My Backyard Garden, a portfolio of coloring pages

I have finally printed a limited edition of “My Backyard Garden, a portfolio of coloring pages.” Rather than binding the pages into a book, these individual drawings of flowering plants and garden critters are ready to be colored and then easily displayed. The 12 x 9” Portfolio includes 10 drawings printed on acid-free cardstock, with signed cover sheet.

About this project: I have always been fascinated by secret gardens. One beautiful spring day, I realized that there was a lovely world of flowering plants in my own backyard. I started making drawings from observation of my backyard garden. The insects and creatures were added, from imagination or photo reference, to the observed floral drawings adding another layer of wonder and magic to the images. I hope you enjoy coloring these pages, as much as I enjoyed drawing them.

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Order Details: $14 each. Free Lancaster local delivery. $7 Priority Mail shipping in US.

Click this email link heidileitzke@gmail.com to place your order. The email will prompt you to select your portfolio color (Blossom Pink {pink is sold out,} Robin’s Egg Blue, Sage Green) and select delivery or shipping.

Payment via Venmo, PayPal, cash or check.

TXP Textiel Plus Magazine

Springtime Isle, highlighted in the Nature themed issue of Textiel Plus Magazine, published in the Netherlands. https://www.textielplus.nl/over-txp-textiel-plus/

Cross-Pollinated Bloom

Last spring I was commissioned by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts to create the award objects for the August 2018 Governor’s Awards for the Arts recipients. My design proposal for “Cross-Pollinated Bloom” was approved and I spent most of the summer of 2018 creating six unique works of art made with hand-embroidered linen and acryla gouache painted on laser cut wood.

Inspired by the idea of what I might discover in a cross-pollinated secret garden, these sculptures are a compilation and abstraction of real and imagined forms including orchids, ferns, poppies, pomegranates and butterflies. My work is not intended to be an exact likeness of any real plant, but rather a playful and tactile imagining of a flowering form that at once seems familiar and unreal. 

Each sculpture is composed of two laser-cut components. These painted, wooden, puzzle-like pieces interlock at the base, to stand on a root ball. A central stem rises just over twelve inches high and fern leaves coil to the side. Embracing the main bud form is a heavily embroidered collar of linen, which draws on the alluring colors of early summer poppies and the rich patterns of butterfly wings, representing the relationship between petal and pollinator. It is my hope that this work makes manifest the value of beauty in our daily lives and serves as a reminder that the ground on which we walk is fertile, and holds potential for new life and growth each spring.

Art at Kings Oaks - Closing Reception - Oct. 21, 2- 5 p.m.

I was happy to be invited to participate in this exhibition with artists I admire, in the stunning venue of Kings Oaks. I look forward to attending the closing reception on Sunday, October 21 from 2 - 5 pm, which is free, and open to the public. So… if you are in the area, please consider visiting.

Art at Kings Oaks reimagines a stone chapel and a 19th-century barn near Newtown, Pennsylvania, as unique settings for art to inhabit.  Initiated in 2012 by Bucks County painter Alex Cohen, the artist-lead pop-up exhibition is co-directed by Cohen and theatre artist Clara Weishahn.  Art at Kings Oaks is an invitational group exhibition that features the work of local, national, and international artists and traditionally takes place over the first several weekends in October.

Clara and Alex put together a lovely catalog to celebrate the exhibition.

Kings Oaks Farm is located in Bucks County at
756 Worthington Mill Road
Newtown, PA 18940

Admission is free and free onsite parking is readily available.

Exhibition - States of Reverie

I am looking forward to this exhibition with wonderful artist and long-time friend, Tai Lipan. Please join us for the reception on Thursday, September 20th from 5 - 7 pm.

The tactile works in this two-­person exhibition use the language of painting to create intimate moments. Heidi Leitzke embroiders lush gardens, hiding and revealing layers of color, line, memory and imagination with each thread. Tai Lipan uses hand-­cut and painted wood to create complex compositions that symbolically depict dramatic collisions of weather, light and the landscape. Ominous and unnerving or luminous and wonder-filled, these works evoke a sense of place.

Sykes Gallery at Millersville University
46 E. Frederick St.
Millersville, PA 17551

The Gallery is open Monday - Friday from 8 am - 4 pm and by appointment, with the artist.

Inertia Baltimore Studio Visit

Baltimore, Maryland based artist Amy Boone-McCreesh recently visited my studio. She brought many thoughtful questions about my work, life and how I try to do it all. The interview is part of her Inertia Studio Visit project. You can read the full interview here:  https://inertiastudiovisits.com/2018/06/21/studio-visit-heidi-leitzke/

Thank you, Amy! 

Drawing with the Sun - Exploring Cyanotypes

I am teaching a workshop this summer at Mount Gretna School of Art!

Often called sun-prints or blue-prints, cyanotype is a fun and vibrant alternate photographic process in which treated paper is exposed to the ultraviolet light from the sun. Objects are laid on the treated paper and as the sun activates the chemicals the exposed areas of the paper becomes a rich cyan-blue creating, almost by magic, a silhouette image. 

This workshop will focus on all aspects of how to make a cyanotype print; including the curious history of the process, how to correctly mix the chemicals, the use of cyanotype in contemporary art and creating your own prints. You will leave with one (or more high-quality) work of art that you could hang in your own home!

cyanotype and gouache on paper, 10 x 10 inches

Who: open to the public
What: Drawing with the Sun, Cyanotype Workshop
Where: Heights Community Center. 62 Pine Ave., Mount Gretna, PA  17064
When: Saturday July 7, 2018
How to Register: http://www.mgsoa.org/2018workshops/july-7th