My friend, Doug, is a financial advisor in Indianapolis and envisioned a piece for his office to illustrate the mood swings of the market (timely, right?). His idea involved the spinning tops that were my subject matter years ago. 
 
Originally, Doug wanted market abbreviations to spin off the tops but I suggested company logos would communicate faster and be more fun. That is until I thought about how I could actually pull this off.

The drawing is nearly 6’ wide. Working that large with colored pencils had my head spinning along with the tops!
 
Thank you to Doug for his great idea, supporting my art for years, and being so positive though the process. 
 

Paradigm Gallery, Fort Wayne Museum of Art. 
Thursday, March 12.  5 – 7PM.

My spinning tops have spun back around! I focused on this subject matter over 10 years ago but last year I was commissioned to do two pieces involving tops. And then in January the Fort Wayne Magazine placed one of my pieces on their cover and also inside. An idea for a quick, mini art show was planted. 

I’ve completed several new works and am showing a number of older works; some never seen. Here’s a short version of my artist statement:
 
A spinning top is my metaphor for a person on life’s path. Like our lives, tops are 
born with a chaotic burst of energy and make a winding way to their imminent 
cessation. Their varying paths are much like our own; barreling straight toward a 
goal, aimlessly wandering, finding a groove and gaining momentum, or running 
around in circles. 
 
I really hope to see you there.

The magazine about all our regional dining gems, Savor, is out and I thank Sara and Caroline at the Fort Wayne Magazine for this challenge. Hope it makes you want to head to your fave brew pub or try a new one. I plan to go to Ambrosia for a cider. And to try mead. Fermented honey, wow.
 
The collage was made with hundreds of pieces of paper. The bulk of it is made from labels from our regional breweries. Below are my sketches/ideas. Sara and Caroline chose the beer explosion due to, well, the beer explosion. I named it “Pop” for the increase in popularity of beer and cider making and because “pop” is a nickname for beer.
 
I savored this opportunity. I hadn’t done a collage for a while. But now I can’t get my mind off the thousands of clock and watch photos I’ve collected for 15 years. Time!?

​My friend, and part owner of Club Soda, Jason Smith asked me to bring to life his concept for their 20-year poster. Woodstock turning 50 was his muse. 
 
It is fabulous to be part of the celebration as my firm, Riley+Company, created Club Soda’s branding, signage and neon all those years ago. Love it when things come full circle. 
 
Check out the schedule. Hope to see you there!

Fort Wayne Magazine’s City Guide! 
 
What a wonderful experience to work with Caroline (Art Director) and Sara (Editor) in creating an encaustic painting for the 2019 City Guide’s cover. They wanted letters. Letters are my thing, so I’ll spell it out:
T-H-A-N-K – Y-O-U.

Fort Wayne Magazine also wrote a nice feature on my art in this month's issue. I am very grateful.
 
And there’s always a smiley emoji in my heart for Abby at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art's Paradigm Gallery who champions my art and pointed these ladies my way.

How cool is it when I get a commission? VERY. Lutheran Hospital wanted a drawing reminiscent of a style I worked in over 11 years ago. This was both fun and challenging. (I’ve drawn two more since!) The work I’d done in this medium was small. The piece they wanted was 36” x 36”.
 
If you’d like to see this drawing called “Life,” it’s on the 2nd floor of the main hospital. Thank you so much to Lutheran Hospital and the Paradigm Gallery at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art for making this happen. 

​Obviously: 1. making art wins out over 2. writing about art. Keeping 2 the 2 theme – welcome 2 the 2uality of encaustic painting! When pieces don’t sell, I live with them, look at them, store them, look at them a 2ndtime, and decide if they are still worthy. If not, I get my heat gun and palette knife and dig in. 
 
The Lake and The Cove are available for purchase at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art’s Paradigm Gallery.

​"Her Wings" became "The Pool."

"Dream" became "The Lake," which is available for purchase at the Paradigm Gallery in the Fort Wayne Museum of Art.

"Love" became "The River"

And "Cling" became "The Cove," also available at the Paradigm Gallery.

​Well, the best kind of surprise occured when doing what is called a “ghost print.” The rest of the class got a chuckle when I about lost my mind over it. If I hadn’t been there to see how it happened I would never have figured the process. 

​A “ghost print” is a print you can make once you have completed the intended print. You send the plate through the press again as it usually has enough ink on it to make one or two ghost prints. With these works, I took off the stencils and then made the ghost print. That’s why the magic happened. Edgar Degas is known for making gorgeous ghost prints. I didn’t make this up!

​What a gift that student gave me. And what a surprise birthday party sort of a thing art is. Never quite knowing how something is going to turn out and then getting to see how it turns out, well, I can’t get enough of it. And I can’t wait to be wrong again.

The example below is of a ghost's ghost. 

​The last couple winters I have taken a printmaking class. One of my classmates saw my palette and loved it. She suggested I try something she does. What the heck.
 
I made four prints and contemplated them for weeks. My classmate prints on top of them. I planned on giving them to another student; they simply were not my style.
 
One day, I read an article about black holes. The photographs looked just like my strange prints. Off I went! I became obsessed and dreamt of hogging the press. 

You can see my original spacey background through the stencils. I am in the process of designing the second layer. 

Again, you can see through the stencils to the starry background. When printmaking, you have to think in reverse. But when working with words, not only do the letters have to be positioned backwards, but so do the words. Thank goodness I figured out that my words weren’t spelled backwards before I printed this. The result didn’t thrill me. My palette for the second layer ended up too like the palette below. Darn it. I loved the words: MAGICAL ERRATIC FIZZLING IMMENSITY.

​With this next piece, something on press went awry and the stencils slipped. However, the accident was happy. The sliding letters illustrated the concept so fabulously. Something that is voracious is hungry and in space that means the entity pulls debris, stars, planets, anything into itself.

​I carve wax away as often as I apply it when creating an encaustic painting. That wax is gathered in a ball. And when it gets large enough, I melt it into a wonderful neutral that I couldn’t have mixed in a million years. Recently I looked at some of my carvings and thought,  “I can make art with these instead of melting them down.”