Where I work there’s a long long hallway, and time was, when you’d be walking down it from here to there, it would be the most boring walk – unless you brought a book along to read as you went — which I often did. Somewhat more than a year ago, an enterprising fellow decided to jump through the hoops necessary to bring art to the hallway. He hung a marvelous set of pieces, mostly I believe from the collections of fellow employees and bosses. And recently he announced that he was taking suggestions for a new set of art – it could be employees’ work, or our family members’, or pieces from our collections. Guess whose hand went up fast? Pick me! Pick me! And so I got picked to adorn a section of that long grey concrete hallway — to show the people I work with, most of whom have no idea what I do when I leave work, the arty side of me.
But what to choose! The pieces had to be hang-up-able, none of my fabric vases or bowls, no mixed-media boxes, no bowties or lutradur butterfly earrings. I did want to show some of the unusual and innovative materials and processes that I use, and I wanted to show my range. So what do you think — here’s my display:
A closer view of the pieces on the left side (if you click on the picture you can see it a bit larger):
First on the left is your basic framed print, my shot of an odontoglossum orchid (say that 3 times fast), below that is my mixed media piece called Hidden Treasure, which is a heat transfer to canvas of a self-portrait double exposure I took of myself years ago. If it’s familiar to you, we’re probably Facebook friends, because the image is my FB avatar. Above that to the right is my Lavender Rust art quilt in a frame that I finished with Transfer Artist Paper. I’ve written about my process in making the quilt at this link. And I’ve written about finishing it and framing it at this link. Then the last piece in this section is a framed print of my Bamboo image, which is a photograph of a bamboo shoot in our garden that I simplified and rendered to look like a pencil drawing.
And the other side:
First at the left top is my Koi Pond and Wisteria blended collage, which I printed on lutradur. I framed it in a glass floating frame, to emphasize the translucency of the lutradur. This is my blog post talking about the piece. Below that is my Fallen Log and Fossil blended collage, which is a Transfer Artist Paper transfer to an art board. This is my blog post about that piece. Above that to the right is a small art quilt, a print of my Iris Dream blended collage on cotton, which I quilted with metallic thread and mounted on a piece of metal mesh and adorned with pearls stitched to the mesh at random. Finally at the bottom right is another framed print, this one of my Egret Swirl image – a photograph of an egret fishing in Lake Merritt, which I rendered to look a bit abstract and dreamy.
Next week he’ll put up the bios that we wrote and the blurbs for each piece, and I’m very curious to see whether people let me know what they think. Before I left work today, I walked down the hallway and two of my co-workers were looking at the Hidden Treasure piece. Near the top is a piece of copper that I embossed with the title of the piece: “Hidden Treasure”. They weren’t sure what it said, so I just sidled over and said, “Yeah, it’s ‘hidden treasure’”. I probably shouldn’t have intruded, they didn’t react, but oh well.
So I didn’t tell you about the rest of the art along the long hallway — there are some incredible underwater photographs printed on canvas, and two sublime quilts. I love the variety of the entire collection. Anyway, I’m just sayin’ — if you need a push to get the courage up to ask to adorn a blank wall where you work, where you get your coffee every morning, whatever, consider yourself pushed!
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