Out On A Limb: 29

© Out On A Limb: 29 (2012)

mixed-media collage: antique postcard (PFB, printed in Germany)

 and trade card (Lion Coffee, Woolson Spice Co., Toledo, OH);

 vintage illustration (Audubon coloring book, circa 1930s);

 hand-marbled paper; recycled catalog; ink, watercolor, marker, fluid chalk,
acrylic sealer & varnish. 5"x5" on cradled hardwood panel. 
Price: $75 (contact me - e-mail link is at the top of the page).

I thought I'd whip up a companion to complement the two Out On A Limb collages created last month and, well, here it is. I wanted to pick up on the yellow color scheme and spring-like feel of the earlier pieces - happily, the beautiful trade card on the left did just that. It's one of the gorgeous, late 19th century chromolithographs promoting The Woolson Spice Company's Lion Coffee brand.

In keeping with the idea of pairing color and black & white bird images, two birds from a 1930s Audubon coloring book were added. I liked that one is hanging upside down. Next: some papers in the middle to provide a transition between the two. Chalk on the edges added more texture.

I wasn't satisfied. It needed more. The pink flowers - from an antique postcard - were next. Hmm. Okay, but still not there. I rifled through the file and found another bird from the coloring book. Eureka! This is one of those collages that it helps to see in person to really get the effect of the layering.

One collage becomes two

BEFORE: Summer 2

Yep. I've been revisiting more "old" collages and transforming them. In this case, the wrapped canvas piece above was cut down and used for new pieces in the Out On A Limb series. I liked the piece when it was created but looking back at it, well, it was too static and without a real focal point.

When I spotted the beautiful birds below perched on branches of bright spring flowers, I knew the old summer collage would make a perfect background for them ...  

AFTER: Out On a Limb: 25 (2012)
mixed-media collage: antique postcards, trade card,
& illustration (Peterson's Magazine 1886); vintage illustration
(The Butterfly Book, Doubleday, 1902) & postage stamp;
handmade paper; ink, watercolor, gesso, acrylic sealer
and varnish; canvas. 5"x5" on cradled hardwood panel. 
Price: $75 (contact me - e-mail link is at the top of the page) 

AFTER: Out On a Limb: 26 (2012)
mixed media collage: antique trade card, sheet music
(Chatterbox magazine) & postcard (postmarked
Wamsley, Ohio, Feb. 24, 1913); vintage illustrations
(The Butterfly Book, Doubleday, 1902); handmade paper;
ink, watercolor, gesso, acrylic sealer and varnish;
canvas. 5"x5" on cradled hardwood panel.
Price: $75 (contact me - e-mail link is at the top of the page)  

Even more deconstruction and reconstruction

Last May, I wrote about the collage above and my struggle with whether it should be vertical or horizontal. Well, it doesn't matter any more. Why? It's been cut up and reworked it into two new collages - below - in the Out On A Limb series.

An interesting thing happened with the top section of the collage, the pressed leaf from an early 20th century school notebook crumbled. I had hoped to keep bits of it, along with the tape strips that held it, but the whole thing fell apart. Then, when lifting the collage off its mat board substrate, the notebook page started to wrinkle. I liked the grungy look and decided not to even try to flatten it.

Yes, these are very autumnal. Spring images coming soon! Honest.  

© Out on A Limb: 27
mixed-media collage: antique endpaper, vintage notebook page
(1918 notebook of Lillian Mary Shackett) and illustration (Birds of New York: Part 2,
State Museum of New York), recycled catalog cover, watercolor, ink,
 acrylic sealer, acrylic varnish. 5"x5" on cradled, hardwood panel. Price: $75.

© Out On A Limb: 28
mixed-media collage: antique endpapers; vintage library date due card
and teletype operator manual and illustration (1990 Audubon calendar);
recycled catalog covers; watercolor, ink, acrylic sealer, acrylic varnish.
5"x5" on cradled, hardwood panel. Price: $75.

Only two more days to see my 5th Street Gallery show

© Out On A Limb: 14 (2012)
mixed-media collage: vintage illustrations (A Field Guide to the Birds,
 Houghton Mifflin, 1934; Birds of the World, Golden Press, 1961),
ink, watercolor, acrylic sealer & varnish. 6" x 6" on cradled, hardwood panel.
Price: $85.  

Just a reminder that "Expecting to Fly," my exhibition at downtown's 5th Street Gallery, is open for two more days: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. today and 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday. It's a gorgeous day for a stroll around downtown! So, please stop in if you are out and about.

Out On A Limb: 20

© Out On A Limb: 20 (2012)

mixed-media collage: antique illustration

 (Birds of New York, Vol. 2, New York State Museum, 1914);

 recycled catalog covers and wrapping paper; watercolor; ink; marker; 

acrylic sealer; acrylic varnish. 6" x 6" on birch panel. $85 (SOLD)

Talk about a struggle. Aieeee. The stormy main section of the background was created with the intention of using another pair of birds - one color, one black-and-white - and some text. I cut, repositioned, painted, cut some more, colored, repositioned again. But it wasn't working. So I set it aside and continued other collages in the series.

Then, I came across these cool falcons perched on rocks. Perfect. After additional background layers and a fair amount of painting on both the rocks and feathers, it was finished. The absence of leaves and trees makes it a departure from the rest of the series - and although it is numbered 20, it was completed after 24.

Out On A Limb: 24

© Out on A Limb: 24 (2012)
mixed-media collage: recycled wallpaper sample & publishers catalog;
vintage John J. Audubon calendar illustration (1990); ink; chalk; acrylic sealer;
acrylic varnish. 6" x 6" on birch panel. $85 (SOLD) 

Hmmm. It may be time to stop numbering these and write real titles. In any case, it looks like the series will go on for some time. I am enjoying making these and coming up with new versions of the black & white/color bird combo.

As usual, this changed a few times - mainly the birds behind the cage. What I really like about it - beyond the striking color combination - are the three layers of birds and how they echo one another.

Out On A Limb: 19

© Out On A Limb: 19 (2012)
mixed-media collage: antique and vintage illustrations
(The Chatterbox, 1899; Audubon calendar, 1990); recycled
glass catalog; chalk; watercolor; ink; acrylic sealer, acrylic varnish.
 6" x 6" on claybord/hardwood panel. Price: $75. (SOLD)

I noted earlier that I've begun making slightly larger Out On A Limb collages - 6"x6" vs. 5"x5" - which doesn't sound like much of a change, but it's amazing what difference an inch all around can make.

This is one of eight finished recently for my show, Expecting To Fly, at Cincinnati's 5th Street Gallery. I opted to include them - along with five new 5"x5"s - because there is a sense of anticipation in the series, as though the birds might take wing at any moment.

These are the first owls in the series. The pair in back were accompanied by a poem that began "Laugh not at our grimaces, Nor call us dull and odd, But come and watch us sailing, When the dew is on the sod." The swirling, colorful barn beams they're resting on are from a glass catalog retrieved from a recycling bin in the glass school adjacent to my studio. I was wowed by the variety of glass and its collage potential.

Out On A Limb: 15

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© Out On A Limb: 15 (2012)
mixed-media collage: antique engraving (Chatterbox),
vintage illustration (National Geographic Florida map),
recycled greeting card, ink, watercolor, colored pencil,
 acrylic sealer, acrylic varnish. 6"x6" on wood panel.
 Price: $85.  

About half the people I know are in Florida at the moment, so this new collage in the Out On A Limb series seemed apt. I haven't sealed it - yet - so I'm still debating whether to remove some of the golden grass or add more. The color birds, leaves and grass are one piece. Cutting the grass proved the most challenging; lots of it was trimmed back, some of it accidentally. I just happen to have two more copies of the map, which was a used bookstore find. Hmmm ...

Deconstructing to reconstruct

A few collages have been sitting around the studio for a little over a year and, to be honest, I'm tired of them. Unlike many other artists, I don't like to stockpile work. So, little by little, many of the pieces are being reworked. "Spring," above, which I blogged about last February, is the latest collage to be given a new life.

I cut it in half, added paper to the left side, then a Victorian scrap butterfly that happened to be on my work table at that moment, and - voila! - "Out on A Limb: 17," below. The bottom half of the original will find its way into another piece, while the new collage finds its way into my "Expecting to Fly" exhibit at 5th Street Gallery next month.

© Out On A Limb: 17 (2012)
mixed-media collage: antique French postcard & text,
vintage print, recycled catalogs, acrylic gel transfer,
watercolor, acrylic sealer, acrylic varnish.
 5" x5" on Claybord/hardwood panel. Price: $75. (SOLD)

Out On A Limb: 12

© Out On A Limb: 12
mixed-media collage, recycled catalog cover
& wrapping paper, vintage illustrations, watercolor,
colored pencil, acrylic sealer. 6"x6" on wood panel (2012)
Price: $85.

Yesterday was gray, cold and wet, wet, wet. I thought I'd cheer myself up by posting colorful parakeets. This morning is equally drab, so here's another one of the bright bird collages I'm working on for March's Expecting to Fly exhibit at 5th Street Gallery.

I was determined to use this peacock - and following along with the black & white/color bird pairings of earlier collages in the series, it was paired with a black & white engraving. A partridge was also in the print, and it was echoed via a gorgeous, colored partridge.

So where are those birds? Well, the black & white ones are the backside of the parakeet print and the colored partridge is back in the files. Why? I goofed. It seemed that the b&w print needed to be toned down in order not to compete with the beautiful plumage of the colored birds. I wanted to use paper to achieve a muted effect and chose a golden-hued piece of vintage tissue. Well, it was a too opaque and obscured the background.

Onto Plan B, which turned into a challenge. Since the series title is Out On A Limb, I wanted the peacock on a limb. I hit on the idea of using a peacock feather as a branch. Piece of cake, right? Wrong it took hours to cut out the feather from a recycled piece of wrapping paper. Then, once it was done, gulp, I decided the collage needed another one. After cutting out another entire feather, only part of it was used. So it goes.

Out On A Limb: 16

© Out On A Limb: 16 (2012)
mixed media collage: recycled print &  catalog cover,
vintage illustrations, India ink, watercolor, gouache,
acrylic sealer. 5"x5" on wood panel (SOLD)  

Just the other day, I was debating whether to use the beautiful images by artist Arthur Singer from Golden Press' 1961 edition of Birds of the World. Well, the die was cast when I paired a trio of Singer's vivid parakeets with a vintage, black-and-white illustration.

The latter's from Vol. I of the Encyclopedia of Source Illustrations: A Portable Picture Library of 5,000 Steel Engravings (Morgan & Morgan, Inc., 1972). The 2-volume book reprints the amazingly detailed engravings created for the multi-volume Iconographic Encyclopedia of Science, Literature and Art (1851). Expect to see more of the engravings cropping up in coming months, because they're my new obsession.

So, it's back to work!

So, I've been back in the studio this week and after cleaning up and reorganizing - well, on a small scale, the bigger clean-up comes mid-February - I started on another eight collages in the Out On A Limb series. They're evolving so fast that these photos - shot on Thursday - are outdated already.

I'm still combining antique & vintage images, as well as black-and-white & color images on each piece. These are being created on box-like boards just like the last five, except that these are birch and are 6" x 6" instead of 5"x5." That may sound like a minor change in size but it is HUGE when it comes to selecting images. I quickly figured out that the vibrant Victorian scraps used in the previous round are too small now.

There are plenty of black-and-white images in my stash that work but I had to look elsewhere for color ones. Luckily, I found more Singer songbird trade cards. I also nabbed a copy of Birds of New York, which was published in 1910 (Vol. 1) and 1914 (Vol. 2) by the New York State Museum. It's beautifully illustrated with painting by Louis Agassiz Fuertes. I got it for an unbelievably great price but after some research, I discovered that Fuertes was/is world-renowned. Gulp. I may not be able to bring myself to use it.

Happily, I lucked into a shabby copy of the original 1961 edition of Golden Press' Birds of the World for a mere $8 at a used-book sale. The over-sized book is chock-full of vivid paintings by Arthur Singer. But a little more research and what do I find? You got it. Singer is a renowned bird painter, too. Sigh. Stay tuned to see how this plays out ...

Out on a Limb: 11

I took a break from the Santa series to return to Out on A Limb, thinking I'd pick up where I left off. Ha! The piece ended up markedly different. I still was going with combining color and black-and-white images of birds but wanted to use an engraving of a robin I've had for some time. It's from a series published in The Chatterbox throughout 1871. The British children's magazine was big on nature and education, and there's no better proof than its beautiful engravings of flora and fauna. I scanned the original, below, in case I want to reproduce it some day. Luckily, I have two sets of the magazine from that year, so there's still another original to play with.

Some of the trellis is missing at the bottom of the collage, a casualty of the knife. I know that I probably shouldn't point that out. But, well, I was determined to cut out that intricate trellis at all costs to expose the background, which includes a piece of veneer from my friend Laura Chapman (I love that it's labeled veneer and wanted to show that) and a sliver of an 1877 map of Ohio from Harper's School Geography.

The vibrant robins were clipped from an antique Christmas postcard. Birds were a common holiday motif and the Christmas theme is carried out subtly in the holly and mistletoe on the trellis. 5" x 5" on claybord/hardwood panel. [SOLD]

Out On a Limb: 8

This is the final post of the six new Out On A Limb collages. The parrots were jumpstarted by the background paper on the right side. It's a piece of a recycled file folder with a leafy pattern I find tropical and exotic, not to mention that it echoes the pattern on the birds' wings. The parrot on the far left was added after I thought the piece was done. I was afraid that the bird might get lost in the background and, to some extent, it does - yet still manages to hold its own. 5" x 5" on claybord/hardwood panel, ready to hang. $65 + $5 shipping & handling. [SOLD]

Note: For those keeping track and wondering what happened to Out On a Limb: 7, it is a mockingbird collage that I used to promote November's art shows. It never appeared in a regular post.

Out On a Limb: 10

I often sets rules for myself when making pieces, well, let's call them parameters - sounds less dictatorial! In any case, when I began this new series within the Out A Limb series, the idea was to combine color and black-and-white images of birds. Then, I found this image in my stash.

The two birds are actually connected to one another, and try as I might to add another, full-color, bird, it didn't work. I could've separated the birds for more flexibility in positioning them, but liked them as they were. So, I tossed out my parameters.

The background looks hand painted, doesn't it? It's not. The "finger-painted" section on the bottom is from a recycled children's book proof, as is the feathered cloud sky at the top. 5 "x 5" on claybord/hardwood panel. [SOLD]

Out on A Limb: 6

Another of those Victorian scraps paired with a black & white image, which is from one of the Dover image books from the early 1970s. The piece at the bottom is hand-made paper that was used as wrapping paper and was a last-minute add - thanks to a suggestion from my daughter. It did need something to ground it. And, yes, it will be in the Redtree exhibit that opens Friday. 5" x 5" on claybord & hardwood base, ready to hang. [SOLD]

Out On A Limb: 9

In the last post about the new pieces in this series, I mentioned that it started with the idea to combine antique black-and-white images of birds with color ones. Well, that impulse came from the vibrant Victorian scrap shown here. It's part of the trove of Victoriana that my friend Shirley Tenhover keeps surprising me with. Just received a new box of goodies from her, but more about that another time. I left the number tag on the scrap, because it reminded me of the tagging of animals by scientists. Like the earlier piece, this will be in the Redtree show that opens Friday. 5" x 5" on claybord/hardwood panel, ready to hang [SOLD]

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}

Out On A Limb: 4

I didn't plan on creating more Out On A Limb collages, but I've learned that when it comes to making art, the word "plan" is fluid. So, as I dove into a slew of 5"x5" collages for this Friday's Mini Madness Open Studio - with guest artist Susan Mahan - I found myself creating another bird collage.

It's markedly different from the first three, because the bird and branch are not constructed from an array of papers. The bird here was snipped from a recycled publisher's catalog cover and the branch was cut from a photo of a glass sample in a glass catalog that I found in a trash can.  

The background's covered with a recycled piece of vellum imprinted with a pale brown flower pattern. The pattern mostly disappeared when the paper was glued down. Even so, it still added subtle color and texture - and made the pieces placed atop it really pop. I've been experimenting this week with translucent papers, so you'll be seeing more of them. 4.75" x 4.75" on archival mat board. (SOLD)

Out on a Limb: 3

In early March, I posted a similar bird collage, Out On A Limb: 2. Back then, I mentioned that it was inspired by a collage in a catalog that I figured would be a snap to make. It wasn't too difficult but I didn't really have fun making it  (or the one before it) and didn't think I'd make more. Wrong.

This one came about when I was cutting a series of Chatterbox magazine bird engravings for a new series. I liked the bird in one engraving so much that I decided to replicate it using vintage book endpaper, text from antique children's books, a recycled security envelope and an illustration from an Impressionist art exhibit catalog. 5" x 5" on archival mat board {SOLD}