ACCEPTED - REJECTED

I took the same two paintings that I took to Renton River Days and submitted them to the Western Washington Fair's Fine Art Competition.

As you might recall, the snitzel 'Lines' won a Juror's Award, and my favorite 'Steel Plant' (above) won bupkis.

I got a little envelope in the mail today from the WW Fair.  They accepted 'Steel Plant' into the show, but they cannot abide 'Lines'.  They want me to come and pick it up where it now resides with the rest of the rejects.

Bummer...that means I need to take time off work this week, too, to pick it up.  And, it means an extra trip to Puyallup.

I wish the jurors and judges would let artists know what they like and don't like.  It's so baffling!

Just proves, it's all so subjective and it doesn't really mean a thing.

STEEL PLANT #1 FINISHED - ?

I'm loving it!

This is Steel Plant #1 

acrylic on canvas

24" by 30"

TRYING TO GET IT ALL DONE BEFORE WEEK'S END

First thing this morning I cleaned the floor in the studio so I could pin baste the 'Mystery Quilt'.  It's bad enough having to mop in the house, you shouldn't have to mop your studio floor....geez.

But I must say it's very nice to have room enough to lay out a big quilt - although this one is not big - on the floor and get it basted.

Afterwards I definitely felt the need for a nice walk so  Lucy and I headed out.

After lunch I went back to the studio and worked on my Steel Plant painting.

Here's what it looked like before I started:

And here's what it looks like now:

You might notice I used a lot of red in the underpainting, but today I used a very limited palette of just Indigo Blue, Quinacridone Gold and a little Cadmium Yellow Medium and lots of white.   I like it.  I will let it rest for a week and then look at it again.

FIRST IN THE STEEL PLANT SERIES

OMG!  Did I just say I was starting another series?  You'd think I'd have learned my lesson, but seriously, I've been wanting to do some paintings of the Steel Plant.  I'm not going to say I'm doing a bunch of them.  I'm just going to nonchalantly say this is the first.

When I drove a truck every day I was going to Vashon Island a lot, mostly to haul the leachate runoff from the landfill with a tanker.  I would cross over the West Seattle Bridge (elevated above Spokane Street) in the early morning and see the Steel Plant and just be enthralled.  I can't say what it is exactly, but the way the sun hit all those pipes and metal buildings with steam coming out.  There are piles of rusty scrap outside, railroad tracks and cars, cat-walks, chimneys and occasionally, if you were lucky, you could see red-hot bars of steel coming out of one of the buildings.  The ground around the plant is black, there are mud puddles that reflect the light and the men are driving equipment around the yard.  It's all very.....I don't know....industrial?  

Now that we live in West Seattle I really need to put what I see on canvas.  Here is the beginnings, the underpainting - mostly I was using up what was left on my palette.  I really like it just like this, but knowing me, it will get too real-looking very soon.  This is 24" by 30".

My husband and I recently went on a tour of this place, the Nucor Steel Plant with a group from Historic Seattle.  I thought I'd be able to take pictures from the inside, but alas, it was not to be so.  They said I could take all the pictures I wanted....from outside their fence. Phooey!  Once the tour started I began to question why I was there!  It was scary, dirty, hot and smelly.  We had to walk on the cat-walks- metal grates suspended over the yard.  I hate walking on something you can see down through.  I have a very great fear of heights.  So, needless to say, I had a death grip on the hand railing, which was filthy with who-knows-what kind of dust.  By the end of the tour, most of that dust was either on my face or on my jeans.

It was a very interesting tour in that we learned a great deal about how steel is made.  Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and generous.  Almost all of the steel made in America is made from recycled materials, hence the big piles of rusty scraps in the yard.  Nucor is very proud of the fact that they are 100% recycled material only.  We got to see the cauldron where they mix the metals and melt them down to make the steel.  It was a little like I would image Hell to be.  Hot, loud, dirty and it even smelled a little sulpher-like.  There were so many things I wish I could have photographed, but I restrained myself.  I'm going to have to walk down around that area a little more and see just how close I can get with my long-lensed camera.