Saturday, August 30, 2025

Keepunumuk - Garry Meeches


I love these illustrations by Garry Meeches Sr.






Garry Meeches Sr. (Anishinaabe) was born on the Long Plains reserve in southern Manitoba, Canada. His style is reminiscent of the plains style of art and evokes the Eastern Woodlands tradition. He lives in Connecticut.

 

SUGAR CANE - Illustrated by Raul Colon

I love this illustrations by Raul Colon.












Raul Colón grew up in Puerto Rico, where he studied commercial art. He moved to Miami in 1978 to work at an educational television center, and ten years later he made New York his home, and began a freelance illustration career. An acclaimed artist, Colon’s work has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, Time Magazine, The New Yorker, and The Wall Street Journal.

An award-winning illustrator of over thirty books for children, including gallery owner Richard Michelson’s: As Good As Anybody: Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Amazing March Toward Freedom, and Roberto Clemente, which was recently banned in Florida, and is being highlighted in this exhibition. The industry has recognized Colón with a Golden Kite Award, two Pura Belpré Awards, a gold and silver medal from the Society of Illustrators, and two Tomas Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Awards.

Colón uses very unique techniques in his artwork to create texture and rich, deep colors. He begins with textured watercolor paper, adds 5 to 8 washes on top of each other, and then uses colored pencils and a scratchboard instrument appropriately called a ‘scratcher’ to draw down through the layers.”


 

Tuesday, August 26, 2025

Drowning People - Touchstone Batiks

 I'm at  Touchstone Center for Crafts freezing my ass of in Western Pennsylvania taking African Batik class with Gasali Adeyemo.  I got a scholarship for this workshop that covered tuition but not room and board.  I'm in a wooden structure without heat. It's charming but again I'm a SoCal girl and I'm freezing.

 I was awarded a 1 month residency at Kala today.  I'm really proud of myself.  Maybe I'm a good artist.

I made these swirls for waves in Key West and they ended up linking up all my work around the Henrietta Marie.











At Touchstone yesterday, I thought I'd Batik some of them.  You can see my control is not that great but maybe there's some charm to being out of control.  Who knows.  The idea was to make the fabric to use in the quilt later.














I had made this digital collage from scanned images in Key West.  It's the crew of the Henrietta Marie drowning.


All the images are hand painted and them assembled in photoshop.  These are pictures from my work I made in Key West.




These are the batiks I've made so far with the same concept as the work from Key West yesterday at Touchstone.  I might embroider on top of it.  Maybe not.





















This one I think is good as is. It would be great to have some good pieces to enter in that San Ramon call for a one person show.

I started to work on one with the boat at the top and drowning black people in the sea to represent Middle Passage. I got














Saturday, August 23, 2025

Joshua Tree Collages

 I don't know if these are stupid, juvenile, are excellent.  But I made this watercolor collages based on the colors, landscape and petroglyphs at Joshua Tree.