Visiting Artist at the Torpedo Factory Art Center

Collage artist Megan Coyle as a Visiting Artist

This weekend I moved into my new studio for June and July at the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Old Town, Alexandria. The artist whose studio I’m taking over let me move in a couple days early. She’s a sculptor and she cleared half of her studio space so I can hang up my art and sell my work. It’s been a lot of fun thus far – extremely different than what I’m used to with working alone in my apartment. If you’re in the area, you should drop by – I’ve posted a schedule for the days that I’ll definitely be in the studio during my residency.

Collage artist Megan Coyle as a Visiting Artist

Here’s a picture of the space before installing my work. My parents were a big help with moving everything to the studio and installing the framed art.

Collage artist Megan Coyle as a Visiting Artist

The work installed in the studio. You’ll notice that I put smaller pieces on pedestals. By moving them out more in the middle of the space, people could see them better when they were walking by my doorway. The artist who owns the studio makes large sculptures so I’m competing for attention with these larger works. We’ll see what I shall do to make my side more fun and interesting to lure people in.

Collage artist Megan Coyle as a Visiting Artist

Along with my artwork, I’m also selling handmade magnets with images of my art – they’ve been pretty popular!

Collage artist Megan Coyle as a Visiting Artist

Here’s my work space – it’s at the back of the room. I think I should move it more towards the front so people can see what I’m working on. Many times the visitors don’t even realize that my work is collage until they read the labels on the wall. I want to make it even more obvious by working in a more noticeable area – not hidden behind cabinets.Well I hope everyone had a great weekend!

Piece by Piece: Figurative Collage Reception Photos

Piece by Piece Figurative Collage by Megan Coyle

Aside from posting the video of my reception, I thought I’d add a few pictures from the event. The one above is an action shot of my artist talk.

Piece by Piece Figurative Collage by Megan Coyle

The audience during the talk.

Piece by Piece Figurative Collage by Megan Coyle

Yet another angle.

Piece by Piece Figurative Collage by Megan Coyle

I realized that, gasp, I hadn’t shown any images of the food during the show. The day before, as well as the morning of the reception, we were hard at work putting together a few platters. The one above is the cheese platter.

Piece by Piece Figurative Collage by Megan Coyle

This is an unfinished platter that had a mix of food – tortellini, tomatoes with a salmon spread inside of them, and a goat cheese spread on some veggies.

Piece by Piece Figurative Collage by Megan Coyle

The fruit platter minus the yogurt dip that we put in the center.

Piece by Piece Figurative Collage by Megan Coyle

And the veggie platter minus the dip in the center. We also had a dessert platter and a few other items that I didn’t photograph while I was working in the kitchen. It was quite the experience planning everything for this show – from PR to planning the menu, I was grateful for every bit of help I received.

So one solo opening down, one more (at the moment) to go. And later today I get to go to work at my temporary studio after I move in. I can’t wait!

Fisher Gallery Reception Video

My brother, Brendan Coyle, put together a video of the reception for my solo show “Piece by Piece: Figurative Collage” at the Fisher Gallery. Here you can get a good idea of what the show looked like when you walked into the gallery. The exhibit features sixteen of my collages created this year.

Piece by Piece: Figurative Collage Exhibit Postcards

Yesterday I worked on installing my first solo exhibition, “Piece by Piece: Figurative Collage” at the Fisher Gallery. The show opens this Friday, although the reception isn’t until the 22nd. Below I’ve included images of the exhibit postcard – you can click on the front and back view to see a larger image of the card.

Piece by Piece: Figurative Collage by Megan Coyle
Front view

Piece by Piece: Figurative Collage by Megan Coyle
Back view

After loading and unloading artwork all day yesterday, it felt great to see the work up on the gallery walls. Now all I need to do is get organized for the reception. Then it will be time to prep for my Visiting Artist work. Yep, there’s never enough time in a day to get everything done…

Landscape Collages from NYC

A few weeks ago I received an email from a high school teacher, Monica, from New York City. She told me that her class had just finished a landscape collage unit and that they had focused on Romare Bearden and my work for their artist focus. Her class analyzed my landscape collages to figure out how I created the work so they could learn from it. They also worked on their own collages inspired from their studies.

Below I’ve included images that Monica so kindly sent to me. I always enjoy hearing from teachers who’ve shared my work with their students. It’s great knowing that your work can inspire others.

Coyle inspired collage
Each collage is about 3″x3″

Taking High-Quality Photographs of Artwork

This weekend I didn’t get a chance to work on my portable portfolio that much – I just swung by a few stores to pick up supplies for it. Before I start putting together prints for it, I want to take higher resolution pictures of my artwork. Previously, I used an old point-and-shoot Canon camera to take images of my work. I also went outside on nice days to take images. Now, with my higher resolution Nikon camera and my light kit, I can control the lighting for the images and take much crisper and clearer images.

Below are a couple works of art that I retook images of. The collages are actually back from my high school days in 2004, when I used to incorporate oil pastel into my collages. The images with caption 1 are photographs I took with my older camera while the ones with caption 2 are what I took with my newer camera. It’s amazing what a difference it can make when you take better images of your work. So now it’ll take me a while to sift back through my work to take better images – but for documentation’s sake, the work will be well worth it when I’m done. With better photographs, you can get much better prints and have nicer looking pictures on your website.

Orange Girl by collage artist Megan Coyle
[1]

Orange Girl by collage artist Megan Coyle

[1]

Figure by collage artist Megan Coyle
[2] Order a print

Senior Thesis Planning

I’ve been trying to work on my senior thesis a bit by creating a few pieces for my next committee meeting. These pieces probably won’t make it to the actual show–I’m pretty sure they’ll be butchered at my next meeting. Nevertheless, I’ll continue onward.

Jean by collage artist Megan Coyle
“Jean Reading.” Collage on paper. 18″x24″

Anyway, for my show, I’ve decided to do collages, with portraits as the subject matter. During my winter break, I took advantage of the free time I had and got started on a sample piece to show my committee. This piece below is how far I got along with the portrait of my mother. It isn’t finished because it needs more shadowing on her face and better work with the wall in the background. I’m not satisfied with the composition either–I’ll probably have to take new pictures of my mother the next time I see her so I can make a better portrait of her.

Sketch of Ali by collage artist Megan Coyle
“Ali (Sketch).” Graphite on paper. 18″x24″

Today, I worked on a sketch for one of my future collages, of my cousin Ali. I like this composition a lot better and I hope to get started on it later this week.

And that’s everything for now. I’ll probably work on a few more sketches tonight of other portraits I plan on collaging.