CANVASES AT TOAST!

rose dark spiral abstract tendrils. sandpaperdaisy has three new consignment pieces at toast in evansville.

Image | 05/19/2016 | sandpaperdaisy

Hey guys, I’ve had the majestic Ergo Sum hanging at Toast for sometime now, but recently I added three new canvases. See if you spot them on your next visit! Trash Rose, A Message, and Endless Forest are all archivally printed, stretched and sealed by myself, with additional hand-drawn accents in white paint pen. They’re all 16×20 and only $85 each! Just ask your server or management if you want to take one home.

A colorful blimp depicting a field of flowers hovers above a dirty, impersonal colorless city. Environmental statement.

a photomanipulation of an impossible fantasy forest where there is no sky only trees upon trees.

Here’s Toast’s website: http://www.toastevv.com/

They’re located at 1550 Mesker Park Dr, Evansville, IN 47720, inside the Helfrich Hills Golf Course.

PG Mythmaking Show 4: The Bird of Hermes

Image | 03/29/201603/24/2016 | sandpaperdaisy

I did this piece for the 4rth annual Mythmaking show at PG. The show hangs until April 15 and has a ton of amazing art, I’ll try to get down there and snap pix before it comes down.

As for my piece, it represents a couplet from the Ripley Scroll, a medieval text on magic and alchemy.

“The Bird of Hermes is my name/Eat my wings to make me tame.”

Melissa Erwin’s The Mother Load

Digital mixed media brilliant colors and unexpected textures and ideas

10/08/201410/08/2014 | sandpaperdaisy

Today I want to show you some of the crazy-awesome pieces from TACODoom artist Melissa Erwin‘s newest show, The Mother Load down at PG Gallery. As you can see below, these incredibly rich and detailed pieces are lavish with color, texture, and unexpected associations. They’re made even better by being gorgeously printed on canvas and mounted onto interesting and varied surfaces including leather and reeds. (Of some sort, I’m not a reed/tatami/bamboo sort of expert even though I adore it.) As usual, I took pictures of a few but not all of the wonderful pieces in the show. Feast your eyes on this!!

So where did all these crazy ideas and textures come from? I’ll let the artist herself explain in her own words. From Erwin’s facebook event page:

Sometimes after suffering some severe frustrations my brain will vomit out a large quantity of questionable imagery. Then I need to do something about it more constructive than a stabbing spree.

This would be that.
A series of digital illustrations based on scribblings in my trusty sketch pad.
Fair warning, I’m not responsible for any weird feelings or nightmares resulting from them.
After all, I don’t sleep at night, why should you?

I have to warn you, I saw a lot of “sold” stickers already, which did not surprise me in the least considering the amazing artwork and the unreal prices (I’m talking $35, $65…it’s nuts!!). The show’s up until the 17th~18th so be sure to check it out before then before everything sells.

Incidentally, keep your eyes peeled for more posts about Erwin’s art. I’m planning “A Look Back At…” series of posts featuring other amazing art shows I wasn’t able to document at the time, including Erwin’s Grenade Pin Girls series, her It Can’t Happen Here show and her Benign Acquiescence show. I’ll also be featuring Amy Wilke‘s awesome show Still Lives: Wunderkabinett, Space Madness II, some past shows of mine, and other shows and events that were too good to miss.

Nebula

stars moon and polygon shapes in deep space in this colorful and wild digital collage painting

08/18/201408/16/2014 | sandpaperdaisy

Did this for this year’s Space Madness 2: There is no cure!

Prints available soon in my Society6, Redbubble, etc.

Everyday Beauty 1: Shower Curtain

extreme closeup of an old shower curtain becomes something interesting

05/20/201405/21/2014 | sandpaperdaisy

I like to take closeup photos sometimes of the design elements in everyday items all around us that often go completely unnoticed or overlooked. This one’s from an old plastic shower curtain that I think we got for 2 bucks somewhere and threw out once it got icky. But one day I noticed exactly how intricate and beautiful the pattern on the outer curtain was. Homed in on, it’s a pretty impressive work of pattern art!

I wonder who in heck designed it.

Phonetasia I: Several months of a small child’s abstracts

05/04/2014 | sandpaperdaisy

I always save my little son’s phone doodles simply because they’re so bright and cheerful. My goal was eventually to make a big gallery of them so I could view at them all at once and enjoy the feast of random colors and shapes that emerged. (Kind of like Jodie Foster listening to washing machines in Contact.) After seeing the finished gallery, I actually think it would be fun to try a “redraw” of some of these sketches where I took an interesting form or idea from one of Paul’s pieces and then actually tried exploring it in one of my own drawings. I might try it!

With due credit to the original artist of course.

I’ll be making more “phonetasia” posts exploring the weird things you can do with various phone apps and filters. Paul’s art below was made using Kids Doodle.

The Art Vault 2: Old acrylic paintings

04/30/201410/14/2022 | sandpaperdaisy

It’s kind of funny, you’ll be thinking by now that all the old art I made was abstract. Actually, most of it was representational. Back when I was learning the basics I mostly drew people and mythological subjects. But for whatever reason I keep digging up images of old abstract work!

These paintings were actually rather large, being about 24×36 gallery wrap if I recall correctly. The orange and blue one was called “Blaze” and was commissioned as a gift for an entrepreneur/millionaire friend of my grandmother’s. This man, who had no doubt seen (and bought!) just about every fine thing imaginable in his lifetime acted absurdly impressed and happy about receiving my humble painting. He was very sweet.

The purple/tan painting, “Thistle Brae,” was commissioned as a gift for Sir Sean Connery. (Yes, that Sean Connery. What can I say, my grandmother gets around.) I used my mother’s potato masher thingy for the grid pattern under the thistle blossoms. I think it was the first time I ever used it…though now I frequently demolish carrots with it to sneak them into my children’s pasta. Anyway…if Connery hasn’t buried this odd painting in the back of a closet or given it away, it’s still knocking about his private collection somewhere.

Humorously, I used to do a comic called Things Fall Apart for a local entertainment rag that featured Connery as a recurring character, and it was these comics he professed to like the best among my art. “The ones with me in them are the funniest” according to him. He might have something there.

I’m particularly proud of one image I drew once of him astride a unicorn with laserbeam eyes, riding next to Optimus Prime. Perhaps he treasured that one too. Sadly, I still haven’t gotten to meet the man after all these years. At the present time a big stack of my comics autographed with his distinctive (huge!!) signature are all I have…

The Art Vault: Old monoprints

blue and orange abstract monoprint using embossed folds of satin to create a form.

04/29/201405/04/2014 | sandpaperdaisy

I just love looking at old pieces now and then. These little beauties are probably from 2000 or 2001 at the latest. Simple monoprints using an inked plexiglass plate, I created the different shapes and patterns on them by using the ink roller itself. In the print above, I also tried taking a swatch of satin from an old bridesmaid gown of mine and running it under the press with the plate, creating the above pattern on the paper. I liked how it worked and went on to use the method in another monoprint, Achyra. Once I find some record of that one (if I do) I’ll show you. It left me at last year’s Hand Prints.

Sandpaperdaisy Art

Art and comics by Heather Landry

abstract