Ta da!

It all began with a big bare wall. This (including Abby the cat) is what you see when you walk in our front door. The wall is really huge -- two stories high, stairs going down.

What to put on it?

So I made 150 large "shipping tags," creating a painting or a collage on both sides of each tag -- 300 images in all.

I wanted the tags to zoom across the wall as well as cascade down. But what order do I put them in? Which side is "up?" It's a good thing we have a king-sized bed, which is where we figured out how we wanted them all to appear on the wall.

We then strung together the tags and bundled each string so we'd know which order they should go on the bamboo pole.

Chris is much better at spatial concepts than I, so he is the one who figured out how to string the tags together and then how to suspend them from the pole. As you can see (in the fourth photo), Abby was a big help offering advice.

The last two photos show you the final result. The hanging is six feet wide by 9 feet high. I think it looks terrific. It's big, it's bold, it has a presence when you walk in the door, it's colorful, and it moves in the slightest breeze, so sometimes I see the fronts, sometimes the backs of the tags.

And it's unique. I've not seen anything like it. I love it. And to love your art? Isn't that just the best?

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. 

Phase 1 is complete . . .

The first phase of my large wall hanging consisted of me making 150 "shipping tags." Each one (and there are TWO sides to each one) features either a collage or a painterly image, all hand done. That means (for those of you who are math-challenged) THREE HUNDRED mini-collages/paintings.

We begin assembling the piece today. Here are a few photos of the tags piled up on the work table.

Gotta say, this has been fun to create. I'll show more photos as we go along, including the GRAND FINALE en situ!

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. 

Summer flowers

We're in the heart of summer here on Whidbey Island, and everything seems to be in full bloom right now.

However.

Leaves are beginning to slowly drift down from a few trees in the yard. Gentle reminders floating in the air, reminding us not to get too complacent. Autumn is nigh.

Technical stuff: Cellphone shots of flowers at Bayview Nursery in Langley, where colorful grasses made a lovely background. And the yellow ones were blooming in a flowerbed on a street in downtown Langley. Shallow depth of field and a painterly touch give the images an overall soft look, yet with a bit of sharpness so my eyes don't go crazy looking for something to focus on. 

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. 

Xeriscapally yours . . .

It's summer. Not taking things too seriously. And having a bit of fun with new (and old) photos of succulents, exaggerating their colors, creating painterly looks. Some of these were taken using a cellphone, others with a DSLR. Having fun simply experimenting.

And you? What are YOU working on right now?

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.

Latest work: "Book of Fish"

I found the most discolored, water-stained, moldy book in an antique store for $1, brought it home and pulled it apart. The cover was the best part, and I really liked the colors. To that I added a vintage picture of a trout, mixed everything together, tweaked it a bit in the computer, and came up with this image. Weird, but cool!

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.

Latest work: "Lunar Rift"

As I’m making a large wall installation, I’m creating small collages that will become a part of the whole. This is one of them, made with hand-painted papers.

All the "artistic" elements have been created. Now Chris and I will begin to put it all together. The even larger challenge will be getting it up on the wall. Since the wall is above a stairway, we will have to use a bit of ingenuity to get the piece up there. We do have a plan, however. Novel concept for us.

 ©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.

Follow-up to yesterday's blog post . . .

Before I posted yesterday's article about finding inspiration, I wanted to get permission to do so from the artist who painted the image I used as an example (Lisa Pressman).

As I went through her website looking for an e-mail address, I saw she had a calendar of her workshops posted. And it turns out she was conducting a workshop here in Coupeville THIS WEEK!

She kindly granted me permission to use her painting photo in yesterday's post, and then also invited me to come over to the Pacific Northwest Art School to chat and see what the class was doing. Bonus!

We just got back home from our visit. The big room they were working in was a complete mess. It was supposed to be a complete mess! It's encaustic painting, after all, and there was colored wax everywhere, lots of tools for scraping, stencils and strings for texture, and more. And everyone was having a great time.

So I ask you: What are the odds that I should post an article using Lisa Pressman's encaustic painting as an example yesterday, that I would e-mail her and receive an immediate response, and that she (this woman from New Jersey) would be just seven minutes up the road from us?

Art. Art is messy. Art brings us together. Art is fun. This was a fun set of circumstances for me, all about art.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.

Finding inspiration

From time to time I'll refer to what I call my "inspiration file," images I've saved that, for whatever reason, I was drawn to. And when I'm sort of adrift, feeling nothing's going right with my art, I'll riffle through other people's images to see what might pop out.

That's what happened here when I saw an encaustic painting done by artist Lisa Pressman that appeared on her blog in 2009. She titled it "Between the Lines 11."

What I found intriguing was her color palette, the soft celadon in the background, the yummy yellow/ochre, the touches of black, and the deep reddish-orange bits. Colors I wouldn't think of using on my own.

And so I began. I began with color and then added additional items such as torn paper, ink scribbles, etc. for the texture. I also used a photo I'd taken of a piece of metal that had a number of crosshead screws in it, and so up top and down at the bottom you can see the little "x's" that are those screws. And then I wondered what if I included a photo I took a few years ago of a vine clinging to an old wall, a wall that featured two iron reinforcement anchor plates in the shape of stars. I call the piece "Reaching for Stars."

My resulting image, inspired by Lisa Pressman's exquisite painting, was fun to make. Her inspiration took me out of my comfort zone, both in selecting colors and then putting together a composition.

Are these colors I might use again? Not sure. And what about the orange-red color Lisa Pressman used? Why didn't I use the same color in mine? In my case, it was a little too much, and didn't work as well for me as Lisa's color worked in her encaustic painting.

Let me show you her blogpost from 2009, and then her current blog postings. She is a wonderful artist and creates exciting pictures. Check out her work. You might just come away inspired, as I did.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.

Local signage . . .

Well, as you can see, we get mixed messages here in the Pacific Northwest. The gentle folks at an antique store in La Conner invited us to walk right in, whereas the less-welcoming folks at Fort Worden in Port Townsend seemed to be closed for the day! And based on the rusty nails, have been closed for quite a while with no intentions of being open any time soon. Sigh . . .

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.

Faces in unlikely places

One of the "seeing" assignments I gave my students was to look for "faces in unlikely places," and they came up with some great stuff. It's my only hope that they continue to look, find, and see the humor in discovering faces where no one else would.

The concept has certainly stuck with me, so that in the first photo, THIS DOO look like a face I found on the side of a railroad car in Toledo, Oregon. And the second picture, taken in South Carolina, looks disturbingly like a menacing yet happy dog face, or a clown face (shudder).

So today, as you're out and about, look twice. Something just might be watching you...


©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.

Around the island . . .

A recent visit to the marina in Langley gave me a variety of photo possibilities, including this extremely large Dungeness crab caught by an extremely happy fisherman.

Off to the north the sky was overcast and bright, giving me the opportunity to purposely overexpose the shot, keeping the lightness and brightness intact.

Two women began paddling out, unable to see the drama below them. What they missed, and what we were able to see from the dock above, was a huge "herring ball." Millions of herring, their gills showing a bright red, were swirling in a densely packed ball, sometimes splitting apart, but quickly coming back to center. The fish were moving fast, in tandem, seemingly as one large organism.

One of the dock workers told us that "there are two harbor seals in the area that sometimes swoop in for a quick meal, and that's always fun to see."

No seals in sight, the herring ball slowly moved away, and so did we.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.

Latest work: "Below Sea Level"

I combined a streak of black ink with a collage made of old papers and then added acrylic paint and brown paper to come up with this abstract image. I like the warm/cool color combination of light brown/blue as well as the little surprising strip of brightness at the bottom.

Friends coming to the island today! Hoo ha!

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.

Local signage

In my days of stock photography, I trained myself to look for (and photograph) signs. And they sold. Some still do. I've sold a "No Parking" sign I shot in Breckenridge, Colorado a number of times. Same with tsunami evacuation signs I shot in Waldport, Oregon. "No Pets" signs. "No Minors Allowed."

So if a sign seems interesting to me, or humorous, or colorful, I tend to photograph it. It's become a habit.

Here are two I found lately. The "Antiques" sign was in front of a shop in Langley on Whidbey Island. It was a bright, sunny day, so I was looking in the shade for possibilities, and I liked how the light was rather muted, letting the warm colors of the oars and the basket stand out when combined with the greyish blue and green colors of the metal sign and the old wicker. (And look at how everything diagonates from upper right to lower left. Love that.)

And then the "Welcome to the Third Room" is a terrific sign I found inside the Marine Hardware store in Anacortes. We bought a bag of old rusty flanges. And of course you're thinking, "who wouldn't?", right? Chris and I are going to be making some assemblage art and yeah, old rusty flanges will be just the ticket! We shall see...

I should make a large print of this sign and put it on the studio door. "If we don't know what it is or what to do with it, it's in here." Open the door and there I am. With the cat.

Perfect.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.

Summer pinks

Walking around Whidbey Island these days is fun -- flowers growing everywhere. These four come from Langley, the perfect place to be early in the morning, before the crowds arrive, when it's quiet and, apparently, PINK!

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.

Latest work: "Wind River Collage"

I'm 2/3 of the way finished with a very large wall installation and this collage is just a tiny bit of it. Working hard, having fun, and will show the final piece in place once it's done.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.

Summer flowers

It's summer here on the island and man, there are flowers everywhere! We've got hydrangeas blooming in the front yard. In downtown Coupeville there are geraniums in window boxes. And down a little walkway, also in Coupeville, I found a vase of flowers sitting on a table.

I began in photography by shooting flowers. I'll probably end up with flowers as well -- so hard to resist. So beautiful. So apolitical. Even the orange ones.

 ©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.

Latest work: "Prayer Flag Lineup"

Brightly colored prayer flags run across the canvas in this fanciful image. I used photos of my hand-painted papers as well as a painterly effect to create a colorful, breezy look that makes me happy.

 ©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.

Nautical bits . . .

I recently finished re-reading The Shipping News by Annie Proulx. Each chapter begins with some sort of nautical/maritime information, and is how and where I learned that these coils of boat lines are called "Flemish coils" or "Flemish flakes."

I always thought they were simply aesthetically cool (which they are), but they're actually a practical way to keep lines neat and tidy and flat (hence the "flake") so that people can easily walk on them and not trip.

And how interesting is it that the main character in the book is named "Quoyle?"

Wishing you a day free of tripping hazards . . .

 ©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.

Around the island . . .

A very good day yesterday. We went exploring.

For the past year we've looked across the passage into the distance to see a large-ish mountain. Looking at maps, we couldn't quite find it, didn't know what it was, so we just referred to it as the "un-mountain." As in, "Look, there's some snow on the un-mountain."

Turns out what we've been seeing is Mt. Erie off in the distance, and yesterday we drove up to the top. It was high noon, so please forgive the first two awful photos, but they do show you the lay of the land. We live way out there on the horizon line (red star in the second picture).

The views from the top are quite spectacular, stretching from Naval Air Station Whidbey and the coast along the west side of the island, south toward Coupeville, and then the Skagit Valley to the east. This is a prime sunrise location. Prime.

Back down the mountain and then to Anacortes to meander among the boats. "Red" was the theme yesterday, apparently.

Returning home, we saw a regatta taking place in Penn Cove -- 56 sailboats with spinnakers billowing out. I texted my friend Paige, "Sailboats in Penn Cove! Sailboats in the cove!" I get a very laconic "Yep. They were there yesterday, too. Stop by for a beer?"

We detoured to the wharf, but the race was almost over and the boats kind of too far away. No matter. Colorful and fun. Walking back to the car, bumped into Eric, husband of the woman who cuts my hair. He's an excellent photographer, had a longer lens than I (damn!), and had also been shooting the boats. He was off to Oak Harbor to see if he could photograph them arriving at the marina. Meanwhile, there was a beer waiting for us at Paige's house, and that's where we ended our day.

The best part of the day? Sitting quietly on top of a mountain hearing/watching eagles soar above and below us. Watching a raven soar, then suddenly tuck in his wings, flip almost upside-down, chortle, then right himself only to do it again. And again. Having a bird's-eye view of this land where we live.

And then, of course, serendipitously encountering a fellow photographer. And having a beer with Paige wasn't too shabby either!

Wishing you a moment of silence today, as you watch something miraculous right in front of you.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.

Around the island . . .

A couple days ago Chris and I went exploring, hoping to find some lavender fields we'd heard about. Who knew they were only about 15 minutes away?

The Lavender Wind farm features acres of brilliantly purple lavender fields, a cabana where bundles of lavender are hung up to dry, and a small gift shop where we could buy lavender soap, caramels, bath items, and more.

They also grow catnip on the property, and so we left with a present for Abby -- a small "pillow" of catnip, guaranteed to delight. And it did.

Lavender Wind has a larger shop in downtown Coupeville that we'll have to check out as well, but the fields nearby were spectacular, exceeding our expectations. The purple level is currently a "6" (on a scale of 1-10), so it's just going to get better and better.

Will we go back again soon? We'd be foolish not to.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.

Huh?

What? You mean the bell will just ring? Without a bell to warn me that the bell's gonna ring? Do people in downtown Portland, Oregon really need a sign like this?

There must be a company out there making a bloody fortune creating signs that warn us something is going to happen without warning. Such as . . .

"CAUTION: Refrigerator light will come on without warning."

"WATCH THIS SPACE: Stupid signs will appear with no advance notice."

And if the sign painter is getting paid by the letter . . .

"ATTENTION: Stupid blog posts will suddenly show up for no apparent rhyme nor reason today or any day for that matter. Without warning."

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Consider yourself warned!