Gray Winter Day Filled with Color...

Although yesterday was gray and gloomy, I was full of purpose and had a clear agenda when I went down to my studio. But that plan was derailed when I pulled a frame off the storage shelf and out spilled a joyful assortment of paper trimmings from my first Marine Heatwave proof prints. Their spunky energy said, “Come play!” and I happily accepted the invitation. Placing slender scraps into abstract designs and photographing their graceful shadows made for a delightful morning.  

This gift of time to dive deeply into a creative practice is something I treasure every day.

Looker Deeper.....

Almost a year ago, I was beyond tickled to have one of my prints included in the “Reframing the American Landscape” exhibit. Little did I know that another painting in that exhibit, Robert Swain Gifford’s Padanaram Salt Flats, would spark my next body of work. Until I saw that painting, I had not known that Padanaram’s bucolic sailing harbor was once home to 13 saltworks. This tidbit of history made me want to revisit my series, Close to Home, where I tried to envision the landscape experienced by Gifford and his contemporaries. In my imagining and framing, it was a world untouched by the hand of man. I feel compelled to return to these places with a more nuanced eye and to find a way to illuminate the shadows of the past.

To help me in that quest, I am taking a class called Print, Paint & Stitch that challenges me to visualize narratives more abstractly. It will be a long journey of discovery. These images are early steps in the process.

Saltwork Shadows

Sabbatical Notes

Last week, my friend asked, “How is your sabbatical going?” I couldn’t find any words. All I had was an image of a deeply dinged aluminum coffee percolator sitting on a red-hot stove ring. I was back in my college kitchen, listening to the burbling water and smelling the aroma of burned coffee.

Being on sabbatical is a bit like sitting in that long-ago student kitchen. All my senses are engaged, waiting, observing, listening, and hoping that what comes out of the percolator will be drinkable.

In the past, a road trip meant lots of podcasts and audiobooks. But last November, it was quiet in the car as my eyes devoured the landscape in a new way. The night before leaving, I finished reading all of the essays that accompany RE/FRAMING THE VIEW: NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN LANDSCAPES, on view at the Whaling Museum until May 25, 2023. The thoughtful commentary has me rethinking my relationship to landscape imagery as an artist and a viewer.

Another pot brewing is kinetic, three-dimensional forms. After the Marine Heatwaves project, I am eager to explore how I can take botanical imagery off the wall in new ways. As I wander through art galleries, looking at materials, surfaces, mark-making, forms, and shapes, new ideas start percolating.

Yesterday, I walked in Plaza Blanca, a unique geologic landscape made famous by Georgia O’Keefe and other painters. It was a day to enjoy the beauty of the place and the gift of the iPhone.

Plaza Blance: Winterscape

We will plot a course home in a few weeks, hopefully driving in between winter storms. I look forward to being back in my studio space to play and experiment with all these new coffee brews.

The winter days are getting longer, and the garden will be calling soon.

Plaza Blanca: Trees In the Wind

Katerskill Creek

When I took this image at Katerskill Creek, I was keenly aware that I was just downstream from Katerskill Falls, famously painted by Thomas Cole. At that moment, I felt I was experiencing the landscape as he might have. It inspired me to find a way to convey that timeless quality in my coastal landscape imagery. But never did I imagine that my interpretation would be in an exhibit with works by Cole and other Hudson River School Painters, including Frederick Church, Thomas Eakins, William Bradford, John F. Kensett, Frederic Edwin Church, and Albert Bierstadt.

Currently on display at the Whaling Museum. Katerskill Gap by John Frederick Kensett, Katerskill Creek by Deb Ehrens

I am beyond thrilled that Katerskill Creek is part of RE/FRAMING THE VIEW: NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN LANDSCAPES at the New Bedford Whaling Museum from October 28-May 14th. The goal of the exhibition is not just a celebration of nineteenth-century artists. It aims to recast American landscape painting in a way that will engender meaningful conversations about historical and contemporary events. For details about talks and events related to the exhibit, click here.

A Year in Books

What a difference a year makes. Last February I was reading about William Morris as I prepared for an exhibit that was to include wallpaper design. And then the world changed.

Today, I realize just how important the stack of books by my chair has been in keeping my creative fires going during this “pandemic-induced sabbatical.” It is a collection of accidental, scientific, and artistic botanic imagery, evocative photography, new digital and mixed media techniques, the language of landscape, and the history of science.   These books have fed my work with the Synergy project, inspired sculptural artists’ books, and new printing techniques. My experimental series of “studio chats” will give you a glimpse of what has been happening here.  I have posted the first two below and there will be more in the future.

Click here to let me know if you have questions, topics you would like me to explore, or if you would like to be notified when new studio chats are posted.

This morning's chat from the studio with Deb Ehrens is all about the decisions needed this morning.

This print is currently on view at Rhode Island Center for Photo Arts.

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Working with climate scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute as part of the Synergy 2 Project is challenging me as an artist in unexpected and wonderful ways.

Deb Ehrens talks about her collaboration with scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute to create an artistic representation of their work.

The Synergy of Kindred Spirits

If only they could talk, I am sure that the twelve framed botanical prints I removed from their storage boxes would be thanking me. They are back in the light, happily visiting with their kindred spirits in a “plant studio” filled with greenery and dried botanical ephemera.

Star Garden Studio in New Bedford’s Kilburn Mill Artisan Center is a new venture by gifted horticultural designer Crystal Brinson. In this unique “plant studio” Brinson will be offering garden design services, plants, botanical themed art, seasonal wreaths and hands on classroom experiences centered on gardening and the world of plants.

While many wonderful galleries and museum walls have hosted my art, this body of work has never been displayed in such a sympatico environment. The synergy is absolutely wonderful. It makes me think about storybooks in which toys come to life at night when all the people are asleep. As I closed the studio door after hanging the show, I could almost hear the conversations my images will be having with their counterparts.

Star Garden Studio will be open
Saturday, September 19th, 9-5
and September 26th, 9-5
127 Rodney French Blvd., New Bedford.
Look for the Star Garden Studio sign near door #4.

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The Conversation of Kindred Spirits

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Milkweed & Ivy

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Mock Orange in the Greenery

Unexpected Gifts

When you sign up for a class you expect to come away with new information and skills. It is a profound gift when you get a group of colleagues who share your passion and support your creative journey. In 2016, I joined six other New England artists to form an on-going photography group dubbed the "Imogenes." Like Imogene Cunningham we all aspire to make art well into our nineties.

During our 2018 Winter Retreat we embarked on a series of creative exercises that became a yearlong project. We did not set out to create a collaborative body of work, but that is what happened...another unexpected gift.

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Each of these seven images is from a different artist who created a visual response to the image to the left. To learn more about who we are and how we created this work click here

Close to Home

Five years ago, I climbed up a ladder in the Art Room of the New Bedford Public Library so I could peer down at the restoration in progress of Alfred Bierstadt’s Mount Sir Donald. It was impressive to see, but what stole my heart that day was a small painting on the far wall by another New Bedford painter, Charles Henry Gifford. Sunlight from a large side window made Coastal Scene with a Gundalow glow with an ethereal quality that captivated and inspired me. Could I ever create landscape imagery that would be suffused with a light like that?

It took a walk along the Fairhaven bike path to make me think it might be possible. As the mist coming off the salt marsh diffused the morning light, I wondered if Bierstadt or Gifford, who spent their early years in this community, had ever watched the sunrise from this same vantage point. I began to envision a series of local landscapes in a Hudson River School style.

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Close to Home: Marsh Dawn Archival pigment print on vellum with white gold

While these painters used glazing, varnishing and secret recipes to create the luminous lighting in their work, I use modern digital printing on translucent vellum with hand-applied precious metal leaf. The gilding creates a unique sense of luminosity and an atmosphere of mystery. The image subtly shifts as light moves across the surface or the viewer changes position. These are prints that need to be experienced in person.

In Close to Home I have tried to honor the tradition of American Luminist painters with Southcoast scenes that feel timeless - images of the present and the imagined past. Part of the series will be on display at Norton Gallery Exhibit: Quiet Spaces during the month of February. There will be a Gallery Night Reception on Friday, February 15th from 5-7 pm. I hope to see you there.

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Close to Home: River Dawn Archival pigment print on vellum with white gold

Healing Art: The Saint Catherine's Collection

 As 2018 came to a close, so did the installation of the final pieces of Saint Catherine’s collection at Saint Anne’s Hospital in Fall River, MA. Twenty of my images are now permanently housed on the walls of this medical/surgical ward.

At a reception to celebrate the installation it was gratifying hear from the nursing and support staff about how this art makes them feel, and what they observe as they walk past it day after day. Conversations with visitors in a gallery setting usually center on technique and artistic considerations. With the hospital staff the discussion was about the spirit and power of water, the calming power of imagery and the respect and beauty to be found in all stages of life. 

When patients come onto the Saint Catherine’s ward, their welcome packet now includes a brochure about the artwork in the hallways. For patients and their families these images are places to rest their eyes, to focus on something non-medical, and to be a destination for the challenging post surgical walking that is key to recovery.

I feel privileged and honored to be part of this program.

Typos and Tangents

Musings on the Creative Process

I don’t know if it was my typo or an overly enthusiastic spell checker, but somehow my intended phrase “photo compositing” became “photo composting.”  It got me thinking. After a bit of reflection I decided that this spell-checking revision actually had some merit. The creative process is a lot like composting.  All kinds of discarded ideas and projects inform and support successful future endeavors.

For every image of mine that hangs on a gallery wall, there are countless others that never see an ounce of ink. Those discards represent hours spent training my eye, learning new techniques, and endless experimenting.  They send me on tangents that need to be explored and occasionally lead me to a better idea or more successful path. 

Healthy compost is made up of a combination of materials and during this long winter I added a new element to mine – a drawing app on my iPad. Instead of spending my evenings watching Apple TV, I spent hours experimenting with an Apple Pencil using it as if it were a calligraphy pen, pastel crayon, or oil brush.  What a treat – a fully equipped art studio with no clean up required!  Over time all this playing with brushes will hopefully refine the subtlety of how I use my graphics pen to enhance the light in my images. 

But enough about winter and compost. Warm weather will be here soon and with openings and workshops.

 Hopefully the snow is gone by the time you are reading this.

Winter 2018

The polar vortex has come and gone, and the days are a bit longer, but New England’s spring exists only in gardening catalogs that tease and torment me.

While many bemoan the long winter days, I take solace in my studio. Hiding in nooks & crannies I have a veritable "plant cemetery" of specimens to study. Last summer I collected garlic scapes and tied them with wire, hoping to force them to dry in graceful shapes. In my head, I saw a collection, a ballet de corps, of fluid, dancing garlic scapes that would complement the image above. It didn't work quite as I had hoped, but on cold gray days, I am happy to experiment, play, and seek out the unexpected beauties lurking in my garden of detritus.

During the winter months, my studio is open by appointment and I really do enjoy the opportunity to share my work. Lovely as my flowers are, they are not very good conversationalists¦ So please plan a visit if you are in the neighborhood. From the comfort of your couch, take a tour of New Beginnings, an online exhibit by Manhattan International Arts where you can see art from around the world. I am very honored to be part of this show.

As far as art is concerned, 2018 is off to a good start.