"Far Away"

It is almost four years since my buddy Cassie died, but I am still working with her. She got hurt in 2011 and couldn't walk up the stairs for a couple of weeks, so we camped out on the first floor. She still had her favorite vantage points to see what was happening outside, but the marks she made on the door were more suggestive to me of a prisoner marking off days on a wall. I called the original print "Crossing Off" and had two color versions of it - an OK but not outstanding print. I have been working with new palettes and filters this year and thought it would be fun to rework some of the older ones. Wow - fun! "Crossing Off" really popped and became "Far Away", because the new shapes and colors created a fantasy landscape of sorts, someplace far away. 

Back to that summer - Cassie got really tired of the arrangement downstairs, and about 10 days into our 2-week recuperation she marched up the stairs when I forgot to block them - wasn't long before she was napping on the bed and couch and looking out the window again. She was one happy girl!

Another Round of "Brickworks"

I started using a glass brick as a viewfinder in 2010. When a print would misfire, I would take whatever came out and tape it behind the brick and photograph it, distorting the original image into something entirely new - great fun! I called the new works "second generation PiCassieO", since the resulting images came from finished art and not directly from master artist Cassie. It is incredible to see totally different images come from the same source! The one below was the first in this series. I think it started from a partial print of "Big Lick" as seen through the brick.

 This version was never printed and got lost in the files, but not before I had extracted "Da Bird" and "Da Bird, Too!" from it.

 Last year I got a new computer, and in the process of moving files I rediscovered the original and a couple of versions I'd forgotten, and started playing with it again. "Brickworks: Advent" (below) was the first new one - if you look very closely, bet you can find da bird!  I called it "Advent" because I did it during the holidays and the colors were everywhere.

 

I liked the colors so much I used it on a phone case and note cards in my Zazzle store.

The image was so much fun to play with, I had to go further...

...and further (can you see the difference?...

 It never stops, sometimes - I gave the top print to a friend, and she decided she liked it better as a vertical (to the right), which I had also considered. She named it "Desert Dream", which was fine with me since the best I could come up with was "Hot Colors"'.  Then I switched gears and went for a more subtle effect, which was pretty but not nearly as exciting. There are two other versions which are presently lost, but I will post them sooner or later.

The possibilities never end - I have lots of new material, but it is so fascinating to look at the older ones in a different way. BTW - this is the final version of the print that started it all - "Big Lick", named for obvious reasons when you consider the source. :)