Press & Publicity
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Dia de los Muertos at Truchas Gallery
The Times-Standard
(excerpted with photos added by the artist)
Created: 09/28/2012 02:39:02 AM PDT
Dia de Los Muertos (”Day of the Dead”) will be celebrated at Los Bagels in Eureka for the months of October and November. In Mexico, the festival is a vital and vibrant remembrance of departed loved ones, as well as a fiesta for those living.
During the traditional celebration, mariachi music fills the air and hundreds of people stroll the blocks of alley ways leading to the cemeteries, where a profusion of plants and flowers decorate graves. Inside the cemeteries, families picnic, listen to music and tend the graves of their departed ancestors.
Through a group art show, Los Bagels hopes to share the experience with the community. Artists will be showing paintings, textiles, drawings and masks inspired by the festival.
”Graveyards have never been sad places for me,” said Gigi Floyd, an artist who creates beeswax collages. “On the contrary, I often get the sense that they are outdoor 'containers' of love, honor and devotion. I feel the same way about Dia de los Muertos. Not a time of mourning, but rather a celebration of our beloved departed.
”I was inspired to make the pieces in this show while wandering around the Arcata and Ferndale cemeteries, surrounded by loving tributes etched into stone. The experience of creating each of these collages has left me with a sense of peace and of hope.”
While each of her three pieces embodies a different aspect of the experience of death, it is her hope that they also come across as an affirmation of life. “Missing Her” is from the perspective of a loving husband left behind. While there is a sense of wistful sadness, it is a tender nostalgia that she wishes to convey the most. “A Good Long Ride” is a celebration of someone who has departed after a long life well lived. “Still Among Friends” is about the “community” of the dead, eternally supporting one another.
The Times-Standard
(excerpted with photos added by the artist)
Created: 09/28/2012 02:39:02 AM PDT
Dia de Los Muertos (”Day of the Dead”) will be celebrated at Los Bagels in Eureka for the months of October and November. In Mexico, the festival is a vital and vibrant remembrance of departed loved ones, as well as a fiesta for those living.
During the traditional celebration, mariachi music fills the air and hundreds of people stroll the blocks of alley ways leading to the cemeteries, where a profusion of plants and flowers decorate graves. Inside the cemeteries, families picnic, listen to music and tend the graves of their departed ancestors.
Through a group art show, Los Bagels hopes to share the experience with the community. Artists will be showing paintings, textiles, drawings and masks inspired by the festival.
”Graveyards have never been sad places for me,” said Gigi Floyd, an artist who creates beeswax collages. “On the contrary, I often get the sense that they are outdoor 'containers' of love, honor and devotion. I feel the same way about Dia de los Muertos. Not a time of mourning, but rather a celebration of our beloved departed.
”I was inspired to make the pieces in this show while wandering around the Arcata and Ferndale cemeteries, surrounded by loving tributes etched into stone. The experience of creating each of these collages has left me with a sense of peace and of hope.”
While each of her three pieces embodies a different aspect of the experience of death, it is her hope that they also come across as an affirmation of life. “Missing Her” is from the perspective of a loving husband left behind. While there is a sense of wistful sadness, it is a tender nostalgia that she wishes to convey the most. “A Good Long Ride” is a celebration of someone who has departed after a long life well lived. “Still Among Friends” is about the “community” of the dead, eternally supporting one another.
"Missing Her"
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"Still Among Friends"
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"A Good Long Ride"
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"Queen of Cups"
Published in the Fall 2012 edition of Dover's
"Crafts, Needlework and Hobbies" catalog
SORRY ABOUT THE OH-SO-FUNKY SCAN!
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"Girl-Crazy Professor"
Open Studios: Floyd
The Times-Standard
(excerpted by the artist)
Created: 05/25/2012 02:31:10 AM PDT
North Coast Open Studios will take place the first two weekends in June. More than 100 artists will open their studios to the public for an opportunity to view their work, chat with the artists and see where they work. A complete list of participating artists, samples of their work, contact information and maps to their studios can be found at www.northcoastopenstudios.com. Note that some artists are participating both weekends and others only the first or second weekend.
Mixed-media artist Gigi Floyd will be one of almost 100 local artists and craftspeople participating in North Coast Open Studios this year. Her home studio will be open both weekends -- June 2-3 and 9-10 -- and featured work will include block prints, monotypes, framed reproductions and melted beeswax collages.
”NCOS is by far my favorite art event of the year,” said Floyd. “I am a 'people person' and love nothing better than spending the day (or week, or month) talking about art. I will shamelessly discuss my pieces and process for as long as there is someone there to listen -- and sometimes even when there isn't.”
Beeswax collage is a medium that Floyd began exploring after a life-altering event in 2008.
”I spent most of that year being treated for, and recovering from, breast cancer. Once that experience was behind me, I decided to try and find alternatives to the potentially toxic art materials that I'd been using for most of my life,” she said.
That quest eventually brought Floyd to a beeswax collage workshop offered by Scrapper's Edge in Eureka. And “Eureka!” is exactly what the artist said when she discovered what was to become 'her' medium.
”When I first decided to move away from 'traditional' art materials, I was afraid that my work would suffer,” said Floyd. “As it turned out, however, what I once perceived as limitation has propelled me into inspiration. And I've been flying ever since.”
Floyd begins her signature collages by coating a pre-stretched canvas with hot beeswax. She lays down the first layer of paper elements and fuses them to the piece using a small quilting iron. Each subsequent layer requires another coat of beeswax and more fusion. For some pieces, Floyd will fuse a scrap of lace or some other small “dimensional embellishment” as a final step.
The Times-Standard
(excerpted by the artist)
Created: 05/25/2012 02:31:10 AM PDT
North Coast Open Studios will take place the first two weekends in June. More than 100 artists will open their studios to the public for an opportunity to view their work, chat with the artists and see where they work. A complete list of participating artists, samples of their work, contact information and maps to their studios can be found at www.northcoastopenstudios.com. Note that some artists are participating both weekends and others only the first or second weekend.
Mixed-media artist Gigi Floyd will be one of almost 100 local artists and craftspeople participating in North Coast Open Studios this year. Her home studio will be open both weekends -- June 2-3 and 9-10 -- and featured work will include block prints, monotypes, framed reproductions and melted beeswax collages.
”NCOS is by far my favorite art event of the year,” said Floyd. “I am a 'people person' and love nothing better than spending the day (or week, or month) talking about art. I will shamelessly discuss my pieces and process for as long as there is someone there to listen -- and sometimes even when there isn't.”
Beeswax collage is a medium that Floyd began exploring after a life-altering event in 2008.
”I spent most of that year being treated for, and recovering from, breast cancer. Once that experience was behind me, I decided to try and find alternatives to the potentially toxic art materials that I'd been using for most of my life,” she said.
That quest eventually brought Floyd to a beeswax collage workshop offered by Scrapper's Edge in Eureka. And “Eureka!” is exactly what the artist said when she discovered what was to become 'her' medium.
”When I first decided to move away from 'traditional' art materials, I was afraid that my work would suffer,” said Floyd. “As it turned out, however, what I once perceived as limitation has propelled me into inspiration. And I've been flying ever since.”
Floyd begins her signature collages by coating a pre-stretched canvas with hot beeswax. She lays down the first layer of paper elements and fuses them to the piece using a small quilting iron. Each subsequent layer requires another coat of beeswax and more fusion. For some pieces, Floyd will fuse a scrap of lace or some other small “dimensional embellishment” as a final step.
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"Big Apple Honeymoon"
Published in the Summer 2012 edition of Dover's
"Crafts, Needlework and Hobbies" catalog
A SECOND APOLOGY FOR IMAGE QUALITY...
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"Pigeon Over Paris"
Collage artist minds her beeswax
The Times-Standard
Created: 11/11/2011 02:39:57 AM PST
ARCATA -- Mixed-media artist Gigi Floyd will be showing her artwork through December at The Garden Gate, 905 H St. An opening reception will be held during Arts! Arcata tonight from 6 to 9 p.m. and again on Dec. 9.
Most of the pieces in Floyd's show are melted beeswax collages, a medium the artist has been exploring for the past few years.
”There's so much I love about working with beeswax -- the rich tones and luscious texture, the intoxicating scent and most especially, the wonderful way that the beeswax can lend a translucency to each collage element, allowing glimpses of previous layers,” said Floyd. “The presence of beeswax mellows and unifies the various elements in the collage, and also adds a patina that invokes a sense of times past, which works especially well with my imagery.”
Floyd begins her pieces with a pre-stretched canvas. Each layer of the collage is coated with hot beeswax, and then fused to the previous layers with a small quilting iron. She will occasionally embed fabric or other small objects as a final step.
”The themes and imagery in my collages are often whimsical in nature,” said Floyd. “My imagination tends to move in quirky directions, constantly combining normally incongruous elements and settings. I've enjoyed giving that tendency free reign in all of the pieces that will be at The Garden Gate.”
Floyd can be contacted at artbygigi@gmail.com
The Times-Standard
Created: 11/11/2011 02:39:57 AM PST
ARCATA -- Mixed-media artist Gigi Floyd will be showing her artwork through December at The Garden Gate, 905 H St. An opening reception will be held during Arts! Arcata tonight from 6 to 9 p.m. and again on Dec. 9.
Most of the pieces in Floyd's show are melted beeswax collages, a medium the artist has been exploring for the past few years.
”There's so much I love about working with beeswax -- the rich tones and luscious texture, the intoxicating scent and most especially, the wonderful way that the beeswax can lend a translucency to each collage element, allowing glimpses of previous layers,” said Floyd. “The presence of beeswax mellows and unifies the various elements in the collage, and also adds a patina that invokes a sense of times past, which works especially well with my imagery.”
Floyd begins her pieces with a pre-stretched canvas. Each layer of the collage is coated with hot beeswax, and then fused to the previous layers with a small quilting iron. She will occasionally embed fabric or other small objects as a final step.
”The themes and imagery in my collages are often whimsical in nature,” said Floyd. “My imagination tends to move in quirky directions, constantly combining normally incongruous elements and settings. I've enjoyed giving that tendency free reign in all of the pieces that will be at The Garden Gate.”
Floyd can be contacted at artbygigi@gmail.com
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All images © Gigi Floyd 2012
