Small Walden Birches

I cut up a large panel of wood into 12 8x12" pieces.  I've prepped 6 of them for painting by bracing their backs with a little frame.  I plan to do a big series with these using my collected Walden Pond birch bark.  I like letting the natural look of the wood show.  

New England Winter

They say snow doesn't sell but  my heart stays true to New England's subtle beauties and cannot be persuaded by what is popular.

Charcoal from the fireplace:

The result:

Bathroom Makeover

If you haven't noticed I am leaning towards crafts suddenly.  I've never really made more craft oriented art before.  Fine Art has always been my focus.  However, I've had some sort of need to turn away from Fine Art for some time.  Working in the art world I saw so many talented artists get no attention and sell nothing and so many terrible kitchy artists do well.  My awakening to the reality of the gallery world made me feel lost in despair.  Moving out of the city and focusing on school has been a good break for me and I am making plans for a project involving Walden Pond of course.  But in the meantime I am thirsting my creative impulses making aromatherapy products and selling them on Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/shop/WiseEarth 

My parent's bathroom is also falling victim to this new found craft project craze.  I am painting a mural in the bathroom and also making a shelf/towel hanger.

Here is the rough photoshop collage to illustrate my idea for the mural.  It is inspired by the mural art of Rufus Porter.  Basically it will changing from Winter to Spring to Summer to Fall in this sort of primitive style.   It will start on the short back wall and wrap all the way around back to the door.

As for the shelf.  I cut a piece of wood and some trim and glued the trim to the edges.  

 Here I have used a drill bit to make a hole in each corbel for the dowel rod to sit in and sanded it down with the dremel.

Then I cut a 1/2 inch wooden dowel to size and glued it into the corbels to create a towel rack.

Cork....finally!

Well, I finally did something with all of my corks.  This will be a gift for a lovely old friend of mine.  

The Process:

I painted a wash with raw pigment and watercolor on a canvas that was backed with cork and foam board.  Then I cut the red-wine stained end of my corks.  The non-stained corks and stump corks were then cut in half with a serrated kitchen knife.  

 

The pieces were then arranged and glued down with gorilla glue (big mistake...should have used normal glue...).  I tried to mix the gorilla glue with raw pigment but things got out of control!  Basically the glue started to bind to the pigment.  Needless to say my idea of creating colored gorilla glue did not work.

So then I had to touch up areas where the glue expanded with paint and I also added gold mica flakes. I think I will add a border of corks around the edges of the canvas if I have enough left.