Another sketchbook page with freehand stitching. Images from Nancy Baumiller's Collage Play With Crowabout sheets, wing from Laura Kirste Campbell's "Old World Flourish" Layers Of Color collection.
If I decide to do much more to this than just finish the border, maybe I'll repost. Otherwise, you get the idea.
Up all night last night with a sick doggie. He seems to be much better now, but he gave us quite a scare, and I won't be comfortable until he's back on his food as usual. At least he's interested in playing a bit now, so it's looking hopeful!
Too tired and stressed to start anything new or large, so I grabbed my ABC book to catch up on my "B" page before tomorrow, when it will be time for "C". If you're interested, I posted my "A" page HERE, and the cover for this little brown wrapper paperback is exactly like the one pictured in this post, HERE. The alphabet pages are for an online art group, the style and booklet are straight from Kelly Kilmer's J.O.Y. group, and the pointy hats mean that it's also headed for the pointy hats and wings group on flickr.
I'm crawling in early for sleep tonight. But before I turn out the lights, you might want to take a peek at my right side bar and click on the new button that says: "30 Days of Get Your Art On". It will take you straight to Traci Bunkers dot com forward slash blog, where you can pick up your own button and start making your own 30 days worth of art!
The best part is that you make up your own rules as to how you want to follow this practice. Personally, I'm using it to push me to scan and blog more of what I do each day. Sorry, it isn't that blogging isn't a priority, but photographing, scanning and uploading pics I find to be so tedious! Not my strong point, and certainly not my passion! So most of what I do -- some of the best stuff, really, and certainly all of the really large things -- are left unseen by eyes in cyberspace.
More tomorrow!
I love Collage Play With Crowabout. Right now I'm catching up on previous weeks.
The Twilight Club was for week #110. That's more than 2 years of Saturdays!
Also, I'm facilitating a prompt group at Wild Precious Studios called Making Mandalas: Art Within the Circle. There are more than 70 people participating, and we're having more fun than I can say! Why don't you come and join us!
And speaking of Mandalas, I have created three concentric circle templates for you to download and use in your artwork! You can find them HERE, at ArtiphyTheSoul, along with other information about mandalas, artwork, and SoulCollage®.
A passion for stories has accompanied me throughout my life, side by side with drawing and painting. A friend of mine once said affectionately, "Barbara is like the 4th little pig. Her house is not made of straw or wood or bricks, her house is built of books." This two-page journal spread was inspired by the Arthurian story of The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell.
What is it that women desire above all else?
Had Dame Ragnell not given King Arthur the answer to this question, he would have lost his head to Sir Gromer. In exchange for the answer, Arthur had to convince Sir Gawain to agree to marry the Dame Ragnell, who was cursed to be the ugliest hag on the face of the earth. Sir Gawain said that he would do that easily to save his king. The answer Dame Ragnell gave to Sir Gromer's question was sovereignty.
On their wedding night, Ragnell behaved like a beast, then teased Gawain for a kiss. Instead of recoiling, he told her that as her husband, he would give her so much more. Instantly, she became beautiful. Then she gave him a choice: She could be beautiful by day, or beautiful by night. Instead of making the choice, Sir Gawain acknowledged her sovereignty. He answered, "My lady, the choice is yours." With her sovereignty affirmed by the one who was loyally bound to her, Dame Ragnell announced that she would be beautiful all the time, that the ugly spell was broken because "A husband granted me, of his own free will, sovereignty to choose what I wish for myself."
The lesson: Ugliness turns to beauty when one's sovereignty is affirmed.
My journal pages quote from an article by Trebbe Johnson in the winter 2010-2011 issue of Parabola magazine. The article confused the stories of the wedding of Gawain and Ragnell with the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but the spirit of the article was entirely true.
And so, myth has far less to do with retelling fictions, with imaginary people, places and things. It is much more a vessel of the information necessary to a whole, functioning and integrated life, both personal and communal. In this sense, myth is history, non-fiction, and an accurate portrait of the psyche and mores of the society that gave birth to its stories. As with any art, myth is at once a portrait of the artist, a snapshot of the zeitgeist in which it was created, and as such, an accurate predictor of things to come, if only one can accurately read its symbols.
A taste of Honolulu in Tempe, Arizona
Clockwise from left: 1.Snowcone 2.Hawaiian prints 3.More fabric 4.Nets & sea glass 5.Hawaiian groceries 6.Wax flowers 7.Almond cookies 8.Starfish. 9.The center photo is the old Hayden Flour Mill. It's the view across the street from the festival. Tempe is almost never this green. Ever.
While we're on the subject of festivals, I didn't take a batch of photos at the Renaissance Fair this year, but I did get a shot of this guy playing the Carillon.
This video was on youtube. It gives you a pretty good idea of how large this thing is and what it sounds like. But for sound quality, visit their website where there are audio clips of most of their songs.
A couple of posts back I showed you a pic of Mona when she was just a background.
Here she is now after a bit of fixing.
There's a French web museum that posts pics of altered Monas which is worth a look. Click HERE to see Mona's journey since her escape from the Louvre. They already have one of my Monas, and I think I might offer this one as well.
February is the best month for desert spring in the warmer years. This year has been cooler and it's March that wins the prize!
Absolutely perfect weather, so we'll be taking advantage of some free tickets to the Renaissance Fair this weekend. Above pics are from festivals past. You can click to enlarge. Top right is my son Andrew; Bottom left is my daughter Amy. No...I'm not the troll....shame on you for thinking that!
Everything I do seems a little lighter and more pastel in the springtime. Here's an acrylic and oil pastel background for a journal page that you can click to enlarge.
Speaking of springtime happiness and winning months of the year, my name was drawn to win the most fabulous piece of artwork! You can take a look at it HERE. I won #2, the gorgeous blue textured book cover! I'm over-the-moon giddy and happy with this! Thanks again, Kelsey
...For Crowabout, Three Muses, and Pointy Hats and Wings
Water...
...was the first thing I thought of when I stepped back from the finished collage and took a good, hard look. It makes me think of an undersea world, or a huge aquarium that the boy is standing in front of. I hope water is an auspicious sign for the new year. It's also the Three Muses theme this week.
Most of the images are from Crowabout, but a lot of the border are pieces from my private stash. The background is lots of thin layers of acrylic paint, and "2010" is penned.
Short and Sweet:
Tuesday was like traveling a long, rocky road which left me exhausted, so this is a short post. Wednesday will be better (and already is, as it's a fair bit after midnight now). Thankfully I'm at a place in my artwork where all goes well even if the rest of the day is poor. This collage was a labor of love!
Have a great day, Everyone!
A Funky Fairy...
Personally, I think my funky fairy began as one of Cinderella's ugly stepsisters. But not all of us are beauty queens, and I think it's far more important to spend time mending broken hearts than to worry about one's reflection in the mirror, so she gets my stamp of approval in spite of her need for good plastic surgery, and rehab for her addiction to cosmetics and other fashion enhancements.
What She's Made Of...
Layered acrylics, Pitt pens and manga brush pens, patterned papers, collage images from magazines, Nancy Baumiller (aka: Crowabout) and my personal stash, Cran d'ache NeoColor II, and Sakura white gel pen, glaze and souffle pens.
What I'm Going To Do Now...
I'm in a rush to see part two of The Prisoner re-make. If I suspend the urge to view it as a remake and choose to look at it as a stand-alone program, it's passable. Although the attempted humor and propensity for taking everything all to seriously are so thoroughly Gen-X, that it makes one wonder if anyone under 30 or over 40 was ever within a mile of filming it. But somehow I'm still hooked, or maybe "committed" is a better word. It will NEVER replace McGoohan's Prisoner, and it makes me seethe every time I think of the derogatory comments made by the directors of the new version about the original--directors who clearly have no understanding of the era, the politics or the symbolism present in the BBC series. Ignorance is not bliss. But as part 2 of the remake is about to be broadcast, I'm off to view it. So until my next post,
Be Seeing You...
...For Crowabout, Mixed Media Monday, Theme Thursday, Wednesday Stamper, Three Muses, and Pointy Hats and Wings
My fashionable (MMM theme) Zetti (WS theme) was made with images from Crowabout, and from my own private stash of patterned papers (TT theme). And since the passing of time is a recurring theme in my dreams, it fits for the Three Muses theme, as well.
Tonight's post will be short and sweet. I'm a little under the weather, and as it's always better to be on top of things than underneath them, I'll be calling it a night early, hoping for lots of rest and pleasant dreams. I plan to hop into bed with the book I'm reading: The Needle's Eye by Margaret Drabble, a glass of wine, and I'll try to catch an episode or two of the original Prisoner series on DVD before I drift off to sleep. We're trying to finish the original series in the order they were made before the new Prisoner airs this weekend. I must say, I'm not optimistic about the re-make. From what I've been told, not much of it seems to even follow the original story. Still, we're only a couple of episodes away from finishing the original, so it will be fun to have those fresh in our minds when we see what the studios have come up with on Sunday.
Stay well, and have a great day, Everyone!
For Layers of Color, Mixed Media Monday and Pointy Hats and Wings
A Celebration...
In my opinion, one of the brightest spots on the web is also an online shop. If you haven't visited Layers Of Color art stamps, you owe it to yourself to stop by and take a look at the gorgeous artwork that owner Laura Campbell lovingly puts into the stamps she sells! And visit the gallery, too! There is plenty of inspiration not only from the talented design team, but from customers as well! This is the perfect time to do so, because if you visit right now, you can pick up all the details about the huge give-away that's coming up on November 14th and 15th in celebration of the release of nine new LOC original art stamp sets.
The Collage...
I'm going to go into a bit of detail here so you can pick out the LOC stamps I used in creating this collage. The background was painted with layered acrylics. I recycled a piece of gift wrap tissue with script by adhering it to the surface with gel medium and then added successive layers of medium and acrylic paint over the top. I buffed it smooth, and assembled my little party fairy using wings, hat and body parts from Lisa's Altered Art, a star from Sandra Evertson's Fanciful Paper Projects, and two different Layers Of Color architectural block stamps for the skirt and top. I drew and painted the hand on a separate piece of paper, then cut and collaged it to the surface. The sleeve was made using another one of the stamps from the LOC architectural block set, colored in-between with watercolor pencils. I added the scrolling, flowery rub-ons from Heidi Grace, and as nice as they are, in retrospect, wish I had painted them myself by hand. Lastly I laid-in the shading and the dots.
"Opposites attract" is this week's MMM theme, and what could be more attractive to a human than a tiny fairy bringing beauty and hope. There are also the obvious opposites of color and contrast, handmade and mass produced elements, and rough and smooth textures.
A Spot of News...
This is the only place on this blog that you'll hear about my next piece of news, so if you're interested, please read-on! I've begun another blog. It's a home on the web for the very satisfying cards and crafty pieces that I love to make to unwind at the end of a long day. Early on, I tried to blend these pieces in with my other artwork and into this blog, and while this may have worked, it confused me, and some other artists who emailed me, wondering just what it was that I did primarily. The answer was, and is, that I'm one of those rare-ish half-right, half-left brain people who's hemispheres are so equally balanced, that I find it just as easy and just as satisfying to make fine art on the one hand, and graphic design on the other. I spent a great deal of my life drawing and painting and getting an arts degree, and just as much of my life writing and working with publishing layouts and graphic design. As one graphic designer friend of mine put it, "You've joined the ranks of artists who get as much satisfaction from creating your own art from scratch, as you do from pushing around and arranging the elements created by others." This is so true, and it describes me to a "T"! So for my own peace of mind, and at least for the time being, you can find my arty cards and crafts at ArtyCardsNCrafts. ArtiphyTheHeart will remain the place for everything else I do. Maybe I'll even choose to post some of my drawing and painting in the future...we'll see... But for now, that blog will link back to this one, but this one will stand on its own.
Asking A Little Favor, If I May...
If you decide to visit ArtyCardsNCrafts, or if you get there through a blog challenge I've entered, please take a minute to look at the list of links in that blog's sidebar. My hope is that it will become the most comprehensive and up-to-date listing of card and craft challenges on the web. So if you know of a challenge that is not listed on that blog, please email me with a link so I can add it to the list!!
And now I'm off to:
Have a late lunch
Catch up on some reading
Visit GoodReads, as my DD recommends it so highly,
Do a bit more tweaking and blog maintenence, and
Work on an art journal page, already in progress
Have a great day, Everyone!
...For Crowabout, Pointy Hats and Wings, and Mixed Media Monday...
Beatrice...
Last night I watched a documentary on the famous ceramist Beatrice Wood, titled, "Mama of Dada". If you can get your hands on this, you need to see it, and I'm told that the entire documentary is on the web, so I'm sure if you Google it, you might find it.
Beatrice died at 105. The film was made to celebrate her 100th birthday, and the interviews with Beatrice were done when she was in her late 90's, still working, and sharper and more alert than many of us when we are in our 30's. Her artwork is sheer genius. She was a true alchemist. Her glazes are without equal--anywhere, anytime. But it's her chosen mix of independence and self-discipline that speaks to me most clearly, and I believe that mix is the secret of her long career and her total presence of mind.
DADA...
Webster's defines Dada as: "A movement in art and literature based on deliberate irrationality and negation of traditional artistic values." In reality, Dada cannot be defined, as labeling it as an art form of any kind would immediately classify it as something other than "Dada". Dada is a mindset which insists on the license to create without the constraints of surrounding societies. Beatrice's work is pioneering and classical at the same time. Beatrice as an artist, and as herself, embodied the spirit of Dada like nobody else, exceeding even Marcel Duchamp with her intense combination of freedom and discipline.
Tying It In With The Process...
The documentary played in the background while I worked with the Crowabout images, and I'd pause it from time to time and play parts of it back as was necessary while painting, drawing, cutting, glueing, and taking stretch breaks. For me, placement of images and painted areas on paper often are made by shape and color, regardless of subject matter, although I am basically a storyteller when I create, and without thinking, I am thinking of scenarios and painting new ones in my head as I move ahead with what I'm doing. So much of it is subconscious work, that when I declare a piece as finished, I let it "sleep" for a period, then go back to it and allow it to tell me what influenced it.
Is there anything more self-disciplined and independent (read DADA) than a cowgirl? There were other images on that sheet that I could have chosen, but this was the combination that my eyes and hands picked and placed, along with other pieces of ephemera, a child from Lisa's Altered Art, and additional paint and dots. Now that I think about it, a cowgirl is probably the perfect combination of pinks and blues, and all the gradients in between, and while I think that idea was somewhat present at the time, it wasn't until I was finished that the symbolism took hold.
Beatrice said, "If I could sum up my life, I would say it was a burning desire for freedom and to be hugged." My vision of Cowgirl Ranch is a place that provides a girl with both.
Now I'm off to:
Paint some pages in one of my handmade take-along journals to fill some down-time while I'm out this afternoon
Make sure I've packed a decent supply of pens and snippets
Choose a new "before bed" book to read tonight, and
Think about what we'll have for dinner
Have a great day, Everyone!
...For Me, for Crowabout, for Three Muses, and for Pointy Hats and Wings
No Satisfaction...
Sometimes you're just not satisfied, and that's how I felt with my last collage, "Row C". The puzzler was that I liked it to look at, it was definitely "finished", but I felt personally unsatisfied, like it got there without me. After forgetting it while I worked on something else, I realized that it was nothing about the collage itself that bothered me, it was something personal. It was about the process. I felt cheated because the collage was finished and couldn't hold anymore, and I really wanted to play with pens and inks and paints on top of something. So I just had to do something else, and that's how The Tooth(ache) Fairy was born.
What I Did About It...
I chose one of my simpler layered acrylic under-paintings to begin with so that I could indulge my urge to doodle without the distraction of a multi-colored background, then I mixed some pink and started painting. First a border, then some funky flowers. Then I grabbed my tiniest black Micron and filled in part of the bottom with a million tiny ovals and circles. Then came dots, circles, squares, an object here, an object there, some rub-on numbers and stars. Before I printed him, the doggie was enlarged and adjusted in Photoshop as high contrast screen tones, and was given a pale-pink wash, which I later intensified in areas with a couple of Prismacolors. His heart (Lisa's Altered Art) was too red, so it got a dusting of pale pink pencil to tone it down. I created the box body of the fairy from items in Crowabout's collage sheet and glued on an altered pointy hat, then some wings (Lisa's Altered Art, again). The arm was the last thing I added.
In Search Of A Home...
Here's a true confession: I don't enjoy making things just to illustrate themes. It feels like work. Probably because a lot of the work I do in real life involves illustration. Even teaching art revolves around illustrating themes and concepts, and I now just want to create from what's inside of me. That's why now, when I design commercially, I choose to design for vendors of products I use, and I do this for the express purpose of using their products in my artwork rather than illustrating a product itself. It's their products shown off to advantage, but my art, my style, and my themes.
I think that's why I am so in love with the Crowabout group. Nancy chooses collage images that are wonderful and often zany, and I get to express myself using these terrific things that I might not have run across on my own, and I get to use them in and out of contexts, all my own. I know it's why I love Kelly Kilmer's A Prompt A Day. Even when I'm not actively participating, the vast stores of prompts and the infinite combinations thereof, are creative DNA that subtly find their way into the things I do!
Also, I really love web challenges. I love this wonderful community of blogging artists, and seeing what others create around various themes. But when I participate in themed groups, I usually do so when I have a piece that fits. Rarely will I create something on the fly just to fit a theme, so when I finished The Tooth(ache) Fairy, I took it around the web in search of a theme, and discovered The Three Muses "numerology" theme in the process, where it fit.
Now I'm off to:
Clean up the studio and file images
Try and motivate myself to do some long over-due blog maintenance
Get people where they need to go
Figure out what we're eating tonight, and
Get back to the book I'm reading before I fall asleep
Have a great day, Everyone!
Zetti
What makes a Zetti? We all know various components of Zetti, but how is it defined by its creators, Tracy and Teesha Moore? Am I correct that Teesha and Tracy invented all things Zetti? If not, then please set me straight. I'm really interested, not in a personal interpretation, but in the actual definition, and in how big a role personal interpretation plays in this, if at all. Why? I don't know why, must I have a reason? I just am. And not from a legalistic standpoint; more from curiosity.
At any rate, here's my Zetti, apparent in image, border and concept, but just what it is that makes these things "Zetti", I couldn't really say, at least not precisely.
Conceptual Art
I choose to illustrate concepts, not words or phrases. If I'm asked to illustrate "chair", for instance, I don't rush around looking for images of chairs, or draw a chair before I've internalized the concept and made it relevant to a part of my life. I don't find it necessary to explain the relevance, but I believe that you are more likely to find something in it that speaks to you, if something in it speaks to me. The meanings can be different for both of us, and are more meaningful if they're personal and individual. But for a piece of art to be relevant, the meaning must come from somewhere other than the observer's making it up on the fly, and while you probably won't see my story in it, hopefully you'll see something of yours. Not everyone works this way, nor should they, necessarily. It's just what I do.
Suffering
You can't study art without noticing how often the word "suffering" pops up, and in so many contexts. At some point or other, students always ask if suffering is a necessary component of creating art, and if so, why this is so. It depends on how you define suffering of course, and if your definition is ghetto poverty, then the answer is, no, it isn't necessary, in fact, it can be a hindrance, although it doesn't have to be.
But unless you're just mindlessly knocking off crafts, and hey, I'm not knocking this, it can be fun and relaxing, but in creating a piece of art, each piece has a growth cycle, and there's always some suffering involved in coming to grips with getting to know the piece and what it needs. There's a period of struggle, a push and a pull, sometimes even a fight, before you can move into the phase of peaceful execution. This type of suffering, like suffering in raising children, and working at relationships in general, carries with it an aspect of beauty and nobility.
If you separate the act of suffering, the work of it, from physical pain and the fear of death and failure, then you extract the beauty. This, simply stated, is the work of the heart. It's the added components of fear and physical pain that give suffering a bad name and conjure up the definitions that western society has saddled it with. Purely, it is in suffering that beauty is wrought, not the suffering of pain and fear, but the suffering of patience. The patience of listening and waiting, as long as it takes, for a creation to develop, working surgery when necessary to remove unwanted aspects and providing the necessary elements at the right times for growth. In Greek, "pathima".
Right now I'm:
Sitting in a public library at closing time
Getting ready to run the last few errands of the day, and
Wondering what to make for dinner.
Have a great day, Everyone!
...Shedding a Light on My Subconscious
It All Began With Pointy Hats and Wings...
This week I received a surprise invitation from Nancy Baumiller to join her Flickr group, Pointy Hats and Wings. I was in the process of raiding my kids' stash of unused 3-ring binders and getting my stacks of collage sheets categorized and filed away in page protectors when the email came. The timing couldn't have been better. Having previously kept collage sheets in a box, then out of the box and all over the place, then back in the box, ad infinitum, I can't tell you how liberating it is to have them in binders that can be flipped through where you can actually see them! The bowl in this piece was right in front of me at the time I opened the email, and without any other thought, I decided to begin my collage with the bowl.
Evolution...
I auditioned several of my painted backgrounds to act as both underpinning and underpainting, and came up with a yellow one, positioned the bowl, and painted the border. The rest of the piece came together without a preconceived theme in mind. I made choices by deciding what worked with the composition, then let the theme evolve by itself. It took a few days to resolve because it needed lots of rest periods between elements, as so often happens when working with intense color and intense image at the same time. Don't ask me why I pulled the fish from my collection and used them here. I just did. The children and the bowl seemed to require them. The same with the fishbone letters. After I finished lettering, those lines and dots just seemed to be needed, so I played along with whatever the piece asked for and added them accordingly. Afterward, I realized they were fishbones.
A Journey Into The Psyche...
But what does it mean? OK, I play that game: Looking at artwork and trying to figure out what the artist is trying to say, both consciously and subconsciously, as well as looking to see what a piece has to offer for me personally. And the benefit of working with a theme as broad as "pointy hats and wings"--so broad as not to impose a theme at all--is that you don't know until you're finished just what the piece you're making says about you--or in this case, me! So I put it to bed, myself as well, and let it rest until morning.
Analyzing The Dream...
Looking back on surreal artwork and trying to fit the pieces is a lot like dream analysis. It's guess-work, but at the same time, it isn't.
So what did I learn about myself? Well, to begin with, it's true that lately I've been feeling a bit more exposed than fits my comfort range and have been dealing with keeping private things private, hence---the fishbowl. But it isn't a proper fishbowl, it's a colorful kitchen bowl...and it's opaque! And here's a quick lesson: If you find yourself unwittingly in a fishbowl, make the best of it. Choose colorful and opaque.
And the fish? Well, it was a piece of deceitful, stinking gossip that brought me into the fishbowl to begin with, under very "fishy" circumstances in which someone took a little bit of the truth and ran with it so far that it took on a very different spin and became a lie, and just like fish, sometimes life stinks! But you make the best of it, hang on to your umbrella for safety, listen carefully to wisdom offered by a trusted little bird, and wear your party hats and crowns as often as possible. Most importantly, you remember that love is always right there in the center of things. The heart at the heart. And no matter how tempting it may be to stoop to the levels of others, it's love that conquers in the end.
As for the clock, well, it's only a partial clock, and that's just the way it came. I didn't cut it; I just glued. What it says to me now as it sits there at the top, is that time looms large over us all. If only we could get a firm handle on time, everything would be possible. But we have to deal with what we're dealt, and don't have all the time in the world at our fingertips--hence, the partial clock, which represents the particular time-frame in which we work out our lives.
Is this what this really means? Who knows? But it's an adequate story, and it's mine, so I'm offering it to you as well, for whatever it's worth.
Kismet...
Sometimes when you're not looking to closely, things just work out right. Saturday Surprise has chosen "in the kitchen" as it's theme this week, just where I prefer my bowl of fish to be kept, and Inspire Me Thursday is open themed.
Now I'm...
Off to run the daily errands
Looking forward to the weekend and wishing it contained a bit more free time
Glad it's finally a little cooler
Appreciating true friends and family, and
Looking forward to an even brighter future!
Have a great day, Everyone!
