Cool City of Cleveland Who Knew?

Took a little trip to Cleveland just for fun. What a great mid sized Midwest city.  We flew ourselves into a small airport within walking distance to downtown, our lodging, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame & Progressive Field.

First stop was the Morgan Conservancy. A fantastic paper & book art facility. 

I know the director Tom Balbo who gave us a personal tour.  

If you get a chance the R & R Hall of Fame is well worth a visit. 

We spent several hours there & could have spent several more.

Looks like a nice exercise to mimic this lettering in a complete alphabet.

The Cleveland Art Museum is free!

I've been a fan of  Claes Oldenburg since I took an art history class as a freshman in college. His paint tube above & we spotted the huge FREE stamp of his in town on an UBER ride.

Who doesn't love a nice set of chain mail for protection?

I'm a sucker for a nice old door.

Botanical Gardens are something we try to see in the bigger cities we visit. This Lego dragonfly was clever. The hi light was the glass house where they had loads of butterflies including the large iridescent Morphos.


Our Detroit Tigers were in town that week end, we went to game three of the match up. Good thing, we saw them win!!! Progressive field is a beautiful stadium.

The evening weather was perfect for watching a game, drinking beer,

& eating a quesadilla as big as my head. Followed by a waffle cone. 

  

April Workshop with Pendragons Take Aways

This blind contour drawing of a lily and some yellow flowers with added water color 

& suminagashi on top was my favorite piece from a work shop I attended in April.

The Pendragons is a calligraphy guild I belong to based in Kalamazoo Michigan. Every spring they bring in a well known artist to do a 2-3 day work shop for us. This year is was Sharon Zeugin.

So many ways to write or "create" a word. Lots of exercises where we stretched, 

bounced, or somehow manipulated words & phrases.

A favorite tid bit from the work shop for me was what Sharon referred to as her

  Rorschach rectangles.

 A small rectangle of stamp material, about 2 X 4 inches. Paint water color in lines accross the surface. Place on your paper. You never know what result you will get 

which is the fun & magic of it. 

Fun to break out lots of tools & colors to play with.

Off to my favorite framing store this week. Arnie's in Houghton Lake. There is a stash of art work I've had set aside to frame for quite some time. My two art pals & I are making a pilgrimage to get our stuff done. Then will come the fun of where to put it in the walls.

Embossing Addiction Continues

   I can't help myself. I enjoy turning on the light box, getting out the alphabet components and disappearing into embossing. Every word can be a bit different every time.

 

 Deciding the way they should all go together is the fun.

They can also be used as stencils. Much quicker but a different result.

A good view of the cut letters on the light box & the stylus I use to make the impression in the paper.

Canson Mi-Teintes with it's slight texture gives a nice result. Lots of color choices.

I plan to create even more letter forms to play with. Custom cards anyone? Just ask.