I've hit a bit of a roadblock when it comes to collage so I decided to try something completely different. I signed up for an online class "Grit and Grace, The Heart of Co-Creative Painting" with Katie Kendrick. The first assignment, shown here, was a mark making exploration. I tried a new product, Liquitex Clear Gesso to build up layers, and its already one of my favorites. I think it will be great to prep vintage books for mixed media as well.
My primary medium is collage and mixed media. Creating this piece was a very interesting journey territory because I only used drawing tools and paint.
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This year I dove into my collection of mid 60s Women's Day magazines to create my annual holiday card. I quickly found myself floundering in a sea of tacky nostalgia: colored toilet paper, Sea Monkeys and other mail order fantasies, virtually inedible jello molds, and impossibly difficult (and often hideous) holiday crafts. Christmas with my mom pretty much centered around the pages of these magazines. We found so much joy making the budget friendly treats and holiday ornaments featured in Woman's Day and Family Circle. We made a clever center pieces from evergreens in the yard and sent away for gifts in the special advertising section that practically never panned out, like a tiny working spy camera and a lemon tree that (never did) grow real lemons. I finally did make my collage Christmas card, but it took me a really, really long time because I enjoyed reading the magazines so much! This piece is titled "Rain." The sounds of a rainstorm on the roof of my attic studio triggered up all kinds of memories of other rainy days and moods. Luckily the storm, "my playlist/soundtrack" lasted long enough for me to finish it.
I was Randel Plowman's Collage a Day project & decided to do the same for one month. It took me a few years and several of Randel's excellent online workshops (where I met a supportive network of kindred spirits) to work up to it. Phewwwww, I managed to do it, and managed to go with the flow when the collages started to morph into mixed media paintings. Takeaways: * It was easier than I thought, but not easy. * It was a little scary because I was entering into unknown territory and did my best creating in a kind of meditative state. I feel like I've become a better artist but on the downside a slightly weirder person. I was already weird enough already! * I'm going to continue because it feels like some kind of journey/quest at this point. I'm plan on experimenting with working larger (something I've never done). I would definitely recommend committing to this kind of challenge in a chosen medium or more broadly to do anything creative as a daily practice. I also found Noah Scanlin's book 365 Make Something Every Day and Change your Life very inspirational. The subtitle is "Make Something Every Day and Change Your Life". Inside the book Noah talks about his experience and says "results may vary" but that "small, incremental steps I took every day added up to something much bigger than the individual parts". |
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