A sincere, heart-felt "Thank you"!

I just want to say "Thank you" to all of you who have checked-out my blog posts over the past year. I started doing this 4 years ago as a real web log of my work and a record of some of my artistic endeavors. I am grateful that some of you have found what I have had to say interesting at some level. I hope that I have provided some useful tidbits along the way as well. So "Thank you"! I wish all of you a peaceful, joyous and productive new year in 2014!

Time travel

I am spending some time this morning going through some vintage magazines. I have a small stack of the publication "Primary Education" from 1917-1918. I have stated this before, but it is worth stating again methinks. One of the many aspects of collage of which I am particularly fond is the sense of "time travel" that I experience when looking through these old publications. In addition to the main articles are the advertisements. Here are a few that I found interesting.

"85 Years After The Invasion" (4.5" x 6.5")

Here's the finished owl piece with the yellow "accent" elements...

Christmas art by Sammy

I had to give a "Shout out" to my nephew Sammy, who gave his grandmother (my mother) a beautiful "scratch drawing" of a wolf for Christmas. There's nothing like original artwork as a gift. Good job Sammy!

Clown finale

Okay, perhaps I've put the clown up too much… BUT, I have the finished composition and I thought I would also show the intermediary steps. The last two steps were to decide on the positioning of the background space and "tipping" the paint brush with red paint. The distinctions are subtle, but important methinks. I decided to go with the more uniform and dark background rather than showing another red highlight (I thought that was distracting).

A couple of owl "sketches"

I certainly will post more in the next couple of days; but wanted to share these two "Sketches" from a very creative evening last night. I will post the finished clown tomorrow probably (it looks good with the brush tip painted red!).

substrates and ideas

Oftentimes people ask me how I come up with the ideas for my collages. As any artist will attest, that's a complicated question. One of the sources of ideas for me as a collagist are the various sources of raw materials which I peruse (i.e., the texts and photographs and illustrations). I have shared this before with regard to my particular fondness for certain types of source materials (i.e., outer space and black-and-white photography books; see 6-29-2013 post). Here are a couple more I have chosen to start working on. The black-and-white image is from an old magazine (I think "Life") and was particularly of interest to me because it covered more than a single page. As an analog collagist, this allows me to create a bit of a larger piece. I also really like the horizontal orientation (similar to "Two Birds, with One Stoned"). The green and orange substrate also has a horizontal orientation, only because I was lucky enough to come across two of the same issues of Science magazine (i.e., with the same cover art). I will arrange the two covers so it may not be so easy to see that they are identical. Both of these substrates have been "sitting around" my workspace for over a week now. I continually will experiment with images that might "work". This (hopefully) will eventually lead to a composition that I can then elaborate upon and do the finish work on. Sometimes people think I have some kind of picture in my head of what I want a piece to look like; but honestly at this point, I really don't have any idea what the compositions will be. I know that I enjoy the contrast of color with black-and-white (but that's a standard artistic strategy). The third image shown here (the blue topographical image) I think will not be a substrate, but will be cut-out and placed as an "object" on a yet-to-be-determined composition.

Clowning around

My friend's wife, Heather (well, she is also a friend), is graduating from nursing school this week. I was contemplating doing a collage for her as a graduation gift. Although she hates clowns; she loves to watch scary movies. But perhaps she wouldn't like a clown collage. I may give her the option of first refusal. I can always use a piece like this in a show. I posted it on my FB page and got some pretty strong reactions to it (which I like). It's not quite done yet and I need to photograph in better light when it is finished. But I thought I would share here. The one with the deflated balloon is the composition I am "going with"; the other was just a sketch.

December sketches

After a full dy of grading and school meetings, I was able to come home last night and spend some "quality time" in my work area. Here are some "sketches" that I was working on. I'm really looking forward to some dedicated art time in December and January!

 

A source of inspiration

I recently met Tony Thompson, a young artist based in my hometown of Utica, NY. He did a collaborative project with another artist resident at Sculpture Space, Inc, and I saw their installation at a Works-in-Progress Reception. VERY cool stuff! Tony's work is pretty amazing. It's like a cross between Banksy and Tim Burton. He's an extremely prolific artist and is involved with lots of community arts projects in the greater Utica area. He's also one of the nicest guys I have ever met. No brooding, moody artist -- Tony is a guy that you just feel good being around. Tony also has Cavernous Angioma, a blood vessel problem which happens to have afflicted Tony in the pons area of his brain stem (an extremely important brain area for some basic physiological functions). Most of the time, Tony  experiences no symptoms as a result of this condition. But sometimes the blood vessels release blood into his brain tissue. This consequently can lead to temporary paralysis, vision, balance and speech problems. Tony recently had his third bout of bleeding and had to spend some more time in hospital treatment. Despite Tony's condition, he continually produces art and is an inspiration to many of us. He has MANY friends and supporters in the area and we will be having a fund-raiser to help Tony pay for his medical bills. Dan Walter, who works at The Dev (see earlier posts of my recent exhibit there) is an amazing arts supporter in Utica, is the lead organizer (THANKS Dan!). Here is a piece of Tony's work that I bought in the summer (with text that states "It wasn't suppose to happen again") along with a piece I just completed to donate to the fund-raiser.

Thoughtsgiving follow-up

Here are the commemorative collage lapel pins I made for our festive gathering at The Green Onion for the 4th Annual Thoughtsgiving Day!