Goodbye and Hello

I'm not talking about saying goodbye to physical places, but rather, to online places. This will be my last post here. Blogger was really my first online "home", and of course, it seems a bit sad to leave it. Here, I shared many aspects of my life, both professional...

and personal...

I shared new work...

and work in progress.

I shared my thoughts, hopes, and dreams...

   

                                                                            

...and always, my inspiration.

Most importantly, I met other bloggers and became part of a large and very supportive online community. I'm proud to now call many of the people I met here my dear friends, even if we've never met in person.

When I first began the "re-launch" of my art career, I felt alone, scared, and very unsure of myself and my work. These kind and generous people have supported and encouraged me, cheered my successes, and been a virtual shoulder to cry on when times were hard. I have learned so much from them, and will always be grateful. I have watched them struggle and succeed, and tried to be there for them as they were for me. The importance of listening can never be overestimated. It's been a wonderful experience, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that blogging opened a new world for me. That new world includes selling art online through my website, enjoying the work of and learning from so many incredibly talented and inspiring artists, and becoming part of the new social media world.

I have spent a lot of time over the summer building a new website and blog from scratch. I started by researching for quite a while, until I felt I'd settled on the best course of action. I had virtually no web development experience, and I have no idea why I thought I could do this. It turned out to be more of a learning curve than I had ever imagined, and I came up against many brick walls, where I had to call for help, back up and start over again with some aspects, and change my so-well-laid plans. Often I felt utterly frustrated. I want to thank Megan for her expert help, without which I could not have done it.

Change, as they say, is good. (Or at least, unavoidable!) So, I will be moving to a new blog and website, which I very much hope you'll visit and enjoy. I have also added a print on demand shop on ArtPal.com, and I will be adding new work to those sites often. This blog will be here as an archive; feel free to come back and browse whenever you like. Most of the content here is still relevant, and hopefully remains helpful or interesting for some time to come.

And finally, it seems I have gotten the timing right for once; tomorrow morning at 11:28, we mark the winter solstice. On this day, the sun travels the shortest path through the sky, giving us the least daylight and the longest night.  There are many traditions and much spiritual significance associated with this day, not the least of which is setting new intentions or making resolutions - looking forward to growth at the first turning toward the light. 

I'm very grateful to all those who followed me here at True Adventures of an Art Addict, and hope you will follow my new blog as well. Blessings to you all, my friends; I look forward to seeing you at the new place! Happy Solstice!

When I Was a Bird

When I Was a Bird

collage on multi-media board, 8 x 14 inches

ingredients: vintage book pages and hand-written letters, image transfers, magazine cut-outs, gampi paper, water color crayons and pencils, stitching

This one looks pretty much the same as the last time you saw it; I just added some stitching, the birds, and tweaked a few other things. Trying not to overwork it, as I sometimes tend to do.

You may have noticed that people with wings, angel-like figures, and girls with one wing appear frequently in my work. I tried to get to the bottom of this obsession in a past blog post titled, "Where Wings Come From", which you can read here if you're interested. Someone once said that all of the figures an artist paints are reflections of him/herself, and in some way, I believe this is true.

detail of first spread from my handmade book, Book of Dreams

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. ~Henry Ward Beecher

a page from Not an Open Book

In trying to find quotes for this post, I came across a very interesting website called Every Pianter Paints Himself: Art's Masterpieces Explained. The home page text states:

Every painter paints himself, a saying first documented in the early Renaissance, has been mentioned by artists ever since. Both Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci used it, as Picasso did too; Lucian Freud and other contemporary artists still cite variations today. Yet despite its great significance to artists, art scholars rarely discuss the saying or its meaning. Those who do seem to have no choice but to deny it: painters don’t really paint themselves, they say, but their sensibility. But why would a phrase that meant so much to great masters, and still does to their followers, require re-phrasing to mean anything? The truth is, as this website demonstrates, it is the images of these visual artists that are veiled, not their words.

Here's an example from the site where they discuss some of Basquiat's paintings in relation to his life. I plan to go back and read what they say about other artists and their work. Just something to think about, you know?

Progressing... a Few Quick Glimpses

Coming along slowly with the new piece I first showed you in this post. It's been quite a while since I completed something; as some of you may know, I've been busy studying business things. More about that later. (You can read a bit about it here and here.)

Most of the basic components are glued down, and I have added some stitching; I think it will be finished in the next day or so. In the meantime, I just wanted to share a few more details before you see the whole piece. (Is that an oxymoron?) Anyway, without further blah-blah-blah:

I kind of enjoy using the hammer and awl to make holes for the stitching.  My dogs, however, do not enjoy the noise - I suppose it sounds like thunder or fireworks to them - and when I start, they quickly find another place to hang out.

My son-in-law gave me these old engineering drawings, which I have since found out are done on silked vellum. We knew they were vellum, but when I tore a piece of it to use in a collage, I saw tiny threads, and realized it was woven. Later I heard, just by chance, that in the past very very thin sheets of silk would be somehow laminated onto vellum to make it more durable. It's a strange material to work with, as it doesn't behave like either paper or fabric, and seems to stretch when wet (or has glue on it), and is very hard to glue down flat.

Here, tree roots have been stitched with embroidery floss - a mix of two different blues. Hopefully, it will all come together soon, and I will share it with you here!


Happy Monday, everyone!

Destruction, and a New Life

A very melodramatic way to describe the second day in the life of our collage, right?  However, I'd have to say it's pretty accurate.

Here's how I left it last night; it was going nowhere, as far as I could see.


I'd had this idea floating around in my head for a few days, using a particular cabinet card photo of a young girl, something nebulous about a lost or broken girl.

You can kind of see her here, amidst the flotsam and jetsam. When I peeled the photo off the card, it tore, but that didn't really bother me.

I had recently found an old set of encyclopedias from 1971 in my basement. Jackpot! I removed the cover from one of them and sanded it to get the slick finish off so that things would adhere to it more easily, also making it look older.

I had already glued the girl together on a piece of an old engineering drawing, and given her a flower hat. Here's where the collage met its fate.

I ripped it into pieces, and laid some of them out on the book cover with the girl.  Not bad. Now we're getting somewhere.

 But where?

 So, putting things on and taking them off, trying to decide which I like best...

 No, way too much...

 So, imagine this happening about a hundred more times...

I feel like I'm getting close, except for that skirt-thing.  Sooner or later...

...I have the basis of my composition laid out. Time to start gluing!  Soon I'll post the finished piece.




p.s. You might see other pieces of the original collage turn up here or there later on...

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...