Art Challenge: Sticks

When Tammie of Beauty Flows chose the theme "sticks" for this week's art challenge, I knew I had to jump in! I love sticks - in the woods, on or off of the trees, in art, or laying in a pile in my studio. Here are a few of my favorites.

 Snow and ice accumulated on these sticks in my yard to make a lovely black and white abstract...

 Sticks with seeds overhanging the Kinniconick Creek...

 I used a smooth bleached stick from the creek in this mixed media piece called, "Flight Talismans".

 Sticks outlined in the light of the super moon...

 Weathered, twisted sticks on the sand dunes at Cumberland Island.

 My friend, Mish, trying to hide behind some bamboo sticks.  Not working too well.

Indigenous

Years ago, I used to make sculptures from sticks, grapevines, rocks and copper. This was the only example I could find. The background is a topological map of a region in Kentucky that is very important to me, the rocks, which have seeds or flowers of indigenous plants glued onto them, have holes in them and are hanging on - you guessed it - sticks.

 Sticks from a tree submerged in the Kinniconick Creek...

 Beech sticks still hold onto their leaves in winter...

A redbud tree in bloom...

Do you think that's enough, yet?  Thanks for inviting me, Tammie!  Go to Beauty Flows to see what the other participants came up with!

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...