Mining Farmersville

Utica College's graduation ceremony was Sunday; so most of my intense school work is now over for a little bit (although I have a full day of academic paperwork to do today). On Monday I headed down to Pennsylvania to visit my friend and fellow collagist Anthony Morgan (who won an award for his work in this year's NCS postcard show). Yesterday, we went to the Farmersville auction in Lancaster County, PA. It's exciting to search through all the stuff and find interesting vintage materials for collage! Of course, in the "old days", Anthony wasn't as interested in finding collage materials. These days, we "compete" a little bit. Anyway, here are some of the gems we found yesterday...

Mother's Day

Yesterday, we celebrated Mother's Day here in the United States (a holiday which became official in 1914 under Woodrow Wilson's Presidency). My mother has been a loving and supportive role model as I have made my journey through life. She's an amazing woman! Although she often claims that she "doesn't understand my art" she regularly comes to my openings to support my creative efforts. She also keeps an eye out for materials for me when she goes to garage and estate sales. In some ways, she understands my artwork quite well I would say. Here's an awesome element that she picked up for me for $1 recently at a garage sale. I'm very excited to see what becomes of this substrate (it's already coated!). I also included a photo of me and my mom when we were in Amsterdam. THANKS FOR EVERYTHING MOM!

QR project a success!

Last night was the opening reception for the "Id/Ego/Superego" exhibit last night at The Tech Garden in Syracuse, NY. As I wrote on this blog a little while ago, I was going to test whether my QR code collage worked at this opening. Here are some photos from last night... and I am VERY pleased to announce that... IT WORKED!!! My analog collage of the digital QR code, when scanned, brings you to this blogsite and now references itself in the cyber universe!

flowers and space

Over the last six months or so, I have become increasingly drawn to the beauty of flowers as collage elements. I'm not sure from where that is coming except for the fact that I have stumbled on some beautiful floral elements in my stack of magazines lately. And of course, outer space is a favorite of mine (and many other collagists). I was able to spend some time in my studio again last night (REALLY looking forward to the semester's end when I will have even more time!) and played around with a couple sketches and variations that I thought I would share. Nothing is "put down" yet, but I am really finding these sketches appealing.

rather

I rather like this image

(whatever that means)...

from the depths of the beginning

As I write this entry, I can't help but hear in my mind the old Emerson, Lake and Palmer song "From the Beginning" (I love that song!). My QR code piece is finished and the show is hung in Syracuse, NY. I'm looking forward to the opening at The Tech Garden next Thursday evening! And although I have a boat-load of grading to do for the end of the semester, I am excited to be exploring and prepping for some new collage work! I thought I would share three of the raw elements that I have coated this week. It's always interesting for me to be "at the beginning" of the process with elements like these. I don't really know what will become of the images here or even whether they will end up in a finished composition. But I do love these images. As a teacher, I would tell anyone interested in collage to always be on the lookout for images that  include inherent depth cues (such as these). Although I have seen hundreds of collages that use a "flat field" approach to composition -- to great effect -- I much prefer a composition with strong depth cues.

Goedenavond!

I noticed recently that many of the page hits for this blog are originating from the Netherlands. This makes me very happy as some of my favorite travel experiences were while I was visiting Amsterdam and Maastricht. If I ever had the opportunity to show my work in either of these cities, I would LOVE to visit again!