Folk Art Mary

Tomorrow I'm Off to a Craft show

Tomorrow I'm off to the 39th Annual Plowshares Craftsfair and Winter Peace Festival, Syracuse, NY. December 5-6, 2009. Show location is Nottingham High School, 3100 East Genesee Street, Syracuse, NY.  I've been getting ready all evening and will probably be getting ready tomorrow right up until the point of departure. I've got the booth on top of the car, two brand new pieces of folk art, and an unfinished folk art guard dog piece to work on while I'm there.

Ta Daaa! Commission is Done

Here it is done! From the first sketch to the final piece, I'm happy with how this folk art commission turned out. I still enjoy the process of turning a piece of wood into a carved and painted picture. It continues to be a thrill. Thanks, Mike, for your trust and willingness to take a chance!

Final size of piece, 27" x 21" x 1.5"

Back to Painting the Alessi Commission

Enough talk, back to photos of work in process. Just to remind you, here's a link to the Alessi commission unpainted carving blog what I wrote about a week ago. Doing this writing about the stages of painting has helped me learn more and be able to better express how I work. Hopefully it's been as interesting to you as it has been to me.

Most of these photos were taken at my Ithaca Farmers' Market booth, my outdoor summer studio. I took them by laying the artwork flat on my work table (here covered with a tarp), then standing on the work table (trying not to lose my balance) and shooting straight down, sometimes capturing not just the artwork but also other things (like paints, paintbrushes, and the occasional edge of my foot) in the process.

1) Here's the first color of paint, a warm yellow.

 

2) Then I added some blues, first starting with the car.  I'm working it out in my mind as I go along. The car and the grandfather need to stand out, sort of as a unit, separately from the rest of the piece because they are located centrally. The grandfather must stand out because he is an important focus for why the carving was commissioned in the first place.

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3) I'm still working on the grandfather and the car. I also worked on the fan shape at the top of the carving. In this piece it seems I'm working from the top down. Figuring out problems at the top before going down to figure out problems at the bottom.

 

4) The bottles and more of the fan and around the frame have been worked on. The car is lighter with shaded areas starting to come out in general in the piece.

5) Still more shading and lightening. The outer frame has been painted, the inner frame where the gold leaf will go has been painted a bright yellow. The lettering and the bottles have been worked on.

6) Close to done, gold leaf isn't on yet, still more tweaking needed to make it really jump. I'll know it's done when I stand back from it, defocus my eyes, and see the painting start to move.

Folk Art Mary

QUIZ ANSWER: Jury Results Fine Art Gallery

You guessed right. Of course I should have known that a picture of Frankenstein was unlikely to be picked for a fine art show. I’m aware that this Frankenstein piece has a lot of rough edges. But I refuse to pick favorites among my children. I’ll leave that up to the jurors. From their point of view it makes total sense, what they eliminate is the images that don’t fit in with the theme of a show, the vision of the juror. Still, each piece of artwork comes out of me like a birth. It’s hard to not take it personally. I’ve had lots of time to practice NOT taking it personally but I’m still not good at this. The way I cope is to continuously make new work, not letting rejections take my attention or slow my forward momentum. My focus is on what I am making NOW, making a picture the very best it can possibly be, working out old themes in new ways, always trying to keep myself challenged and surprised and fresh.

Where does my art work fit? Fine art usually describes the work of trained artists. I've had no visual art training so I'm not a fine artist. My "training" comes from the hard knocks of 35 years making my craft. Describing myself as a "self taught" artist feels pretty comfortable. Folk art or American folk art is another natural niche. The first gallery I was in, from 1976 to 1990 was Jay Johnson's America's Folk Heritage Gallery, in NYC.. It was at that time that I began to accept my work being defined as "folk art", although with some discomfort. My work was too rough and unpretty and contemproary to feel entirely comfortable with folk art, yet that's the term that mostly has stuck. Here's another idea, "American Artist"? It's simple and descriptive and I do work on American themes. Naive?, primitive? - also possibilities. Outsider?, visionary? - I think a number of my dream pieces fit in here. Craft artist? yes, since my work involves a traditional craft like carving, I definately think of myself as a craftsperson. Traditional art? Another place I fit in.

Maybe the categories simply don't count. Here's what I know. In my early twenties, I went to college and wanted to be a writer. My father was a carver who gave me a gift of a carving (he had made). This inspired me to make my own carved and painted pictures, and eventually to stop being a fiction writer. I've been making these picture stories ever since.  I use my art as a sort of therapy, to make sense of my life, a narration that helps me work through life events and feelings. I call it my picture diary. I get great satisfaction from the making of pictures. That's got to be enough. I'll leave the definitions and categories to everyone else.

In the meanwhile, the State of the Art gallery is a fine gallery with fine jurors. My piece "Sheep Herding, Dog Stalking Sheep" was accepted into this show. I highly recommend you see the group show which runs December 4, 2009 through January 3, 2010.

Folk Art Mary

Quiz. Two Pieces Entered, only one Accepted at Fine Art Gallery.

Recently my work was accepted for a fine art show at the State of the Art Gallery, Ithaca, NY. I thought the jury results of this were interesting and in parallel with what often happens when I enter many shows. I submitted images of two folk art pieces to the juror of the show but only one was accepted.

Below are the images of the two pieces.

The first of these painted woodcarvings is called "Sheep Herding, Dog Stalking Sheep". I've written about a companion to this piece earlier in my blog.

The second piece is called "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein"

Which one piece of artwork do you think was accepted to the fine art show and which one do you think was rejected?! I welcome your comments... Folk Art Mary

Fast Forward to Finished Carving Waiting to be Painted

I forgot to take pictures of this piece in the process of being carved. But here's a fast forwarded picture of the folk art commission completely carved and just before I start to paint it. One last thing, I still have to add the top and bottom frames.

Sketch #3, Folk Art Commission

This is the third and final sketch. It's been cleaned up a little bit over the second sketch. I put the fan shape back into the bottom to bring balance into the top and bottom of the piece but, because the bottom fan area is smaller than the top fan area, the piece still remains bottom heavy and anchored the way I want it to be. With this final sketch, both Mike and I are happy

For my larger pieces, I generally take a lot of time with the sketch. I've learned it's better to not rush the drawing. I need to feel really good in my gut about a sketch before I trace it onto the wood and begin to carve. My art work can take hours and hours of carving work, and then hours and hours of painting to get it just right.

I'd rather not regret later on that I didn't go that little bit further towards making a piece of american folk art that I'd feel proud to put my signature on.

Sketch Number 2, Commissioned Art Work

Mike had some changes he wanted me to make before he approved the sketch. Pretty simple changes, change the name from "Vigo" to "Alessi", and change the wording in the banner from "Since 1947" to "Fai quello que ami" ("Do what you love"). I decided to make the piece a little more vertical, so I added more space in the striped or fan area above the oval. I took the stripes out at the bottom, with the intention of making the piece more bottom heavy. It also bothered me how the oval was at the bottom of the piece, like it was floating. Imbedding the olive oil and the logo into the bottom of the square frame was an attempt to sold this problem. I also decided to put clouds in the sky behind the car, with some of them cutting into the oval shape at the top.  www.maryshelleyfolkartcom.

 

Moving on to the Sketch for the Commissioned Art work

So now we've narrowed down the elements that I think will work well for a sketch and the eventual artwork. I just go by a gut feeling, whether I can see a flash of the piece in my mind, before I start the sketch. I've been doing this work for 35 plus years, and I have a good idea of what will work in advance.

A commission is a dance, between the artist and the person wanting a special piece of artwork, usually something of sentimental value (a birth, death, wedding, anniversary, geographic move) that they want to commemorate. The work has to please me and the customer both. I like to take the time the sketch requires so all are happy. Sometimes the person ordering the piece is nervous, and I need to reassure them as to why I think a certain idea will work more than another. We both have to be happy. If I'm not happy it won't be a good piece, one that stands alone and represents my vision and style. If the customer isn't happy then I'm not happy.

On the other hand, I like to ask the customer to give me some free rein. I have them look at the artwork that's on my American folk art website, to tell me which pieces appeal to them most and why. I let them know that I'm not a realist, so especially when people  are the subject matter to not expect them to look anything like the real person looks.

A commission is a challenge for me. With a commission, sometimes I end up doing new subject matter that I never would have thought to tackle. (For instance, right now I'm in the middle of a beekeeping commission, for a beekeeper. I never would have thought to do this as subject matter, but it's working out really well. You'll see the making of this beekeeping piece later, once I've got it completed and can do all the pictures in my blog in sequence)

On the other hand, sometimes commissions take me away from the flow and energy of my own work, and so I like to keep balanced by keeping one quarter of my work as commissions and the rest my own work. Winter is when I most like to work on my folk art commission orders.

So, after this long explanation about commissions, here at last is the first sketch I drew for Mike:

As you see, I've got grandfather confidently posed by his model-T, with the olive oil bottles arranged somewhat symmetrically (I like balance and off balance) at the bottom of the piece. I used the round shape because I thought it worked with the 1920's time period. I like circles that puncture squares. I used to be a signmaker and made a few signs using this format. Mike had something to say after seeing this sketch, which led me on to a sketch 2 and a sketch 3. I'll show you sketch 2 with my next blog!

By the way, my art is featured for this month at the Artiscape website.

Alessi Olive oil Commission

I do a lot of commissions, perhaps a third to a quarter of my work. I like commissions because they inspire me to tackle new subject matter. It can be challenging to come up with an idea that pleases me as well as the person wanting a commissioned work.

Last summer I got a call from Mike, who wanted me to make a surprise folk art commission as a gift for his wife Laura, who was a fan of my work. Mike thought a picture of Laura's grandfather, importer of Alessi Olive oil, would be special to Laura. Together we narrowed down the idea a bit more, and talked about timing for when I could complete the art work. Mike sent me my standard sketch fee and a number of photos to help me get inspired to do a sketch. I narrowed down the photos Mike sent from ten to the three that caught my fancy the most. Notice that the quality of the photographs is low, but it was enough to get me going with an idea. 

Here's grandfather Alessi, I really liked this shot, it gave me a feeling for the character of the man as he was about to get into his Model T.

 

At my request, Mike did some further research and got me a better picture of a model T.

I thought these olive oil bottles had a nice old fashioned shape that would go with the model t theme.

Bird Print, Fourth Color Maple Leaf Red

It's a beautiful autumn day, that's why I decided to call the red I used "maple leaf red".  Right now I'm waiting for a delivery of carving wood from a sawmill. I will blog on this later.

Finally the Bird Print is dry. I painted a fourth color, a red, around the edges to give it snap,  a hand done look, and for each print to have a little bit of individuality. For some reason it took this color a fair amount of time to go from wet to tacky to dry. 

Here's the folk art print without a matte:

Here is the print with a matte.  This is  #1 out of eleven prints. What do you think? The matte cleans it up considerably and protects the print from touching the glass when it is framed, thus extending the life of the print.