Anne Leuck Feldhaus Adventures & Art

Back from the farm...

And just like that it's over....was it a dream? A beautiful week of blue skies, big puffy white clouds, endless gorgeous hilly back country roads, cows, pigs, goats and corn. I wish I could hold on to this feeling of completeness and happiness. No tv, no computer, a lot of times no phone (my outdoor studio at Castle Rock State Park had no cell phone reception). But it wasn't all sunny skies for me. I had some very real creative challenges and no where to run away from them...I seriously considered driving back to Chicago one morning. But I stayed and battled it out with myself and am very happy with the few pieces that I finished...I think what I accomplished out there mentally in a week would have taken me 3 months here in my studio with all its distractions.

The other magic that happens as an artist at a program like this is you are PRESENT the WHOLE time, I mean visually and creatively, MENTALLY PRESENT. Everywhere I went and every road I traveled I was scanning the amazing lush green vistas all around me...appreciating every field, cow, pig and hay bale..stopping, sketching, taking photos.

The community and group of folks that make up this organization (The Fields Project) are so amazing, they are like a second family after my 3 different years of participation in the program. I also met a group of wonderful artists from around the country and a few right here in Chicago (I had this silly idea that I knew all the aritsts in Chicago!)

The field sculptures this year were so vivid and beautiful thanks to a new grass field and all the rain of the past few weeks. Another huge highlight was Cathi Bouzide & Danny Mansmith's collaboration on the wrapped corn bin. PHENOMENAL!

I'll post more photos and notes soon but in the mean time I did upload my photos to my FLICKR page so please check them out.

Trip #2...

We had a nice litle trip to Milwaukee...we ate at a few of our old favorite places, toured the neighborhoods that Rich lived in and visited the Milwaukee Art Museum where I was very inspired by the works of:John Wilde, Alan Davie, Milton Avery (painting below), Edgar Tolson (sculpture below) and Gabriele Munter.

 

Top photo...sketching on the drive up on Sunday, you'll notice this is one of those sketch book pages that has to span 3 days..that's what happens when I get behind. Snapshots from the trip below:  Conejito's Place where they serve your enchiladas on a paper plate...no muss no fuss. Tasted just like I remembered and I don't think they've raised the price in the last 17 years.

  
Sorry to mix the food with the art, Typepad has me using a new beta site that is making it very tricky to layout the images with the text. Have to see if  I can get my old  format back.

 
That's Rich in front of Sydney HiH...the building where we met. His band the Psycho Bunnies had a practice space (where he was living very primitively!) and they often played in a bar in the basement called The Unicorn. It looks like Sydney Hih's days are now numbered. Other treats...Kopps Frozen Custard...Butter Pecan..mmmm. These cows overlook the parking lot. A fun little get away..I've been playing serious catch-up after excursions 2 weeks in a row. Suddenly my show in Kansas City is only a week away! It will be a working weekend for me...but I'm looking forward to it! 


 

Kohler Art Adventure...

On Monday I took this first of many trips I will be taking in the next 5-6 months if you include all the art fairs. I often feel like a shut-in working from my home studio but suddenly the season changes and my world opens up. I love a road trip...especially when someone else is driving!

My first adventure was earlier this week when I took a long overdue trip up to the Sheboygan/Kohler/Manitowoc area to visit my dear friend Erica Huntzinger. She works as a teacher at the the wonderful John Michael Kohler Art Center and has also recently become involved in their Arts Industry Program which brings artists to the Kohler Factory for residencies. I love this museum, it is just the right size and they show such an eclectic mix of artists. The wonderful surprise here is all the bathrooms, each designed by a different resident artist. The Women's Room shown above has all these exquisite corpse tiles and each sink and toilet bowl is also adorned with art. 

Photo on the left Erica & Daniel choosing the spot to plant a new tree. Daniel is an arborist among his many other talents!

After our tour we lunched at the yummy Field to Fork, hiked around their home in rural Cleveland, WI. (that used to be a cheese factory!) and had a lovely bonfire that night. The photo below is a peek at the cheese factory from over the hill:

On Tuesday morning we took an extensive 3 hour tour of the Kohler Factory. It was amazing, unfortunately cameras were not allowed so all I have is a photo from  Destinationkohler.com. I encourage you to take the tour if you get the chance. Our guide, Joe, was was fantastic. He worked there his whole life, and has been a tour guide for the last 20 years in his retirement. We were able to also take a peek at what the resident artists were working on, they have the opportunity to work in the Pottery, Iron and Brass Foundries, and Enamel Shop.

After the tour we had the most amazing brunch at Whispering Orchards....
Strawberry Ruhbarb French Toast! Fed the goats and mules then later hiked down to Lake Michigan and collected lots of great rocks.

Then visited Daniel at the Cleveland Post Office...a really sweet small town place where the postage has also gone up only one cent. Of course they were out of one cent stamps!

Finished up with a tour of the area, saw lots of great birds, a yellow finch and this is a red winged blackbird on the sign. I had not seen one since doing my field sculpture last summmer.

It was a wonderful little get-away...now back to real life: Trying to catch up in the studio!

41...Asleep in the Cascades

I had a wonderful trip out to the Seattle area last weekend for my 41st birthday. I visited my brother and his wife in Sammamish. On Friday we drove up to Lake Wenatchee in the Cascade Mountains, it was so beautiful! Every morning when I woke up I ran for my camera because the view with the sun coming up was so breathtaking. We had a great time cross country skiing and ate lots of good food. If you go, rent your skis at Plain Hardware, yes the name of the town is Plain! Photos are of my one and only most favorite brother, Carl & I and my 4 legged nephew Willie.

Prior Birthdays:

2008  41 = Lake Wenatchee, WA

2007 40 = Venice, Italy

2006 39 = Saugatuck, MI

2005 38 = Bedford, PA...enroute home from a show in Virginia

2004 37 = Punta Cana, The Dominican Replubic

If you can swing it, I highly recommend this traveling birthday idea...premise: Go to sleep or wake up somewhere you have never been before. I started in 04, you know what they say about all work and no play...this guarantees an extra little get away every year!

A Busy Weekend...

On Saturday I hung my show in Fluorish's Fine Art Gallery with the help of my trusty assistant Kate...

it's a beautiful space with great lighting and very high ceilings and the nicest staff you'll ever meet. My opening will be on March 15th and will be on all day event from Noon-7pm...a family day with lots of activities.

On Sunday Rich & I ventured to Merrillville, Indiana to purchase an amplifier...it was a business trip for both of us as I took advantage of being the passenger and sketching the journey to and from Chicago. It's landmarks and unique signs that make the paintings fun and familiar, not so many left around any more. One of my favorite local land marks was the  Magikist Lips sign....I remember as a kid driving through Chicago visiting from Wisconsin, how cool my brother and I thought that sign was. Sadly the last Magikist sign came down in early 2000. It was the logo for a carpet cleaning company...which I just learned on wikipedia, I would have thought it was for something more fun, like those goofy wax lip candies we used to buy at the  dime store.

I'm starting to dream up other ideas for these road trip paintings. I'd like to make a deal with the tourism bureaus in every state and do a cross country road trip, sketching my impressions into paintings that they could use for marketing their state....we could rent an rv so and bring the dogs with us, I hate leaving them behind when we travel. Sounds like big fun to me, I love the open road!  Here are Sundays sketches, kind of murky...I forgot to bring a good sharpie and had to use an old stubby one found in the bottom of my purse:

The negative for the day was this horrible, mostly unmarked, detour for I-65 going south...this added much time and many miles to our little excursion. You know something is wrong when you stop at a toll booth to ask for directions and the attendant hands you a flyer as though she was expecting you.

Gingerbread Addition...

We left Chicago on Sunday afternoon and headed up to rural Warrens, WI to visit my Mom & her husband Bill for Christmas....the road conditions were pretty treacherous, our usual 4 hour drive took six and a half hours. We awoke on Monday morning in their retreat-like log home nestled in the woods surrounded by snow covered trees and more Blue Jays then I've seen in a long time. After a good morning work out of shoveling snow we headed inside for breakfast and our 3rd bi-Annual Gingerbread House Project (note to Carl that is the infamous Blue Shovel).

It's been 2 years since we did this and I didn't have time to get any supplies - Mom said not to worry, she had everything we needed as she presented me with the pre-fab house kit that she bought at the store. It was already baked and stuck together! I said "we have to build something, they took all the fun out of it". I then realized we could use this little pre-made cabin portion as a base and create an addition! We made templates out of cardboard and Bill (a retired home builder of many years) consulted. I traced and cut the walls from the gingerbread dough then baked them. They got a little warped and some were thicker than others, we knew early on we might have some structural issues. Our first batch of icing was too thin, this also contributed to the problems. As you can see it took many hands to put this together.
Mom did a beautiful job decorating the front, I was distracted by falling walls and only managed to get half a coconut roof, and the backside done. Bill ran down to his shop and cut us a little piece of wood to help support the roof...we should have stopped while we were ahead: our roof was falling in. We raced to get a photo before the crash. Now we know how to do it next time...(we will use a drill and use bamboo skewered beams). It still was great fun and as many art teachers have told me, sometimes it's more about the process and the journey than the end product. We laughed a lot and had a good time, I was impressed that it worked up to the point that it did. We went on to have a lovely Christmas Eve with more family and 3 crazy dogs running around.

 

Folk Art HEAVEN...

Returned from Alabama last week - the Kentuck Art Fair was a gem, like no other show I've ever done. My first thought upon entering the park was "I'VE DIED AND GONE TO FOLK ART HEAVEN". I was very inspired and moved by all the visionary art work and wonderful artists that I met (first photo William Scrip's amazing sculptures, Robert Seven's art and booth, and one of my wonderful neighbors).

Gabriel Shaffer has a wonderful photo album on his flickr site capturing some the most memorable artists from this show. I had the honor of meeting his mother, Cher Shaffer (a highly collected visionary artist) from whom I purchased this fabulous painting of her cat, Yoda...also got some other nice treasures from Mark Orr (the perfect art fair neighbor), Jim Shores and Kim Young.

My dear husband did all the driving so I was free to read and look out the window and dream, I also did a lot of drawing in my sketchbook. I have some great new images for future road trip / map paintings...scroll down to see them:

What I did on my summer vacation...

I feel a little like school has started again as I try to organize all I have to do since returning from one of the most memorable summer vacations of my life! 'Beehive Barn' - my favorite creation from the Fields Project (see more here), with the exception of my field sculpture. This barn was inspired by a photo I took on Daysville Road between Franklin Grove and Amboy (my daily route to and from the farm I stayed at). I'm going to put together a flickr photo journal of my fields project experience much like this excellent one created by my wonderful and witty friend Laura Nugent... I've got my July Newsletter to write, several pet portrait commissions to finish, the 3 day Magnificent Mile Art Fair this weekend, new paintings to add to my website, Illinois sales taxes to file and some serious design work for a pending licensing deal. I would really love some help but delegation does not come naturally to me...it would really take the right person. How do you find that person? How do you trust that person? I have been dancing around this topic for the last 5 years or so...and with my now divided work space I don't see it happening any time soon; unless, of course, the right person presents his or herself to me. I am officially putting out a request to the universe...

The second half of my vacation was a good old fashioned road trip via I-80 to the YMCA of the Rockies in Colorado for Rich's family reunion. We saw all the expected road side attractions, complete with gargantuan gorilla daring people to buy some fireworks.

In addition to the astounding beauty, it was so great to see all of our nieces & nephews and other family as well as participate in a nocturnal hike, archery and a good old fashioned campfire sing along. Thanks to Ruth & Ray for this unique and memorable event!

After all is said and done, it is always wonderful to come home to our beloved pups - we our really lucky to have a great pet sitter from Urban Tailz, thanks Ben!

11 Acres

It can't get much bigger than this...What a week I've had here in rural Illinois at the Fields Project. I will detail more about how we created this field sculpture in a later post, but let me just say this was a community effort, a lot of hard work, 2 full days in the hot sun in the field gridding out this design with flags then mowing the design. I was one of 3 women and a student who did designs, I'll show the others when I have photos and more time to post. I'm running back out to the country to paint, only a day and a half left before our art fair on Sunday and then back to the city...with the most amazing memories and greater appreciation for the land, the farmer, this special community around Oregon, Illinois and art making!

"This 11 acre field sculpture, by Chicago artist Anne Leuck Feldhaus, was created to encourage people to adopt from their local animal shelters and rescue groups."

View my Flickr Photo Journal of the making of this sculpture!

The Big MOVE...

I meant to document our move over the last several weeks - that is the amount of time we have taken to transport our lives, countless trips in our pickup! And one hired haul of our furniture. Not the most efficient system - it was quite a roller coaster of chaos and emotion ...we took the final miscellaneous things from the house on Wednesday and still have yet to empty the garage..hopefully tonight!

Packing up my studio was the hardest part...I will have a very different space arrangement but I'm looking forward to starting fresh in a new place and working completely above ground for a change...and who knows what new imagery will emerge living across the street from a bread factory!

The new house is over 100 years old and is very sunny and bright and has these incredibly high ceilings. I chose Peacock Blue for our kitchen and living space - I love it and it also sets Izzy & Alice off very nicely!

Alice looks on as I paint the final pieces in my Bucktown Studio from her favorite ratty green chair that we left behind in the alley...

Anne's Art on a Bus!

My painting, "Three Birds Flying" is featured on the back of buses in the Detroit area!  Common Ground Sanctuary's Art in the Park Committee decided to feature it in ads for their upcoming Art Fair, September 16-17 in Birmingham, Michigan. The sad part is that I had to cancel the show, some big changes for us happening around those dates...more on that later!

I also designed their Art Fair Poster back in 2001.

A Very Sad Week...

Our very dear almost 16 year old cat, Oliver died very early Sunday morning, August 6th. Only 8 pounds left of his healthier 16 pound weight. He had started to look like the kitten that we adopted from Chicago's Anti-Cruelty Society in August of 1991. Rich and I had only been together a few months when we got him, and Oliver only strengthened our small family bond. He remained our baby until 1993 when we adopted our second cat Zoe, then later our dogs, Izzy and Alice. He was always a little miffed that we kept adding to our family, but he enjoyed the daily annoyance of these other beloved pets. He was with us as we moved from Weed Street to Fulton, to Campbell to Oakley, each transition always traumatic for him. It's a blessing he left before the the move to Washtenaw as I think that probably would have put him over the edge. In his younger days he was an amazing jumper and he loved to chase shadows across the wall. In 2002 he made his press debut in the  City Link Newspaper Newspaper. He was my witness and companion as I went from setting up an art studio in a tiny little closet to building my art business to what it is today. He would always come traipsing through my studio whenever I was trying to photograph a painting on the floor...the end of his tail often gracing the photos. It was getting pretty boring around here when Alice showed up as a 12 week old puppy in 2004. I think she probably prolonged his life, the two of them would spend hours engaging each other one at the top and the other at the bottom of the stairs - Alice yipping and every now and then a snarl or a hiss from the OL Man. He was an indoor cat but loved to go outside and eat grass...only to come in later and throw up....Izzy and Alice were always happy to take care of the mess!  He had these amazing little tufts of fur on the tips of his ears and he loved to have them pulled. It is so hard to say goodbye, these creatures come into our lives and do nothing but love us, without emotional baggage, no memories of anger or hurt only love and companionship. Not that he didn’t have a feisty personality, he would sidle up to me to be pet only to bite me a few minutes later when he had enough ...then return 10 minutes later for another round. I guess we've had our final round, we will miss you dear boy...

Licensing Show 2006

Just returned from my second year exhibiting at the Licensing Show in NYC. I had a corner location this year and it seemed to make all the difference. I met people from many wonderful companies and have several great prospects. Now the hard part, follow up...!

My New Tent Goes To Michigan

I just purchased this used Craft Hut Tent on Ebay. I sent the tent top to Flourish Company and they put a great skylight in and vents on the ends. I used it for the first time over the weekend at the Bloomfield Birmingham Art Center Art Fair in Michigan. I love it! Much more room overhead, and very well built. You do get what you pay for...not to mention a little more peace of mind when the weather turns. I have to thank the Art Fair Sourcebook Forum, that's how I found out the tent was up for auction on Ebay - they are a great resource for this business!

Sunny Sunday

Pretty chilly today but very sunny, so we couldn't resist biking to the Lake, another reason I love Chicago. 

39 And Feelin' Fine

March 7th...we took a little trip to the other side of the lake ..Saugatuck Dunes State Park in Michigan. A Breathtaking view and perfect day!

Welcome....

I'm finally getting around to blog-land - I've been meaning to do this for months now and decided it was time to share the everyday adventures along with my art...

We took an amazing trip to New York in October...one of the neastest things we did was walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and surprise my old art fair pal from college who was having an open studio during the  D.U.M.B.O. Event in Brooklyn. Here's a photo on the bridge..it was a spectacular view as we were on a level above the car lane, just bikers and walkers on top of the world.

Rich took this photo of our hands - we could feel the cables moving!