Patricia M Osborne

I’m delighted to welcome back, poet, Karen Pierce Gonzalez to Patricia’s Pen. Karen is also an artist and today she’s here to discuss her artwork. You’re going to love it!

Karen’s Artwork

Karen Pierce Gonzalez

For this blog, I decided to focus on only one of the natural elements I work with.

I’m not a trained artist. My artwork is an intuitive conversation I often have with elements of the natural world. The result of this interplay with whatever I discover when outdoors is always a surprise because the journeys we take together are not scripted. I really don’t knowwhat the outcome will be.

The walnuts, similar to most of the other tree-related art I make are what remains. As shown in the group photograph, they’re what’s been left behind after serving their primary purpose (tasty inner meat for crows and squirrels).

How they start

I find them along The Laguna de Santa Rosa path, near where I live in the North San Francisco Bay Area. This particular one-mile strip of packed earth is a favorite spot for local walkers, joggers, and bicyclists. What that means for the walnut shells is that they are often further fractured by human traffic.

Walnut

The fragments I bring home dry in sunlight streaming in from my studio’s south facing window. : Like so many other aspects of my life, where I have learned to ‘make do’ with what I have at hand, I dialogue with these walnuts using a limited supply of art materials.

When I am ready to begin working with them, I always reach for whichever color I am drawn to. I experience this as a sensation of being thirsty for a particular shade or hue. Usually I start with a standard colored pencil then move onto watercolor based pencils, then perhaps onto glitter or thin sticks of oil pastel for texture.

Shell half-life

Over time, and because I have collected a whole tray of these bits  in various shapes and sizes, I began to explore with other materials, such as  ink tense and metallic pencils which, I discovered, offer deep degrees of color, and acrylic paints which can add another dimension of texture.

However, what matters the most to me is the joy I feel when creating these pieces. Partly because I am always in awe of how the colors highlight certain cavernous qualities otherwise unnoticed, but also because I can make something ‘broken’ whole, and beautiful beyond my expectations.

Basically, the final piece is a collaboration, a give and take in which the shells take in color and give back a new level of being, a new life.

After the Feast

These are small, ranging in size from .75 to 1.5 inches (1.90 – 3.81 cm) in height. And, as such, it is difficult to show them in galleries as I have larger works of found nature, etc. So I  photograph them and share them in on my website and related websites like the National Arts Program (USA) and on social media platforms. This year I plan to also submit them to literary journals where I hope they’ll be as well-received as my pine cone and bark pieces have been.

Still in the Sea

About Karen Pierce Gonzalez

Karen Pierce Gonzalez’s visual artistry focuses primarily on assemblage art from elements found in nature. To date, 50+ of her art images, including six cover images, have been or are scheduled to be published in a range of literary journals/magazines. In March her larger textile-related pieces will be on display at the Vallejo Museum and in April she has been invited to share 31 of her art pieces in The Wombwell Rainbow’s National Poetry Month Ekphrastic Challenge.

An award-winning writer, Karen’s work has appeared in numerous print and online publications, radio, and podcasts. Her chapbooks include Coyote in the Basket of My Ribs (Kelsay Books), True North and Sightings from a Star Wheel (Origami Poems Project), and forthcoming Down River with Li Po (Black Cat Poetry Press). Details of a fifth collection are currently under discussion with a North American publisher.

Find out more about Karen’s art and writing over on her website HERE

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