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Monday, November 1, 2010

Gloria J Zucaro, First Friday Feb. 3 Opening and Exhibit.

Hi everyone,

I am madly preparing for my first two-man gallery show at The Dole Mansion in Crystal Lake Illinois.  I have about 65 paintings to varnish,frame-up, inventory, photograph and hang for the First Friday event on February 3rd.  So I have not been posting to my blog since last Friday.   If you are in our area, I would love to meet you.  The opening is from 5PM until 7:30PM.  401 Country Club Rd., Crystal Lake, IL
I am exhibiting with my friend Dotty Carringi who does beautiful pastel paintings.
 Here is a picture of front of the building and a short history.
Dole Mansion
Back in the 1860s, when the town of Crystal Lake was about 25 years old, Charles S. Dole purchased over 1,000 acres of land overlooking the lake. It was his dream to construct an elaborate estate that would reflect his position as a successful businessman. He was an early member of the Chicago Board of Trade, being associated with Armour, Dole & Co. in Chicago. To carry out his plan, he built a three-story mansion with adjoining gardens and stables. European craftsmen were imported to lay parquet floors, fashion archways and carve interior wood work from black walnut trees grown on the property. As a final touch, he brought in Italian artisans to build several marble fireplaces. According to Mr. Dole's obituary, construction costs exceeded $100,000, an enormous amount of money in those days.

During the early 1900s, the property was owned and operated by several different ice companies. Ice was harvested from Crystal Lake and shipped by rail to nearby Chicago. The advent of refrigeration brought about the decline of the ice business. After laying vacant for several years, the property was sold in 1922 to the Lake Development Company. Today The Dole Mansion is owned by the Lakeside Legacy, along with Lakeside center, which is the building connected to The Dole Mansion. Dole mansion is located along the lake, and there is a festival held on the grounds every year.

Gloria J Zucaro's Collage Class

This past weekend I took part in a collage workshop at The Mainstreet Art Centre in Lake Zurich, IL.  It was taught by Laura Lein-Svencner.  What a fun but intense workshop!  I never realized how labor intensive collage can be!  

We spent the whole first day preparing our papers with staining, stenciling,crinkling, removing color with a metal polishing compound,gessoing, and polymer, polymer, polymer!  All our twenty papers or so had to be polymered on both sides, and transfers had 3 layers of polymer on one side only. So all day it was a constant stream of artists brushing on the polymer or gesso, and carefully carrying their papers one at a time to the back room to let them dry on newspapers that were stacked everywhere on tables and on the floor!

The second day Laura did a complete demo for about an hour and a half.  Then she gave us some small squares of watercolor paper and some of her sample papers(three very small pieces, about 2" x 3", and a couple of transfers.  We were to do practice runs with these three and tear or cut the papers, arrange them and tack them down with a special little heating iron.  Then more polymer, then shading around areas on our pieces to make them more dimensional, adding some pastel if we wished, spray with fixative, polymer, add transfers, tack, moisten the back of the transfer to remove the paper, quickly polymer to avoid a bloom, add beads or what-not....I am exhausted!  And most of you will say "what in the world is she talking about!"

ANYWAY...below are my first efforts with collage.  The first 3 are our practice squares, about 4" square, the fourth and fifth are using our own papers and "Found" objects.  I my, case the flowers and the sunbather that are mixed in with my papers.  These collages are larger.  One is 6" square, the other is 6" x 4".