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