Last November, I was invited by Barbara Bassett to do a show with her at her gallery, Barbara Basset Art Gallery, located at Pudding River Wine Cellars. I’ve long admired Barbara’s work and love the setting of her gallery, so I said yes.
We got together several months ago to plan for our show and come up with a title; we both liked Nature’s Rhythm, as it gave us freedom to create in our own styles.
I wrote a quick blurb about my pieces:
Color is an overriding theme in Dayna’s work. Whether she is painting abstract landscapes or creating more nonrepresentational work, color always finds its way into her paintings, mimicking or exaggerating nature’s wild palette.
We hung our show last week with the help of Sean, the owner and winemaker at Pudding River Wine Cellars.
Barbara worked big, I did a series of 12×12 inch pieces.
We got the show hung quickly, and then we did a timed selfie.
Some of the pieces I will have in the show:
“The Thread of a Path,” plaster, oil, and cold wax, 12×12 inches.“Spellbound By Thoughts,” plaster, oil, and cold wax, 12×12 inches.“Grateful For the Silence of the River,” plaster, oil, and cold wax, 12×12 inches.“A River of Gratitude,” plaster, oil, and cold wax, 12×12 inches.“A Silver Curtain of Rain,” plaster, oil, and cold wax, 12×12 inches.“The Hum of Mosquitoes,” plaster, oil, and cold wax, 12×12 inches.“A Pulsing Wave of Gratitude,” plaster, oil, and cold wax, 12×12 inches.“The Light Glimmers On,” plaster, oil, and cold wax, 12×12 inches.
The opening reception is Wednesday, May 22, 4:00 – 6:00 pm. The Pudding River Wine Cellars and Barbara Bassett Art Gallery are just a ten-minute drive from from Silverton and 15-minutes from Salem, through the beautiful countryside. The show will be up for several months, so if you can’t make the opening, take a short drive and visit this beautiful winery and gallery.
A few months ago I was contacted by Mary Lou Zeek, an artist and art force in Oregon, asking if I would be interested in being the featured artist for the Family Building Blocks annual fundraiser, Uncorked Live. I was familiar with Family Building Blocks and I knew they did excellent work in our community; their motto is: Keeping Children Safe and Families Together. I did a little research on their annual auction and in pretty short order told Mary Lou I was definitely interested and to please put me in contact with the Uncorked organizer.
I had been working on three new large paintings (30×40 inches) and I thought any one of them might be a possibility. I was also working on a fourth painting (36×36 inches), that was coming along. A date was set of April 1st to decide on a painting. Because I have lots of work hanging in my house, it was decided that a committee would come to my house and select a painting.
The group walked through my house: upstairs, main floor, and downstairs, looking at their options. They settled on three possibilities, and my husband lugged each of them outside so they could be viewed in the best light. The three options included:
“Morning Clouds Giving Way to Sunshine,” plaster, oil, and cold wax, 30×60 inches.
“It Smelled Like the End of Summer,” plaster, oil, and cold wax, 30×40 inches
“Against a Cloud Lit Night,” plaster, oil, and cold wax, 36×36 inches.
The ladies whittled it down to two selections and asked me to choose as they wanted me to select the one that best represented me. I chose Against A Cloud Lit Night because it was my most recent painting, but also because I had painted it with the auction in mind.
The painting was delivered to the photographer the first week of April, photographed and then returned to me to finish drying until the auction in mid May. Last week the painting was delivered to Zenith Vineyard, where the auction was being held.
The perks of being the featured artist for this prestigious event was having my art featured on the cover of the auction catalog and for my art to be on the wine labels of the bottles of wine, which were given to everyone in attendance. What I didn’t know was that my art would be etched onto a jeroboam of wine (a jeroboam is equivalent to six standard 750 ml bottles – who knew there was such a thing!). The etched label was gorgeous and even had texture.
Patrice Altenhofen, Executive Director of Family Building Blocks, holding the jeroboam of wine.
Uncorked Live was held last Saturday night, May 18th. It was a surreal evening; seeing my art on display, then being handed an auction catalog with my art featured on the front. Everyone in attendance received a bottle of red wine or sparkling chardonnay, both with my art on the label.
Two people asked for my autograph, first on the cover of the catalog, and then later to sign a bottle of wine.
What a thrill.
I was anxious leading up to the actual auction, fearful that no one would bid on my piece. My painting was the fifth on the line up . . . .
. . . and it sold for $3,500. I later learned that two jeroboams of wine had sold for $850 each and one of the bottles was purchased by the owner of a vineyard who wanted it on display at her vineyard for the art rather than for the wine.
I was happy to have helped raise over $5,000 for this wonderful organization keeping children safe and families together.
There is no doubt about it, creating my Salvage Collage mixed media pieces are time-consuming and messy work. First is the collecting of vintage books (worthy of a separate post), then the dismantling of the books (another separate post). When all of the collecting and ripping apart has been done, it is time to slog through the piles, looking for just the right scraps to create something new. All of the pieces I use in my collages are from discarded books that have been ripped apart and disassembled – from the linen covers, to the gluey spines, to the book boards themselves.
Eventually it is time to stop sorting and auditioning and actually glue the pieces into place.
Meanwhile, I’m off to the YMCA annual book sale because today is the final day and all books are $5 a box!
UPDATE: I got SIX boxes of books. I can’t wait to begin ripping them apart!
I am excited to announce that I will be having a Salvage Collage mixed media art exhibit at Guardino Gallery in August of 2019. I have already started working on a series of collages for the show, but somewhere along the way I became obsessed with grids. And circles. And circle grids. I have purchased circle punches ranging from teeny tiny to jumbo sized. All of my Salvage Collage pieces for this show are created from deconstructed, decaying, vintage, falling apart books. Here’s a peek at a recent piece I worked on in my studio last week. This one is being created using book scraps and the completed collage will be mounted onto a book cover. (You can see some circles have crept into this piece……)
My fascination with grids goes back a number of years, so when I started cutting out little blocks of color from discarded and deconstructed books, it wasn’t surprising that I started to create grids.
After cutting out a variety of squares, I started experimenting with adding shapes for more visual interest. Both of these pieces are still in the auditioning stage, but once I start gluing, I will fine tune the final composition.
It was a short leap from squares to circles and that is when my obsession kicked into high gear.
And so it goes. Ripping, tearing, punching, repeat. Periodic updates on my project can be found on my Instagram page: DaynaLovesArt.
The Little Things show at Guardino Galleryin Portland is my favorite group show of the year. I don’t know how many years I have participated, but this year will be the gallery’s 18th year. For the current show, there are over 58 participating artists and the only requirement is that all pieces are 7×7 inches and smaller. I created 12 abstract paintings on cradled panels, each is 6×6 inches.
Here are my pieces:
“The Waters of the Night,” oil and cold wax by Dayna Collins.“The Sudden Dip into Evening,” acrylic and cold was by Dayna Collins.“The Heat of the Long Afternoon,” Oil and cold wax by Dayna Collins.“The Heart is Restless,” oil and cold wax by Dayna Collins.“The Flash of Summer Lightning,” oil and cold wax by Dayna Collins.“The Darkness of the Water,” acrylic and cold was by Dayna Collins.“Outside the Window,” oil and cold wax by Dayna Collins.“Dropped Through the Gate of Memory,” acrylic and cold wax by Dayna Collins.“Dreaming of Drums and Magic,” oil and cold wax by Dayna Collins.“Another Knot in the String of Time,” plaster, acrylic, and cold wax by Dayna Collins.“All the Moments of the Past,” plaster, acrylic, and cold wax by Dayna Collins.“A Deep Pool of Silence,” oil and cold wax by Dayna Collins.
The show runs through December 30 and all pieces are take and go. If you’re looking for original art and creative gifts, this would be a perfect place to shop.
Here we are the day of our show opening, stopping by for a final sneak peek since we hadn’t yet seen our scrounged letters hanging above the word beauty. We loved it. We spent the day tromping all over Astoria, took a short rest, then returned at 5:00 to celebrate our opening for the rest of the evening.
Final formal photos of Stephanie and me.
Once the guests began to arrive, it was a riot of activity, laughter, fun, chatter, music, visiting, drinking, eating, and general merriment as people came and went, lingered, wandered, stopped back for another look and chat. Stephanie and I were blown away by how many of our friends drove from out of town: Seattle, Salem, Portland, and Albany.
After the last guest drifted away, a group of friends joined us for dinner across the street at Fulio’s and we lingered late into the evening, basking in the afterglow of a successful show and opening party.
After years of being junking partners, my friend Stephanie Brockway and I are doing a show together at RiverSea Gallery in Astoria. Both of us have shown our work at RiverSea for years, and Stephanie had a solo show there a couple of years ago. I show paintings, she shows a combination of paintings and outsider folk art. Scrounged Beauty is found object art, highlighting the best of our collections of found objects, and as some would say, junk.
Months of Auditioning
I spent months pulling things out of drawers, bins, bowls, and trays, choosing which pieces to try out on various pieces of reclaimed wood and prepared boards.
Weeks of Connecting, Titling, Signing, and Photographing
A Day of Hanging
Okay, Colin actually did the hanging, while Steph and I gallivanted around Astoria.
A Sampling of My Pieces (out of 42 I have in the show!)
“Delightful Daydreams,” by Dayna J. Collins“Giddyup, Little One Trick Pony,” by Dayna J. Collins“Obscured Thoughts,” by Dayna J. Collins“A Whisper of Conspiracy,” by Dayna J. Collins“Drawn Into Memory,” by Dayna J. Collins“Daily Interactions,” by Dayna J. Collins“The Tiniest Things Mean Something,” by Dayna J. Collins“Most Expedient Route,” by Dayna J. Collins“Painstaking Exactitude,” by Dayna J. Collins“Traveling Side Show,” by Dayna J. Collins“Seeing Through Shadows,” by Dayna J. Collins“Little Time to Talk,” by Dayna J. Collins“Untroubled By Disturbing Dreams,” by Dayna J. Collins“Beckoning,” by Dayna J. Collins“Staring Into the Distance,” by Dayna J. Collins
I’m fortunate to be a member of a group of 11 artists who share the second floor of the Wool Warehouse at the Willamette Heritage Center. We call our space: Studios at the Mill. We have been together in various forms (in various studios) for the past four years. My space is always evolving depending on my latest project. What remains the same for now is this is my Special Projects Studio, where I house all of my ephemera, vintage books, and oodles of photographs.
Initially, we hosted Open Studios on a monthly basis, but after a few years, that got to be too much, so for the past couple of years we host Art After Dark Open Studios quarterly. Last night was our July event. On the second Thursday of our chosen month, we all fling open the doors to our studio, serve wine, sparkling water, and lots of food – savory and sweet. Our studio member Jim Hockenhull often has his wife, Jo, join him in providing us with music and last night they played and people danced. We also asked Steve, who owns a new restaurant at the Willamette Heritage Center, Krewe du Soul, if he would serve samples of his Cajun fare. He agreed and for two hours offered samples of jambalaya and gumbo; there were lots of people walking the halls with smiles on their faces. To best share our event, here are photos I took of people throughout the evening.
For our next Art After Dark Open Studios, we’re mixing it up a bit and it will be held a month later on: Thursday, November 8, 2018.
The Salem Art Association invited established and emerging artists (who live or work within 25 miles of Salem) to submit artwork for Radius 25: Through My Eyes, a juried group exhibition at the Bush Barn Art Center in Salem.
There were 230 entries for this group exhibition, with 50 works of art selected by juror Jennifer H. Pepin, an artist and owner of J. Pepin Art Gallery in Portland, Oregon. My entry, In the Fading Light of Evening, is plaster, oil, and cold wax, 18x24x2 inches, and was one of the 50 pieces selected for the show.
“In the Fading Light of Evening,” by Dayna J. Collins.
The show runs through August 25 at the Salem Art Association’s Bush Art Barn.
Salem Art Group: Bonnie, Susan, Katy, Kay, Nancy, Kathy, and Dayna (Tory not in photo).
On Wednesday, May 16, the Salem Art Group held an informal reception at the Art Annex, inviting guests to stop by for a visit from 10 am – 2 pm and join in a conversation. Here’s what the promotional materials said about our group and the goal of our show:
Each month a group of eight Salem artists meets to talk about their work and exchange ideas. Over the years the “personnel” has changed but the core purpose has remained the same: support of creative work in a changing world. The group supplies each other with honest critiques, new ideas, reading and visuals in support of ideas, information about media and techniques, and moral support. They attend each other’s openings, they collect each other’s work, and they occasionally make work together. This exhibit will allow the artists to show the work they do, and for the public to see their serious work, as well as the fun that is part of Salem Art Group. Incidentally all eight artists are women: Tory Brokenshire, Dayna Collins, Nancy Eng, Bonnie Hull, Susan Napack, Kathy Shen, Katy Vigeland, and Kay Worthington.
The Annex was a hub of activity for the entire four hours.
During the reception we saved a wall for an interactive, spontaneous project.
We each contributed five art prompts, which were put into a bowl. We took turns drawing a prompt, and doing what we were instructed to do. Prompts included: Draw a shadow; create a diagonal trail; hang it up; draw a shape within a shape, within a shape, within a shape; color an emotion, and home.
Show and Tell: Salem Art Group in Conversation runs through May 31 at the Salem Art Association Art Annex.
