Where have you been?

Well to tell you the truth, I’ve been working on a lot of new art, that’s where.

For example, what do you get when you combine an 1840s daguerreotype image of this lovely lady:

A scan of this 1860s ambrotype mat:

and an image of a big bowl?

Well after a lot of work in Photoshop, I came up with my latest digital piece:

The Star Collector

What’s great is that this piece will be a limited-edition series of prints, but I am also making it into a 3-dimensional illuminated piece as well.  Hopefully I’ll have photos of it up soon.

I’ve also been working on many many new pieces of jewelry; by a quick count I spied 23 pieces that are well on their way to being finished, plus several more in the works.  Maybe if you’re really good, I’ll sneak some “in progress” photos of them on to the blog in the next day or two.  Anyway, back to work!

-M

New Art on Etsy

Well, I just wouldn’t be much of an artist or blogger if I didn’t keep you up to date with ALL of the new art that I am doing- not just the jewelry.  So, to that end, I would like to introduce you to two new pieces that are now making their first appearances on Etsy.

The first is called, “The Watchman”- it picks up right where my work left off at the end of last year- heading in a generally Steampunky Carnivalesque direction.  Not sure how long this new direction will last, but with my life-long fascination with all things carnival, I doubt it will be ending anytime soon.

The second piece is called, “Dream of Flight.”  This is actually the second version of this piece, I did the first about 5 years when my Photoshoping skills were much more inept.  I always felt like it was a good composition, and vowed that I would one day return to this piece when I had acquired more skill.  This time around I’m particularly happy with the butterflies and their subtle shading, but as is often the case with Photoshop, I can still see plenty of flaws in this version, so there is always more to learn.

If you are interested in either of these pieces you can go here to find out more.

-M

P.S.  For those of you who do not yet know about Etsy- ETSY.com is a wonderful website for all things handmade.  Go, go now, you’ll love it- I promise.

Ferris Wheels

Ah, to be a kid again…nothing like that sinking feeling of your stomach in your throat…I shot this image at the NC State Fair on a beautiful fall evening; it was one of 5 this year.   I do wonder sometimes what happens when they are tearing this thing down, moving to a new place, reassembling it, and then realizing at the end that they have a bolt or two left over…”You mean it costs 10.00 for a one minute ride, and on top of that I could die?!  Sounds like fun!!”

O.K. so maybe I’m in a bit of a cynical mood today, now that we don’t have the election to brood over any more, I wonder what we’re all going to do with our leftover angst. I keep expecting someone to pinch me and say, “there was a problem with a few of the ballots in Florida…”   It seems like its been forever since we had a democratic process that actually worked the way its supposed to.   Kind of makes me feel like getting on this Ferris Wheel just to relive the sensation one more time…anyway hope you enjoy the art.

The Escape Artist

Here is another new piece the I have been recently working on-it’s called, “The Escape Artist”, and is part of a new series of whimsical pieces that explore the notion of dreams, both lost and found, and how as we go through life, we often compromise or change our dreams, instead of following them fully.

Enjoy. Oh, and if you’d like to see more from the series you can click here.

Another Piece

Here is a second image from the series- this shot is from Falls Lake in northeast North Carolina-these trees should be about halfway underwater. This is how bad the drought is locally. The water can be seen about 150 yards away in the background of this image.

If you’d like to purchase a small version of this image, you can click on the link above.

The Hidden South

With the start of a new year I have been creating an entirely new series of art. The working title for this series is, “The Hidden South” – it is composed of many images I have shot during my recent travels. I am in my mid-thirties, and in the past several years, I have been through every southern state but West Virginia and Kentucky, and I am amazed at how much change (ie, development, globalization) has occured since I was a child. So many areas are almost unrecognizable now, and yet if you take a minute to look beyond the construction signs and asphalt roads, you can still catch glimpses of the south I grew up with-a place of stillness and beauty, much of it unchanged for the past hundred or more years. Below is one of the first pieces from the series- Enjoy.

You can see more pieces from this series here.