Leviathan for #twitterartexhibit

Image | 03/11/201602/28/2016 | sandpaperdaisy

I’m happy to say that everything worked out and my special #twitterartexhibit one-off painting featuring my linoleum-block print Leviathan is safely in New York, NY, at the Trygve Lie Gallery where it will be sold for charity!

This year, the myriad and wonderful postcard-art show will benefit Foster Pride and the money will be used to provide art education and opportunities to children in foster care! I am proud and blessed to be part of this amazing show with talented artists from all over the world.

The art this year (and in past years) is phenomenal. You can browse the rich variety of pieces on any of these pages:

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/twitterartexhibit
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/twitrartexhibit
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/twitterartexhibit

Below are some shots of the piece as I worked on it. You may or may not be able to tell, but there are shimmering silver planes in the water that actually shine when you move the painting.

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.

Eurydice

04/10/201404/05/2014 | sandpaperdaisy

I took the name for this traditional linoleum block print from the ancient Greek legend of the singer Orpheus and his wife. Orpheus and Eurydice were deeply in love and happy, but on the night of their wedding Eurydice ventured out into a field (some say to dance) and was bitten by a snake and died. Orpheus then descended into the Underworld and got Hades to agree to allow him to take Eurydice back to the realm of the Living, provided he did not look back at her on the way. Tragically, Orpheus looked back almost as he and Eurydice were about to be reunited, and she remained in the land of the dead.

The high heel shoe implies dancing to me and a beautiful woman, and the bear trap in the field shows the misfortune and the sudden snap of deadly jaws that sealed Eurydice’s fate. Below are the different sketches I made before making my print and adding watercolor to it. Eurydice was originally made for Hand Prints 2012 and went on to appear in mixed-media collage form in last year’s Earth Day Art Crawl (above).

eurydice-floral-lines_by_sandpaperdaisy1

DRIFT part 2: SCRAP

the drift scrap version I made for EDAC 2013 sandpaperdaisy

04/09/201404/05/2014 | sandpaperdaisy

In my last post I mentioned that DRIFT had gone through different forms. Here you see DRIFT:SCRAP, a piece I made for last year’s Earth Day Art Crawl. I took a copy of my digital painting and decoupaged it to a piece of scrap wood left behind by the last people who owned our home, then screwed in different bits of machinery from busted appliances. I wanted to both extend the lines of the reclaimed bits in the children’s home-made rocket and also explore the Earth Day theme of art made from found objects. Everyone loved it including me!

My pictures of the piece are from last year (read: last phone) and aren’t that hot, but I’ll try to get some new ones. I still have this baby and I’ll be bringing it to this year’s Earth Day Art Crawl on the 19th where it will be for sale!

Love Letter

two children standing in front of the tree upon which they pledged their love in chalk

03/21/201403/19/2014 | sandpaperdaisy

I did this work in 2013 for my “Patchwork Dragon” solo show in November 2013. The show version had pages from my childhood personal diaries collaged around the edges to form a border. After its debut at the show, this piece with the diary page collage was auctioned off by The Literacy Center to raise money to help adults learn to read. I picked this piece especially because of the title “Love Letter” and the diary entries attached to it. It seemed the most perfect piece I had for a literacy auction.

It’s sold now to a generous supporter, but this teaser I did for the Patchwork Dragon Show shows some of the diary collage on the original piece:

Love Letter without the collage is on Society6||Redbubble.

You can check out The Literacy Center on their Facebook and at their home site, www.litcenter.org.

Phosphate, a lost (or rather, sold!) piece

brightly colored fish cut from paper, swimming in a phosphate polluted pond

03/13/201403/12/2014 | sandpaperdaisy

Back in the days before I had an easier-to-use phone camera, the occasional odd work of traditional art would slip by me without getting fully documented. Such is the case with Phosphate, a piece I was actually quite proud of. I made it as a challenge to myself for last year’s Earth Day Art Crawl.

That year, the inaugural year of the art crawl, we participating artists were challenged to make art which was either environmentally themed, made from recycled materials, or both. I responded by making a phosphate-polluted pond with lovely koi-like fish below the scummy surface, digging out some neglected mod podge and a frame from an old piece of art. Little did I know that mod podge would soon become a frequent element in my traditional art pieces! At the time I just wanted a good way to seal up the old frame and effectively represent the uneven surface of a pond. Here are the progress shots I did manage to get of the piece:

You can see something of the finished piece in the last image, but alas! It is partially covered up by the next pieces I was working on, my “Fleurs du Mal” collage series. I was in something of a rush and I barely finished Phosphate before it was time to run it over to the gallery. Comforting myself that I would be able to document it once the show came down, my hopes were dashed when I discovered it had sold. (Certainly a piece of art being sold is something of a nice consolation prize though.)

I hope you’re happy with your new owner, Phosphate!

Online reader for 2010 Sketchbook “Down My Street”

two demons or lords of xibalba emerge from the parts of a car engine, resembling something from a painting by hieronymous bosch

03/08/201403/09/2014 | sandpaperdaisy

At the time I made this post my book had not been uploaded to The Sketchbook Project’s digital library yet. I’ve updated the link in the original post, but I wanted to feature this work again since I haven’t spoken about it here since 2011. My sketchbook “Down My Street” helped me get back a great deal of my artistic momentum and it also helped me practice writing a compelling, coherent narrative over a long format. As one kind reader put it,

Hello there. There’s some lovely work on this site, but your sketchbook is probably the most absorbing one I’ve seen. I found the imagery and the stories fascinating, and liked the way you put notes at the back. It made reading it a second time, a different experience.

Thank you, Raccoon906!! Your art is awesome!

Ergo Sum

Bone and syringe butterflies merge into black polygons which in return become flying lizards. An homage to Escher's Metamorphoses.

02/12/201403/19/2014 | sandpaperdaisy

“Ergo Sum,” centerpiece of my last show. It’s probably atrocious Latin, but I wanted to take the Thinking out of Being. The original incarnation of this baby is a seven foot wide painting and collage on wood! Here it is a bit bigger: