Art and Garden Parties

Weekend Road Trip – Art Parties

Is it really Monday?  The weekend was a blur – It’s great to have such a creative family, although 2 solo show openings (one in Denver and one in Steamboat) on the same weekend is pretty over the top.

My partner, Barbara Gilhooly had a reception for her solo show of paintings, drawings, and wire sculpture at 44T Art Space in Denver.  Her show is open now through the end of June.  My Dad, Rod Hanna had an opening for his 50 year retrospective photography show this weekend at the Steamboat Springs Art Museum.  His show will be up through Oct. 14th.

I made it up to Steamboat on Saturday in time for the Dinner at the Museum with the Artist event – a 72-person group event, tables filling the art museum.  It was good food and good times – seeing my Steamboat family, some friends I hadn’t seen for quite awhile, and meeting some new folks.

We enjoyed a great dinner surrounded by a selection of 68 amazing photographs from the 3 “periods” of  my Dad’s 50 year photography career (early black and white newspaper reporter journalist photos, KC Chiefs and Denver Broncos sports photos, and colorful western landscapes as well as Colorado horse drive photos).

As I sat there at the dinner and looked around at all the people and all of my Dad’s artwork, I felt like I was at my Dad’s graduation!  He’s made some amazing pictures over the past 50 years.  It’s a great show.  If you can’t get to Steamboat to see the show in person, here’s a link to the news story and some of the photos in the exhibit.

"Garden Party", 19.5"x20" (cotton fabric hand-dyed and breakdown screen-printed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton thread) ©Ayn Hanna

Switching Gears – Garden Party

It just so happens that today is the deadline to drop off artwork at the Lincoln Center for the Ft. Collins Studio Tour Preview Show.  Each of the 60 participating artists will include 1 work of art in this “studio tour preview” show which will be open June 8 – 24, with an artists’ reception on June 15, 5-8pm.

Naturally, I was still working to finish my piece for the show this morning as I didn’t get much any stitching done on it this weekend.  Not that I rely on deadlines to keep me going or anything (I do), but I did get my piece finished by early afternoon today, and it came together pretty easily, once I gave up the idea of doing a bunch of hand-stitching on it.

"Garden Party" (detail), 19.5" x 20" ©Ayn Hanna

So, this piece is all machine stitched.  It began as 1 piece of cotton, screen-printed with multiple colors and imagery via the breakdown screen-printing process.  Breakdown screen-printing is a great combination of painting and printing with procion mx dyes. (I would show a photo of what the initial screen-printed base fabric looked like when I started this piece, but apparently, I missed getting a picture of this one after printing it.)

"Garden Party" (detail), 19.5" x 20" ©Ayn Hanna

Working on my initial base layer screen-printed image, I appliqued some pieces of my hand-dyed fabrics then added batting and a backing and machine quilted the piece.

This will be on display at the Lincoln Center Gallery, June 8-24.  I’ll be there for the artists’ reception on June 15, so please stop by and join me if you’re in the area and can make it.

"Garden Party" (detail) 19.5" x 20" ©Ayn Hanna