Online Puzzles with the Woodson Art Museum!

Some months ago the Woodson Art Museum, home of the spectacular annual exhibition, Birds in Art, starting sharing online jigsaw puzzles of work in their permanent collection. 

I have been deeply honored to have several of my pieces accessioned there over the years, so imagine my great delight when some of them started appearing as puzzles! There are presently four of my images on the Woodson puzzle page (right now they are the last four on the page, scroll down!), along with dozens of others. 

Here are the direct links to "my" puzzles. You can change the number and size of the pieces, as well as invite other people to play with you... so... have fun!

Cruisin' - (American White Pelican)

A Tern of the Tide (Common Tern)

Shower With a Friend (Wood Ducks)

Oops. I guess I don't have a big image of this.
Ripples (mallard)

It's that time... Birds in Art and Project Postcard

 September approaches, and with it comes the annual delight that is the Birds in Art exhibition at the Woodson Art Museum in Wisconsin. 

Birds in Art is the museum's flagship show, and a touchstone exhibition for wildlife artists around the world. It is always such an honor to have one's work selected, and indeed one of my pieces will be included in the show when it opens on September 11. 

But before the show begins, there's always the fun task of creating a couple of new little pieces for the Project Postcard event that accompanies the opening. Birds in Art artists create and donate 4 x 6-inch artworks which are then sold for a flat amount. Funds raised through Project Postcard are used to purchase work from the exhibition for the museum's permanent collection.

I am always happy to participate in the event, particularly since my own work has been purchased via the Project on more than one occasion. Of course I can't show you what I've submitted before the sale happens... but I can give you a hint. Any guesses?

Beyond Artworks: Artists & Their Stories at the Woodson Art Museum

Long time readers of Brush and Baren have no doubt heard (read) me wax poetic about the delights of the Woodson Art Museum. I have been fortunate to have my work juried in to the Woodson's flagship international exhibition, Birds in Art, a dozen times, and honored to have several pieces later accessioned to the museum's permanent collection. It's probably easiest to tell you about the breadth of the collection by quoting from the museum's website: 

The Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum collection began with birds and then took flight to encompass and embrace the art of the natural world. The 1976 inaugural exhibition, Birds of the Lakes, Fields and Forests, set the stage. Today, more than 14,000 works of art, including paintings, drawings and field sketches, graphics, photographs, and sculpture, celebrate the essence and spirit of birds from around the world. The collection also includes decorative arts: more than 125 Victorian glass baskets, early twentieth-century utilitarian and decorative glassware and porcelains, nearly 100 Royal Worcester porcelain bird figurines designed by Dorothy Doughty, and a survey collection of historic and contemporary glass vessel forms and sculptural objects.

Like most public institutions around the world, the Woodson spent several months of the last year closed to visitors. They are delightedly welcoming the community through their doors again, and doing so with a new exhibition curated from their collection. Beyond Artworks: Artists & Their Stories celebrates the paths of artworks from creation to acquisition.... and includes sculptures, paintings (and two linocuts!) by past and present masters of wildlife art (and me!). Although I'm not able to be at the show in person, the museum sent along installation photos and, OH! if you are at all in the neighborhood I think you need to check it out. It looks beautiful. 

Show continues through June 6, 2021. 

And speaking of migration... Birds in Art 2020!

"A Tern of the Tide," reduction linocut © Sherrie York

It's been a season of disappointment, as workshops and exhibitions everywhere have been cancelled. But this past week brought a spark of delight as I learned that "A Tern of the Tide" has been accepted for the 2020 edition of the Woodson Art Museum's annual Birds in Art exhibition.

Birds in Art is the one of the most prestigious exhibitions of wildlife art worldwide, and I am always humbled and honored when my work is selected. 

The show opens September 12 and will run through November 29.

The September Shows: Linocuts everywhere!

I've enjoyed a little respite from the crazy pace of the summer, catching up with some of the myriad tasks that were neglected when my schedule hit Mach 10.

Some of what was happening in all the summer craziness was the framing and shipping of work for three major exhibitions, all happening in September. Which is almost now!

"Four on the Fence," reduction linocut © Sherrie York

The Woodson Art Museum's flagship exhibition is one of the highlights of the wildlife art year. Birds in Art 2019 includes the work of 114 international artists, and will honor British colored pencil artist Alan Woollett as this year's Master Wildlife Artist. Show opens to the public on Saturday, September 7 and will continue through December 1.

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It's my great honor to have been invited to participate in the Susan K. Black Foundation's exhibition "In the Audubon Tradition," opening at the Cincinnati Museum Center on September 12 and continuing through January 5, 2020. The show includes work by 80 of the top artists in the wildlife art field...  whew!

(This list embiggenable with a click)

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The Society of Animal Artist's 59th "Art and the Animal" exhibition opens this year at the Briscoe Western Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas on September 20. Show continues through January 5, 2020. Selections from the show (including my piece, Chasing Daylight) will go on national tour following the event's close at the Briscoe.

"Chasing Daylight," reduction linocut © Sherrie York

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Also, don't forget it's your last chance to see "Under Pressure: Birds in the Printed Landscape" at the Museum of American Bird Art in Canton, Massachusetts. Show closes September 15, so don't delay!

"Dinner Party," reduction linocut © Sherrie York

Wow? What just happened?

My submissions for this year's Project Postcard event at the Woodson Art Museum.

It's a cloudy and cool-ish day here in midcoast Maine, with a few rain showers moving through. Sure, we're still having days of heat and humidity, but yesterday when I drove to town I noticed two large maple trees with a distinctly orange tinge to their outermost leaves.

Summer is winding down.

While I know some people try to avoid thoughts of summer's end, this year I feel inclined to embrace it. I gave myself a rather ridiculous schedule these last three months and by golly I'm tired.

There's still plenty to do... and I'm even starting to put things into place in my 2020 schedule already... but the pace seems more reasonable. I should probably emphasize the word seems, since I know looks can be deceiving.

But I've managed to squeak out some hours in the studio the last couple of weeks. Both projects were "secrets," however, so I don't have much to show at the moment. The photo here is a distorted view of my linocut submissions for this year's Project Postcard event at the opening of Birds in Art at the Woodson Art Museum.

Birds in Art artists donate small (4x6 inch) artworks which are installed in a secret location. Patrons pay $50 for the opportunity to spend one minute (!!) in the company of the many lovely (and anonymous) pieces and to choose one to take home. The museum uses the Project Postcard funds to purchase works from the exhibition for its permanent collection... a win-win-win for museum, artists, and collectors.

In addition to small print projects I have finally managed to ship the last of my works to major fall exhibitions, so whew! I can check that off the to-do list, also.

So what's next? Oooooh! A big, not-so-secret project! I've been asked to be the poster artist for the 2020 World Migratory Bird Day events! It's an exciting opportunity, although a little bit daunting due to the short production timeline. But I had my first design conference with the organizer yesterday, and I'll be jumping in to some rough sketches the rest of this week.

And of course I've got linos on my mind... I'd like to get some smaller works going before the end of the year... although right now my brain seems stuck in ideas that demand a larger scale. Hopefully my creativity will start cooperating in more practical ways soon.

So stay with me as I switch gears and head back into the studio season. Make sure your wood pile is well-stacked and your tea supplies ready to go before the cold arrives! We've got some linos to make...

Three crazy weeks, and then back to the studio

Alright... where the heck were we before I started running all over the universe again?

Yes. Duck linocut in progress. Hm. Howzabout I share a little about where I've been the last couple of weeks, and then we'll get back to work, okay?

First: Birds in Art!!!! This is not just a legitimate excuse for being out of the studio, it's the best reason of the year for packing a bag and a rubber duck* and heading for Wisconsin.

My linocut, "Watching + Waiting," hanging in august company at
Birds in Art. (Yes, that's a Robert Bateman oil on the wall to the left.)

If you've never been to the Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, all I can say is that you've been missing out on some of the most inspiring exhibitions and community-minded events to be found. Anywhere. Trust me. Just go there.

And if you go in the autumn you will find the walls filled with their flagship exhibition, Birds in Art. It's one of the most prestigious wildlife art shows in the world, and it's always an honor to have work juried in to this exhibition. And, wow! I was surprised and touched to have work included in two other exhibits currently on view there: Regal Bearing: Bird Portraiture (from the museum's permanent collection), and a fun little collection of pages from the museum's guest books... including two I created during my residencies in 2018 and 2013.

I was barely home from Birds in Art when I turned around and headed downeast to Mount Desert Island, home of Acadia National Park and the Wendell Gilley Museum. The Gilley is a tiny gem of a museum, centered around a large collection of Wendell Gilley's bird carvings, but which also presents exhibitions of related work in paint, print, and sculpture.

I visited the Gilley to open conversations about upcoming collaborations... I'm excited to share what we're cooking up, but that will have to wait just a bit.

The day after I returned from the Gilley Museum I was up to my elbows in framing for another show, which I installed yesterday at the Gilsland Farm Audubon Center in Falmouth, Maine. It's a challenging space to photograph... a long, narrow gallery with floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall, so you'll just have to go there to see it for yourself. Show runs through October 28.

Whew! This morning I was finally back in the studio slinging ink, so you can expect an update from there in the next day or two.

*Oh. I suppose the rubber duck reference deserves an explanation. A few years ago the Woodson Museum staff gave Birds in Art artists a rubber duck and asked us to include it in social media posts. My ducky still travels... in fact this year our unfortunate travel delays enroute to Wausau had a silver lining: Ducky met our airline captain and got his Junior Pilot wings. You just never know where he'll turn up next. Kinda like a certain printmaker.  #birdsinartducky

Linocut in Progress: Sort of...

The best laid plans, and all that. It's September, and while one might hope that the end of summer would mean a slow down in the schedule, one would be engaging the aforementioned hope in vain.

I did get a fourth color pass printed on the current linocut in progress. It was, as I think I predicted, a fairly straightforward transparent blue.

Reduction linocut in progress, Step 4 revealed!

Instagram followers saw this sneak peek on the press... I think last Thursday. And yes, it's been an entire week without additional printing, but guess what? The ink is still damp. (Hello, Maine.) It's okay to print, I've just been a bit preoccupied. First the print:

The color looks streaky, but it's not. Wet ink, uneven table surface, bad photography.
The trifecta of horribleness.

And now for the excuses.

Friday/Saturday: Midcoast Audubon Lobster Bake Fundraiser. One day to shop and make fish chowder and cream puffins for 75 people, the next day to cook and serve lobsters, clams, corn, and potatoes in addition to aforementioned chowdah and dessert. (I bet you aren't on a board of directors that requires this kind of duty.)

Mmm. Lobster, corn, and taters smoked and steamed in a bed of seaweed.

Sunday: Studio and home visitors.

Monday: Prep for upcoming presentations. Attempt to run errands but... oh. Holiday. How rude. Do a little carving (!!!!), but not enough to print. Continue to fight ants in the studio.

Tuesday: Run all the errands not accomplished Monday and meet with a collector in Rockland.

Today: Laundry, haircut, and packing... because it's time for..... BIRDS IN ART! Tomorrow I'm off to Wisconsin for the opening of the exhibition at the Woodson Art Museum.

A ducky confab at the suitcase means it's time for Birds in Art!

And there went the week. Next week isn't much better in terms of available studio time– More visitors, more meetings, and framing for a show that I will hang September 19 at Maine Audubon's Gilsland Farm Nature Center.

Honestly. When someone tells you how wonderful it must be to be an artist, able to sit around and make prints all day long, send them to me. I'll set them straight. All of these other activities (ok, ok... all except the lobster bake) are part of the job, they just don't involve making art.

Hopefully I'll be able to sneak in and get the next color printed before I have to take off again (next Thursday), keep your fingers crossed for me!

But first... I'm off to see if the last item of clothing is dry enough to put in the suitcase, and triple-check that I packed my toothbrush. Stay tuned!

Workshops everywhere, and some linos, too!

Whew! July and August... what happened to them?

After two weeks of workshops on at Hog Island Audubon Camp and a short workshop at Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge I immediately... led more workshops!

The first week of August I was joined by eleven fun and inspirational women for a week-long field sketching adventure, hosted by the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland. Naturally it was a week of record heat and humidity, but we were fortunate that our class met mornings and we were able to avoid the worst of the oppressive afternoons. We spent time at Owls Head Light, the Rockland South Beach, and in the garden (complete with chickens!) of one of our group members.

Sketching at Owls Head Light

We spent the hottest morning inside the museum, first drawing from Ai Wei Wei's Circle of Animals gold zodiac heads, and then taking a close look at the preliminary drawings for a number of Andrew Wyeth's paintings. Fun!

Sketching in the Ai Wei Wei exhibit at the Farnsworth Art Museum

The group had such a great time that we've scheduled a "reunion" sketch date next week in Rockport Harbor. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again and filling a page or two of my own this time!

I thought I'd be getting back in the studio the following week, but I was called to sub for some workshop sessions back on Hog Island for Family Camp. This time I was sketching with kids and parents and grandparents...

Sketching in the gardens on Hog Island

Whew! All done now, right? Not quite! I had a pile of framing, packing and shipping to do for upcoming shows at Ann Korologos Gallery in Basalt, Colorado and Oh Be Joyful Gallery in Crested Butte, Colorado. It was the first time I had to manage all that in my new place, so it took extra time to figure out new working systems. But I got it all done, and I know at least some of the work has already made it to its destination.

At long last I got into the studio last week, to work on two small linocuts for Project Postcard, coming up during the Birds in Art exhibition at the Woodson Art Museum in Wisconsin. Carving went well, but the morning I set up to print... disaster!!!!

If you've been following along since my move you might know that Presston, my lovely 30 x 60 Takach press, came out of his 6-month storage adventure with a buckled laminate surface on the bed. After some panicked correspondence with the good folks at Takach I was just about to order a new press bed when my neighbor asked if he could take a look at it. 

He pronounced it fixable, and proceeded to help me pull up the loose portions of the laminate and re-adhere them. Hoorah! I got a couple of editions through the press in between the chaos of workshops and workshop prep and kept my fingers crossed.

Unfortunately, no doubt encouraged by our two weeks of record heat and humidity, the portions of the laminate that had been intact in June decided to pull up, creating a big bubble on half of the bed. There was enough flat space for me to print the two tiny (4 x 6) pieces I was working on, but once again I was dead in the water for anything else. 

This time when my neighbor came by we agreed that the best thing to do would be to remove the laminate across the entire press bed... including the areas we had fixed in June... and stick it all back down again. 

As you can imagine, this was a multi-hour, multi-day project. The old adhesive came up fairly easily, but the new stuff we put on in June? Ooph. We finally finished it yesterday. So far it all seems good... so tonight I tore down some paper and started to prep for a new, largeish lino! What a relief. No pun intended.

As for the little pieces created for Project Postcard, I'm afraid I can't show them to you. At least not in full until after the event. But I can make a silly warped image of them...

Assuming I don't run into any more press-related disasters I expect to have this new piece underway tomorrow, so hey! It looks like we might be getting back to our regularly scheduled... schedule. Stay tuned!

Young Printmakers at the Woodson Art Museum: Week Two

When we last left our printmaking heroine, she and her trusty sidekick, Woodson Art Museum Education Curator Catie Anderson, had just wrapped up a week that involved carving tools in the hands of 4th grade through adult learners. I'm delighted to report only one small bandaid required in a pool of 180 rookie carvers.

But for Week Two we put away the sharp implements and loaded up a travel crate with all the accoutrements required for an inky adventure. (Read: Many, many packages of hand wipes.) We were taking our print-and-pony show on the road!

The blocks the students carved the previous week were 4" x 4" in size. Their first step this week was to print their block four separate times on small sheets of paper. This gave them time to get a feel for the proper amount of ink and hand pressure to apply, and it provided four little prints that could be manipulated to determine a final design. Our goal was to print each individual block 4 times on a 10" x10" fabric square that would ultimately be assembled as a classroom wall hanging or quilt.

Once the students determined their 4-print pattern, they practiced printing on a larger sheet of paper.

5th graders with their larger repeated-pattern prints

Printmakers. All of them. And isn't this a spectacular art room?

Once they settled on their overall design, students printed their 4-up pattern one more time on to fabric squares. So satisfying.

Let's see... let's do some quick math. 150 students times at least 12 impressions of their blocks... that's a minimum of 1,800 print impressions in 5 days. Pretty. Darn. Awesome.

Plus I have to say that you haven't lived until you've prepped and cleaned up more than a dozen inking slabs and brayers over and over during a week. I owe so many thanks to Education Curator Catie Anderson for spending epic amounts of time at the sink, in addition to organizing our travel, coordinating with schools, gathering our supplies, providing amazing classroom input and backup, and lots of great conversation on the road. (Once she had enough coffee. ;-))

Finally, kudos once again to the entire Woodson Art Museum staff and all their members and volunteers. The museum is an amazing resource and it's clear how dedicated they are to supporting their community, its educators, and its students. It's always a privilege working with such an amazing organization, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to introduce printmaking to a wide audience. Let's do it again some time!

Young Printmakers at the Woodson Art Museum: Week One

Ready for students in the Woodson Art Museum classroom.

And there goes February. Did you see it? Me, neither.

At the beginning of the month I headed off to Wisconsin and a two-week Visiting Artist Residency at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum. During my visit I worked with 150 students in grades 4-12, and about 30 adults, creating relief prints. I'm back in Maine now (with a rotten cold, go figure), but wanted to share some images from this great experience. There are TONS more photos on the Woodson museum's Facebook page if you're itching to see some.

During the first week of my visit the students traveled to the museum and during the second I traveled to their schools. This is a risky proposition in Wisconsin in February, but we were fortunate to have two weeks of clear (but cold) weather, especially since most of the participating schools were about an hour away from the museum.

Week One sessions included a quick visit to the main galleries of the museum and two concurrent temporary exhibitions: Wild Fabrications, which featured studio art quilts with an animal theme, and Explorations in Wood, which included both functional and sculptural works.

Looking for graphic patterns in art quilts. R Wunsch/LYWAM photo

While in the galleries, students were asked to looked for strong graphic pattern elements as well as aspects of animals that might be incorporated into their own designs.

Downstairs in the classroom we first drew thumbnail designs for relief blocks, then transferred the drawings and carved. We accomplished a lot in less than two hours!

Designing for repeating print patterns. R Wunsch/LYWAM photo

5th graders hard at work.

Next week... Printing!

But before printing week I also got to work with a couple of adult groups, including area teachers who were invited to a free printmaking workshop at the museum. (Complete with coffee and snacks!)

Beginning experiments

Oops! A couple of people are missing, gone to pick up some art supplies,
also provided by the thoroughly awesome Woodson Art Museum.

We treated the afternoon as an experimental print lab, trying simple two color reduction prints, different color combinations, and overprinting two different images.

I really enjoyed this afternoon with teachers and was grateful for the opportunity to facilitate some personal creative time and casual interaction among art education professionals.

Lest you think it was two weeks of all work and no play... I did get out for a few hours to do a little birding. One of the museum curators and his wife shared their Sunday with me... we picked up what I think were my lifer snow buntings and three snowy owls. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Stay tuned for Week Two and some amazing student work....