A NATURE GATHERED EXHIBIT

Friday, August 7th - Friday, August 28th

6th Street Gallery
150 West 6th Street
Vancouver, Washington
(360) 693-7340

Opening Reception
Friday, August 7th
6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.

This is a wonderful opportunity to see, in person, all of the art created throughout this year-long challenge.

Pieces will be for sale during the show. If you are interested in purchasing a particular artwork, please contact the gallery for availability and pricing.

Starting in September 2009, any remaining works will be available for purchase on-line through the Nature Gathered blog site.

Indra's Net

Indra's Net, inspired by the verse below from the Vedas in ancient India:

There is an endless net of threads throughout the universe.
The horizontal threads are in space.
The vertical threads in time.
At every crossing of threads there is an individual.
And every individual is a crystal bead.
The great light of absolute being illuminates and penetrates every crystal being.
And every crystal being reflects not only the light from every other crystal in the net,
But also every reflection of every reflection throughout the universe.

What better place to use those Swarovski crystals, golden thread,tiny watch parts, as well as texture stamped in heavy body gloss gel medium and colored with acrylics gold calligraphy ink. Loved doing this one! The visionary in me was delighted!

Art and images copyright 2009 Suzie Wolfer- all rights reserve

Best Laid Plans - Elements UPDATE

FINISHED!

To say this theme, for me, was the most difficult, thought provoking, and time consuming is an understatement. I thrashed about struggling with how to best represent the concept of Elements for several months.

I considered a number of paths, all of which lead me to unsatisfactory conclusions. In the end, I decided to tackle the idea in an abstract manner, which also allowed me to incorporate my exploration of patterning. I am pleased with the final result and proud to have been a part of this challenge.

Art and images copyright 2009 Tracie Lyn Huskamp - all rights reserve

"When You WISH......."

After pondering the theme "Heavens" I realized that I must include a star. As far back as I can remember I was always wishing on the first star of the evening.

Then, the phrase, "When you wish upon a star" kept playing in my head.

I had this beautiful star fabric so I embroidered the phrase and created a milky way using Angelina and crystal stars. The moon was created from another fabric and fused to the star fabric.

Completing the 12 themes has given me challenges and new experiences in mediums that I may not have otherwise attempted to use. Thanks to Jan and Tracie I have had the opportunity to participate in a project with a very talented group of artists.

I am excited about the show at the gallery and now must begin gathering my pieces to send to Jan.

Art and images copyright 2009 Marylin Huskamp - all rights reserve

Stairway to Heaven

Here's another art quilt for my 'Stairway to Heaven'. I've enjoyed all of the twelve challenges during the year and seeing every one's interpretation of our themes. It's stretched me to try new techniques and mediums. I'm eager to see all of our artwork hung in the gallery. A whole year's work and it's hard to believe it's ending. Thanks to everyone and especially Tracie Lyn and Jan for keeping us on track.

Art and images copyright 2009 Paula McNamee - all rights reserved

The Last Two Pieces

I almost forgot to get these posted on the blog. Like Tracie Lyn, life has gotten in the way of my plans for the summer. But....I did remember and here are my "Elements" and "The Heavens".

The Elements is an interactive piece. In continuing my mountain theme, I used four pictures from Hokusai's 32 Visions of Mount Fuji to represent each element. The individual element cards can be flipped up to display the next. This was a challenging and fun piece.

The Heavens came together in about two days. I had been thinking of how to do this one for about a month, not really getting anywhere and being stumped about it. Last Friday I had a vision and in one day I had the fabric and half the work done. The fabric is creatively quilted, the nebula is printed on inkjet canvas and the mountain, continuing again with the mountain theme, is printed on cardstock and everything is glued to the fabric covered canvasboard.

This has been a wonderful and challenging journey. I've played with techniques that I've never done before and stepped further out of my box than I thought I'd ever get. Thank you to everyone for pushing me out of my comfort zone.

Z'anne

Art and images copyright 2009 Z'anne Bakke - all rights reserved

Best Laid Plans - Elements

This blank canvas represents the current condition of my final artwork due in this year long art challenge.

Since today is the deadline for posting any outstanding pieces to the blog, I thought I would share a glimpse of my... um... work-in-progress.

After revealing my Heavens artwork, I had a full week to complete my interpretation of Elements, and fully intended to have the painting ready by today, however, life quickly stepped-in with other ideas.

I still plan to finish the work, and hope I can update this post with happy news, very soon.

Elements

This was quite the challenge! Having a picture in my mind and transforming it onto a canvas presented quite a puzzle for me.

I am always pulled toward fibers so I knew I needed to use fibers for the medium and present the elements of earth, wind, fire and water in a way that the observer knew what the work represented.

I feel I accomplished that with color and the flow of the fibers. Earth was the most difficult but after pondering over it for a while I decided to use real pressed botanicals.

Now I have one more challenge left....Heavens.....Again pictures floating in my head but "Oh my, how to transform those images onto a canvas?" I am somewhat perplexed!!

Since I tend to work best under pressure and I only have a few days left to complete the final monthly challenge I am sure the way to do the transformation will reveal itself to me.

Artwork and Images copyright 2009 Marylin Huskamp All rights reserved