Semi-stalled but still doing things

My time has been very productively spent doing both arty things and practical things--still cleaning up the house and our stuff from the holidays, and reorganizing my supplies to better accommodate all the crap (excuse me, valuable materials!) I've acquired over the last year and to facilitate the things I want to focus on for the next few months . . . book-making and journaling.  So I haven't posted anything because I don't want to take the time to take pics, upload them, edit . . . next thing I know an hour's gone by that I really needed to be doing something else.  But I think this week should see the end of that and I can get back to a more regular schedule.

Part of my problem moving forwards is that I apparently haven't fully committed to a decision about how to  put in the pockets to hold the tags/slips of paper that I jot down my ideas on.  Do I use library pockets with an extra accordion fold to hold plenty of tags?  Or just a little envelope?  And what size tags do I want to use anyway?  I was thinking of making the holders/envelopes out of Graphic 45 paper--am I going to want to do something to more fully incorporate that paper in with the hand-painted papers I used for the book pages?  And if so, what is that going to be?  (I did get some Glimmer Screens and an enormous Tattered Angels dragonfly stamp today with my Archiver's coupons with the thought that might be part of the solution.)  

As you can see, there's plenty whirling around in my head at the moment.  I feel sure that within the next few days, I'll realize what the answer is and get it sorted.  And here I thought sewing the book was going to be the toughest part!

In the meantime, I have gone through all my supplies/materials and reorganized between my public space in the dining room and the overflow space in our utility room; made thank-you cards using my new sewing machine for our English family that we can all sign and send off this week (it's not too late as long as they arrive before the end of January, right??); installed Photoshop Elements 9; done some experimenting with the masks and various sprays that I have; continued to mess around with the 1st workshop of Pam Carriker's through Strathmore online; and generally felt that I am getting my life in order so that I am free to devote some hours to these pursuits without any guilt whatsoever.  It's all good here!

Life as Geometry: Shorts Book with Origami Pocket Envelope

Too much fun! While my son had his fencing lesson next door, I sat in an empty classroom and made a little book. Following Alisa Golden's excellent instructions in Expressive Handmade Books, I made a little Shorts Book out of notebook paper and colored a rainbow spiral on it (I could definitely see that making this with double-sided paper would be very attractive indeed).

Then at home this evening while watching the Tour de France (taped from this morning), I quickly wrote a few silly lines about circles and got enough for the four pages of the book. Took just a few minutes to write them in, and then about another five to cut a strip of paper from an oversized art calendar that my aunt Margaret gave me and fold an easy pocket to hold the book. I love it! Ms. Golden's folding instructions and accompanying diagrams never got me lost, and as I am quite spatially challenged, that's a feat worth mentioning.

The book style is preferable to the instant book I did earlier; the page thickness doesn't get in the way. Or perhaps that's because I was using such thin paper? I'll have to double-check that with thicker paper when I do one with more thought.



Running up a quick prototype--as that's what I viewed this as--was extremely useful. It will be a great example to show one's students why one needs guidelines on the paper for writing, it helped me decide which style of writing worked best within the book and with the words chosen, and I realized that I really needed to treat the facing pages as one long spread rather than separate pages (which would be my preference).

Back from Vacation

Today the kids and I got back into town from a wonderful couple of weeks spent at my parents' place in rural Kansas. It is always a restorative trip for me and the children too. I never do get much time to actually do things of my own, so I have learned not to lug along a whole lot of stuff thinking I'm going to get to play more than at home, but I think the enforced break is a good thing. There is also usually a visit to either the Utrecht store or Creative Coldsnow's Westport location, both in Kansas City. I was quite pleased this visit to find the Golden Van Dyck Brown in fluid acrylics there, which I have been looking for--I know I could order it online, but it's just so much more fun to pick it up in a store and walk out with it.



As I said, I didn't get to play with actual materials much, but I did manage to find some time here and there to do some of the projects in Susan Tuttle's book Digital Expressions; the images with this blog post are a couple of the results. The building is the one-room schoolhouse that my grandfather attended as a boy; it's just down the road from my parents' farm. The other abstract image was lots of fun to play with, and there were no brushes to wash up afterwards!



I did spend some time thinking about what I want to do over the next few months and realized that I don't have any free time if I do everything. One decision I need to make is whether to sell any holiday cards this year. If I do, I need to get cracking on those, get them posted up on my shop site, and fulfill the orders pronto. I also have to decide if I'm really going to offer an after-school book arts class at my son's school in the fall. (I offered it halfway through the spring but it didn't make.) That's going to take some work to pull together as well.

Other projects in my pipeline are doing something with the painted papers I did before leaving on vacation and finishing the Renaissance triptych book that's been lurking for some time now. I also saw something in the latest Cloth Paper Scissors (I think) that I would like to send in an entry for--a book limited to no more than 6x6", if I remember correctly.

I was also contemplating what to do with the 7gypsies printer's tray I got recently (shame to let those Archiver's coupons go to waste, even if I don't know what I'm going to do with something yet), and I thought it might be fun to do some of the ideas from Mixed Media Self-Portraits and do one in each tray. That's a pretty large undertaking--unless I purposely made myself do it in time limitations. Guess it depends on why I decide to do the project--practice doing instead of thinking, or really delve into the self-portrait concept . . .

And on top of all those things, I forgot to mention that I wish to finish the projects in the online Complex Collage class that Julie Prichard & Chris Cozen are offering . . .

Much to think about, and much to do!

Evening with Friends

Tonight I spent a few hours in the company of two women who also share an interest in creating things and discussing this process and the results of making art, and while not quite as fulfilling as some of our other evenings have been, I did leave with an image in my mind. This is unusual for me, since I don't consider myself to be a visually oriented person, but this one I have. It's more impressionistic, almost but not quite abstract, in style, and it would be three friends sitting at a table with light coming from an overhead, old chandelier, not something shiny but old, and maybe in a square with a light at each corner, and shadows everywhere especially in all the corners. Colors would include deep, dark reds, the light from the chandelier a rich buttery yellow.

Ongoing Projects

I have so many things to do I thought I'd better make a list:

1. Finish "Bathtime" piece
This requires continued messing around with it. I think I am on the right track--this evening I painted interference violet and blue paints over both the clear granular gel and the black background, and it ended up reminding me of wisps of steam rising up in a hot bathroom. The rivulets of clear granular gel remind me of the condensation that forms on the mirrors and drips down. I think the "bubbles" are going to work out all right with the glass balls over them, but I'm not sure yet. Should I put some kind of border around the circles--and if so, what in the world would it be? And how to adhere the balls to the piece is yet to be decided. I am going to need to paint some overall covering over everything too, and I need to decide what that will be (soft gel, heavy gel, gloss/matte/satin, etc.). Finally I have to decide how to integrate the nude woman panel into the whole thing. Using glass mosaic pieces at the corner of both the small panel and the large one does a good job, but I need to decide if I should add some blue & purple swirls into the fog at the bottom of the inset panel, or if I should add just a few streaks of interference red paint to the larger background panel. Or what the heck--maybe both!

2. Finish two fairy canvases
I have the idea of wrapping each with wire and having crystals strung on the wire. That's also how I could attach the bottle with glass shards inside to the piece. Also need to put a couple of layers of gel medium over them.

3. Complete house accordion book
The cover is done and the signatures are sewn in, but I need to add text to them. I think I'm going to put stuff in from Alain de Botton's The Architecture of Happiness. I need to decide what the test is, lay it out on the page, and execute it.

4. Complete Renaissance women's triptych
The triptych itself is done, but I need to make a final decision on the paper for the signatures, choose the embroidery thread for sewing the signatures, create and add text & illustrations to the signatures, and sew them in (must also choose beads to cover the spine sewings). I think I'm going to use the Katherine Phillips poems, because its weirdness is useful to demonstrate the small box that women used to beat their wings against, some more successfully than others.

5. Finish off the little blizzard books I made a few weeks ago. They need covers (or to be incorporated into something larger) and text on the pages. I haven't thought about these much so am not sure where I'm going to go with them.

I'd really like to wrap up these projects so I can think about the new book styles I want to try and also figure out some different ways to use the beautiful chiyogami papers I received for my birthday last week. I am now a proud members of those in their forties! And happy to be there.

Brainstorming Likes

In the interests of thinking about putting something personal into my art rather than having it be simply well-executed, I'll go back to the beginning and think about what I like at the moment:

--small glass bottles
--metal
--iridescent and interference colors, things that change as you look from a different angle

That's where I paused. Interesting--nothing very organic there, all hard things. Pretty, cool (rather than warm) things.

I don't think any images I like come to mind--too hard to get everyone else's stuff out of my head. But as I write that, I realize I do really, really like architecture plans and blueprint drawings, so that's something. I also love maps. So back to the bulleted list:

--architectural plans and drawings
--maps
--beautiful handwriting

Not bad for a new beginning!

Shadow

I did have a neat idea for a piece sneak into my mind over the holidays--a portrait-oriented landscape, mainly fields and hills, with a shadow of some animal in the sky falling over part of it. You can't see any of the animal itself, only the shadow on the ground below. Overall effect would be of menace juxtaposed with beauty, hovering nearby, lurking. It sounds more like a straight painting piece, and I'm not a painter, so I'd have to figure something out, but I like the concept.

Plans for the New Year of 2010

I feel a need to reset myself and figure out what I want to do with all this stuff. I feel very strongly that it is IMPORTANT for me to break through this barrier I have set up for myself that is prohibiting me from truly making my own pieces. When I look back at the things I've made over the last year and a half, I do see a very strong presence in those pieces I did early on, before I got . . . self-conscious, or something, whatever it is. I love the water piece I did with the glass star in the sky, and I love the Magic book I made. I also enjoyed the over-the-top romanticness of the watchmaker's tins that I did for a recently married bride and her parents.

But for some reason, when I sit down to think, "what do I want to make", I am met with a complete void of thought. No colors, no words, no images, nothing. That's why I feel it's so important to break through this and not walk away from it, because that's just not right. It needs to be faced and dealt with. The question I have to answer is what is the best way to do that.

One thing I have considered is that I may be putting too much pressure on myself. It is okay to take pride and enjoyment in following someone else's project plans, and for that reason I plan to make some of Tim Holtz's Christmas Tags once I get settled back into the house. I'm also going to try to not save every single possible moment for art but use some time for cooking for myself & others and generally try to keep a balance without getting wound up about doing so. By now I have gotten to the point where I don't feel I have to apologize for having time to myself during the day, because my being available that way allows us to raise our children as we think it ought to be done--without babysitters, afterschool care, forgoing extracurricular activities. So okay.

The one other possibility I have thought of is that perhaps I just can't "create" this way--I need to be able to give into the obsession and not stop for picking kids up from school, fixing dinners, doing bedtimes, etc. In that case, I'd have to wait a long time to make anything! I think I can find a way to manage that, if necessary.

I think that when I relax a little, whatever I want to explore will come out. Now I'm open to it--even more, finally aware that I have been avoiding it. So I'll continue to do stuff and wait for whatever I want to explore to knock on my door, which will be unlocked and inviting.

Notes on Pumice & Clear Granular Gels

Just taking notes in preparation for my "Bathtime" piece as well as documenting in general. Not a terribly interesting post for anyone but me, I'm afraid . . . all products used are Golden unless otherwise specified.

Yesterday I mixed Clear Granular Gel (CGG) with heavy body Mars Black + Dioxazine Purple and painted over 1/3 of a gold gessoed mini canvas. I then mixed the Mars Black with Anthraquinone Blue and did the next third. The last bit I painted with untinted gel. Might as well not have used the purple or blue--I couldn't see any evidence of it, so use less next time (or don't bother and put it on top).

Today I painted over the untinted clear gel with fluid Carbon Black. Laying down the untinted CGG and then painting on top of it once dry is good if one wants what is underneath to peek through in places. If full coverage is desired, it's best to mix the paint in with the gel before applying. And remember that although it's named *clear* granular gel, the parts where the granules are does dry snowy white, just as Patti Brady says in her book Rethinking Acrylics.

Over the top of the two-thirds of the canvas that had been painted with tinted CGG, I first brushed fluid Interference Violet, then Interference Blue (Liquitex--Jerry's was out of the Golden). After letting that dry a few minutes, I brushed over all of it with the fluid Carbon Black that was now on the paintbrush I was using. This toned the interference back down and brought the black back up. I think this is going to work for my piece. The purple is quite purple, though; the blue is more subtle.

I also mixed some Extra Coarse Pumice Gel (ECPG) with Phthalo Blue (Red Shade) and applied to a couple of mini canvases, one that had white gesso and one that had a wash of fluid Transparent Yellow Oxide on it. It looks so cool! Putting Interference Violet over this looks pretty neat. I'm not sure about the Interference Blue, but I may not have shaken it enough before applying--it looks milky white, and I don't think it's supposed to be that way.

Getting Personal & Playing

Last night around midnight I gave in to the pull I'd felt towards drawing all evening (too tired to act on it before), and I finally just sat with my journal and a Koh-i-noor Magic pencil and played. I colored on things that were already in there, and I also did some of the doodling I used to do as a child over a whole page. On yet another page I made marks on it guided by what the song I was listening to at the time was doing ("My Father's Face", by Leo Kottke). I had a great time!

One thing I found had a very interesting effect indeed was using the multicolored pencil over a stamped image (one of Stamp Zia's nudes) that had been partially painted with Micaceous Iron Oxide (Golden fluid acrylics). Great texture and look, and I discovered that when I rubbed my finger over it all, I created a glow around the figure from the pencil particles that had been deposited on the iron oxide.

Also got a very nice look rubbing the pencil over the onionskin paper. The raised veins picked up the color, and it's a more subtle effect than using ink.

Book Idea for a Christmas Present; Personal Challenge

Recently I found Book + Art: Handcrafting Artists' Books, by Dorothy Simpson Krause, on the shelf at Borders and had to get it. It is beautiful, lovely, and filled with inspiration. I read it at a time that I was wondering exactly what I thought I was doing, and this helped everything to coalesce in my mind. I love books, I have always loved books, and nearly everything I have learned over the last three years is all useful in creating books. I am still going to do other things, because I don't think I'm made such that I could do only one thing, but I can embrace the idea of being a book artist.

I really liked Stepan's blog posts about their trip to the Czech Republic this summer, and along with his pictures I think they would make a beautiful book--and a great Xmas present. Been thinking about how to do it. Would love the images and words to overlap. Wouldn't it be neat to do it on glass pages, and use the nifty Keith Smith Coptic sewing to attach? I think that's beyond my abilities to execute for this Xmas though, with everything else I have to do. Maybe I could print the pictures onto canvas, or do image transfers onto Claudine's sticky back canvas (reverse before printing), and then have the text on paper? Could I use plexiglass pages instead of glass? More durable is better. Then I could put images and text on and have it all look like it's floating. Would it be too hard to read, and would that matter? Or could put the text on a translucent paper, like onionskin or vellum, and have the images printed on transparencies. Ooh, that sounds like it has possibilities. Will keep ruminating on the matter.

One of my biggest challenges is to take my art to a personal level. I still have a very large barrier between me and what I make, and I think if I can surmount that, what I make will have more power. That is going to require me to slow down my thinking a bit and also focus it more. There are just so many things I want to try! And the quote by Lily Tomlin quote about her teenage diaries that I read on Dorinda Fox's blog recently does express one of my biggest fears, I'm sorry to admit. ("What if it's boring . . . or if it's not boring, it might be too revealing, or worse, it might be too revealing and still be boring.")

How to Finish the Water Nymphs Piece?

The water nymphs piece is not done. I could clearly see that when I took a picture of it. But what does it need, and where does it need it?

Maybe something more, something 3D along the lower lefthand and bottom sides. Could add necklace of small glass spheres from Alpha Stamps to main nymph? Put iridescent wash over all but nymphs, so they remain clear and glossy? Seems to need to be under some kind of layer--looks too raw to me. But I want to keep the difference of the women from the rest of the piece. Maybe put glaze over the nautilus and matte gel over the rest excepting women? Include an interference blue in the nautilus glaze?

Also could experiment with circles of white paint--it occurs to me the white of the water & foam on the nymphs isn't carried through the piece. Not sure where to put the circles, though, because I really want to preserve some of the open space between the nymphs and the cameo. Maybe larger ones over the lower area and a few smaller ones in upper area? Will have to experiment on a duplicate image.

And still would like edges to look a bit more finished. What if I glued small mosaic tiles in blue shades all along edges? That might be quite nice and actually be in keeping with the whole water theme, since I associate mosaics with baths.

Thoughts on Making my First Pendant

I have learned two important things: you can't reheat Glossy Accents with a heat gun in the hopes that it will smooth out, but you can remove the entire contents of a pendant blank and start again! I poked around the edges with the sharp pin I use to clean out the tips of glue bottles, and it all just lifted out and peeled away, even the paper I'd put on the bottom, and it was as though I'd never put anything in it.

So, what did I like and not like about my first effort? I liked the paper, but it needed something dimensional, I felt, so I sprinkled clear microbeads on the Glossy Accents when it was still wet. That didn't turn out too well. The detail of the picture disappeared, of course, so instead of seeing three red flowers one just saw three red blobs. If I'd had one of those lovely glass red roses from Alpha Stamps or something like that to add, it might have been okay, but I didn't have anything suitable. Also I think I simply put too many microbeads in.

Whether that contributed to how the Glossy Accents dried, I don't know, but it had a lumpy surface on it that was displeasing to me. (That prompted the experiment with reheating it to smooth it out. Works with beeswax--not with GA! It bubbled and probably gave off some horrible noxious gas too.)

When I started over with the newly blank pendant, this time I began with the dimensional accent rather than the paper backing. I found that one of the little armadillo charms I had fit perfectly in the bottom of the pendant, so then I just needed an appropriate background for it. Couldn't find any Texas-style paper (with all the papers I have, I couldn't believe I didn't have the right one) with bluebonnets or cacti on it, but I did eventually find the border to a punch-out card that I got in England last year looked quite nice behind it. I cut it down and adhered it to the blank with a few dots of Diamond Glaze, then I put DG all around the edges and bottom. The armadillo went in next, and out of frustration (couldn't get the tip of the DG unblocked for more than a few seconds at a time) I removed the tip and just poured DG in straight from the bottle. I had to do this carefully and slowly at first so I could prick some bubbles I saw coming out, but I think that may have worked out better than doing it from the tip since it was such a large quantity I needed. It's still drying, but it looks very smooth on top, and I think I'm going to be very satisfied with it.

Note to self: add picture once finished.

A Quiz, Somerset Studio May/June 2009, p. 75

What are your three favorite colors?
Blue.
Red.
Green (learned to like this because so many of my aunts like it, and I make things for them).
Fourth would be purple.

What kind of architecture do you like?
I like a lot of things. The English half-timbered look with leaded glass panes is a favorite, as is the English cottage. I like the Spanish villa style and love the look of the French Quarter and the Garden District in New Orleans (pre-Katrina).

I do not like the rows of terraced Victorian houses, nor do I particularly like modern unless it's done very, very well. I don't care much for Greek or symmetry in my buildings. What I do like is warm, inviting, welcoming, cozy (of residential). I like a lot of light. I like natural materials rather than synthetic.

What are the three words that describe your personality?
Unassuming.
Listening.
Undemanding.

What is your favorite animal?
Cat.

What do you collect?
It used to be books. Sometimes I would buy a book just because I liked the cover. I also buy blank books and never write in them. Also I love to get small unique serving pieces to use for company--or just myself! Another thing I have always liked are vintage labels. It's really only recently I've given this any thought--I don't think I've ever given myself permission to collect anything before (and am not sure I have yet).

What is your favorite season?
I like them all. Each has different things to recommend it. Spring is lovely because it transforms the landscape, summer is nice because it's so relaxed, fall is great (probably my favorite, I guess) because the coolness is such a welcome relief after the heat of the five-month-long summer here in Central Texas, and the winter is fun because I like snuggling up with throw blankets and hot water bottles (remember, Central Texas, this is a novelty and doesn't last long).

Name your favorite icons.
Not even sure what is meant here. I'll substitute "images" for "icons" and answer it that way. Strong, confident women--goddess, archetype images. Images with that secret air of knowing about a mystery that no one else does. The Serena image that Stampsmith sells--something about the look on her face. I like water images--Japanese waves, still oceans, waterfalls, all of it.

Initial Thoughts on Time

Back to me to pick this month's challenge for our group--I went with "time". None of us seem to have any right now, so it seemed appropriate!

While at a mandatory seminar last weekend, I jotted down some notes and thoughts on the topic; here they are.

To begin, I need to decide if I'm going to look at time as neutral, as an enemy--prisoner of time, a limiter--or as positive. And personal level or society level?

Could do a family tree/genealogy theme. Or could use the fog of time that obscures things, yet sometimes it's only time that brings true clarity.

Incorporate mirrors (small ones) here and there in the piece, because you can't escape time, it is relentlessly objective, there is no appeal--it shows you what is, no escaping.

Also use an hourglass somewhere, or the shape of one? Could get the sand medium to use on part for "the sands of time" (might be too cliched). Or could do some train tracks somewhere for "the tracks of time". Maybe just do an entire piece using common cliches about time! Ha.

What are the colors of time? Browns, golden, iridescence, sand medium around edges.

What are the patterns of time? circles, spirals (use the new technique just learned with wireworking to make some--could use in the border)

Elements to use:
chains
mesh
mirrors
sepia tone
spirals
words/quote on side running off the edge

Find a quote about time--something that addresses how it imprisons and frees us at the same time.

Could do a progression--distressed at top, progressing down to pristine images--passage of time.

Could make a memento box with tiled top (and sides?)--would have to use all manufactured tiles. Idea from Mixed Media Mosaics.

Shapes of piece:
grandfather clock: a portrait rectangle with a circle hanging below it from a chain (chains of Time).
hourglass: two landscape rectangles with circle in middle
other: square on top, circle in middle, triangle on bottom (could use past, present, future in triangle)

Being Without

We have spent the last month frantically getting our house ready to go on the market. There hasn't even been headspace to think about any projects, let alone blog about them or explore them in my sketchbook. And now that we are nearly ready and the headlong rush has paused a bit, I find myself at a bit of a loss since all my stuff is packed up in the garage, waiting for a new house and space to come out. I miss all my things, my boxes of beads and charms and ink pads, and wonder how it will feel when I finally get to unpack them. Could be one month, but probably more like two or three, and more if we are unlucky. Fingers crossed for a speedy resolution to the whole process.

I'm finding that since A. and I started this monthly challenge thing, that's all I do (except for making the Christmas cards). That's okay with me right now. It's a function of how much time is available, and with a four-year-old it's still pretty limited.

This month's challenge topic is "experiments". I won't have a finished project to show since all my stuff is packed, but I did get out my new sumi painting set last Wednesday on my birthday and tried a couple of things. One thing I found out is that I had never used a brush to do calligraphy--in the past I've always used a calligraphy pen. I love the way it looks with a brush! And I will try to work that into something soon. Our showing is a week from tonight, and I'd like to do something else but am not sure what. Before all the house stuff started, I had already ordered a miniature chemistry set off of eBay and was going to make a shadowbox, but I just don't think I can do that now. It's too hard to go through boxes to get just what I need and then put it all back up again. I guess I could think it through and set it up, at least. After last month and thinking about what turns something from "craft" into "art" (not that it's important necessarily, I know), we concluded that art definitely involves the personal expression of the artist. So I have tried to think of what I could do with the background to personalize my shadowbox. Maybe use a couple of pictures--the one of my dad as a toddler being held up by his dad to press the doorbell, and print one from last summer with Daddy and Jonathan in the granary with the chemistry set in sepia tone--that might be nice.

In Process with "War" Project

Last weekend I had to attend a mandatory parent seminar at my son's school, and while listening to an extremely enthusiastic person expound on the benefits of kale smoothies and hemp seeds, I started writing about the "war" challenge. Just writing out the idea I had, which was good, but not a spark, really. And then the spark came, and I couldn't write fast enough to get all the thoughts and vision in my head down on the paper. I never thought that would happen to me! And yet there I was, sitting on the third floor of the school building, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do and how to do it. Magical.

Now I'm about a third of the way through, and as plans do, mine is changing. And also, as it usually happens, it is changing because something didn't work out like I thought it would. Turns out it's really NOT possible to collage magazine pictures onto a stretched canvas without them wrinkling . . . at least not the way I did it. But that's getting ahead of myself.

I gessoed an 18x24" stretched canvas twice, then I took strips of bleeding art tissue (Spectrum, available at Teacher Heaven and Jerry's Artarama) and added them on with matte gel medium. I did it in an abstract landscape fashion, with greens and browns at the bottom and blues with a few reds and oranges at the top. Mainly my objective was to have the sides of the frame covered, and it was an opportunity to play and experiment since my plan was to cover the front completely with magazine pictures. I was delighted with how the tissue paper turned out.

My overall idea was to put lots of pictures of the earth in beauty on the collage, following a general landscape layout--rocks and trees on the bottom, oceans and sunsets on top, mountains in the middle. That way when one first glanced at it, the impression would be one of peace and grandeur. But a second glance would reveal that in places the paint was cracking (use crackle paint); I had thought about using the peeled paint technique detailed in Christine Hellmuth's Collage Discovery Workshop in a few places, but since I've never experimented with it before I'm not going to do it for the first time on this piece. So I need to age it a little, not noticeably but somehow, in a couple of other ways. Maybe lightly sand a couple of areas, rub Distress Ink over a couple of bits.

Then what I wanted to do is to place magnifying glasses in various spots on the collage, and the picture in the magnifying glass would be one of the destruction and devastation the human race is waging on the earth--birds covered in oil from a spill, dead coral reefs, clear-cutting in the Amazon rainforest, etc. I thought of tying a single metallic embroidery thread between all the glasses, partly to contribute to the misleading initial impression that it's just about the earth's beauty, but it occurs to me now that it would also bring out the theme that everything on the earth is connected, and sometimes that connection is quite fragile indeed. So maybe I will still find a way to work that in.

The reason I have stopped and haven't done anything for a couple of days now is the wrinkled pictures. It actually gave me a great idea because the wrinkles remind me of one of those relief globes, where the mountains are really raised. Would have been neat to figure out how to do that underneath and then have the pictures on top of that (although I can see that would be tough in practice because the paper wouldn't go on evenly over a raised mini-mountain). But that then led to the idea of getting some small, teeny mountains--and maybe also some forests--from somewhere like a hobby shop that sells that kind of stuff for train sets. Their mountains might be too big for my scale of picture though . . . just not sure what I want to do about this and how to work the wrinkles in. I actually kind of like the wrinkles because it's the beginning of showing that all is not perfection, but I need to make sure it looks purposeful and not just like my pictures wrinkled during the adhering process!

At any rate, I'm having quite a lot of fun with this. I was delighted to find a way to do something on war that wasn't going to be immediately depressing to look at--it can carry a message and be serious, but it's also still pleasing to the eye. Hopefully it will all work out in the end.

What to Do about War

So our topic for the January challenge is "war". No limits--could be conflict on a national level such as the current Israeli/Gaza issue, internal conflict such as that between person and role (self and wife/mother), a battle such as the battle against cancer--anything viewed, I guess, as one force opposing another. That's really what war is on the simplest level--two or more forces in opposition that do not compromise and seek to gain leverage over the other(s).

My challenge especially is going to be how to approach this and make a piece that isn't troubling for me to create and that is still something I wouldn't mind having in my house (along lines of last post about what my personal criteria are for my artwork). And I do think that it would be easy to create a piece on war that is disturbing to look at and hard to make. Perhaps the real challenge is finding a way to do a piece on war that is not personally difficult to create and one that is not something the viewer wishes to turn away from upon seeing it.

Not sure yet on which level I wish to approach this. H., who came up with the topic, said she did so because of what is going on in the Isreali/Palestinian conflict at the moment. I thought of something on WWI, with the poppies and headstones of family members who fought in WWI, but as far as I know I have none and Dale has only one, and that just feels a bit pretentious or saccharine anyway. This afternoon I remembered that last summer I'd had thoughts of doing something to illustrate that continual struggle between self and wife/mother roles, so maybe I'll go back and look at that post if I can find it. The personal war--not to illustrate a resolution, just to acknowledge and give voice to the conflict itself.

I am finding it hard to think about this in a way that doesn't feel fake or self-important. Perhaps this might be a good month to do a couple of different pieces for the challenge to see how each comes out and what I think about them. I don't even know how I want to do anything yet. I could maybe use the ration book I got from Duxford last summer--do heat transfer and put multiple copies on a background . . . it just seems that what comes to mind at the moment is "clever" but not honest somehow. Will keep thinking about it and trusting that I will get through to the honesty.

My Goals for Finished Pieces

The more I think about what to make for my challenge pieces with my local friend, the more I find myself thinking about what I like and do not like in my own finished pieces. Even just thinking about what I'm creating has helped me think differently about the pieces I see in a museum. I think I'm broadening my horizons!

One thing I am definitely becoming certain of is that I am firmly in the mixed-media category. Anything else would bore me, but this offers such a wide variety and the potential to keep learning new skills. I also am increasingly that I want all my pieces to have dimension to them. This began even over a year ago when I was still in my homegrown cardmaking workshop year, learning a different technique for each card I made. Just adhering something with foam tape so that it was on a different level than the rest of the piece was brilliant, I thought, and I am now finding that I am always looking for a way to add some dimension or extend something across a border.

Tonight I was contemplating the piece I'm working on for our "beginnings" challenge. It is certainly my most ambitious and I am not at all certain it's going to work out, but even if it doesn't I should learn something from it, so on at least one level it will be a success. Anyway, I realized that it is a personal requirement of mine that first and foremost, I want what I make to be pleasing to the eye. I'm not sure how to put it in any more exact terms--harmonious? pretty? [no, not that]? But some artists want their work to be disturbing on first glance, and I guess that at least at this point, I'm not one of those people. I want what I make to be something I or anyone would want to look at, something that if glanced upon on one's way from room to room, it would give a smile, a sigh of appreciation/pleasure, something like that.

Secondly, after one has simply found the viewing to be pleasing, I'd like the details of the work to be interesting for those (like myself) who find that intriguing. So there needs to be a backstory or amplification of the work that if explored is also satisfying in some way.

I still find great resistance in myself to having words on my pieces (seems way too twee), but this evening I read about Soul Soup and loved some of her poetry that is on her paintings. So maybe sometime in the next two or three months, I will add my own personal stipulation to our monthly challenge that I have to include words on my piece. It would be good for me!

Thoughts on "Beginnings" of All Kinds

Our challenge topic for November/December is "beginnings", put forth by myself. We are taking two months to do it with all the holidays, Thanksgiving travel, etc. I am making lots of Xmas cards and trying not to stress myself out too much. My mind keeps saying that I "should" be doing lots of things, but I try to cut that off right away and just enjoy playing around with different things.

I am amazed at how fast the transition has been for me from following very detailed instructions to create a clearly defined end result to just playing around and seeing where it takes me. Really, I thought that would be much harder for me to do! I think that all the projects and reading I've done have really paid off, which is how I typically do things--immerse myself in information for a while, then I surface and start synthesizing what I've learned to execute it in my own way. From somewhere I have gained a lot of confidence that I didn't have just a few months ago.

One of the things I did that has produced some lovely embellishments to use on my Xmas cards was to make some monoprints with alcohol inks on glossy white paper (I think I used red pepper, oregano, and the gold metallic mixative). I thought they might work as background panels for something else, but they didn't, so I then put some gold peel-off stickers I got in England last summer on them. They looked nice but like stickers put on paper (which they were, of course!), so I put Glossy Accents over the exposed parts, and they really look quite nice now.

With all the coupons Michael's has been handing out the last few weeks, I've been adding some neat things to my inventory. One is the Sophisticated Finishes Patina set, which I'm dying to play with but may not get to until after the holidays (sob). An idea for one of next year's Xmas cards is to cut a big Xmas tree with upturned corners, patina it, and punch holes to hang little ornaments from on tiny jump rings. Or, maybe, just do the tree as is once it's patina'd--embellish it by putting a star on top or something.

Anyway, about beginnings:
--One idea would be to do a collage with many different images of beginnings on it--January calendar, blank book (3D element), wedding ring or announcement, graduation picture, clock or timepiece of some sort, etc. This could be good practice for identifying a focal element and arranging different items, and it would be fun to use the different media for blending things together, especially now that I have the encaustic medium.
--I really like the idea that a beginning is also an ending and have found it very hard, in fact, to separate beginning from ending when thinking about this challenge. It would be another mixed-media piece, but maybe I could fashion a Mobius strip out of something, perhaps with words or a quote written along it?
--I also thought of doing a sunrise somehow, maybe in Art Deco fashion and tearing strips of paper to serve as the sunrise. This would be a landscape-oriented piece.
--I could make it personal and do a collage of beginnings for me: first house I remember, anything else significant. Must admit this seems the least interesting of all so far though.
--Some artistic representation of the beginning of a fractal--see quotes below. Now that could be quite fun!

Quotes about beginnings that might be interesting to muse over:
--The beginnings of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. ~ Kate Chopin
--"In my beginning is my end." ~ T.S. Eliot
--"Play is the beginning of knowledge." George Dorsey
--"Solitude is the beginning of all freedom." William Orville Douglas
--"At the earliest drawings of the fractal curve, few clues to the underlying mathematical structure will be seen." Ian Malcolm