pen Company and had a lot of fun playing! https://www.birminghampens.com/
This is one of the books I’m enjoying reading in the evenings.
I haven’t had much time to try new cooking methods but my rice cooker has gotten quite a yummy workout. I have tried numerous “new to me” recipes that are variations on rice plus vegetables plus herbs and spices themes. To save some time occasionally I’ve used frozen chopped vegetables and canned beans. I’ve really appreciated the toss everything into the rice cooker press the cook button and walk away aspect of using a rice cooker. That has made meals easy and has sustained us.
While my overworked rice cooker has given us some tasty meals I am eagerly looking forward to seeing what the chef makes during my opening! I’m especially looking forward to seeing everyone in person and reading your comments online! Thank you in advance!
I’m posting this blog early this week as Monday is Memorial Day. I’ll leave you with a poppy…
I hope your week is pleasant! See you next Monday!
This was the first Mother’s Day without my adopted Mom as she died last year. This month is also the month my adopted Dad died just days after sending us a box of books by mail. So it’s been rough. Also I’m very busy working on an art exhibit. So I’ve mostly been offline away from social media doing work stuff and generally taking care of myself.
Here’s a sketchbook page in which I list a few the the things I learned from Mom.
Because it felt good to do it I put a downloadable ebook version of “Pembral Forgets” on my email newsletter. It’s a book I illustrated that Steve Tubbs wrote about fall leaves, good food and a boy who forgets something important but is loved anyway. Here’s the link https://sueclancy.substack.com/p/pembral-forgets
I had dedicated my part of this book to my adopted Mom and she did get to see it!
This week we did take a books and beers break and joked that it was brought to us by the letter V – a local bookstore Vintage Books and a local brewery Victor 23.
My adopted Dad always insisted on having his beer in a glass. So in his honor we too insist on a glass!
I stayed up late several nights reading a novel “Rejoice” by Steven Erickson and would spend all day reading it if I only could. I’m absolutely loving the plot scenario of outer space beings who have made it impossible for any human on Earth to cause harm to another human …
Wow! It’s the perfect read for this difficult weekend.
Now to work on paperwork and framing for my upcoming art exhibit …
This week has definitely been caffeinated. My art commission for Caplan Art Designs is buzzing nicely. The Bainbridge Island Art Museum sent news this week that my book Coffee Beans Plus H2O is included in an exhibit catalogue “Open Sesame” that will come out in March 2023!
Lots of creative things are percolating! Here’s a video look at my book Coffee Beans Plus H2O.
The portfolio page on my website has more photos and info.
In last Monday’s post I shared a pig painting I began with the excess blue paint I had as a result of the still in progress secret art commission. Well, here’s progress on the pig painting. The week has been very busy so I’m glad to have this much done on a new painting.
I still make many of my artist books from scratch – hand sewing the bindings, paper folding and all. Coffee Beans Plus H2O is one example. Patchwork Poems is another. But some time ago I got some very valuable advice from Laura Russell at the 23 Sandy Gallery (an artist book gallery I work with). Laura encouraged me to focus on my book content, my stories and illustrations, as not so much on creating complicated book bindings. So nowadays I buy and use well-constructed blank books to write and draw in. Many of the books I buy have sewn bindings and will lay flat while in use. Quality of paper and the ability to lay flat are attributes I seek in my blank books.
There’s a locally owned art supply store, not far from where I live, Columbia Art and Drafting, that regularly has good quality sketchbooks in their “buy one get one free” section. I like to go through this section like a vacuum cleaner, hoovering up sketchbooks!! 🤣
Here’s what I got: six 3 x 5 inch hardcover sketchbooks for pen and ink work, two 5.5 x 8.5 inch hardcover sketchbooks for heavy watercolor and gouache work, two 6 x 9 inch hardcover books and four 8.5 x 11 inch hardcover books all of which will accept ink, color pencil and light watercolor and gouache work! When we got home from the art supply store I started right away on a drawing in one of the new blank books… which will get shared on my email newsletter later this week and I will continue sharing as time goes.
Here’s a limerick I wrote and illustrated about blank books.
Here’s a delightful article about journaling and what’s good about keeping a journal.
And Sketchbook Skool is fun too – lots of videos with drawings in action.
Hope your blank books will soon contain your very own delights! See you next Monday or so.
My Odditerrarium exhibit is humming along nicely at the Caplan Art Designs Gallery! This week was another busy week and I’m grateful to have a Gallery collaborator who helps keep things going in many ways including with posts like this! What a nice way to show the pets that inspired the portraits in my exhibit!
Since I knew this week would be another busy one I carefully carved out some time to sketch. Because I’ve discovered I enjoy sharing step-by-step how I create my sketches I documented my sketchbook session and posted it here on my email newsletter. In the post I show the art supplies (like the NIL-TECH watercolor pencil set) and how I use them as well as how I got the idea for my sketch.
As you know from earlier posts I’ve been working on a new illustrated poetry book for Storyberries.com. Knowing I wouldn’t have much time to work I did “need to let it dry” kinds of tasks: I spray-fixed the pages and glued the still-raw boards for the book covers. In the last photo you see the small credit card sized book just before I set it up interlaced with wax paper and paperweights to dry while life happens.
Then a wonderful visit happened over three days with family! There were two college soccer games to attend in support of one family member. We ate in a number of locally owned restaurants. We went for a hike in a park. We played games of dominos well into the night. I didn’t photograph everything and I never managed to get everyone in the photos at the same time but this photo below was the most successful.
One family member was on the field being a goalie. Other family members were along sidelines taking photos of the action on the field. There were so many reasons we were seldom in the same places at the same time for a family photo. The games were active occasions!
The outdoor soccer games were also unseasonably warm and sunny, for the Pacific Northwest, as you can see below.
I wear two high powered hearing aids and have since I was 8 years old. My right ear is a bit better at hearing with hearing aids than my left one. I know well from past experiences that hearing aids are sensitive to heat, moisture and interference by hats – among many other things – so I try to be careful. I even remove my hearing aids before I use spray-fix on my art projects just in case.
Well, during the first soccer game I was enjoying listening to family members and the noisy hubbub of the game when suddenly everything went quiet as if a switch turned the sound off. My right ear was completely silent and I could barely hear, with the hearing aid in my left ear, the loud drums and shouting from the crowd. Immediately I told the family member who was talking to me that something had happened to my hearing aid. I told my wife too and excused myself to go to the car to see if I could replace a battery, adjust a setting that was knocked off by my hat or do something and get my hearing aid back on again. No such luck.
So I went back to the stadium and told my family that I’d be more deaf than usual the rest of the day. My hearing issue was no problem for anyone else, some sign language, repeating things patiently, and my lip reading skills could compensate. It was me that had a problem. In such scenarios I have FOMO, a Fear Of Missing Out. My family loves me and includes me in everything- I can trust and rely on that – it’s that they are all such good storytellers. They’re good storytellers in the literary sense of building suspense using nuances of wordplay, of voice tones and inflections, of playing shared family knowledge like a violin (in kind, gentle ways) while building towards a punchline. To miss some of the words or sentences means a high probability of missing the joke! If you know me at all you know how I love a good story so I had a serious case of FOMO!!! I didn’t want to miss any clever turn of phrase that would be said!
To cope with the FOMO I did my best to focus on the bigger picture of just enjoying their physical presence and to appreciate the things I did hear and let the rest go…and to just trust myself and them! I did my best to “catch the conversational drift” and add related stories of my own now and then. I tried to be as much a full participant as possible. It was hard at first to keep my FOMO from dropping down like a barricade between us but I leaned on trusting myself and everyone else. I imagined the conversation was a happy-accident style painting where an artist just trusts the creative process. I reminded myself that I like surrealism and nonsensical poetry – that I would be fine with things not being comprehensible. I recalled the art college essays I wrote about the artists John Cage, Rene Magritte, Joseph Cornell and Ray Johnson. I also remembered reading about Surrealism and Dadaist poetry and storytelling in addition to the art styles.
Later that day when we had dinner and as the evening cooled off my right hearing aid fluttered to a little more life. Not back to it’s normal power but I was glad of a wee bit more sound. After we were home I got out the hearing aid instructions and fiddled with the settings. During breakfast the next morning I fiddled with the settings some more and the second game day had a bit more – not normal but better- hearing in it. Still I practiced “just appreciating what I did hear” and “just trusting and loving”.
Here are some photos from the second soccer game of people I was just loving and trusting.
Our family soccer goalie is in the middle behind the fence. The 4 others are also family members.
And I found myself just enjoying our meals together and didn’t take photos. Except for this one at happy hour.
Stories got told over our domino games we had at our house till after midnight! In our quiet house I heard a bit more of the stories but it’s obvious that these hearing aids need repair! Will visit the hearing aid repair place asap!
So I learned this week that it really is true that “A little nonsense now and then is valued by the wisest people”, that art can help – even when it’s memories of art history essay papers, and also that just loving and trusting can lead to some of the happiest of experiences! What a great time I had with family!!!!
I hope your week is filled with love, trust and happiness too! See you next Monday.
My Odditerrarium fine art exhibit opens this Thursday Oct 6 from 6 to 8 pm at Caplan Art Designs! It’s been fun to think so much about what dogs and cats might think about! I hope others are amused too.
I’ve enjoyed titling paintings in ways that refer to aspects of mental life. Sometimes, like this painting below, I’ve been rather straightforward. This painting is titled “Intellect”.
Here’s a look at the exhibit in the process of going up on the wall at Caplan Art Designs. The gallery kindly sent me these photos. You can see more about my entire series here on my portfolio and I’m still very proud of the nonsense poem book related to my exhibit! Yes, copies of my book will be available at the Gallery and also available online here – with a full preview of the entire book too.
On another gallery wall there are 3 of my other paintings from other series.
Here’s a kid looking at one of my paintings before it got moved to a different place in the Gallery.
On my email newsletter recently I shared a few of the sketchbook pages where I’d thought, with a pen in hand, about thinking.
Over on NIL-TECH they wrote a really nice thing about my currently in progress drawing marathon…please click here to see it for yourself. It’s so nice! <blushing>
If you saw the above Reel then you’ll recognize the progress I’ve made in the photos below.
If you’re wondering how I’m managing so many projects at one time: I have 3 work stations in my studio. Each project has it’s own area with an art supply taboret between them with my color palettes and brushes sorted for each project. This way the projects and the supplies I’m using for each one are always ready. I’ll take turns working in short bursts almost daily on each project until they’re finished.
My sketchbooks and the art supplies I use for them are much more portable and roam with me from the coffee pot to the breakfast table or outside to our patio.
And here’s hoping the rest of this week goes smoothly for us all. See you next Monday.
Here’s a dog portrait in my Odditerrarium series. A bird dog exercising discretion. 🤣 Yes, I laugh at my own jokes. This painting is 8 x 10 inches and created with ink, gouache and collage on board.
Here’s a closer look.
Jokes aside – as I worked on this painting I was thinking that it’s not our first thought or an event that’s the important factor it’s our second thought and the actions we do next in response. It’s having the discretion to choose wisely what our next thoughts and actions will be that’s most important.
That thought popped up again when I made a mistake in my sketchbook. I started to attribute the quote to Seneca but it was by Epictetus. So I shared how I fixed the mistake I’d made, in permanent ink, in my sketchbook in this email newsletter titled: 95% of being an artist (or a human) is knowing how to deal well with mistakes.
Here’s my sketchbook with the mistake corrected.
This week Amy, the owner of the Caplan Art Designs gallery came to pick up the Odditerrarium series for exhibit in October. It was great to see her and visit!!
Here’s the box of 20 artworks – many of them new for the October exhibit. I’m still enjoying being a miniature artist and having an entire exhibit fit in one box!!
Do you ever get suddenly tired of typing? I do. I have more I’d love to share with you about this book (in the pic above), about my projects in progress… but my typing fingers are tired. So I leave you with a sketchbook doodle and a hope that your week is pleasant. See you next Monday.
