Milwaukee Artist Trading Card Exhibit

It's been a few months since I've blogged, but I'll try to get back in the swing now that spring is here! I've got a show up this month at the Creative Arts Resource & Network of Western Racine County (CAR&N) gallery, 220 E Main Street, Waterford, Wisconsin, featuring Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) made by members of the Milwaukee ATC group (including myself).

Although we only take up one wall of the gallery, there are 169 ATCs by 55 different artists. I received the majority of the cards in trade at the Milwaukee ATC monthly live trade meetings. (See our group webpage for more information.) Many of my ATCs included were from my ATC-a-Day project in 2006-2007 because the majority of ATCs that I've made have been traded away to other people!  But I got all these fabulous cards in return:

There's quite a variety of art from traditional painting and drawing to collage and assemblage using everything from fabric & fibers to recycled objects and wire and glass. The display case in the first photo above includes some fragile and three-dimensional ATCs.

If you are in SE Wisconsin or Northern Illinois and interested in seeing the show in person, this Google map shows the location of the gallery as well as some local laces to eat nearby. The actual gallery hours vary (and are not what is listed on their website). They are generally open Tuesday-Friday 10-4 and Saturday 10-3, and are sometimes open Wednesday & Thursday evenings until 8 pm but they may close early some days if they do not have any visitors. If you are driving from a distance, I would recommend calling ahead to make sure that they will be open when you are planning to go. If you are unable to see the show in person, you can get a photographic overview on Flickr here.

Besides the Milwaukee ATC group's display, you can also see paintings by Jeremy Uglow, photographs and collages by Nick Torkilson, and jewelry by Jeanne Baas. The ATC portion of the show will be up until about May 23, 2014.
 

Wisconsin Regional Art Program

Thanks to my friend Gary's encouragement, I submitted two pieces to one of the Wisconsin Regional Art Program's regional exhibits in Greendale, Wisconsin, this summer.  WRAP was started in 1940 to "encourage the creative growth of Wisconsin non-professional artists from rural areas." ("Non-professional" in this case defined as not making the majority of my income from art, which is definitely the case.) Last weekend was our workshop day, featuring a lecture and demo by jewelry artist Brenda Schweder and a critique of our art by Chad Lindemann.

I was very happy to learn that my collage "Once Upon a Time" (above) was one of seven pieces chosen for the State Exhibit Award, which allows me to participate in the statewide show in 2012! If you are a Wisconsin artist, check out the information about upcoming exhibits/workshops to see if they have a program in your area.

Art Journal: What I Did This Summer

Somehow the summer has flown by and next weekend is already Labor Day!! I have been a negligent blogger and will try to catch everything up in one post via my art journal entries:

At the end of July I worked on a spread incorporating all the 12 plants/flowers associated with the months/suits in the Japanese card game Hanafuda. (If you've ever wondered how Nintendo got its start, the company originally manufactured hanafuda cards.) I drew these while attending the Inspire Your Life art retreat organized by Kim Geiser.
I took workshops in Interactive Art Journal techniques taught by Kim Rae Nugent (see sample at left) and Renewing/Redoing Your Wardrobe taught by Geri Justinger, and I taught a class on making Faux Tintype ATCs. We were in Kim Geiser's store/studio in downtown Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and you can see photos from the weekend on Flickr.

The August Sketchbook Challenge theme is "Every Day Objects" so I started this next spread with a staple gun, chicken wire, popcorn and Kleenex:

But summer is the fair & festival season in Milwaukee, and we hit the Wisconsin State Fair in early August, and the farm animals took over!

I'd been meaning to make sketches from all the photos I take of my sister's horses and chickens, and I finally did! In addition to State Fair, we also hit Summerfest and Irish Fest to see Gaelic Storm, which is probably the most festivating we've done in one year. (Sure, that's a real word.) So I leave you with my favorite Gaelic Storm song:

Dr. Evermor's Forevertron & HH Bennett's Studio

I had a very busy spring, and now that it's summer (how'd that happen?), I'll try to take advantage of the holiday weekend to catch up on some blogging.  In June we had a family gathering in the Wisconsin Dells with the obligatory boat rides on the Upper and Lower Dells and a lumberjack breakfast at Paul Bunyan's Cook Shanty.

But the two things I had always wanted to see in the Dells? Dr. Evermor's Forevertron and H.H. Bennett's Photographic Studio!

The Forevertron is an amazing outdoor sculptural environment created by Tom Every a.k.a. Dr. Evermor from salvaged items.


He was doing steampunk before steampunk was cool. I won't even try to describe this in words. You can see my full Flickr set here. We were fortunate to meet him on the day, and the official Dr. Evermor website is up, but still under construction. Besides the Wikipedia article linked above, you can read more at Roadside America and PBS.org.

On a slightly different tack, the H.H. Bennett Studio is small museum run by the Wisconsin Historical Society, which preserves a 19th-century photographic studio. (If you've ever wondered, my on-line name is "vintagepix" because I have a collection of vintage photos.)

So this site might not be for everyone's tastes but I am entertained by giant cameras and stereocard viewers (modeled here by my big brother)

and taking a family photo through the lens of an antique camera.

(For those of you who know your optics, we are upside down in the original photo.) So if you're in central Wisconsin this summer, consider a road trip!