Glass Fantasy

I was at the DeYoung Museum today to see the preview for members opening of the Dale Chihuly Exhibit.

Dale is a glass artist from the Seattle area. This blue piece is an item for sale in the gift shop.

I love the nestling.

Here is another piece - viewed from underneath.

The glass seemed to move as though it had fluidity. Vibrant colors - all quite energizing and a great way to end a long week!

Commission Piece Delivered!

On May 31, I blogged a bit about starting on a commissioned piece for a client in Napa. Creating the piece was so smooth and seamless. The parts came together effortlessly. I remembered everything I learned about creating intentional marks from my 2007 art residency, and created the write up for the client in a way that the information flowed out of me.

Today, I delivered the piece. There was a small "unveiling" at the client's office and an impromptu presentation by me on the process I followed, the elements of the piece, and the certificate of authenticity. The client was pleased. The piece met her expectations.

I hope to do 6-8 of these a year. That would be art bliss.

And I Fall Asleep, Lulled by the Noise of Paris
36 x 48 inches
Acrylic/Mixed Media
June 2008
Laura McHugh

Succulent

Sunday I attended the Sunset Magazine Annual Open House in Menlo Park.

One of the vendors had some succulent arrangements. Here are three photos I took.

All stunning.

Watercolors

This weekend, I was experimenting with the egg shape and colors. I have a dream of an egg installation someday. Just double click on the images for a much higher resolution view.

City Council Meeting 2e

Contrarian


Loose Connections



Sad Eggs


Normal Eggs


Ocean Prism

Some Saturday Photo Art

The Beach at Dusk

Shared Flourless Goodness

Table Centerpiece

The Restaurant Name in Shadow

Monday Art Photos

What I'm Afraid Of

The collagologist topic this week - Things I'm Afraid Of ....






















Getting lost in the woods.



















Clowns and Mr. Bill, to some extent.


















Headless dolls and untended ones.




















The small hands and feet on my Bustamante chair, and the nubby things on this vase. Attractive and creepy all at the same time.




















Strange fruits. Again, attractive, but creepy.

Commissions

I have been commissioned to create a piece of art for a client. Here's a small detail from the canvas, and another from the attendant documentation. The piece is called And I Fall Asleep, Lulled by the Noise of Paris

Things That Make Me Smile

I'm in a loose collection of artists called the Collagologists. We do collages of photos on a random topic. The last one we did, B is for... can be found here.

Today's topic is Things That Make Me Smile. I have been in quite a crabby mood lately, so I was more challenged than usual to find things that make me smile. Of course, my kids and those sorts of things bring me joy, but I wanted to do collages that really make me zing inside that are atypical.

Here's my favorite. The entire set of eight pages can be found here.

Coffee Ice Cream and Spoons

Good Eats!

I finally met Alton Brown! Here we are at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Cooking for Solutions event last night. He is so funny! Irreverent! And boyishly handsome too.

Some art photos:

This beautiful and strangely round artichoke was on one of the presenter's tables. There was so much food and wine and all of it was extremely good. I ran into two people I know, besides Alton! Well ok, I don't really know Alton, but having watched him for years on Good Eats!, I feel like I know him.

He was very nice and a real person. Thanks to Kati for getting this shot of us for me to treasure forever!

We went around to all the booths and ate ourselves silly, then checked out the fishies and jellies. It did seem strange they were presenting all this cooked fish in front of all the live fish. Does it scare them to see people out there on the floor eating "them"? We wondered...
Here are sardines in one of the circular tanks. The new camera is taking much nicer pictures of these displays than my former ones.

We stood for a long time at the shark tank, watching the sunfish, bonito and tuna circling around amicably with the hammer head and pacific sharks.

They show us that in our diversity, we can still get along and play nice.

Alton will be giving a speech from this tank on Sunday. Swimming with the sharks, his wit will be in top form, I'm sure. I will miss it because I'm off to Napa to consult with a client on a commissioned art piece. This is a first for me.

Berkshire Hathaway Meeting & Art

I did these monotypes a couple of weeks ago to work through some anxiety about my money and retirement.

Today, I was in Omaha NE to attend the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting and tend to some of my investments. The public art at the Qwest Convention Center was eerily similar to two of my prints...not sure what to make of it.

=

Emerging

Emerging, Encaustic on Wood Panel, 16x16

This weekend, I attended the International Encaustic Artists (IEA) annual retreat. Held at the Hidden Valley Retreat Center in Carmel Valley, we had spectacular weather (85-90F). There were panel discussions, a great presentation by Richard Frumass of R&F Paints on pigments and the making of encaustic paints, and even a Project Runway competition!

I have long wanted to do encaustic work and took a great workshop in January from Eileen Goldenberg. There were almost forty extremely high calibre encaustic artists at this retreat and among them, I felt the work I brought to share was quite amateurish (or, let's be kind and say - in its infancy!)

Today's presentations on techniques by Lissa Rankin and Miles Conrad blew me away. Lissa is such a pro - handling the brushes with the confidence that comes from years of working in the medium. Miles is very meticulous and focused on the vision of the piece, and showed us how to build three-dimensional shapes and adhere them securely to the frame.

So, by noon today I felt like though I haven't even started to work in two dimensions with encaustic, which is what attracted me to the medium to begin with - all the possibilities of collaging and layering - now I want to do three dimensional work.

I call this first true encaustic "Emerging." It echoes my desire to work with the form of the circle and adds to earlier two-dimensional print works the ability to explore the concavity and that precious space between the underside of a gently dipped shape and the surface it rests upon.

Detail - Emerging

A Little Piece of Paper Can Go A Long Way

Someone dear to me gave me a little present recently. The present was wrapped in beautiful swirled paper that I believe may be handmade. (A friend at a treasure mapping event in early January told me how she made marbleized paper that looks very similar to this.)

I liked the colors - olive green, tangerine orange and a sultry lemon yellow, so I mixed these colors to make some prints on my press. I got inspired to cut out a circle of the saved wrapping paper to incorporate into the piece.

Go to the link to Recent Art Pieces in the right sidebar to see all the prints. This is one of four monotypes in that color family. I've done six more sets in other colors.

My other favorite is this one:

Conrad and I Get To Work

I was finally able to get out to my studio and work with my print press, Conrad. We created eight monotype prints - four in a pink and green color scheme, and four more in blue and purple. I used Daler-Rowney Pearlescent Liquid Acrylic Artist's Inks for the handwork. Some prints were two pulls.

Website Art

I've finally updated my website. I was long overdue to receive the upgrade from LiveBooks and I had let my URL, www.artbylornadoone.com, expire. So, it was meant to be that I now have www.lauramchugh.com for my website.

New work from December has been added, including the index card art pieces (20) and 5 new prints I made for the BlueSpace show in early December with Conrad Whitehall, my partner press.

Bouquets to Art

I was turned on to a great collaborative art event at the DeYoung by a dear friend. The event invites floral artists to interpret pieces at the DeYoung using flowers. My favorites were the interpretation of Oranges Wrapped in Tissue,


and


I hope to have more time next year to really soak up this wonderful event.

B is for ....

.....

blankets, blue bottles, bug cars, brooms, blackberries, bottles, bicycles....

Today's photo is from an art project I was invited to partcipate in with a couple of friends. The assignment was to make a photo collage of items around the house that start with the letter "B."

I found about 15 things pretty fast. I downloaded them, did a little bit of customary Picasa messing with them, then pasted them into Powerpoint for a quick arrangement and PDF'd the whole thing.





I wonder what the next assignment will be?