Sunday, June 12, 2011

Circus Flora Drawings

I am an artist and teacher working in St. Louis, Missouri. I have a BFA in Ceramic Sculpture from the University of Hawaii and an MA in Sculpture from Fontbonne University. My background is in clay, but I use whatever media are suited to the concepts I work with, including bronze, oil, pastel, watercolor, acrylic, and pen and ink. I have shown in galleries in St. Louis and Honolulu, as well as numerous art fairs and competitions. I have created and installed large public playground sculptures and fountains. I have done portrait and landscape commission work. My illustrations have been published internationally, and I have also independently illustrated and published several books and art calendars. My work is in many private collections, and my art and teaching have been featured in St. Louis Magazine, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and the Journal Newspapers. I currently have a one-man exhibit of drawings on display at the Centene Center for Arts and Education in St. Louis. I do artwork to give physical form to the images and ideas that arise within me. There is a deep joy in this. It is work; often tedious work, but I learn every single time I set hand to it. My interest is in what unifies humanity. My hope is that the images I produce touch a sensitivity in people across the range of age, gender, and background.

To contact me, you can email me at moleculefarm@sbcglobal.net.

I have attended Circus Flora with my family almost every year since the early 1990s. I adore the circus and deeply admire the performers. I am grateful to the people of the circus for the astonishing entertainment they provide, and I have always wanted to give something back to Circus Flora.

On Circus Flora's Artist's Day I videotaped as much of the rehearsal and the circus as I could. I then looked through the video frame by frame for images of particularly dramatic, beautiful, or surprising moments, then processed and printed the stills that most appealed to me.
I began these in January of 2011. I chose to work in oil pastel on black paper because this medium has a very theatrical, dramatic look. I worked several hours every day - every single day - on these drawings from mid-January until mid-May. The results are what you see here.

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