A Day in the Life of a Collage

It started this way:

I had an old watercolor of a tree that I didn't want any more, so I thought I might recycle it and use it as the base for a collage.

First, I glued some brightly colored pieces of an old museum guide onto it, since I wanted to be able to scrape through to show bits of color.

Then, I covered the entire thing with pieces of vintage paper from old books, drawings, and sheet music.

I immediately added a second layer because it's easier to scrape or rub off when still damp from the glue. (I use matte gel medium as my adhesive.)

Here's a close-up view. I have to apologize for the poor photo quality, as it's been very dark and dreary here, and there's not really enough light to get a good photo with my phone.

Here it is after I scraped some of the papers off to reveal the colored paper underneath.  I call this the "Glaaaaaaah!!!" stage - when a piece gets to the point where I'm either going to throw it away or cover it up again; in other words, I hate it. Could I make a decent composition out of it? Probably, but right now I'm not seeing it.

My studio and materials were also in a complete state of "glaaaah!", but I still couldn't leave well enough alone...

 I glued some more papers on, then rubbed some more off (lather, rinse, repeat) .... and this is how I left it for the night.



Tune in tomorrow to find out what happens to our poor, pitiful collage. Will it live to see another day?  I'm not so sure...

Printing Up a Storm

I'm not really sure what that means, "up a storm", but it's what my grandmother would say when someone was going at something full-force, as in, "When you were a year old, you were just talking up a storm." I wonder where that came from, and is it an idiom?

Sorry, I'm wandering off course here, or, what my husband would call, "babbling". I do understand where that one came from, and it's a metaphor. I think. I've been working really hard this week, and I guess my brain is a little fried. I seem to be able only to speak in figurative language.

Anyway, I've been making monotypes (or some would say monoprints) for two days, not counting a whole day of preparation, which consisted of rearranging my studio, cleaning off the press and the dog crates and as many surfaces as I could to dry prints on, removing lots of artwork that was stored in boxes, finding my plexiglass plates and other equipment, etc.  That was Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday I printed, without breaks, from about 8:00 in the morning until 5:00 or so in the evening, without sitting down. My back was not at all happy about it.

 My drafting table, which is usually covered with carousels full of colored pencils, pens, and other tools, was pulled away from the wall, cleaned off, and used to hold the plexiglass plate and another piece to roll out and mix ink on. This wasn't nearly enough room to do what I needed to do, but I had to make do with what I had.

 Inks have been rolled out and colors have been mixed...
 

 I used some plants in my prints, just stuff I found in the yard, mostly weeds. It took a while to clean the ink off of everything, which is always the worst part...

My press was used as a press for a change, instead of a table where junk collects...

I don't have a drying rack, so every possible surface was cleared off to be used as space to dry prints...

... including the dog crates and drawers where I keep all kinds of ephemera...


Hopefully I will be showing you some finished products soon!

Time to Push?

I don't really have much time to read art business books or blog posts, but I try to spend at little a little bit of my rare and cherished free time learning about how to be an artist, as opposed to how to make art.  In truth, it's a pretty boring subject, but one that's important to those of us who aspire to attain even a modest amount of "success"- insert your own definition here - as artists.

So lately, things have begun to pick up a bit, and I have been selling some work, as well as being invited or selected by juries to participate in some fairly important exhibits. Recently, my work has been published in an art 'coffee table' book as well as on a book cover, and I've been notified of a show (possibly solo) coming up this year. So here's the thing: isn't this the time to push?  I mean, now that I've gained some momentum, I feel I should work as hard as possible to take advantage of it.


 Here are a few of the things I'm working on now:

 If you've been reading my blog lately you probably remember my Book of Secrets.  I've laid this one aside for a while to work on other things, while contemplating issues I still haven't found answers for, such as:

 Snakes eyes,...

                                                                                       ... or no snake eyes?
And what about the nagging questions around locks, latches, chains... or what?

Here's another piece in progress:

For this one, I cut some old book covers into panels, and attached an old 'star guide', game piece, puzzle pieces, and monotype scraps. 

I like how it's coming along so far, but my big question is how to attach the panels together.

I was thinking of something like hooking them together with large jump rings, but now I'm not sure.  Sew them onto ropes or cords of some kind, maybe?




  Stay tuned for the next post, because along with the answers to these and other burning questions,

... I'll show you, in depth, what's on my easel! 




 
So, what do you think?  Time to push?

Moving Along with WIP

I'm amazed that it's already summer solstice! Summer officially starts today, and time keeps moving along- what's that they say about time flying when we're having fun? Somehow, time always seems to move faster than I do, but I'm still moving along with my art at my human pace, trying to take advantage of the free time (ha!) I have now to get things done.

I thought I'd share my progress with one of the pieces I showed you in this post.  It's called "Story of My Life", which I took from the title of the lovely vintage book cover I'm using as a substrate. It's hard to resist a ready-made idea like that, right? The book is actually about the life of William Taylor, an evangelist missionary who was Bishop of Africa during the 1800's.

These are 2 of the many configurations I've tried as I continuously rearrange, ad, and subtract various elements, in search of the best composition I can come up with.  I should have taken more photos, and intended to, but I get carried away when I'm working and forget, or just can't stop long enough. They help me to remember where I placed everything, which can be really helpful.  Oh well.  I hope to be able to post the finished version of it soon.


Also, I should announce that I have a piece in the National Collage Society's Annual Postcard Collage Exhibition.

The exhibit will be on display at Kent State University until July 20; subsequently, you can view it online at the National Collage Society website.

Happy Solstice, everyone!  Have a wonderful summer!

New Work: Vernal Equinox

I have finished one of the pieces from my "Work in Progress" post, and wanted to show you what it looks like in its final incarnation.

The title of the piece is Vernal Equinox, partly because I started working on it around that time, but also because these were the pathways around which my mind traveled as I made it. According to Wikipedia, an equinox occurs "... when the tilt of the Earth's axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun, the center of the Sun being in the same plane as the Earth's equator."

 illustration from Wikipedia

  There are two equinoxes, one around March 20th (vernal), and the other on or near September 22nd (autumnal). On these two days, the length of the day and night are equal- hence, equinox. Originally the festival of the pagan fertility goddess Ostara (Oestre), the date of Easter is calculated as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. From the equinox until the solstice, the days lengthen; it is the day that "light overcomes the darkness".  Since it was the first new work I had begun since sometime before Christmas, and the spring equinox signifies renewal and rebirth, it seemed a fitting title.



Usually, I simply list the ingredients of the piece underneath the photo, but I thought that this time, it would be fun to do a pictorial list instead.  As you can see, I'm easily amused!

 I suppose this could be categorized as either a material and/or a technique- decollage is exactly what it sounds like. First, you collage; then, you de-collage- also known as tearing off what you just glued on. It seems like this would just be a slow way of getting nowhere, but it can create some interesting textural effects that you couldn't get any other way. In the case of this piece, I took some of the ripped-off pieces and glued them onto my substrate. Upside-down, actually- I used the back side of the papers as the front. I hope that wasn't too confusing?

Found objects: here are some of the objects in one of my drawers marked, "metal things". 

Soft pastels: I used a mixture of reds to get that reddish-salmon color for the background of the upper part of the piece.

Embroidery floss was used for the stitching. I keep buying more colors, so now there's not enough room for all of them in the box; consequently, it's a mess.  Time to get a bigger box.

Metallic pens: I originally bought these Pentel Slicci pens to use with the guest book for my daughter's wedding. They write very smoothly, and seem to resist drying out.

Gold paint crayon- It's very hard to find these any more, but I just bought this one on etsy!

Vintage map (not this exact one)

Maple seeds from my yard. Photo by Laura Bell.

 Acrylic gel medium- you can never have too much, right?

Brass mini-brads- not even I am pathetic enough to get excited about a photo of brads.



Well, the pictorial list was a lot more work than the usual way, but I kind of like it! What do you think?  Now that school is out, I hope to be posting a bit more regularly.  A demain!

Message From a Dream - finished

I have completed the last piece I was working on for the "In Your Dreams" exhibit which is coming up in February.

Message From a Dream

 ingredients: vintage book covers, vintage Japanese envelopes, stamps, vintage book pages, image transfers, graphite drawing, watercolor pencils, metallic oil crayon, mica, feather, stitching

I've also revised the two "language of earth" pieces I was working on, thanks to the valuable opinions and advice you all gave me when I was stuck. It really does help to have some fresh eyes on work that you've been staring at for so long that your perspective is all skewed and wonky, don't you think?  I decided to ditch my original idea of connecting these together as one piece, as it seems they will each work better on their own.  If you want to see what these looked like before, click here.

 The Earth Sings

 As someone had suggested, I tried to connect the sections of this piece a bit better so that it's more integrated, and flows better from one section to another. I added brads to the compass, and spread the hydrangea petals from the top left into other sections of the piece; the stitching has been extended into the bottom left part where the globe is.

The Earth Speaks

On this piece, I just added blue stitching to the metal object plus a little more connecting it and the map, as well as to the ash seeds at the top.  I'm actually pretty happy with the way this one turned out.

I hope you are all having a wonderful holiday season, and not getting too stressed out.  I will be trying to do the same. 

Language of the Earth

My intention was for this to be a multi-panel piece, but as you may know, artwork seems to take on a life and mind of its own, quite carelessly ignoring our plans. Since these pieces didn't turn out as I had envisioned, I'm not sure they say what I wanted them to, and so the purpose of attaching them to each other may now be moot. I'm wondering if they might work better as separate pieces. Has your artwork ever mutinied on you this way?


In this post, I introduced the first panel, which I'm posting here so that you can see what they look like together. (I apologize for the horrible photos- the colors are affected by less than optimal lighting conditions, and I haven't had time to get good shots.)

Here's the second panel.  I'm now going with the working title, "Language of the Earth", though I'm not certain that's right, either.

ingredients: vintage book cover, vintage map, found metal objects, fossil, ash seeds, ginko leaf, metallic ink, stitching (embroidery floss).

Some details:

So far, so confused. Let me know what you think, as I seem to be fresh out of thoughts right now.

FINI!

It took most of the summer, but I have finally finished my "Book of Dreams".  At several points in the process, things did not go smoothly or according to plan.  You can read about the whole adventure here, here, here, here, here, and here, if you wish.  (Wow- that's a lot of "here"s! This really was more of an ongoing series than I realized.)  One of my purposes in posting each stage of the book's creation was to share my thoughts and technical processes with others who might be able to learn from my techniques- and from my mistakes.  So, if any of these posts has helped you in any way, I feel I have accomplished that goal. (Or even if my cluelessness brought  you some laughter, I'm happy to entertain!)

Front Cover

detail

 

detail

1st spread

detail

detail

2nd page spread

detail

3rd page spread

detail

detail

detail

open

If you recall, I had a problem with the spine, and ended up slicing it apart down the middle because it wasn't quite wide enough for the pages.  I thought long and hard about how best to fix it.  My first idea was to sew something, such as the spine of another book, over the cut, using the same stitching I used on other the pages.  I quickly realized, however, that I couldn't do that because the pages were already glued in; there was no place to put the needle through. My second thought was yikes- I've totally ruined the whole thing.  I was afraid that if I just glued some kind of paper onto it, it might not be strong enough to take the repeated opening and closing that the book was likely to have to endure, and wouldn't look right, besides.  Luckily, while looking at book binding supplies for the guest book I'm making for my daughter's wedding, I happened to see this Lineco Satin Cloth Tape.  I thought it was worth a try, so I ordered it, and it worked- in fact, the width was perfect.  But the tape was so pretty and shiny and new-looking that it seemed out of place in contrast with the old, well-used appearance of the rest of the book.  I attempted to resolve this by gluing on a 'skin' of dried acrylic gel I had peeled off from the earlier front cover fiasco.  You can see this on the photo of the back cover, below.  I'm still not sure about it, but have decided to leave it be for now.

back cover

FINI!  (The End)