Out on A Limb: 5

Way back, that is in March, I posted the first of the Out On A Limb series. I mentioned - well, maybe whined a bit - that I didn't particularly like making the pieces. At that time, as you will see here, I was creating the birds and limbs from various bits of paper. I used vintage bird images to make stencils, then, cut the parts. Once the initial construction was finished, I did enjoy adding to it but getting there was tedious. To me, it's like cooking - I once was a chef and went to chef's school in Philly - in that the prep work isn't necessarily the fun part. I feel the same way about sewing, hate cutting out the pattern but love embellishing the final product!

Well, as time has passed, I've returned to the series. But it has evolved into something I now enjoy making much more. I just completed six pieces in which I decided to combine color images of birds with black-and-white ones. For this one, I used a vintage page from a 1930s Audubon bird coloring book - the same book from which I had made the stencils - as the background, pairing it with a color image of a cardinal from one of the beautiful American Singer song bird trade cards published in the early 20th century.

Each piece is on a 5" x 5" x 3/4" Ampersand claybord panel. Normally, I don't hawk products, but I just bought a slew of these in a variety of sizes and love working with them. Unlike the boxy, wrapped stretched canvas, there is no give-and-take on the surface, so the papers glue down flat, flat, flat! I varnished the sides, which are made of hardwood, and attached sawtooth hangers to the backs so that the pieces can be hung without framing. I just learned that the entire series will be on view in Redtree Gallery's "A Small Glimpse" show, which opens Nov. 11. {The cardinal is SOLD}