Four daily squares shown all together from my latest Four Corners series. As I said in last week's Studio Notes, I am pendulum swinging back to loads of bright colors after my more somber Compassion series.
My daughter Maggie and I have a Mother Daughter Art show coming up in April 2017. We are both showing our work at a local Park District building in Deerfield, Illinois. The facility is called the Patty Turner Center and has a lot of meaning for our family because my dad is an active member of this senior center.
As people who read my Studio Notes know, I am an artist who makes abstract art with fabric. My daughter Maggie is an artist proficient in many different media. She is an illustrator who draws animals and their environs. Her wildlife photography is wide-ranging from birds in local prairies to cuttlefish in Australia's Great Barrier Reef to turtles on Florida beaches. Her goal is to educate the viewer about the subject matter as well as inspire the viewer to sense the awe and wonder of wildlife. You can find some of her work @maggiewarrenstudio on Instagram.
We wanted to come up with a title for our group show that includes both of our styles. Abstract Ecology seems to say it best. Abstract for my art. Ecology for her art. Even though my art may seem purely geometric, I often get my inspiration from landscapes and the natural world around me. Maggie’s art is not abstract but very detailed scientific illustration or photography. We approach our art from different viewpoints, but our mutual love of the natural world around us is a foundation for both of us and our art.
We committed to this show back in June 2016 and it seems so far away. At the end of February 2017, I remembered this was coming up and decided we better start planning. Having gone through planning my show at Congregation Solel last January, I felt like I knew the steps that need to happen. However, this is a totally new venue. My daughter Maggie and I came up list of questions for the Park District staff. We needed to know logistics of when we can put up the show, when should we take it down, when can we have an open house. Details Details. We had a lot of questions. We talked to the staff of the Park District and they couldn't be more helpful.
Our first concern is how many pieces we can set up on the hanging wire system in their gallery hallway. This will determine how many large pieces I display from my 25 Day series of The Every Day Project and how many smaller fabric art wrapped canvas squares I will display. Maggie is focusing on her illustrations of Midwest bird species but including some of her current ongoing projects as well. She will be determining which pieces to include based on our available space as well.
There is nothing like an upcoming show to motivate you to dust off your artist bio and artist statement. Rewriting these will be an important focus this month. As well as the written prep for the show, I am deciding which of my 25 Day series from the ongoing Every Day Project will "look good" next to each other. Other activities include technical details of hanging a show. I am perfecting my "hang by one nail” technique for ease of hanging the show. I am printing labels for all the 25 days pieces. I am fusing the labels onto the back of the 25 Day pieces.
We both have plenty to do to keep us busy for the next month.
For your local readers, the tentative day for the Abstract Ecology Open House is...
April 7, 2017 from 5-7 pm at the Patty Turner Center, 375 Elm St, Deerfield, IL
More details will follow.