Huron River Art Collective Blog

The following guest blog post is contributed by Huron River Art Collective member Cara Cummings. Cara’s watercolor painting, Just for Today, was accepted by Juror John Gutosky into the Collective’s Fall Juried Exhibit, 2022.

Holding a flower in my hand, feeling the textures, seeing the subtleties in colors, noticing how many petals there are, how they curl, and how they are attached to the flower head – this is how I begin a painting.

Botanical art is only partially about creating a beautiful picture of a plant. It is also about learning to look, and beginning to understand, and share more about it. How are the same kind of flowers different from each other, or similar to a completely different species, genus, or even family? Twirling a stem between your fingers helps you to understand the form, to see how structures are related to each other. How can you tell the story of a plant by getting to know it? 

While photographs can be helpful reference tools, they do not provide a full picture of your subject. Using photographs to document your subject can be important, especially if it takes weeks or months to complete a painting. But even then, I use them sparingly, and only to compliment my sketches, notes, and color studies (color can be very off in photos).

Daylilies are big, bright, beautiful, magical flowers that arrive in the summer, and true to their name, only last for a day. And within a couple of weeks the whole display is gone again until the following year. 

I have always loved them, but for a long time have avoided painting them, as I was unsure of how I would work on such an ephemeral subject – I am a very slow painter – but this past summer, after watching them come and go for several seasons of living with this garden, I couldn’t let the brief opportunity pass again. Their bright, complex clusters of orange petals looked almost electric as they hovered in the deep green shade of the unmanicured jungle in the back corner of my back garden.

I chose a few stems that were just beginning to open, knowing that I didn’t have much time. I always start with quick, light pencil sketches, and find the form from there. I pulled one of the flowers apart, and holding a petal between my fingers, sketched it from several angles – I wanted to get to know it, so that when the petals began to shrivel up, I would have the memory of the feeling in my hand. I also took notes about the number of petals, the direction of the veins in the leaves (a monocot, parts in 3s, parallel veins…), and color of the closed buds – anything that would help me later. 

Finishing the initial sketch, and doing a quick color study went pretty quickly (the flower opened as I worked). But I was only able to begin the painting before the flower had changed, and then was gone.

Because I take the time to get to know my subjects, I am able to finish my paintings without having the original flowers in front of me. I do pick more blooms (if they are available) to have as references for a few more days which allows me to hold them in the light and get the colors of highlights and shadows, and to find details I may have missed, but for the most part I can continue to work from the memory of having held the flower in my hands.

Cara Cummings is a fine artist, illustrator, gardener, and educator from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her work represents the synthesis of her background in biology, environmental policy, agriculture, and lifelong love of nature. Her garden is the place where she grows flowers and food, and is a place to inspire new art, and to provide educational ingredients to share with her students. To inquire about purchasing artwork by Cara Cummings, email: cara@carasgarden.com

Huron River Art Collective’s Fall Juried Exhibit can be seen at the Ann Arbor District Library (lower level) through the Reception on November 13th, 2-4p. Artwork is available for purchase directly from the artists with no commission. Join us at the reception to hear from the Juror, John Gutosky, and for awards.

All members are invited to submit guest blog posts. For Guest Blog Post Guidelines, please email communications@huronriverartcollective.org.

The following guest blog post is contributed by Huron River Art Collective member, Exhbits Chair and Community Exhibits Coordinator, Dennis Gordon. Dennis had two woodcuts accepted by Juror John Gutosky into the Collective’s Fall Juried Exhibit, 2022.

The term ‘woodcut’ is a confusing term, since it refers to the print made from a wood plate.  The above print (aka woodcut) , ‘Teasel’ is currently on exhibit at the Huron River Art Collective Fall Exhibit at the Ann Arbor Public Library.

This woodcut is the only time I have engraved on two separate plates and then attached the plates together (with thin slats on the back side – lots of them, and lots of screws!).

There are many things I like about woodcuts, but if I narrowed it down to two, they would be the strong black lines that you tend to get and the unpredictability of the whole printmaking process.  No matter how much you plan and prepare, you really don’t know what you have till you take the print.  Sometimes it is a good surprise, sometimes not.

One of the nice surprises with  ‘Teasel’ is the variety in the strength of the lines, with the foreground being very defined and the background being blurred.  ‘Teasel’ is similar to many of my other woodcuts in that it comes from a photograph that I have taken where a somewhat simple image can be worked on to produce texture and detail beyond the original photograph. I find woods, shadows, reflections, unusual angles of objects and scenic vistas to be my most frequent inspiration.

While many of my woodcuts are black and white, I often integrate color by painting a loose, not well defined background painting, letting that dry, and then inking up the wood plate and printing the image on that background.

Dennis also has some woodcuts on display at White Pine Studios in Saline and at the Gallery at Cherry Hill Theater in Canton. To inquire about purchasing artwork by Dennis Gordon, email: dennishgordon@yahoo.com

Huron River Art Collective’s Fall Juried Exhibit can be seen at the Ann Arbor District Library (lower level) through the Reception on November 13th, 2-4p. Artwork is available for purchase directly from the artists with no commission. Join us at the reception to hear from the Juror, John Gutosky, and for awards.

All members are invited to submit guest blog posts. For Guest Blog Post Guidelines, please email communications@huronriverartcollective.org.