Art at Year's End

I worked hard to make fifty Christmas Cards and soon after completing them realized I should have made seventy or a hundred! I learned a lot in the process that combined monoprints with enhancements by Prisma Color and paint. Fun work that next year, I promise myself, I won’t put off so long nor approach my holiday projects in such a conservative manner. Of course I don’t know what I’ll be doing next year although it may include a trip to Mid-Missouri to spend the year-end holiday with my children and grandchildren. Que sera, sera, I sing. 

I was pleased with the cards I made and with the many, many Artist Trading Cards I made at the same time. I’ve kept at that production to make ready for two trades in January. One set is done; the other awaits a real idea! Oh well, that’s the way so much art goes, certainly my own.

I watch January’s approach wondering what cards I will make that first week for the second Saturday trade. I’m sure something will occur to me to make cards I’d be happy to trade! I’m sure you will see some of the next week. Promises… promises…

I’m not much for making New Year’s resolutions and probably will not bother myself to make any now. I do know I’ll make several hundred Artist Trading Cards, will make many mixed media pieces, revisit my petroglyphs in new ways, keep art journals as well as my regular writing journal, write many stories about my life (my weekly challenge for the story telling group I lead), finish the manuscript I’m currently writing about a relationship I had with Rafael Martinez back in 2002, and draw a lot of plants and flowers to use for general cards.

It sounds like a busy year with many new things to discover. I will also give a lot of attention to art printing from lino- and wood-blocks. Wish me well. I wish you a happy new year!

Denver, 2015

Art Deco Artist Trading Cards

Artist Trading Cards by Phillip Hoyle

Artistic style changes thus creating what art historians call periods. Art Deco began in Europe in the 1920s and some years later spread to America. It was the design, architectural, and craft style that can be seen as distinct with its use of geometric designs, metal, inlays, and so forth. The style was widely used in public art works during the Great Depression of the 1930s and extended into the early 40s.

The prompt for last week’s Artist Trading Cards trade was Art Deco. To meet it I searched for ideas online and in books. I settled on letters (the development of new print fonts were big in the period), skyscrapers (think of NYC’s Chrysler Center and the Empire State Building, and the use of ancient motifs in a modern architectural environment (my fancy talk). Anyway the challenge occupied my mind and quite a few hours. I drew, experimented with stamps, made a mess, cleaned it up, and voila, I completed nineteen ATC’s.

Working in this tiny (2 ½ x 3 ½ inch) format is a great way to experiment with technique and to use up leftover scraps of art materials, all those things you just can’t bear to throw away. I figure as long as I can afford glue, I can make these cards for years! And the work area doesn’t have to be large. If I ever end up living in a tiny house, I can keep making these tiny pieces of art!

Have a good art week and a happy holiday.

Denver, 2015

Artist Trading Cards by Phillip Ho

Parades of Lights

Star on Christmas Card monoprints
Phillip Hoyle, 2015

Just over a week ago I watched the Denver Parade of Lights. So today I’m wondering about art and the Parade. My first experience of such a parade was in Tulsa, OK when I was singing on a float with a group of carolers. I’m not sure it was so much art as it was a friendship obligation. Still the event was festive. I don’t know what the overall artistic and affective result of the float was. I was along simply to sing loudly—the great out-of-doors required it!

This year was my first time to attend the Denver Parade. I was there with a group of friends and enjoyed the overall experience that included a brief tour of the Brown Palace atrium with a jazz trio entertaining, children singing along with Jingle Bells and the like, and the children dancing with one another and parents. Our parade evening was off to a cute and festive start. Outdoors we saw the parade’s approach announced by safety lights spinning from golf carts. I wondered if elves could be driving them. Whoever they were, they were clad with reflective jackets. The marching bands were lighted up in special adaptations to their regular outfits—some very cleverly. I realized the invention of portable battery packs and low-watt bulbs made their glittering, moving display magical. Then there was a group of low riders with blue undercarriage lights and the car bodies each covered with as many tiny lights as were added to the huge chandelier in the Brown’s main lobby. These cars came bouncing down the street. Their presence was the most visually stunning effect of the parade.

We heard several bands play beautifully and artistically accompanied by displays of pompoms and flags and huge snowflakes. My favorite band had the least glamorous uniforms but the most enthusiastic delivery of an enthusiastic musical arrangement. I turned to an old band member, a trumpeter, in our group and exclaimed, “They’re the best band with the best arrangement.” He concurred. The other best band was a group of children playing Kazoos. They were on a wonderfully inventive float with moving parts displaying a rising-up-and-down clock tower and followed by a huge balloon of a red-wrapped holiday package adorned with glittery gold ribbon and bow. The old band guy exclaimed, “I love the Kazoo band.” I concurred.

There were more delights and I slipped into critical mode to figure out how some of these displays were better than others, an artistic decision weighing many visual factors along with the affective result among their viewers, an audience that was much more affected than critical. And there I was among them being carried into the past of memories and a present wonderland of sights and sounds. I was moved by the moving displays that combined inventiveness, engineering, precision, stamina, and so many other factors beyond design considerations. There are many things to think about in a work of art!

Denver, 2015

Star monoprint, Phillip Hoyle 2015

Christmas Stars

Star. Monoprint card by Phillip Hoyle
I titled all fifty cards the same.

I had a preacher friend who dreaded the religious holidays, especially Christmas and Easter, “What can you say that hasn’t already been said over and over again?” he whined with true exasperation. “I’m so tired of it.” I wondered if he wanted to be stellar, but even that would be traditional.

I am not so dramatic as my friend but still have to face a similar dilemma annually for my Christmas card. I don’t hope to be original, but I do hope to create something that is different for me, some experimental technique or design even when using centuries-old symbols that more recently have been overused by Madison Avenue to sell holiday presents.

This year I’m using a roller, a stencil, a stamp, and some pencils. I cut the stencil and the stamp myself and employed a printing process my artist friend Sue taught me during the past year. (I suppose this is the way I keep myself entertained in the studio.) I chose odd combinations of colors to create strange looking stars, perhaps ones that could gain the attention of modern-day magi and lead them through a cultural desert find a most holy and unexpected gift.

The ones shown here I am keeping in my collection so don’t be disappointed when you don’t receive one of them. But to summarize my card project; I made fifty monoprints with stamp and Prismacolor enhancements. Well, something like that.

Happy holidays!

Denver, 2015

These cards I'm keeping for my own collection. The process was great fun.

Education and Storytelling

Once in a Lifetime

Here is the story I told today at the LGBT storytellers gathering. Think of it as somewhere between true confessions and entertainment--some kind of art!

“Opportunity knocks,” we’re told in adage and advertising. “This could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you.”

I’ve grown to hate advertising, to resent Madison Avenue’s influence in hyping sales of clothing, stockings, cars, trips, meds, and Presidential campaigns. This change in American life got underway with terrifying seriousness during the 1940s and has never quit. I was born in 1947, surely my first once-in-a-lifetime experience. But eventually I came to see that everything that happens is singular. Any event of a life is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. For example, although one may go to worship week after week, the service is different if only because of how the worshipper experiences it. Surely the sermons are different even though preachers know they really have only three sermons. A few ministers work hard to keep them interesting.

But to a story! It occurred in the 1950s back when catalogues were still big time. My parents didn’t get them, but my grandparents who lived on a farm did. At around age 8 I discovered at the farm a new catalogue that had a very large toy selection, a kind of 50s version of Toys ‘R Us®. I was fascinated and marked in it all the toys I wanted for Christmas. Later my grandfather was perusing the catalogue and found my marks. He added them up and was amazed and amused to find that their cost totaled nearly $1,000. (In those days my dad’s salary was probably around $6,000. The sum made a good story for the family but one I didn’t hear about for several years. The catalogue went the way of all catalogues, meaning to the outhouse where I saw it later as it was recycled in what I suppose today would be called low purposing. Perhaps I mentioned seeing the catalogue there and then heard the story. I don’t know if this story of my childhood glee and greed changed me in any way, but I do later recall a Christmas when I got exactly what I wanted but didn’t expect to get, a Fort Apache and a knock-off Lincoln Log set. I was elated and played so many years with those gifts I failed to ask again for anything specific for Christmas. Still I got gifts and learned how to say thank you for gifts I didn’t appreciate.

Somehow I came to disdain the influence of fad making and advertising to the point I avoided purchasing anything faddish. Still do. I think my big change came one summer when I was directing a residential camp for kids going into fifth and sixth grades. That year I came across a group of children comparing the designer labels on their clothing—a first experience of this kind I ever observed among Kansas youngsters. I felt like leaving that work that afternoon, angry that parents and society were stealing childhood away from the children. A few years later David Elkind wrote a book, The Hurried Child (1981), a social/psychological study of cultural change and its effect on children. The book made a splash with reviews, interviews and some discussion, but made little impact on child rearing and American society. The power had already been handed over to Madison Avenue.

I still don’t go with the fads, even the thirty-years-ago fad of storytelling groups is still with us! I read and appreciated their literature, but when I attended one, the stories really had nothing vitally related to the lives of the tellers, or at least that’s how I perceived them. Thus I failed to join such groups then. But these days I am ever so happy to be in this group of storytellers in which we sell nothing faddish, nothing marketable, and tell stories of our own experience, ideals, and values. I like that our sessions seem like a revival of ancient gatherings of elders around a campfire to tell and sometimes evaluate the good old days and speak of how events shaped them and their tribe.

© 30 November 2015

Writing

What my writing efforts look like on paper!
by Phillip Hoyle

Writing used to be a job. It was part of my profession as a minister and educator. I wrote notices, the occasional column for the church newsletter, and recruitment letters for volunteer singers and teachers. I worked hard to write well and in my thirties began writing curriculum resources for religious education. In my forties I began writing resources for a publisher and did so for ten years. In my fifties I began writing as an artist, at least that is how I think of it. I wrote then for myself stories from my life experience, pieces for magazines, short stories, and more. In my sixties (I’m still in them) I wrote a novel and so far several hundred stories of my life, vignettes of life from different points of view. And as you know if you are reading this, I keep a blog related to art matters—mostly the arts in which I am involved directly.

These days I am not going it alone, but while I don’t have an editor like I had at the publishing company, I have two groups that hear my pieces. Reading them aloud always sharpens my ear to mistakes and awkward expressions.

I write a bit almost every day and in so doing start stories I wasn’t planning to write. Writing is not a job but still some kind of vocation and always a joy. Still its joy demands some kind of discipline that to me is more like play—play among the world of ideas and words.

If you are interested to read more of what I write, follow this blog artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com. Also I contribute occasional pieces to sageoftherockies.blogspot.com.

Denver, 2015

Artist Trading Cards

My favorite three ATCs in  my ZOO ABCs
Cards by Phillip Hoyle

The theme for the Artist Trading Cards swap at CORE New Art Space is ZOO. I've been hard at work to get all twenty-six letters represented in what I'm Calling ATC ZOO ABCs. It's been quite a fun project, and I am looking forward to the trades this coming weekend. 

So I've made my ABC ATCs. Tell me what you think of me.
Cards by Phillip Hoyle

Denver, 2015

Dreams

Mechanical Dreams ATCs by Phillip Hoyle
These could be studies in line, blue and orange. I took the photos of
my very mechanical as well as artistic son's tractor engine, at least I think
that is what I was photographing.
I added pieces of colored transparent acetate.

An upcoming ATC topic is taking me into the world of dreams. I’ve had some, actually quite a few. This I recall because most mornings I write several pages of whatever I may think of and that sometimes includes dream images and actions I recall upon awakening. I know I dream a lot more than I can recall. I have conscious dreams as well. For instance, I loved my grandpa Pink, as we kids called him, a farmer in Kansas. I loved his tractor and loved riding on the tractor with him. I got an idea about dreams, in this case conscious dreams, mechanical dreams, especially since I have never thought about myself as being mechanical. But I can dream of it and did.

My eldest sister, who I always thought rated high on the mechanical scale, said a couple of years ago she was amazed when as a boy I took apart an old clock at our grandparents’ house and then put it back together. She could never think of doing that. Well, whatever childhood or adult perceptions may be, I have no memory of any such event. I do like to watch clock gears working but can’t imagine I fixed anything!

At least I can make these tiny art pieces out of such dreams.

Happy dreams to you this week. I’ll have more to show in a couple of weeks.

Denver 2015

Halloween Returns

Haunted Houses and Ghosts Artist Trading Cards
Phillip Hoyle

You may have to get close to the screen to see the printed house outlines in the five black Artist Trading Cards. I printed red on black and had to highlight them with thin lines in white pencil. The photo doesn't make it quite clear enough. The white figures (eyes, teeth, and hair) are done with paint and white gel pen. 

The ghosts were cut from a photo of a geyser and with tiny holes punched out. They are mounted on a cut-up painting, acrylic washes on watercolor paper, a painting in which the brown got too brown for whatever I was trying to do that day. 

The trade last Thursday evening was fine. I traded over thirty cards and collected some winners! These ATC artists love Halloween and Day of the Dead for the wide variety of often weird images they suggest. One woman came dressed in a black robe and interesting feathered mask. We shared cards and food, and then made cards for another hour and a half. What a nice celebration.

This weekend I decorated the front porch with spiders, bats, and spiderwebs. We put pumpkins, spiders, bats, and lanterns in the living and dining rooms. We're almost ready to receive the young neighbors begging for treats, and we've got enough chocolates and Skittles to upset the hardiest stomachs. More and more the little ones are accompanied by costumed adults. Last year we had 86 kids at the door. We're ready for even more.

Happy Halloween.

Denver, 2015

Art Journal

Journal page Missouri Petroglyphs by Phillip Hoyle

Even though I write almost every day and almost always jot down something about art (an idea, a reflection upon seeing an art display, even some kind of analysis or quote related to a book I'm reading), I have a difficult time getting to my art journals to write anything. Some months ago I wrote about an art journal that focuses on images, ideas, experiences, and other matters related to Colorado petroglyphs. Beginning that art journal was meant to keep me working in small art forms and keeping a written record of my feelings and work as well. I've painted petroglyphs as it were a dozen years. I still mess with those designs. I affirm that it's better to keep working them as compared with writing about them. 

Art Journal page by Phillip Hoyle

I started a second art journal about petroglyphs in Missouri. I've been even more neglegent in relation to keeping it up to date. Oh well. I have many plans. Always have! Many, many more than I can ever imagine fulfilling. I'm showing just a few things from the Missouri art journal. My other Missouri art is related to flora, not petroglyphs. 

In the meantime I'm fixing more Artist Trading Cards to trade late next week. Hope I get all of these things done.

Denver, 2015

Halloween Art

Spider ATC's by Phillip Hoyle

I have acquired quite a large collection of Artist Trading Cards, the result of several years of trading these baseball trading card-size pieces of art with other artists. As a result I’ve had to increase shelf space to accommodate the growing number of ring binders in which I store them. Still, by comparison with two other collectors who have over 22,000 cards, I’m only a beginner.

In the collection I have many cards related to Halloween and Day of the Dead because these topics are always the October themes of the two trades I attend. Thus I have collected cards of glowing jack o’ lanterns, witches in pointed hats, flying bats, black cats, spider webs, and so much more. There are skeletons wearing party clothes, flying ghosts, ghastly ghouls, walking dead, on and on—designs I don’t particularly groove on yet ones that have become increasingly popular in American life and entertainment. 

Eclipse ATCs by Phillip Hoyle

On Saturday I took several sheets of gloomy ATCs to a trade at CORE New Art Space in the Santa Fe Street Arts District. My themes were spiders, the moon on a dark night (actually the lunar eclipse a couple of weeks ago), and the word BOO. I had other new cards as well, ones I prepared in case some folk should not be so deeply into fright. While I don’t find the topics exciting, I did look forward to the creativity of the Halloween enthusiasts. The October trades generally bring out larger participation!

Even though we did not have anything like a record-breaking attendance, I did take home about thirty cards--really nice ones: clever, arty, skillfully made, funny, weird, and always creative. Check on line searching for Artist Trading Cards, Denver to see more cards and, if you like, get a mild artistic scare.

Boo ATCs by Phillip Hoyle

Denver, 2015

Springtime in My Studio

Missouri Springtime by Phillip Hoyle,  5 x 7 1/2"

Springtime has come before fall has fallen in mixed media art pieces of spring flowers. To create these I have been working from drawings I made in Mid-Missouri in May this year. I left the sketches alone for several months in the hope that I could do something not exactly like the real flowers, somehow change them into lines and colors, dots and scribbles that my son Michael would still be able to identify as the flowers I drew sitting in his prairie, garden, and pastures.

With fall just underway, I am pleased to begin showing these works. I'll let them surround me during the winter with their promise of warmth to keep me comfortable when the snow flies. Well, it's a nice sentiment!

The piece above was started as a print on a GELLI pad made with Golden OPEN acrylics. I added lines, dots, and a few paintbrush strokes. I'm already starting to think of spring even though the sun is shining brightly and warmly here each day. 

Denver 2015

Found Objects

Leaf Print ATCs by Phillip Hoyle
Each card 2 1/2" x 3 1/2"

I found some objects, namely leaves and some paper I had saved for the occasion of making Artist Trading Cards to this theme. The paper I saved when we dismantled the ATC booth at Denver County Fair in August. The table covering had marks from watercolor pens, pencils, blotches of paint, notes people had written for fun (?), an odd assortment of designs, scratches, scrapes, and colors that I knew I should save. Then a month later, this topic was chosen for a theme. 

I printed leaves on the paper, then used a very fine pen to clarify some edges and add a few details that didn't want to print. I did even more by saving the leaves I printed and use them as collage details for more cards. It was an enjoyable project and I learned a lot about the techniques and accidents of plant prints I tried to make the most of my accidents. Besides that, I enjoyed our trade last Thursday evening at Jerry Simpson's studio. 

Denver, 2015

ATC by Phillip Hoyle, September 2015

I made several ATCs from scraps left over from some GELLI monoprints I had used for another purpose. The ATC group where I am going to trade them meets in the studios and galleries of one of the world’s most interesting dumpster divers who is also a rather well known artist. You can find interesting videos and comments about Jerry Simpson on You Tube and elsewhere online. His compound of buildings is in itself a work of art as well as is his extensive orderly storage system. His place inspires the use of found objects for re-purposing, up-purposing, and transforming from trash to art. 

ATCs by Phillip Hoyle, September 2015

I couldn’t easily throw away the trimmings I used due to their brilliant and deep colors. The paint made by Golden, their Open Acrylics, makes a bold impression. I’ve used what they package as Modern Colors: Hansa Yellow Opaque, Pyrrole Red, Phthalo Blue (Green Shade) Quinacridone Magenta, Phthalo Green (Blue Shade), and Titanium White. I also used a white Jelly pen.

Thanks for the comments on last week’s posting of the Claret Cup Cactus. I framed it this week and am very happy with the results. I’m sure there will be more cacti showing up before long!

Denver, 2015

Cactus Print Finale

Claret Cup Cacti Monoprint by Phillip Hoyle 2015

Finally I got back to the monoprint I've been looking at for several weeks, maybe quite a few weeks. I'm happy that I did after looking at many pictures of the plant. Some of the buds opened into flowers, others are waiting their turn. At least that's how I imagine it. 

Oh, the collage of monoprints I titled Bear Clan did make it into the WOW show at CORE New Art Space and is hanging there for another week. You can see it if you get there soon. The gallery is open Thursday through Sunday. In case you can't make it there I'll give you a glance at one little part of the show. 

Top left framed work 'Bear Clan' by Phillip Hoyle

Bear Clan

Bear Clan by Phillip Hoyle
Collage of monoprints

As I have worked with this image of a bear in the past year, I have always seen it as a spirit image and without thinking much assigned it to the male gender in my mind. When my daughter-in-law saw several of the prints, she saw it as a female bear. My art friend Sue saw it as a bear, not assigning any gender label.

So I wonder how others may see it. If you want to tell me, make a comment! It's a little bit difficult, but select the anonymous category. You may have to type in a code from an illustration. I would like to know. Comment below. I hope to learn something.

Oh, I entered the piece into the WOW open art show at CORE gallery. So now I wonder if its a she-bear, a he-bear, or something else AND I wonder if I'll be jury-ed in! Hope so and further hope you have a good art week. 

Denver, 2015

Recycle Art

The print I showed you a few weeks ago.

One of my art processes is to recycle paintings and prints to use as grounds for Artist Trading Cards. I started doing so about three years ago and have cut old, usually unsuccessful paintings into cards 2 1/2" x 3 1/2". I've then printed, collaged, drawn, painted or all of the above in many different ways. About two years ago I started making tiny floral works on the cards. To do so, I refer to old floral studies, some made about seventeen years ago, others newer, and make the cards. I set out a group of cards and using a variety of pens, make tiny pieces of art. Using my computer I color print them and mount them on pre-cut note cards that I send to folk as short letters or gifts. 

When about four months ago I began playing around with GELLI print plates and produced larger monoprints. I realized they could become grounds for more of these floral prints. Printed on all kinds of paper, for instance, like the page from a magazine shown above, I realized they could serve as grounds for more floral pieces. I hope to make greeting cards with them and mixed media pieces to frame. Of course the larger format presents challenges, one I am just beginning to meet.

A few weeks ago I posted one of the monoprints and suggested I would figure out just what floral thing to do with it. One of my friends said she looked forward to see what I would do. Well, here it is well on its way but still unfinished.

Claret Cup Cacti, white ink on monoprint made on magazine page.
7x5" by Phillip Hoyle

I'm sure these red spots will become the red flowers but haven't quite figured out how. And I'm sure you'll get to see the end result. 

Denver 2015

More Bear Prints

I printed yesterday. Bear images.

I have no idea where these images are going! I made fifteen or more prints, a few paws and quite a few bears.

Still I am hoping to get something together for an upcoming art show at CORE New Art Space, their annual WOW! show. They want different, unusual, edgy pieces for this show. So I'll do what I can and want to do it with a Bear! Probably something that uses these small prints in a collage. Time will tell! 

This piece holds promise. It's a little out of focus but
not much. It just printed up that way. Who knows?

I hope you and I both have happy art weeks!

Denver, 2015

A Touch of Pink

The summer hailstorms pretty much devastated our front yard. Trees and bushes were stripped of many of their leaves. Hostas were shredded like lettuce even though they were ready to bloom. Some English ivy plants were pounded so severely they had no deep green leaves left. Some plants died. There was a lot of cleaning up to do, but as we did it my partner and I noticed new growth. The magnolia bush on the parking not only got new leaves but also two new, out-of-season blossoms. That seemed very nice. The ornamental grasses began to recover. Before long we saw beautifully shaped leaves on the Eastern Redbud tree.

The cone flowers recovered quickly--they always seem to do so no matter what happens. I noticed some delicate flowers I didn't recall seeing before: some pink and some light blue blossoms. Jim mentioned one weedy-looking new growth wondering if it might be a cosmos. He'd never had any but hoped this plant might grow. His guess was right. We now have a pink cosmos. I suspect next year we'll have several. 

This past week I worked several times in the yard and have enjoyed looking at the process of recovery underway there. I like the clusters of color, especially the new pink flowers. I suspect I'll have get out there with my pad and pencils and begin drawing. The leaves and stems have great shapes and the flowers are actually very simple. Then I'll have to make new paintings and prints of the things that once again abound in the garden.

Denver, 2015

Inspiration

Ancient traditions of varying cultures assert that artistic gifts come from godly sources. It's in the language of inspiration, the muses, and the artist being gifted. I've thought about those symbols for my whole adult life and wondered at the history and interconnections of the metaphors. Then I finally decided not to worry myself over details and simply say I'm thankful for the gifts--large or small, real or imagined--that allow me to do art. It began with music and before too long expanded into writing, visual arts, multi-media, and so forth. I was mostly just doing a job or several jobs, ones I enjoyed and continue to enjoy every day. I'm not particularly pious, at least by some people's standards, yet I do recognize that in art something has to arise from somewhere to make possible the creation of beauty. May it be the god from within or without. I say this with a deep sense of humility and thanks.

A few days ago someone saw in my studio the crucifix pictured above. He was very enthusiastic for whatever reasons and made over what he described as the wire sculpture's beauty. I was a bit embarrassed. I made the piece decades ago in a workshop in which I also wrote a poem, probably the first one I ever wrote. Certainly it was the first sculpture I attempted. Only many years later did I work with visual artists to learn techniques and the like. I keep the spontaneous piece visible to remind me not to shut off whatever gifts or natural abilities I have in my work. And each day I do my artwork with a sense of thanksgiving.

I must add, just in case you are interested, I did not make the metal saints. They are New Mexico Hispanic pieces of Saints Maria Magdalena and Rafael.

Denver, 2015

Denver County Fair 2015

Yours truly trapped like a fly in a spider's web so enthused I was at the fair.

I'm posting some photos taken at the Denver County Fair this past weekend. I'm adding just a little comment hoping you might get some of the flavor of the event in its fifth year. I look forward to next year's event. Attending the fair was great fun, a time of activities, entertainment, rides, contests, with both common and unusual people, and so much more.

Hundreds of visitors visited the art gallery where among other art were
several Artist Trading Cards.

On Wednesday I went to the fair to enter my Artist Trading Card pages and one mixed media print with collage. On Thursday I went back to help set up the booth for making Artist Trading Cards. I also assisted hanging the ATCs in a section of the Art Gallery.

I entered three pages of single cards, each card a separate piece of art: two pages of florals and one page of drums. 

My newest page of florals was prepared specifically for the show. The backgrounds were made as monoprints using a Gelli printing plate. I finished them by drawing with various pens rather abstract flowers that don't show up so well in this photo. 

The ATC Pavilion where adults, teens and children spent time making Artist Trading Cards. I felt lucky to get
to talk with people of all ages while we made cards together. Interesting people; very interesting cards.

I visited the fair with a friend on Friday. We looked at many entries--traditional things like baked goods, candies, quilts, and knitting. We also enjoyed Peeps displays, the Geek Pavilion, the Cat Pavilion, and many people we got to talk with. Food was good. Special shows entertained. I'm pleased and plan to return next summer. Plan to join me.

'Old Grizzly' was my entry to the mixed media portion of the show. It is a
monoprint with collaged map with a bear relief print mounted  with glue.

County Fair

Some Artist Trading Cards that are going to the
Denver County Fair this weekend.
Mixed media ATCs by Phillip Hoyle

I recall going to the Clay County Fair at the end of the summer in Clay Center, KS a place with 4H displays, animals from surrounding farms and ranches, food judging, live music, rides to make my stomach feel queezy, (maybe because I had just eaten too much BBQ beef made by the Lions Club), and lots of people wandering the grounds. It also seemed to announce the impending start of school at CCCHS. Some fifty years ago I tramped through the county fairgrounds and buildings looking at homemade pies and home-canned garden produce, ducks and chickens, cows and horses. It was a rather celebrative affair in that little town where I attended high school.

After I left there, I never expected to participate in a county fair again. When many years later I moved to Denver, I went with friends to something similar, the National Western Stock Show. Being there stirred up memories of childhood trips to the American Royal Horse Show in Kansas City. Now there is a Denver County Fair in its fourth or fifth year held in the exhibition hall out at the the National Western Stock Show grounds. 

Anyway I have entered three sheets of Artist Trading Cards: two pages of wildflowers and one page of drums. (I posted some of the drums on this blog.) Also I have a monoprint with a collaged map with a grizzly bear printed on it. I'd show you that, but I never did take a photo of it! Guess you can visit the fair to see it. Look in the Mixed Media section of the Art Gallery. 

I am not only attending, I'm rather involved in the fair this year. On Thursday I'll help set up an Artist Trading Card booth where you can stop by and make cards, on Friday when the fair begins I'll be visiting it with some friends, and on Sunday I'll return to help with the booth, help pack things up, and retrieve my artwork. Lots of activity. Lots of fun.

Hope your summer is full of lots of fun and at least some art.

Denver, 2015

Art Prints Galore

Printed on magazine paper, I played with
aa combination of colors and the use of
a circle of cardboard. Look here next week
to see if I was able to turn this mono-print
into a mixed media bunch of flowers--my goal.

A little over a week ago I spent an afternoon with my artist friend Sue printing in her studio. Both Sue and I print and recently have been working with mono-print techniques. I am a newcomer to the filed; Sue has been at it for quite a few years. She invited me to join her for an exploration of using the relatively new Gel printing plates available from GELLI ARTS. Plates come in several sizes. I had worked with a small one, but that day I was going to explore what I could do on a plate 5 x 7". Works made on these soft plates do not require a press or even a spoon. The artist simply uses a hand. 

Sue really liked this design made with a stencil. She was more moved than
I although I too like it. I'm not quite sure what I will do with this one, but
she suggested I make a work with a group of these pieces showing perhaps
six or nine of the figure in different colors and backgrounds.
The bear is from an old Ute petroglyph in a group of several carvings
along the Gunnison River in western Colorado.

I liked working with the larger plate and used a brayer to spread the paint. I used my hands to transfer the prints, but sometimes I used a baren or another brayer. I used a variety of mark makers as I continued to explore the interactions of colors with one another, of the paints on different kinds of paper, of the effects to be made with stencils and other mark makers. I kept varying my techniques and following suggestions Sue made. And I ended the session with quite a few prints and many more ideas. I plan to make a set of Artist Trading Cards of florals. I'll call them Colorado Wildflowers! Be sure to check next week to see what took place. I believe the work with the bear figure will prove even more challenging. You may have to wait several weeks on that one.

Hope you are having a wonderful artistic summer.

Denver, 2015 

Cosmic Views

Cosmic Wonders
Mixed media by Phillip Hoyle
after a Cherokee petroglyph from Judaculla Rock

After quite a few years of painting designs from Ute Petroglyphs, I took up some very interesting old figures from a site on the Tennessee River in western North Carolina. 

The hundreds of pictures on this ancient soap stone boulder were scratched and dug into the surface of the rock. Some of the pictured characters match old Cherokee tales of creation and life. Cherokee people of the region claim that their ancestors left these signs for them, stories as it were of mythical times in which the gods and heroes interacted directly with the tribe. 

For me the soap stone suggested grays and blues along with red accents. So a few years ago I painted several of these wonderful and challenging designs. Last week I hung another one in my display at Colorado Mountain Art Gallery in Georgetown. If you're going that way, stop by. It located on 6th street next to the city building and police station, across the street from the historic hotel from the old days of silver mining. It's about 45 minutes west of Denver along Interstate 70. 

There are many other kinds of art in this co-op gallery that shows work of about sixty Colorado artists. It's worth the stop.

The "Cosmic Wonders" hangs next to "Deer on Turquoise" taken after
a Ute Petroglyph from western Colorado.
Both works by Phillp Hoyle.

Denver, 2015

One of my favorite mountains and skyviews.
Photo by Phillip Hoyle

Years ago I lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I felt elated there soaking up the contrasting cultures that lived together and influenced one another visually and culturally. I wanted to be influenced by new things in those days. Still do. 

At first my family and I lived in the North East Heights in a beautiful townhouse that presented a beautiful view of Sandia Peak, that mountain that reaches over four thousand feet above the river bottom and displays huge cliffs of brown granite. I loved sitting at the dining room table sipping a cup of coffee looking at that mountain. Sometimes the very top was covered with a thick icing of menacing storm clouds while the rest of the sky was blue and full of sunshine. 

After some months our children left home for their own adventures while my wife and I continued exploring our new home. Eventually we moved downtown into a comfortable apartment complex. I lost sight of the mountain due to our lower elevation and buildings, but I still had a pile of brown granite, a massive one called the Federal Building. I was quite pleased to sit at the same table sipping my morning coffee as in the Heights but now looking at an impressive structure made by people. I found it pleasing although profoundly different than the large mountain I had seen before. 

This beauty stands on 13th Avenue between
Lincoln and Broadway, Denver.
Photo by Phillip Hoyle

Of course I could see that other peak on my way to work. Other mountains as well.

In Denver I still get a wonderful view of Mount Evans as well as other mountains when I walk to the bus stop. Downtown there are fewer mountain views but many tall buildings. One my favorites is the one picture above that gives me not only a huge structure, but also views of the sky behind me. Many photographers have been fascinated by clouds reflected in windows. It's not the same as watching clouds in conjunction with a favorite mountain, but has its own wonders to reveal.

Denver, 2015

Artist Trading Cards

African Drums Artist Trading Cards prints with mixed media by Phillip Hoyle

I had fun printing and then finishing with collage and various pens a set of thirty Artist Trading Cards. I printed on pieces of cut up paintings--some finished, others just in process when I gave up on them. I started with a simple drum shape and printed several cards. Then I added a turtle design and printed more. Then I made the block into a mask and made another six cards. Finally I kept removing parts of the block until I had only the outline of a drum and its head. I printed these black on a several more cards. Some of them got ornamented with designs, the others simply with lines and a tiny bit of design near the bottom. 

Drum ATCs by Phillip Hoyle

I made these rather elaborate (though tiny, 3 1/2" x 2 1/2") pieces of art to please myself. Of course I'll trade most of them, but my purpose was to make drums that satisfied and entertained me. They were also part of my 68th birthday festivities, the part of those festivities I held in my studio.

Denver, 2015

Note Cards, Greeting Cards, Artist Trading Cards Galore

When I last worked at the Colorado Mountain Art Gallery in Georgetown, I looked and looked for my greeting and note cards display but couldn't find them anywhere. Okay, I said to myself, calm down and get logical. I looked more and still didn't see them. 

Later, when I was not looking for them and walked by the display for the umpteenth time, I spotted them, plain as day, right on a jewelry display case. It's sometimes difficult to see things when you know they are not there! Now they're in a great spot, and since locating them I've sold two boxes of note cards. And the rude thing about it is that I've got to get to work on some new ones! 

My plans: I've got these cards--probably a few more prints off older blocks, two big bunches of floral cards which I have begun, and of course, Christmas cards! I'm busy drawing, preparing grounds, purchasing supplies, and getting ready for at least three projects! I hope to take some new note cards to the Gallery in about two weeks when I next work there.

Nothing like a deadline to get this artist moving.

Hope you're having a wonderful summer of art and fun!

Denver, 2015