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).