Super Flat Stool

Some years ago while browsing the Art section of Barnes and Nobles, I happened upon a book called The Japanese Experience: Inevitable. The book featured the work of a group of artists that call their art “Super Flat.” It is a Japanese Pop Art movement. I bought the book, which traces the art movement’s history to earlier Japanese art – sometimes described as a “floating world.”

The students, I was teaching at the time, were very excited about Japanese Animé. So the content of the book fit the kids’ interests. I had the idea to take an unfinished stool and add a Super Flat-like painting to it. Although I wasn’t successful in getting the students to paint their own stools, they liked seeing me paint my design.

Premonition Pink

When I attended an art educator convention in Boston during the spring of 2005, an ad using pink with orange flames got may attention. So, I used the color combination in this final mixed media piece.


mixed media on paper, 17.5" x 24"

Premonition Green

In this charcoal dust and watercolor mixed media piece, I repeated the process. This time my colors were inspired by the film "House of Flying Daggers."


mixed media on paper, 17.5" x 24"

Premonition Orange

Some years back I'd seen a technique demonstrated involving charcoal dust. Water is applied with a brush to areas that are to remain whitest. Charcoal dust is then sprinkled across the page. Then a bucket of water is splashed across the page. The dust sticks to the areas that were dry. This process is best done outside because of the mess involved.

Afterwards I used spray fixative to keep the dust on the paper. On top of the dust I painted watercolors. I was pleased with the result.

This is the first one I did for my students to show them what was possible. Folks have told me it looks like a map. I simply painted complementary colors.


mixed media on paper, 17.5" x 24"

120 Colors

During the spring testing of 2005 I drew this piece beginning with a grid. Using Prismacolor Sticks, I drew expressive lines across my grid. Then I added circles inside each box. I proceeded to blindly pick six colors at random as I filled in each box and the circles within. Filling out testing forms had inspired this part of my piece.


colored pencil on paper, 21" x 26.5"

After I rendering with the six colors, I again chose six random colors. When I reached the last of the 120 colors, I put the rest back in the box and picked at random again. This went on until I completed the piece.

From the outset I was determined to use all 120 colors that came in the Prismacolor box. So often artists are advised to only use a limited palette. Anyway it took a while to finish this drawing.

Sea Floor Rock

This piece was inspired by sites in Denver, Colorado.


acylic and molding paste on canvas, 20" x 20"

Petrified Rock

This piece was inspired by sites in Denver, Colorado.


acylic and molding paste on canvas, 20" x 20"

Red Rock

At a workshop I played around with molding paste on canvas. This is one of three pieces that I painted following the workshop. It was inspired by sites in Denver, Colorado. I wanted my students to see an example of using molding paste on canvas.


acylic and molding paste on canvas, 20" x 20"

Artroom

In college when I took the course Freehand II, there was a project we did that involved charcoal rubbings on tracing paper collaged with colored inks. Later on when I was teaching, I thought I’d experiment with the same method. I already had those supplies and I wanted to convince my students to work with mixed media. So I created this piece as a sample. Usually if the students saw me enjoy making a piece first it was an easier sales job to convince them.


mixed media, 11" x 15"

This time I used rice paper to make charcoal rubbings from objects and surfaces around the artroom. I then painted matte acrylic polymer to adhere the rubbings to watercolor paper. After the rubbings were dry, I spray fixed them. I then painted layers of color inks on top of them.

While digging through some boxes I found this piece. I think I will try to do some more works using these materials. It’s a direction that I really had not pursued.

Curls Gone Wild

My reason for creating this drawing was to show my students a finished color pencil piece. I wanted them to see what was possible when layering different colors of color pencil.


colored pencil on paper, 20.5" x 28"

Abloom

watercolor on canvas, 12" x 12"

Afire

This was my first attempt at a watercolor canvas painting. Although I didn't have my students working on this type of canvas, I had them see what is how different it is.


watercolor on canvas, 12" x 12"

Purple Blend

Do you ever read the Sunday comics in full color? Did you realize you’re looking at pieces of the Sunday comics right now?

This collage is made up of pieces of the Sunday comics collected between September 2004 and March 2007. The only thing that they have in common are the colors. Speedball acrylic gloss is used to glue them down on Reeves BFK paper. I recently took a break from my dot artwork to complete this piece.


collage, 10.5" x 19"

So what made me create this work?

Well back in the summer of 1998 I took a trip to Chicago and saw the work of Ray Yoshida. He taught at the School of Art at the Institute of Chicago. I enjoyed the show so much I bought a catalog.

It wasn't until seven years later in March of 2005 that I got around to doing a piece in the spirit of the work I saw in Chicago. Cutting out the pieces from the Sunday funnies was very time consuming. I wanted my students to see how the context of the comics could be changed in a collage. It was a good way to show them how to use found materials.

We See

The materials for this collage were handed to me at a lecture on Hannah Hoch in Boston. It was one of many seminars I attended at a national art teachers convention in March 2005. The speaker asked 25 of us to make a collage out of the materials she put in a cellophane bag. She referred to it as a "Dada bag." When I returned home, I worked on this piece as an example for my talent art students. I wanted them to see how unusual materials could be used to make a collage.


collage, 17.5" x 24"