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