Re-Discovering Scratchboard.

 I've always loved black lines. Must be the memory of all the joy of coloring books and crayons. The MAC, (Macoupin Artists Co-Operative, Staunton, IL) has a Tiny Creepy Art Show every October. I love Halloween so I'm all in. I explored the studio checking out all the options and discovered some small scratchboards leftover from kid's programs at the library. I took them home and came up with these:

I never really LOVED scratchboard before but....I was addicted....bought more boards and created several collections of bookmarks/miniart/fridgeart. Ones for Tiny Creepy, ones for FALL and up coming four collections of small and larger works for Christmas. Here's an overview of the Tiny Creepies (showing at the MAC in Staunton, IL and heARTland Gallery in Hillsboro, IL)  and the Fall Collection (showing at Shibui Studio Art Gallery in Gillespie, IL) Some of the tiny creepies:

The Fall Collection at Shibui Studio Art Gallery, Gillespie, IL.

Collage Butterflies

 I have an overabundance of paper at the studio. Calendars, dust jackets from library picture books, shiny papers, textured papers, maps, music, and all the colors you could imagine. So I decided to create some Butterfly collages. I started out with some imaginary butterflies and they evolved becoming women butterflies. I showed them at the heARTland Gallery in Hillsboro Il along with a retrospective of my husband's art. It was a great show and I'm very grateful that Martha asked me to show our work there. (I think I have butterflies out of my system for awhile now!)