Sue Clancy's Blog, page 57
August 8, 2016
Upick Book Farm Art
Finished a new art piece destined for the Caplan Art Designs gallery one-person exhibit I’ll be having in October! The opening party will be a 3 course wine dinner party at The Daily in The Pearl. You can get more info about that on the Caplan Art Designs events page – look at “Cooks, Corks and Co-conspirators”. Yep, I’d be a considered a co-conspirator. Anyway, here’s the info about this newbie art piece:
U-Pick Book Farm
By Sue Clancy
12 x 9 x 1.5 inches
Hand dyed paper, handmade paste paper, hand woven paper, found paper, acrylic on cradled board
And, if you missed my prior blog post where I told and showed about this artwork in progress here’s a bit about my thinking behind it:
U-Pick Book Farm by Sue Clancy
Combining the concepts of local u-pick fruit and vegetable farms with local libraries that have baskets for a patron’s book harvest and adding the burrowing, digging instinct of a dachshund.
U-Pick Book Farm By Sue Clancy 12 x 9 x 1.5 inches Hand dyed paper, handmade paste paper, hand woven paper, found paper, acrylic on cradled board
August 7, 2016
the art of a book basket
Here in the Pacific Northwest I am able to go to a farm and “U-pick” my own fruits and veg – often the farmer will hand me a bucket to hold my freshly picked produce.
Recently at my local library had about 16 books balanced between my hip and my arm while I used my other hand to look up something on the computer. A librarian saw me standing in this awkward pose and held out a basket saying “Would this help?”. Wow a basket to hold my freshly “picked” books!
Both of these situations inspired some art I’m currently working on for an upcoming one-woman art exhibit via the Caplan Art Design gallery in Portland Oregon. Anyway, here’s a photo of me arranging my cut hand dyed papers to make a basket full of books just prior to gluing them together. Each paper was hand dyed to be the color and pattern it is – and the “basket” is handwoven hand dyed paper. Not pictured are the “plants” the books are being harvested from!
Sue Clancy in the process of assembling a fine art piece with her hand dyed papers that have been cut out in different shapes.
August 3, 2016
sketching the Oregon Coast
In the current August 2016 issue of Oregon Coast Magazine I have an article titled “Sketching The Coast”! Right there, in print, on page 42 it says “illustrations by Sue Clancy” (Wow!) !! On the title page of the magazine next to a big 42 it reads “An illustrator records her travel experiences to Newport in whimsical cartoons”. How fun is that for a teaser?! But just think, my messy sketchbook, in print, in a slick glossy magazine, Oregon Coast Magazine, a gadzillion copies of which are actually available on newsstands right this minute! Blows my mind to contemplate that. Here’s a link to their website: http://www.oregoncoastmagazine.com/index.html – so you can order a copy mailed to you if you live someplace like Ohio, Pennsylvania or Timbuktu – but you’ll only see my article up close if you get an actual physical printed copy! Yep, you guessed it, I’m loving the whole “my art in print” thing!
Sue Clancy’s illustrated article in the August 2016 issue of Oregon Coast Magazine
July 29, 2016
quiet books noisy thoughts
I made my first ‘artist book’ when I was about 6 years old. I had become deaf when I was about 4 or 5. It happened in summer and my birthday is in the summer so was I still 4 years old when it happened, or had I turned 5? At any rate the world became silent. This was not a problem for me. It was just my normal life before I got my first set of hearing aids. I lived with my grandmother and life was good. Except for the brief times when I was taken to visit my biological parents. During the weekends at their house an angry yelling adult frequently appeared in my field of vision shouting “BE QUIET!”
This was a mystery to me. What did the phrase “be quiet” mean? I had already learned to read, write and draw. I already knew that the public library was a place full of wonderful magical books full of mysterious things that other people knew. Books were how people collected and kept what they learned and how they made it available for kids like me to see! (Wow!) So after a few weekends of two adults taking turns shouting “BE QUIET” I began my investigation.
I gathered several sheets of paper together and stapled them along one edge. I began to record, mostly in drawings, what I had just been doing when the “BE QUIET” message was delivered at the top of grownup lungs. Between these weekends I went with my grandmother to the library. There I asked a librarian how I would find out what the phrase “be quiet” meant and how someone did that ‘be quiet’ thing.
I don’t recall the exact encounter with the librarian, I mostly remember having a lot of trouble explaining what exactly it was that I wanted to learn. I remember eventually being introduced to the Dictionary and other books containing information about ears, hearing and sound. I wrote and drew, in fat-first-grade pencil, everything I learned into my stapled handmade book. When I was done, and back at home with grandmother again, I created a yellow colored construction paper cover for my book, glued one edge of the construction paper to the staples and titled it, in red crayon, “The Be Quietness Book”.
Long story short I had created my first entry into what, as an adult, I’ve learned is a genre within the Book Arts world: “Books that help you think about and make sense of your experience in the world”
And I’ve been making artist books ever since. You can see some of them on my artist book page here: https://sueclancy.com/artist-books/
Photo of me laughing and drinking coffee while working in my studio.
July 27, 2016
There’s a great editor in Cybertown, and you found her!
Hey look! A freelance editor friend of mine is going “public” with her editorial-ship-ness! Yea I made up a hyphenated (caffeinated?) word just to play with her mind. You may be thinking “what’s a creative visual artist doing cultivating a friendship with an editor-type?” Well I want to play-well-with-others in the publishing and gallery worlds so it seems a good thing to have my eye’s spotted and my tee’s golfed. Or is that i’s dotted and t’s… See what I mean? Editor’s rule! And Lorna’s a dam* good one – I know because I’ve consulted with her a time or two.
Uh. What? Is something important happening here? Do I need to pay attention?
How many times in the past hoursdaysweeks months have you wondered why your favorite dizzy blonde wonkerific blogger hasn’t been posting as frequently as she used to?
Really? You haven’t noticed what I may or may not have or haven’t been doing or not doing? Shizzlesticks in a mudpie!
Well, wake up and smell your smoking motherboard.
It’s good to have options.
I’m here to tell you that Lorna is back in Cybertown and she’s been busy being a darned tootin’ fine editor. (By the way, I’m Lorna.)
These are my Professional Editor Glasses. I will put them on for the remainder of this post. You WILL notice a difference.
Don’t concern yourself that prior sentences in this post may or may not have been technically grammatically correct or that there were words the Oxford Dictionary…
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July 25, 2016
big artist pants
Well today I pulled up my big artist pants, squared my shoulders, and submitted my artist book “A Fish Story” to the 23 Sandy Gallery www.23sandy.com for an upcoming juried book arts exhibit titled “Pop-Up Now II”. Wish me luck! I’m hoping to get to play with the big artists in that exhibit! The juror’s are impressive (intimidating?!) – the artist’s who were in the first “Pop-Up” exhibit at 23 Sandy were OMG awesome (you can see some of their book-work via this link here: http://23sandy.com/works/product-category/curated-collections/pop-up-movable) – So I have a serious case of the little kid to big kid adoration. You know stuff along the lines of “Oh I wanna play! Pick me! Please? Pretty please? I’ll show you my glue and paper collection…I can do this… I wanna learn that…Show me how… teach me ….let me…aww com’on…”
And this gives you a glimpse into my philosophy of selecting which gallery and which arts events I try to participate in: Does it inspire me to do my absolute best? Does it challenge me as an artist? If the answer is yes – then I get my brave on and go for it! No matter what the outcome is – I’ll learn something in the process and I’ll become a better artist for the effort!
One of the big learning curves – besides making a pop-up book with 4 different movable pop-up mechanisms (whew!) – was making a video of “A Fish Story”! I’m so gosh-darn proud of it I’m posting a link to it again here: https://youtu.be/3gx6QmzXlpM – and in case you’ve just joined this show here is a still photo of one of the pages of “A Fish Story” – that green tab lets the viewer move the fish into the water away from the fisherman. (Yep, that mechanism was hard to construct… but details about that is a different blog post.)
page from the artist book “A Fish Story” by Sue Clancy
July 22, 2016
Finally A Fish Story
Here is the long awaited video of my artist book “A Fish Story” – first I had to catch it (make the video), then I had to grill it (edit it down to one minute – the gallery wants all videos at a minute or less) then I had to de-bone it (remove the sound) after a next-door friend said he could hear his electric sander in the background of the video. (Q: How does a deaf person edit sound on a video? A: Verrry carefully with help from spouse and friends!) But finally… here is A Fish Story!
July 19, 2016
artist book rabbit
Practicing my video techniques again in prep for filming my pop-up book “A Fish Story” (see more about that elsewhere on my blog)… this time I’m practicing video with a rabbit. Even had to “trim” my original video. But don’t worry, no actual bunnies were harmed in the production of this artist book or the film of it.
July 18, 2016
road trip inspired apparel
Recently I took a wonderful road trip to Boise Idaho to visit family there. Drove through the Columbia River Gorge on the Oregon side… saw waterfalls on the way to Idaho, saw the sunlight on the Boise foothills, then on the way home – again through the Columbia River Gorge – there was a spectacular sunset, sun shining on the rocky cliffs above the water. Needless to say I jotted pattern notes in my sketchbook. (I stopped at a rest stop to do that – don’t worry I did not draw and drive!) When I got back to the studio I created my patterns on handmade paper and then, after the papers were dry, photographed and uploaded the patterns to my signature collection at VIDA. http://shopvida.com/collections/voices/sue-clancy I’m imagining how fun it will be in the middle of winter to wear a waterfall, a summer sunset or the sunlit Boise foothills!
A pattern design I did based on a waterfall I saw on a road trip. http://shopvida.com/collections/voices/sue-clancy
A pattern design I did based on a summer sunset I saw on a road trip. http://shopvida.com/collections/voices/sue-clancy
A pattern design I did based on seeing the sunlit Boise foothills on a road trip. http://shopvida.com/collections/voices/sue-clancy
July 12, 2016
artist book Geo Erosion
Here I go again practicing filming one of my artist books in action. My pop-up book “A Fish Story” (pictured in earlier blog posts) is in stages of drying – and when it’s dry I’ll have to show it’s pop-up glory (ahem, cough!) on film. So… I’m working up to that one. In the meantime I’m practicing video techniques with my other artist books. This one, titled “Geo Erosion” is an altered book: I took an existing geology textbook and used an Xacto knife to cut out erosion patterns in the paper. Now, less talk more video:
