Found treasure

 Last night in the studio, I "came across" this gem. It's a beat-up old science classroom "poster" (map-like) made with kind of a paper-canvas material. To tell you the truth, I barely remember purchasing it (probably at the Farmersville auction). I was SO excited to have found this! I started experimenting right away (so much fun!). I have been wanting to try to create some collages that are a little bigger, so this is a perfect source. I have my hand included in one of the photos, to show the scale.

I love the muted color palette! I don't know what will come from this source for elements... but I'm excited to start exploring/experimenting. Here are some starters (all rough right now)...

Cooperstown (NY) Art Association

Had a wonderful time at the 35th Annual Regional Art Exhibit in Cooperstown, last night. I was so excited that I got accepted into this show, along with my friend and fellow artist, Tom Nettle; and my sister-in-law and fellow artist, Donna Durr. They accepted 66 pieces of the 176 that were submitted. And Tom won a Juror's Citation Award, too! The show was particularly strong, in my opinion... and well-attended. It's nice when there is some external recognition for all the time we spend creating in the studio.

Award winner, Tom Nettle

Cut paper collage entitled "Vivian", by Donna Durr

Award winner, Mary Helen Epps, with her piece, entitled "Contemplation"

 

creative distractions

 Well... I had intended to work on finishing the "paired" project last night; but I got distracted by some elements that were laying around the tables in the studio. Not sure if anything will come of this rudimentary start. But I am digging the way this looks (a bit of surreal; a bit of Warhol)...

The collage of life

I've been very pleased with the number of hits that this blog is getting on a daily basis recently. One reason I am posting today, is to let folks know what I have been up to recently. I consider my life to be very collage-like. In addition to loving my activities as an visual artist, I am playing more music with friends -- old and new. We play mostly improvisational music (jamming?), rather than playing "cover songs". Last weekend, as part of my birthday celebrations, I got together with my good friend Goody and a new person who we have not played with before. He played guitar; and an instrument called a "duduk" (an Armenian flute-like reed instrument). It was an awesome 2 hours of ambient, spacey, jazzy improv. On Saturday, we played with a full band, including keyboard, sax, and drums. SO much fun! I also dealt with a sewer back-up in my basement (yuck). Life is like a collage, with so many interesting elements. But I have also been working on a collage project which I "teased" about in an earlier post (regarding a potential transfer element). The project involves a paired set of collages. Not done yet... but here is some progress.

 

"In Someone Else's Hands"

 I finished this piece yesterday, for the National Collage Society “Small Works” exhibit. ALL entries need to be 4” x 6” and mounted on 8” x 10” mat board. I wasn’t going to submit this year, but this came together rather quickly. Although, in my haste to finish it (it HAS to be sent out today), I failed to do the “micro cutting” around the face (dammit! sloppy). I will still submit it. This one is entitled “In Someone Else’s Hands”.

teaser transfer

I meant to post this first image the other day, as a teaser (what will become of this?). But I ended-up posting about the piece I had just finished. Anyway... I had already decided on the answer to the "teaser" part if it... I wanted to use it as a source for a transfer. So now the "teaser" has moved along one more step. Here is how I used it for two different, complementary transfers. I'm still not sure where these final compositions will end-up; but I am interested in the process, and the idea of doing a complementary pair. The third image is a quick collage (like less than an hour!) I made for a friend of mine. It's a very small piece (3.5" x 4.5"). I missed some micro-cutting in my haste to get it done. But I think it's a nice, simple piece.

 

Sisters

I am happy to have finished this piece today. It's a "sister" piece to another one I created recently.

 

Self portrait?

 While going through a box of old stuff from my office, I came across this quick sketch I did when I was on faculty at Lebanon Valley College. The eyes were drawn around what was then two coffee drop stains (the brown color of the coffee has since faded) on my desktop blotter. The sketch was made circa 1993. I recently put UV coating on it the other day, and will re-frame it soon. But I realized that perhaps, unwittingly, this represent the only "self-portrait" that I've done (at least that's what I am now thinking). This doesn't have much to do with collage, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless.

Dancing in the studio

Well, I'm not exactly sure from where this metaphor came, but it seems to capture what I was doing in the studio last night -- dancing. I was chipping away at a potential composition for the National Collage Society's small format exhibit (the guy with the dog); but was also playing around with other elements. I also have a partner frame for the gold-braid frame I posted recently (with the beautiful woman and the graph paper composition), which is silver-braid. I experimented with elements that I thought might go well with the silver. I ended-up creating a composition that is very atypical of my normal style. It was exciting to open-up more possibilities for future directions. Here are some of the images from my dancing...

Top 5

It's cliche for parents to insist that they do not have a favorite child -- that each provides their own blessings and challenges. Perhaps the same can be said of an artist's perspective of his/her creative works. But from my experience, I would not go that far. And in fact, I have submitted many pieces to various juried shows and am often particularly annoyed when a piece doesn't get accepted that I considered "a very strong piece" -- other times, I'm more understanding ("Well, it wasn't my strongest submission"). With that being said, I present a piece I finished yesterday, that I think is in my top 5 best collages I have ever done. I worked on-and-off on this piece for weeks -- having good breakthroughs followed by some mistake or challenge. The piece was originally inspired by the original frame and mat coloring of this garage sale acquisition. The faded green and blue mat seemed to be "calling out" for some of the green and blue-green vintage papers that had been accumulating in my studio space. When I placed the beautiful woman as the focal point for the piece, it just felt so "right". And the flower -- which had been laying around the studio table for months -- complemented the color palette perfectly (and the somber facial expression of the lady too). The top image is the finished piece. But I included the other image (bottom) to highlight the last decision I had to make with this piece. I had originally thought the cream-colored sides would work well; but there was a crease and a bit of asymmetry that I didn't like. So I tried more detailed edging, and it seemed to work well. There a bit of a different vibe for each (and I like both); but I finally went for the detailed edging instead of the cream. The piece is entitled "The Sacredness of Comfort and Care" (9.5" x 9.5"; 14" x 14" framed).

NCS small format

 As part of my activities in the studio recently, I decided to experiment with some ideas for the upcoming small works exhibit of the National Collage Society. The pieces for this event are required to be just 4" x 6". I like the challenge of this small scale. Here are some of the images I was playing with...

I was particularly interested in the way the different background on these to "experiements", created such a dramatic contrast. I like them both equally well, I think.

Don't not sweat the details

Ah, the ole double-negative. Sometimes, folks say "Don't sweat the details", implying that it is not worth getting upset or obsessing over "the little things". When I'm doing my collages, I spend A LOT of time with the details. I DO sweat the details. I think the result of doing so, contributes to why people respond positively to my work. I've done a post like this in the past, but I think it's always worth a "refresher". The detail to which I am referring in this case, is the painting of the edges of my elements. Doing this, covers up the "interior" white of the paper. It is especially important when the image is dark, and the paper is thick. And what happens in an overall composition, is that it tends to "allow" all of the elements to be seen as a more integrated whole. Sometimes, viewers mistakenly think my collages are digital, precisely because the images are so integrated -- the reason that I always explicitly refer to my collages as "analog collages". Here's a good example of before and after painting the edge...

 

The Pet of the Hospital Nurses

Here is a piece I finished yesterday (I'm on a roll). It's entitled "The Pet of the Hospital Nurses" and is 11" x 11" (16" x 16" framed)...

I thought is might be interesting to show the evolution of the piece. It started with my interest in the "base" image, an etching from a book from the 1870s, which was entitled "The Pet of the Hospital Nurses".

I cut out the nurses and baby, and had experimented with various backgrounds...

I had intentions of extracting the baby's head from the image and replacing it with some kind of animal head. I realize that's a little bit "obvious" for the composition related to a teacher's "pet", or in this case, the nurses' pet; so I felt like I needed it to be compelling. As that idea "sat on the back burner". Then, I came across this etched image in another vintage book from the turn of the 20th century of a British politician named William Wilberforce. I found the pose in this portrait to be quite interesting. It looked a little "bratty" to me.. and weird (which, of course, was compelling to me... although I don't like using images of "famous" people, typically).

As I was cutting the body out of this image, I left a piece of the arm of the chair attached (mostly as a precaution to get the entire body of Wilberforce, and to not cut too much away... easier to cut more, than try to piece back together).

When I was experimenting with placement into the nurses image, I noticed that the arm of the chair was positioned so that it looked like some kind of weird prothetic arm of the nurse on the right. Okay!... another element of weirdness. Always welcome with me ;-) So I trimmed everything down, but left the arm of the chair attached.

I then had to look for an animal tail as another element. I got one from a contemporary wildlife book of a Senegalese galago. It seemed to work well. Then it was a matter of doing some more trimming (micro-cutting) and painting the edges of the individual elements, and placing them precisely together. I initially wanted to leave the title of the etching ("The Pet of the Hospital Nurses"), in tact, to be part of the composition. But I found it too "distracting" (or causing an imbalance).

I also had to decide whether to place the nurses arm in front of the border element, or behind (likewise for the bush on the bottom left). Once I decided, I proceeded with the border all the way around. I had to splice a number of these borders together and place them VERY precisely (so that the mat would be perfectly square to the borders. That process alone, took about two hours of careful splicing and placement. So, once again, here's the final composition: