From Flamingo Art

A Flamingo has a T-Shirt

Flamingo T-Shirt benefit for artists

Since 2009, dozens of flamingos have visited my studio, to sit for portraits, to tell stories, and to eat my snacks. They appear in The Lost Cave Paintings of Saint Paul, watercolor and acrylic paintings, coloring book pages, and paper mosaics. Now they have a new Flamingo Friend on a shirt and The Flamingo T-Shirt is delighted to represent his friends.

Buying the Flamingo T-Shirt

The folks at Liquid Screen Design created a 3-week pop-up shop for artists to present and sell their work on T-shirts. Each limited edition shirt is $20 — $10 for the artist and $10 for production. The shop runs from 6/15 to 7/6/2020 features the Stained Glass Coloring Card Flamingo. Click here to order. Check out the rest of the shop. You’ll find designs from many artists.

Flamingo T-Shirt 2020

Cave Painting Flamingos Cheering the Shirt

Flamingos Cheering the T-Shirt

The 3-11s: 3 cats and 11 flamingos,
an internationally acclaimed acapella group,
cheer the T-shirt.

Three-Elevens
Three Cats & 11 Flamingos, and international acapella group, support the Flamingo T-Shirt.

 

T-Shirt Backlash

For anyone following the adventures of my small friends during the past nine years (cats, Robert the Tap Dancing Rooster and other birds, insects, elephants, horses, a cow, two warthogs, some dinosaurs, and hundreds of other creatures), there should be no surprise that this t-shirt production has caused some commotion.

The rising tide of public opinion in screeching, screaming, whistling, tootling, roaring and other noises demanding their appearances on t-shirts is overwhelming. Have no fear for my neighbors. I live in a land (apartment structure) that is sufficiently insulated to protect the outside world from the Noise of Whimsical Creatures. Whether the Small Friends Research Institute, which sponsors and supports my Wildlife Work, will get into the T-shirt business is not for me to say. Its management is in the hands of the Creatures Themselves.

Sourcing other susangainenartist.com images

https://www.etsy.com/market/susangainen 

Powderhorn Weekend

An artist on every block

And a festival on every weekend

With Minnesota statues requiring at least one artist on every block and at least one art festival on every weekend, this weekend (August 8-9) is The Annual Three-in-two-days Art Festival Weekend. I will be with my friends at Powderhorn with the Art Shoppe at Midtown Global Market.white 350 3 inches

Powderhorn Park is beautiful, uncrowded (even when filled with artists). 34th & 15th Ave, Minneapolis. Saturday 10-6; Sunday 10-5.

Yes — free transportation takes you everywhere. Follow this link.

The Other Festivals are: Loring Park (Saturday – Sunday) and Uptown Art Fair (Friday – Sunday).

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New Art: Cards and Tiny, Original Paintings

I have lots of new cat images because I’ll be at the 4th Walker Cat Video Festival on August 12 at the new Saints’ stadium.  New cats! New birds! New abstracts ranging from calming to crazy!  Cards are $4 each and tiny original paintings that fit into 5×7 frames are $15 each. I know that everyone doesn’t have space for 4-foot paintings. But everyone (and this means you!) has space for 5×7 inches.

For more information about the images below, click on the picture.

2015 Art-A-Whirl prep

2015 Art-A-Whirl

Proud to be part of 2015 #ArtAWhirl. I’ll be at the Keg House Arts Building, 34 13th Avenue NE (F8 on the map). I will be among a group of incredibly talented polymer clay artists who will all be celebrate Art-A-Whirl together.

New Work

I will have some new work: a Black Cat Clock piece, a number of round menageries, lots of new work featuring Max the Cat, and new cave art including the two cave birds (below) and Three Cave Frogs.

Work-in-Progress
Work-in-Progress
2015 Art-a-Whirl Postcard
2015 Art-a-Whirl Postcard

3 Cats & 11 Flamingos at the Art Crawl

 

The 3 Cats & 11 Flamingos Acapella Group are starring on my wall at the Dow Art Gallery during the Saint Paul Art Crawl. Click here to download a pass for FREE Green Line transportation for Saturday and Sunday. (Note: you have to take a two-question survey first.)

The group lives and practices in Saint Paul, in a home with a very-well sound insulated practice room. The group has stopped out from their first World Tour to appear at the Dow Art Gallery.

The Dow Art Gallery and the Art Crawl

40 artists share the beautiful light-filled space at the Dow Art Gallery, 2242 University Avenue West, Saint Paul. Start your Art Crawl journey in the Dow, then hop onto the Green Line for a complete Saint Paul Art Journey.

 

3 Cats and 11 Flamingos Acapella
3 Cats and 11 Flamingos Acapella

Reclaim & recycle new techniques into new flamingo art

3 flamingos on a round
3 flamingos on a round
Painted Beaded Flamingo at Vine Arts Center
Painted Beaded Flamingo at Vine Arts Center

A wooden flamingo is born

In 1996, a now-shuttered lumber yard in Saint Paul cut the flamingo from a piece of plywood, made a dozen sets of bookends, a random kidney-ish shaped piece, and 24 8-inch rounds. I painted and beaded the flamingo, and the rounds have aged like fine wine in a stack under my stairs.

New life for the flamingo

After standing tall in my bathroom for 16 years, the 5-foot tall beaded-and-painted wooden flamingo had its last public outing at Vine Arts Center during the 2014 Northern Spark Green Way Glow.

It is now a pink gesso-covered Cave Flamingo which was part of my Lost Cave Paintings of Saint Paul installation at the WARM (Women’s Art Resources of Minnesota) Mentor-Protegee final show, Beyond the Surface, in late 2014.

WARM Installation 2014
WARM Mentor Protegee Show 2014: Lost Cave Paintings of Saint Paul

New life for the wooden rounds

Two years ago I bought a dozen 12-inch round sheets of a fine artist paper whose brand is lost in the mists of time. They sat comfortably in the package until I decided to use gesso, the key ingredient in Cave Paintings, to attach the round papers to the wooden rounds.

Wooden rounds meet tiny Flamingos

How this piece was made:

  1. I used gesso to attach the paper to the wooden round, and trimmed the excess.
  2. With a spatula, I splodged gesso onto the paper, and then pressed it with the Ax-Man Gizmo #2, a tube with wire mesh that makes a scaly-sort of pattern. I let it dry overnight.
  3. I sponged color onto the now-patterned gesso. I recommend acrylic paint (as opposed to watercolor), which won’t move an inch when you cover it with acrylic medium. I learned this lesson the very very hard way (subject of another post when I’m over my disappointment.)
  4. Having made dozens of tiny flamingos as ornaments, bookmarks, and gift tags, I am surrounded by them. Three volunteered to be encased on gloss varnish for this project. I glued them onto the round, and waited patiently while the glue dried. (Really? Why are you telling me this? Because I have a life-long history of being too quick to move on to the next step, and I want to save you from the abject misery that will follow a string of bad words.)
  5. Inspired by Dar Bunde, an amazing artist-member of the Northstar Watermedia Society, I used Liquitex Gloss Medium because I want this piece to be SHINY!!!!! I poured it on and set to to dry overnight.
  6. I painted the sides with acrylic paint and covered the sides with gloss medium
  7. I attached a hanger on the back so that this can hang on the wall.