Untitled Post With Nothing in It

Until just a minute ago, that's what this was. For a very long time, started sometime in what seems like the distant past, this post had languished in a dormant state called, "I'm doing too many other things, but I'm planning to do a post at some point, preferably sooner than later." But my brain was so otherwisedly (at least I found time to invent a new adverb - I think) occupied that I had gotten no further than this, and I was stuck there, with no idea at all as to what it should be about. Sometimes if I just begin to begin, inspiration may strike me out of the blue - or maybe not.

I have had this little collage sitting on my press next to the computer desk, but I hadn't scanned it, or thought of a title. So I've decided to call it "Otherwisedly Occupied", which seems to be the best I can do right now, and also allows me to use my newly-invented word.

Otherwisedly Occupied

mixed media collage, 6 x 4 inches

ingredients: vintage book pages and other vintage ephemera, decorative paper, watercolor pencil

I hope you enjoy! Have a great weekend, everyone! xoxo

Art Challenge: Ritual/ Routine

When lovely Nadine of tinywoolf declared the theme for this art challenge "ritual/ routine", I knew I wanted to participate. It's such an interesting subject, I thought it would be easy to come up with something good. While I find the concept of ritual to be quite fascinating, I found that when I actually sat down to think about what I would do, I had difficulty narrowing it down to a workable size. I mean, it's a BIG concept; it covers a lot of ground. So I thought looking up the definition might help, give me some clues or spark an idea.

Here is Merriam Webster's definition:

1. :  the established form for a ceremony; specifically :  the order of words prescribed for a religious ceremony
2. 2a :  ritual observance; specifically :  a system of rites
    b :  a ceremonial act or action
    c :  an act or series of acts regularly repeated in a set precise manner

Humans are creatures of habit, as are all creatures, it seems. My dogs will wake me up at the same time every morning, and expect to be fed at 5:00. We naturally fall into forming patterns, of doing things at the same time in the same way over and over again. I would suggest that this saves some part of our brain to think about working out more complex problems, because we don't have to re-think when we're going to brush our teeth every day. Or maybe not.

Rituals are also important to the formation and continuance of societies; we agree to elect our leaders the same way at repeated intervals, we decide on the guilt or innocence of people who break our laws by using a set, prescribed, series of rituals. If we didn't have rituals in place for these things, no society could survive, but would quickly descend into chaos.

 Weighing of the Heart Ceremony, Book of the Dead, 1285 bCE

Based on the definition above, the word "ritual" covers everything from the sacred burial rites of the ancient Egyptians to the "March Madness" college basketball tournament to brushing our teeth at the same time each day. (Just to amuse myself, I thought about making a shrine with a toothbrush inside of it; I know - weird sense of humor!)  So I'm probably thinking about this way too much, but my ideas for this piece just kept bigger and bigger, and I realized there was no way I could do it justice in the short time I had left. In fact, it's really still in the planning stages; I'll share it here as I work on it.

Invocation of Tara

ingredients: map fragment, magazine cut-outs, image transfers, artist pens, watercolor pencils

So I decided to use a piece I had already been working on, which does relate to the concept of ritual in an obvious way. Tara is the Tibetan Buddhist Goddess of Compassion, and rituals to honor her have been performed since the 6th century and possibly longer. According to Wikipedia, "Tārā became a very popular Vayrayana deity with the rise of Tantra in 8th-century Pala and, with the movement of Indian Buddhism into Tibet through Padmasambhava, the worship and practices of Tārā became incorporated into Tibetan Buddhism as well. She eventually came to be considered the "Mother of all Buddhas," which usually refers to the enlightened wisdom of the Buddhas, while simultaneously echoing the ancient concept of the Mother Goddess in India.... Tārā is also known as a saviouress, as a heavenly deity who hears the cries of beings experiencing misery in samsara."

The image of Tara I used for this piece is based on a centuries-old painting somewhere; I have unfortunately lost track of the source. By the way, she is not always green; different aspects of Tara are different colors. Green Tara is one of the most popular.


Be sure to visit Nadine at tinywoolf to find out what the other participants came up with for the challenge. Happy weekend, everyone!

Mary Walker's Pants

When I started working on this collage, I didn't really know who Mary Walker was; I just thought she looked fascinating, and that it was pretty bizarre that someone could be arrested for wearing pants. So I looked her up to see what else I could find out.

Mary Walker's Pants

mixed media collage, 11 x 8.5 inches

ingredients: vintage book cover, vintage book pages and ephemera, cut-outs, child's drawing, lace, image transfer

I also found a page in this history book where someone had made some notes about women's rights, written right underneath the heading, "Manifest Destiny." Since women's rights seem to be in the news quite a bit lately, I thought now might be an appropriate time to share this.

Here are some things I learned about Mary Edwards Walker (November 26, 1832 – February 21, 1919): According to Wikipedia, she "was an American feminist, abolitionist, prohibitionist, alleged spy, prisoner of war, and surgeon. As of 2017, she is the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor." Though women were not allowed to serve as doctors, she nonetheless served the Union Army during the Civil War as a surgeon in an army hospital, and was captured by the Confederates when crossing the lines to treat injured civilians, and sent to the prison at Richmond.

   After the war, "she became a writer and lecturer, supporting such issues as health care, temperance, women's rights, and dress reform for women. She was frequently arrested for wearing men's clothing, and insisted on her right to wear clothing that she thought appropriate.
Walker was a member of the central woman's suffrage Bureau in Washington... She attempted to register to vote in 1871, but was turned away. The initial stance of the movement, following Walker's lead, was to claim that women already had the right to vote, and Congress needed only to enact enabling legislation."  She also wrote books and articles about these issues which concerned her so deeply. (Wikipedia)

Yet the history book only mentioned that she regularly got herself in trouble by wearing pants. What else, I wonder, has been left out of our history books?

Mending

This much I have learned. Never give up. No matter how broken you are, it is possible to mend. It may take a very long time, and it may be the fiercest struggle you ever face. And you will probably be completely unprepared, like I was.

Mending

mixed media collage, 17 x 11.5 inches

ingredients: vintage book cover, vintage book pages and other ephemera, vintage textile, image transfer, watercolor pencils, found objects, acrylic ink, rice paper, feathers, stitching

available for purchase here

I thought I was unbreakable. Just pile it on, I can take it; I've been doing it for years, right? I never gave any credence to that whole "straw that broke the camel's back" thing. How could one little straw make a difference? After all, it was nothing at all when compared to what I'd already been carrying around for so long.  The phrase, "nervous breakdown" never even crossed my mind.

But I was wrong. To my great surprise, there is a tipping point, and I suddenly landed flat on my back, broken into pieces. There's a saying, attributed to everyone from Leonard Cohen to Rumi, something about the cracks being the place where the light gets in.  That may be true, but that light can be blindingly, relentlessly painful.
 
For a year and a half, that pain seemed unbearable, unsurvivable. It's difficult to talk about this without seeming melodramatic; I just want to say this as plainly and as honestly as I can.  If the last straw has broken the camel's back, the camel will have to build up it's muscles, to become stronger than before. If you lose a wing, it can be mended, and the mended place will be your greatest strength. And someday you may fly again.

Answers

Answers

mixed media collage, 7 x 4 inches

ingredients: vintage book pages, ephemera, watercolor pencil

Available for purchase here.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front (excerpt)
 By Wendell Berry

Denounce the government and embrace

You need to make a commitment, and once you make it, then life will give you some answers. Les Brown
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/answers.htmlDenounce the government and embrace

the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns....

... Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts....


I have no answers, but this, one of my most favorite poems by my favorite Kentucky writer Wendell Berry, makes me feel there may yet be reason to hope...

Fear Not

Fear Not      

 mixed media collage, 9 x 5 inches

ingredients: map fragments, vintage book pages, image transfers, watercolor pencils, mica, stitching

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
― Marie Curie



“I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good.”
― Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Broken Girl - the Art of Recycling

Here is the finished version of the collage I was working on in the last two posts (here and here):

Broken Girl, mixed media collage on vintage book cover

ingredients: cabinet photo, vintage book pages and torn papers, vintage ephemera, watercolor pencils, stitching

The edges are cropped because it didn't quite fit on the scanner, and it's been way too dark and cold here to take good photos. (I take them outside in open shade.)  As you may remember if you're a regular reader, the torn pieces of layered papers on the right side started out as a completely different collage. I wasn't happy with the way it was going, so I incorporated it into a very different type of collage, i.e. one where the composition is more planned out and less abstract.  This doesn't usually happen, and I certainly didn't predict this turn of events when I started taking photos for my blog. These aren't the posts I had intended to write, but I thought it might be interesting for people to see what happens when things don't go as planned.

One thing I learned some time ago in my art-making explorations is that there's nothing wrong with tearing one piece up to make another; in fact, that's how I first began playing with collage. I didn't start out to become a collage artist, but as I tried making compositions with pieces of discarded work, I became hooked on the collage process as well as its outcomes. I love taking pieces of old ephemera that would otherwise be thrown out and combining them into something new. They bring with them something of the time they are from and the people who used them, which I think adds depth and meaning to the work.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. Scott Adams
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_art.html

"The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country


"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
-- Scott Adams

“We don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents.”
― Bob Ross

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...

Spring Morning

Spring Morning

mixed media collage, 6 x 4.5 inches

ingredients: monotype, watercolor pencils, vintage ephemera

available for purchase here (prints, too!)

I haven't been keeping up with my weekly quick collage series, since I've been so busy doing other things. I'm unsure whether I'll go back to it or not; I'll just have to see how it goes. In the meantime, here's a little piece I did recently. I know it's out of season, but at this time of year it can be nice to remind ourselves that Spring will come, eventually.

Hope everyone is having a happy holiday season!

Alignment

Alignment

mixed media, 6.5 x 6.5 inches

ingredients: vintage maps and book pages, image transfers, acetate, watercolor pencils, vintage stamps, stitching

Alignment- (noun) 1. arrangement in a straight line, or in correct or appropriate relative positions.

                               2. a position of agreement or alliance.

“When what you value and dream about doesn’t match the life you are living, you have pain.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“And while his mother's lecture had gone over his seven-year-old head, Pasquale saw now what she meant--how much easier life would be if our intentions and our desires could always be aligned.”
― Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins


 

“Your definition of a good life does not have to look like everyone else thinks it should. Whatever feels right for you, whatever aligns your inside with your outside, that's what you should spend your time doing.”
― G. G. Renee Hill




This piece was gifted to two very dear friends; I truly hope they will enjoy it!

New Work: Lost II

Lost II

ingredients: vintage book covers, vintage ledger paper, lace, acrylic ink, Caran d'Ache crayons, watercolor pencils, image transfer, cloth, stitching




I write about the power of trying, because I want to be okay with failing. I write about generosity because I battle selfishness. I write about joy because I know sorrow. I write about faith because I almost lost mine, and I know what it is to be broken and in need of redemption. I write about gratitude because I am thankful - for all of it.
                                                                                                               ~ Kristin Armstrong

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

                                                                                                          ~ Henry David Thoreau

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.
                                                                                                                          ~ Pema Chodron

New Work: The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper

9.5  x 15  inches

ingredients:  vintage book cover, found objects, cut-outs, lace, vintage ephemera, decorative papers, vintage photograph, feather, pen nib

This piece is based on an 1892 short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, an important piece of early feminist literature. In the story, the protagonist is confined to an upstairs bedroom for a "rest cure" for what would now probably be diagnosed as post-partum depression.  She is forbidden to work (she's a writer), and begins to obsess about the yellow wallpaper and what might be lurking behind it, eventually tearing it off the walls. According to Wikipedia, "The story depicts the effect of confinement on the narrator's mental health and her descent into psychosis."

 I've always been fascinated by the story, and in fact, wrote a paper on it in college, wherein I compared the theme of madness in The Yellow Wallpaper to it's use in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.  Gilman's story is a bit creepy, yes, but so well-written, and really gives us a shocking and sad view of how such illnesses were treated back then.

 Some details:

 

 Hope you like it!

Weekly Quick Collage: Presence

Presence

collage, 9.5 x 6 inches

Inspiring words about being present:

Weekly Quick Collage: Serendipity

Serendipity

Another in my series of weekly collages, done (mostly) in less than an hour using materials laying around on my drafting table (or floor). Enjoy!

"Vital lives are about action. You can't feel warmth unless you create it, can't feel delight until you play, can't know serendipity unless you risk.”

~ Joan Erickson

“Sometimes serendipity is just intention unmasked.”
~ Elizabeth Berg, The Year of Pleasures

Weekly Quick Collage: Fly

                                     Fly                   8 x 4.25 inches

ingredients: vintage book pages, vintage map, vintages stamps and other ephemera, Derwent watercolor pencils, graphite

“I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you're going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.”
~C. Joybell C.





“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.”
~ Stephen King





Happy weekend, everyone!

Weekly Quick Collage: Entradas

Again, all the materials came from the mess on my work table.

Entradas

ingredients: vintage map, notebook page, ledger page, school writing tablet page, and book pages; vintage lace; magazine cutout




I wanted to share this song by Jason Isbell, my new favorite singer-songwriter. Take a listen, if you're interested; his lyric are pure poetry.





Hope you enjoy!



p.s. Thanks to a comment on the last post, I figured out what was bothering me about Pink Dress, and took a stab at fixing it. Thanks to Jo Murray for noticing that the bright new swirl was out of place with the vintage papers. I really do appreciate constructive criticism, because it can help us immensely, if our aim is to become better artists. I sometimes wish we bloggers could do more of this, as it's nice to have another critical eye on your work besides your own.  So, I covered the swirl with part of an old bible page, and added some stamps, and I like it much better now. See what you think:

Pink Dress

Ephemeral II

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.     

~ from "When Death Comes" by Mary Oliver

Ephemeral II

ingredients: vintage book cover, antique photograph, vintage/antique ephemera, vintage buttons, acrylic ink, pencil, artist pens, vintage textiles, pin, lace, leaves, feather





Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

from "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" by Wendell Berry

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!