Friday Egg: Invisible Ink

An etched goose egg, the design revealed in relief rather than color. Simple and elegant.

Happy Friday!

Friday Egg: Apricot

This week I am showing a brown chicken eggshell etched and then dyed in these delicious orange and apricot colors.  This one found a new home at the East Austin Studio Tour last month, so this is a goodbye post! 

Happy Friday and Happy Holidays!

Friday Egg: Gold Leaf

Another golden egg: This time it is an etched goose egg done in a ferny leaf pattern and then covered in sheets of 23.5K gold. So I called it Gold Leaf! Too obvious? Probably, but I could think of no other name once I thought of that one. I like that small bits of the white eggshell underneath peak out from between the leaves, the same way the sun might filter through a shady grove of trees.

As with any of my works, this piece is available through Camiba Art Gallery. 

Happy Friday!

Friday Egg: Caritas Super Exaltat Omnia

An ostrich egg, pure white and unaltered, broken open to reveal an inner life of golden light. A representation of the love a parent gives a child. The highest and deepest love to the child, as represented by the golden inner lining of the egg that protected and nurtured the child. But such love is not without consequence. The egg has to break for the child to grow. The dual states of parenthood, of love and pain.

This work can be seen at Gallery 701 at the Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Drive, in their show "Naissance" beginning November 18th and running until February 20, 2017. 

Friday Egg: "Elliptical Red/Blue"

Today's egg is an idea I have been working with this year. I have become fascinated with the interior of the eggshell and what the pores of the eggshell do with the dyes as I work my design on the outside. Usually, this beautiful scattering of colors is only seen after an egg breaks and at that point most people aren't in the mood to see how gorgeous it is inside. I want to bring this beautiful "conversation" between my work and the reaction of the eggshell to the fore without the disaster preceding the discovery, so I chose a goose egg that I was not particularly fond of and sawed about a quarter of the shell away to reveal the internal scene. And because I wanted this work to be about what was happening inside the eggshell, I decided to paint the exterior a matte black to hide my own half of the interaction and accentuate the beauty of what the eggshell had to say. In one of the photos, I took a close-up of the exterior and you can still see some of the etched outlines of my design in the black paint. One difficulty I had in photographing the work is that the dots of color are so beautifully diffuse that it is impossible to perfectly capture the image because it looks out of focus. This is definitely one that you should see in person if you can. 

Which you can! As I mentioned last week, the East Austin Studio Tour is coming up, Saturday and Sunday, November 12 - 13th, 19 - 20th from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. all four days. I'm stop #75 on the tour. For more information on the tour or to find out where my studio is, go to http://east.bigmedium.org/.

If I have enough photos of my work, I may just keep posting works that you just have to see in person to entice you to come on the tour. 

Happy Friday!

Friday Egg: "Translucency"

I enjoyed every part of creating this piece. A lovely plain and simple etched egg but with a giant hole cut into the eggshell, revealing the internal play of light and shadow. The etching is the most important part of this piece, as the light is blocked more by the thicker areas of eggshell so that the pattern can emerge internally. This first photo shows a good amount of the etching and a hint of the shadows inside, but if you go a couple of photos down you can more clearly see what is visible when you look inside. It reminds of sugar Easter eggs with scenes inside. And I'm tickled that it almost looks like and actual egg, with the white surrounding the darker yolk. This was a tough one for me to photograph and I would recommend that you see it in person if you can.

Which brings me to some timely news: you will soon have the opportunity if you want to see this work in person because the East Austin Studio Tour is approaching soon, Saturday and Sunday, November 12 - 13th, 19 - 20th from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. all four days. I'm stop #75 on the tour. For more information on the tour or to find out where my studio is, go to http://east.bigmedium.org/.

I'd love to show you this and all my other new work (I have some fun 2D work that I've been playing with!), so please come on by if you can.

Happy Friday!

Friday Egg: Pinwheel!

Color! Spinning patterns exploding from a central flower! All on a topsy-turvy starflower base. This goose egg was a lot of fun to make, but please don't ask me which colors I used or the order they were put on because I simply can't tell you. Every color! All the colors!

Happy Friday!

Friday Egg: Blue Moonflowers

Revisiting a pattern that I love today with a more unusual colorway. These are hollyhocks done in turquoise with red outlines and black and gray stems. I started here with a goose egg dyed red. I outlined all the flowers and stems with beeswax and then washed the color back to white. Then I dyed the egg turquoise and rinsed it until it was a very light blue and waxed the inner petals. I dyed it again to a medium turquoise and waxed, a darker turquoise and waxed, and a final really dark turquoise color. Once all the blues were covered, I rinsed again and then dyed the egg black, waxed, and rinsed to gray. Once everything was waxed, I put it in a vinegar bath to etch so I could get some dimension to the design. You can't see it very well in this first photo, but in some of the close-ups you can get a better view.

Happy Friday!