Final Summer Art Fair jury is complete.   August 20th I will be at Agora in Fitchburg.  It is one day and always a great art fair.   Hoping the summer goes well.   I recently traveled to England and Scotland.  The landscape was amazing so I suspect some of my photos will be used as inspiration for future art.

The Iris and Crane are small needle felt pieces.  Both are finished and framed to 8 X 10.   I have been adding more small needle felt pieces to my inventory.  They are much easier to standardize.  Wet felt on the other hand is still my passion.  You can always see the wavy edges caused by the uneven shrinkage as the wool felts.  Wet felt also completely transforms, often in surprising ways, when I felt the wool.   I did add needle felt to the Storms of Moscow Mountain  (16 x 18 finished frame size)   and the Bright Poppies  (finished frame size 16x20) to highlight and add fine detail.  This is the first very stormy sky that I have created.  Hoping that people like it.  The selection of the gold for the background of the poppy is also a bit unusual but I liked the contrast.    

Art Fair jury results are starting to come through.  I will be in Spring Green the last weekend in June and part of the Madison Art Guild booth at Art Fair on the Square July 9-10.  Still waiting for Jury results for Iowa City and Agora in Fitchburg.

Update

Heading into the art season with lots of optimism.   I have my first solo show in Oshkosh Wisconsin at the Evergreen Retirement complex's gallery.  I am working hard to complete 35 pieces in total.  I added some smaller needle felt pictures last year and they sold well.   The birch from my last post has won a Wisconsin Regional Artist Program award and will be in the state wide competition in September.   I will be posting my summer schedule as time goes on but thought you might be interested in seeing some of the newest pieces.

New Felt pieces

Working on new felt pieces for the next art fair as I sold seven rather large pieces recently.    These two were just completed. The birch is still wet.  The colors should brighten even more as it dries and you will see more variation of color especially within the darks.  The trick with felt is to keep the fibers in place where you need a clean line ... edge of barn or shape of birch tree... while allowing other fibers to roam as you can see from the birch leaves and the back ground and from the foreground in the barn.  If I can, I avoid needle felt.  The barn has more needle felt because I had to sharpen edges and add some sharpness to the tree.  It looks like the birch tree will be ok as is.   The birch is large 24x28.  The barn is about 22 x 24.   I would like to get one more large piece completed before the next art fair July 18th.  If you are near Mt. Horeb Wisconsin on that date, come out and see me.

It has been awhile since I have posted.  Been traveling and also working on producing new work.   The art fair schedule for the summer has been set.  I expect to be at Art in the Wright Place in the fall.     I am attaching some photos of new work.    The chicken is fun but needs to  be on an appropriate size canvas.  Just seems a little overwhelmed by the current canvas.  The new purses need to be lined but not sure that will happen tomorrow.   We need to load the van for the Cambridge art fair tomorrow and with all of that happening I may not get to the sewing machine.  We shall see..    Looking forward to Spring Green, Wisconsin.

New Flowers

I started out thinking the dark green/navy background would be a base layer with lighter layers over it but when I saw the bright flowers agains the dark colors they just popped.   Needless to say, I ended up leaving them as is.