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?

Friday's Art

The light over the table in my hotel room at the Alexis - Seattle.

Best Part of the Day

I'm now in our UK office in Stockley Park (near Heathrow). I'm here to review how we are approaching safety and compliance for our European operations, which is a thrill to finally be doing in my professional, engineering career.

However, the high point of the day was when my sponsor, the Dir of Facilities, asked if I wanted to see some of the art they were considering for the office expansion. He introduced me to Shirley Hudson, who has an art consultancy practice here in the UK.

Shirley had a nice selection of mostly prints in limited editions, including many by Anita Ford, including the one shown above.

I was so excited to see some original art up close and instantly imagined myself in Shirley's job, which reminded me of the resume I wrote for myself over the holidays:

Resume

Laura D. McHugh, PE, MBA

• Ms. McHugh is retired. As such, Ms. McHugh accepts only short-term management consulting projects where she can limit her involvement to activities that genuinely interest her. If art and/or travel to EU countries are involved in any way, your project has a much higher probability of being accepted.
  
  
• Ms. McHugh is only considering opportunities that allow her to work flexible hours, with minimal or no attendance at routine staff meetings. She is very comfortable making interesting and engaging presentations, if required, and is happiest when she can work in the background to provide high quality value-add results that you can integrate into your planning and implementation without continued reliance on her services.

• Ms. McHugh is not interested in reporting to nor supervising anyone. She works best with no supervision and appreciates the opportunity to develop a clearly defined work scope, which is most enjoyable when it is a non-linear, creative process. She enjoys situations where there is continual feedback and collaboration throughout the term of the project.
  
  
• Ms. McHugh’s hourly rate may be higher than what you are accustomed to for senior level consulting. However, you can rest assured that Ms. McHugh is interested only in efficiently completing your project quickly and completely to your satisfaction so that she is available to return to traveling, creating fine art, and moving on to the next interesting gig.

650.743.2791
lauramchugh@mac.com

Trinity College - Dublin, Ireland

Today I travelled from Cork to Dublin. Because of delays in rail service, I didn't get to Dublin until about 4 pm. Luckily, my hotel was right across the street from Trinity College, which was on my list of "must sees." This is the best photo of the day - a porcelain vase in a window, inside one of the oldest gates at the college.


The gate, and the red door.

Architectural Art in Cork Ireland

I'm in Cork on business and staying at a new hotel. The exterior is modern and I don't feel it is attractive. It's important to be curious and open-minded about art, I think. But my judgement intervenes when I drive up to the outside of this place.

However, it is a beautiful and well-appointed facility. There is a full spa, pool, and grounds surrounded by a wildlife refuge. Out the windows are green, gently rolling hills so typical of Ireland, complete with the bleating sheep that have full coats, pregnant for shearing in a few weeks.


This photo shows the FRONT of the hotel, quite unspectacular, and what's up with that big green facia? The whole modern-ness of the building and stark landscaping really distracts from the countryside. But then, maybe that discontinuity is the point - the building definitely does not compete with the natural beauty.

Inside is another story. The reception area is sit-down desks, like when you open a checking account, except that each of the three desks is in it's own private alcove with beautiful mossy green curtains hung back on either side. The rooms are also beautiful and environmentally friendly. You have to put your door key into a slot on the wall just inside for the power to go on. The bathroom is the gem in the room:

European in design, the shower has only a wall, no door. The first shower I had flooded the entire bathroom because I don't think the drain is working properly, so I put a towel across just in case. There are two shower heads, one of the huge rain type, and a second traditional head. Not shown is a huge tub, plenty big enough for two, with two headrests and a waterfall-type water spout on the side.

The glass panel in the shower divides the shower from the rest of the room. This architectural feature is repeated in the bar area of the lobby, where you can see the bottles of Irish whiskey lined up behind the frosted glass.

Viewing Art, Not Quite the Same as Doing Art

Some days, all I can squeeze in is a little bit of viewing art. Doodling during meetings may be too conspicuous and there's no down time between 7:30 when I left the house to vote this morning and 9 pm when I get home tonight.

So, I saw this bit of creativity - living art - and thought it worthy of posting.

The Four Core Value Figs

This is a sketch from a painting I did in 2004. The painting hangs over my fireplace in my family room. Today I was working with how my core values of Ease - Flow - Connection - Fun show up in my artwork and I realized there are four figs and four core values.

So - I will call them the figs of ease, flow, connection and fun.

Art Van

I now have a beautiful used Eurovan to haul art supplies and finished art around in. Yay! I was worried about messing up my beautiful little convertible Beetle. The Eurovan, which was sold to me by a lovely couple, Yula and Luda, in SF at Discount Auto Sales was a real deal and the transaction was actually a pleasure.

They were straight with me about the price, fun to talk to, and Luda and her sister who was visiting from Sacramento even helped me drive the van home. They were a delight to interact with and now we have a good car for hauling the dirty dog around in, a way to go camping, and something I can use to pick up people (and all their luggage!) from the airport.

She's a beauty!