Pawn in Autumn and A Raven in Autumn

Note: the copyright watermarks do not appear in the actual art (needed for on-line display only).

This is my newest design and was finished & scanned today. The design measures 12" x 16 1/2 ".

The reason for the two titles is that the prints will be named "Pawn in Autumn" and the greeting cards will be named "A Raven in Autumn." I thought it was best to decipher the two as I have found customers of greeting cards not understanding the reference to "pawn" outside of its context. The prints are more likely to be shown together with their kind and thus will be clearer as to what the theme means.

For those of you not in the know, the pawn relates to chess. In chess, any being that is not a king, queen, bishop, knight or rook is a pawn. This one is obviously a pet pawn because of its collar.

I probably won't have the greeting cards printed this autumn (as autumn is nearly done, at least around here), but I am hoping to have some prints of it for the upcoming holiday shows.

I may not have any new designs for awhile as I prepare for these shows. On the other hand, it is likely that I will post pieces that have never been seen or scanned before.

My Website

Music MYSPACE (hear clips)

My Etsy on-line store for purchasing some of my CDs and some of my art

My band site: Saratoga Faire

My Renaissance band MYSPACE: The Spirites Consort (hear clips)

Purchasing our Saratoga Faire CD on CD Baby

Practicing and learning new music, new art show and new gig

This is a new picture of Jim and me last summer. The two of us are spending the evenings practicing and learning new material. We are performing New Year’s Eve with the band. I think we are also playing a Christmas venue, though not entirely sure.

I painted/worked a new piece the entire day and rushed downtown late before everything closed and found out I will be at the holiday art show at Lower Adirondack Regional Art Center. Yippee! This year I will have greeting cards and giclee prints (and maybe an original or two). Oh, yes, and CDs.

My Website

Music MYSPACE (hear clips)

My Etsy on-line store for purchasing some of my CDs and some of my art

My band site: Saratoga Faire

My Renaissance band MYSPACE: The Spirites Consort (hear clips)

Purchasing our Saratoga Faire CD on CD Baby

How Angels Communicate in the Evening and How Angels Communicate in the Evening II

Note: the copyright watermarks do not appear in the actual art (needed for on-line display only).

These are 2 new designs I finished on October 19 from graphically altering relief sculptures. The relief sculpture was done on a wall-hanging platter shape. The platter is visible on my website here. You can see that I did quite a bit of altering to make it into a graphic. I have shown the actual sculpture in a number of places, but the graphic alteration is completely new.

As I said in my previous post, I like the monochromatic effect I get with playing with and re-arranging my ceramic sculptures in this way. It gives another life to my ceramic creations and it is another art form I am just now discovering. I like working in the two mediums and this is a way for me to do that.

Right now I have the images for sale in my Etsy shop as greeting cards, but I may do more to make them into prints (& possibly other alterations down the road). Once I printed the greeting cards, they looked different from what was in my monitor, so I tried to represent them as best I could with the other two images (shown). Monitors display colors differently though, so it may be a futile exercise.

My Website

Music MYSPACE (hear clips)

My Etsy on-line store for purchasing some of my CDs and some of my art

My band site: Saratoga Faire

My Renaissance band MYSPACE: The Spirites Consort (hear clips)

Purchasing our Saratoga Faire CD on CD Baby

4 Unicorns: Unicorn II in Dayglow, Unicorn V in Red, Unicorn III at Dusk, Unicorn VI at Midnight

Note: the copyright watermarks do not appear in the actual art (needed for on-line display only).

These are 4 new unicorns I made from graphically altering relief sculptures. The relief was done on wall-hanging platter shapes. The platters are visible on my website here. You can see that I did quite a bit of altering. The pottery pieces were shown at Lower Adirondack Regional Arts Center for a 5-person invitational juried exhibit called Once Again in March of this year and I also sold the greeting cards in the art center shop concurrent to the exhibit. Later, I brought them to more shops.

I like the monochromatic effect I get with these alterations, something one sees at night, at dusk and at dawn, which is why some are titled that. It’s something I never tried before, but I like the effect and it gives another life to my ceramic creations.

Right now I have them for sale in my Etsy shop as greeting cards, but I may do more to make them into prints (& possibly other alterations down the road).

Right now they are printed on linen card stock from a giclee printer with archival inks (rated to last 100 years). They are also signed, so they are a little more special than my mass produced cards which use soy based inks and have barcodes. Sometimes I test new designs out in this way, printing a small number.

My Website

Music MYSPACE (hear clips)

My Etsy on-line store for purchasing some of my CDs and some of my art

My band site: Saratoga Faire

My Renaissance band MYSPACE: The Spirites Consort (hear clips)

Purchasing our Saratoga Faire CD on CD Baby

Pull Me to the Sky II

The fact that this has a “II” after its title means, of course, that there is another earlier version, but I haven’t scanned in yet. I don’t know if I want to change some things about the earlier version, or just leave it, so I may not scan it until I resolve this.

These are paintings I have been working on this week. There is also another painting going too, but it is unrelated to this theme.

This is a kind of art that I have never tried before: taking a song I have written and writing it in ink on a piece of watercolor paper and painting over the top of it. I painted birds on top of the writing, but they aren’t prominent, but the birds break out of the middle to the frame of darker paint.

I think that this lyric works well as a stand-alone poem, which is why I chose it. The song is on my Goldenrod CD and a different version is on the Come to Me in Dreams CD (the former version is my favorite of the two).

I am interested in trying more versions as I’m not sure I like the window effect, though I like the fact that I chose to put birds where the writing is, however subliminally.

I don’t have it for sale anywhere yet: I am wondering whether to put it in a gallery or show or put it for sale on-line. I am leaning towards putting it on-line only because the audience for my music is widespread, out of the general area where I live and I think an audience member might appreciate it more than a gallery patron.

Anyway, I don’t feel I am done with this theme and I will post more when the time comes.

My Website

Music MYSPACE (hear clips)

My Etsy on-line store for purchasing some of my CDs and some of my art

My band site: Saratoga Faire
My Renaissance band MYSPACE: The Spirites Consort (hear clips)
Purchasing our Saratoga Faire CD on CD Baby

Our CD, Saratoga Romance is now up on CD Baby

Our new CD (cover design above) is finally up for sale on CD Baby. It will probably be up on Amazon, Borders, and download sites like I-Tunes shortly.

I did the artwork for the CD (while band member Jim Lestrange did the graphics). I also made this into 2 greeting card designs without the writing (one has a color shift). It has done well and I am encouraged to make more designs with Celtic knots and horses.

I am hoping to sell the CD on Etsy as well. While I have done well at CD Baby (and they do have the soundclips!), I am less pleased that they were taken over by Discmakers: more corporate & seemingly more disorganized (though to be fair, they have just started to overhaul the site and things may get better... I hope).

Anyway: here are some of the greeting card designs I made from the CD cover (note: the copyright watermark does not appear in actual product):

My Website

Music MYSPACE (hear clips)

My Etsy on-line store for purchasing some of my CDs and some of my art

My band site: Saratoga Faire

My Renaissance band MYSPACE: The Spirites Consort (hear clips)

Purchasing our Saratoga Faire CD on CD Baby