Touring again, but having more fun

© The Grand Tour: Airborne (2012)
mixed-media collage, recycled book cover,
 antique circus poster reprint, vintage illustration,
watercolor, India ink. 11.5" x 8.5" on archival mat board. Price: $185. (SOLD)

The Grand Tour is back but evolving. I'll continue using the fantastic, hand-painted 19th century fashion plates from Godey's Ladies Book and Peterson's Magazine, but am not limiting myself to them. Something clicked when I created pieces for last fall's Cincinnati Dreams Italy exhibition and the series was suddenly lighter and cheekier, with women who were less passive.

The pieces are also becoming larger, not enormous, but bigger than they've been. I'm excited and working like crazy on these, as well as other pieces for my March show - "Expecting to Fly" - at the 5th St. Gallery downtown (link in side rail). Well, it's off to the studio. There's lots of work to be done!

Comfort food

I've been jumping back and forth on pieces for various exhibits, and finally returned to the food memory series. Not sure yet when the show will happen but I'm so deep into it that I figured I might was well continue the series. This piece evolved from the comfort found in coming home every night and knowing that dinner will be on the table. The scalloped red edges are from a cooking feature in a 1939 issue of McCall's magazine. The woman was snipped from the cover of a Christmas issue of Ladies Home Journal. She was making cookie press cookies with her daughter in the original illustration. I'm still working on toning down the background layer of dinner menus and on perfecting the steam coming from the enormous pot pie - an illustration from a 1930s children's book.

Nesting

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Eugenie's Friends Felt It Was Time for An Intervention, my first 3D/box collage. It's one of two pieces I've been working on for Encore, a one-night only exhibition Oct. 13 at Memorial Hall that's part of the first Constella Festival of Music and Fine Arts. The exhibit riffs on that evening's concert - "Classic Gems and Contemporary Miniatures" - by featuring miniature works of art.

Beyond the requirement that each work be no larger than 6" there was another one: each work also had to be displayed on a pedestal. The latter made me think twice about participating. A collage in a frame or on a stand seemed boring. Then, I hit on the idea of box collages, which would be more, well, sculptural. By the time I finished Eugenie, which is butterfly themed, I knew that the second box would be about birds.

It's a work in progress, but I'm sharing it, because I'm beside myself with excitement about a great find on a walk last week: a perfect, little bird's nest made of a fascinating array of materials from plastic to human hair to twigs. I cradled in my palms for 2.5 miles until the end of the walk, then, dashed to the studio with it. Voila. The nest fit into the box as if it were made for it. I allowed it to air dry for a few days, sprayed it with acrylic sealer, let that dry, then, painted on acrylic varnish to preserve it. That's it drying in the background. We'll see where the piece goes from here ...

The Grand Tour resumes ... in Italy

I took a break from The Grand Tour series for a couple of months but jumped back into it head first during the past week with five new collages about Italy. They're for the exhibit, Cincinnati Dreams Italy, which will be held Oct. 8-9, 15-16 and 22-23 in historic buildings near the Taft Museum of Art.

The show's the brainchild of Kathy Holwadel, who has a penchant for thinking up cool ideas and it's just one of the events she's cooked up as an offshoot of the Taft exhibit "George Inness In Italy," which opens Oct. 7. There are dozens of Cincinnati artists involved. I'll post details - hours, etc. - as soon as I can; meantime, read more about it on La Piazza, Kathy's blog.

This is No. 15 in The Grand Tour series. I've started adding subtitles; this one - which I admit to changing five times in the last 48 hours - is "The Grand Tour 15: Upon Closer Examination, Elizabeth Realized That Her Guidebook Had Failed Miserably In Its Description of David." It's a hand-colored, antique Peterson's Magazine fashion plate combined with images from vintage guidebooks, maps and brochures. 5.5" x 8.5" on archival mat board with India ink. {SOLD}

Food for thought

I've been working on a series of collages for an upcoming exhibit at The Bonbonerie Cafe - no date yet - that are based on people's food memories. I thought I'd give a sneak preview of two of the pieces in progress. I plan to finish these and the remaining three this week, now that I've wrapped up 90 new collage tags - including a batch of Halloween ones you'll see soon.

I read, and re-read, pages and pages of memories that were collected during a series of dinners last winter and spring at a large, communal table in The Bonbonerie's former tea room. Each meal had a theme and during the dinners, people shared their stories of the role that food's played in their lives. I found myself attracted to far too many of the stories and overwhelmed as I began to gathering paper for them. So, I winnowed it down to five stories that resonated the most with me.

The collages shown here - which I haven't titled yet - are about a first-time lobster experience on a date in Miami and a grandfather who owned a cafe in Northern Kentucky and, for a time, sold sausages from his bicycle. I loved that image and was lucky enough to find a large-scale bicyclist in my stash, along with some beautiful sausages. The gummed price labels were a fab find tucked inside a box of cardboard price tags I bought two years ago on a trip to New Harmony, Ind. I was looking for a tag and had forgotten the labels were there. That's one of the things I love about what I do: constant surprises!

I'll let you know when the exhibit opens.

Eugenie's friends felt it was time for an intervention

I swear that I'm off butterflies after this piece. Honest. This is a work in progress but I'm so excited about how it's developing, that I had to post it. It's my first real effort of creating a piece in a box, which I've wanted to do since starting collage making. Yes, I know that the other butterflies were in shallow shadowboxes but they were essentially flat collages placed in pre-covered cloth boxes.

Foam-core board pushes Eugenie out from the back of the box - a bit hard to see in the scan - and watercolor paper reinforces the butterflies, which float and bend behind and in front of her.

A piece of plexiglass will cover the box and I may add more butterflies; most likely right up against the inside of the glass. Yet to be decided: how to attach the glass. Initially, the plan was to drill small holes and screw it on. Now, though, I'm thinking vintage upholstery tacks or something edgier.

Despite the numerous classes I've taken on box making - which included plenty of great tips on how to paper them - I never seem to get the corners mitered correctly. But here that didn't matter, because I'm layering the paper on the box, starting with tissue thin pages on the outside from "The Butterfly Book." Inside, are more pages from "The Butterfly Book," as well as The Chatterbox and a vintage songbook.

As you can see on the back, below, I've been inking the edges and paper. To do that, I used three colors of ColorBox's Fluid Chalk ink. I have scads of the pads but this is the first time I've used them. Love the soft, transparent effect. Well, more when it's finished.

Italian Shoes: A Woman Can Dream

This collage may look familiar to regular readers. It's an updated version of The Yearning, which I had been looking at for a while, rethinking it. My first impulse was to cut it down, but I resisted. Instead, I kept changing the title; it went from "The Yearning" to "Shoe Fetish" to "A Girl Can Dream" to "Italian Shoes: A Woman Can Dream."

But the other day, I was leafing through the Dec. 1940 issue of Ladies Home Journal searching for images for a food series and happened to glance up at the collage just as a shoe ad caught my eye. Aha moment! More shoes, that's what it needed. I added two that are bigger than the others and help direct the eye. Small change but a big difference. So, it remains the same size:  5.5" x 8.5" on archival mat board. {SOLD}

Butterflies: 3

Isn't that calligraphic background spectacular? It's an original plate of a hand-drawn pen illustration from "Gaskell's Penman's Handbook" (1883) and there is a tiny butterfly in it toward the top right edge of the plate. Sections of other plates from "Golden Gems of Penmanship" (1884) make up the body and top layer of the large butterfly, and the handwork theme is carried over into the middle layer via the antique, hand-marbled endpapers. 

I liked the idea of combining the calligraphy with the printed lists, one of which is an almost tissue-thin page from the Holland "Butterfly Book" I've been mining.  The pages helped protect the color plates in the book, as well as identifying the butterflies. I used another one on April, where it became semi-transparent. 10.5" x 7.75" on archival mat board with ink, watercolor and specimen pins. In a cloth-covered, 11" x 8.5" shadowbox that is ready to hang. $65 + $8 shipping & handling 

Butterflies: 2

Here's the second collage in the butterfly series. I popped it onto the scanner rather than shooting a photo, because when I have it in the shadowbox, it's difficult to shoot. So, keep in mind that about an inch of the edges is covered by the shadow box.

As mentioned before, these started out as simple, decorative collages but as they grew, I decided to add elements about collecting. A Victorian obsession if ever there was one. That's where the text on the left comes in, and because it references caterpillars, I located some to place beside it. Both are from the "Butterfly Book" by W.J. Holland (Doubleday, Page & Co., 1902) that I've been pilfering for all it's worth - as are a few of the butterflies.

Of note is the flower background. I found two vintage Dover books of iron-ons and bought them with the intention of seeing whether the images could be ironed on to paper as a different kind of image transfer. I tried it and it works, but what also interested me was that the images had begun transferring onto each other over the years. You can see faint outlines of the image that was after this one in the background. So, I opted to use the entire page as is.  10.5" x 7.75" on archival mat board with ink, watercolor and specimen pins. Mounted in a cloth-covered, 8.5" x 11" shadowbox and ready to hang. $65 + $8 shipping & handling

Butterflies: 1

So, this is what happened with the square-shaped butterfly collage mentioned in the last post. Now titled "Butterflies: 1." Yeah, not too creative. Most likely, I'll rename it, as often happens and is one reason I stopped writing titles on the mats!

In any case, not much changed on the piece. I moved the red butterfly, which was cut from a recycled greeting card, to the bottom. The orientation of the main butterfly was altered, and antennae and a body were added. A small gold butterfly was tucked under the quote and, hmm, there seem to be more changes than I thought.

I wanted to soften the quote but didn't want to use paint. I turned to my tissue paper bins - yes, I save all the tissue paper from gifts I receive - where I found a pale blue piece. Once it was down - but not glued on yet - I realized it would draw attention away from the butterflies. Then, I found a white-on-white, flower-patterned piece. The pattern is lost against the white background of the quote but it provides some cover over the text, which is what I was looking for. 7.5" x 7.5" on archival mat board with ink, watercolor and acrylic paint. Matted to fit a standard 12" x 12" frame. $60 + $8 shipping & handling

Summer 2

It's obvious looking at this that it was created while I was working on Summer 1. They have the same color scheme and share other elements: the pen nibs (gel transfers), yellow flowers (both Victorian trade cards) and light color washes. I enjoyed working on both; for once, I left enough time to move pieces around, and add and subtract elements. Here, the latter included roughing the edges with ink for a worn appearance.

This is on the boxy stretched canvases I'm experimenting with. The papers wrap around the edges to cover them, then, onto the back. They're sealed with an acrylic sealer and a UV protection spray, and can hang without a frame.

It's one of the collages created for this weekend's Botanica exhibit at The Green Corner in Kennedy Heights. If you have a chance, stop by. Hours: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. today, noon-4 p.m. Sunday. 6524 Montgomery Road, one block south of Kennedy Heights Arts Center.

Summer: 1

This is another one of the narrow-form collages I've been playing around with for the past 10 months or so - and it's also one of the new collages created for this weekend's Botanica show at The Green Corner. In it, I finally got to use another section from Lillian Mary Shackett's 1918 general science notebook. I mentioned the notebook - a flea market find - in May when I incorporated a page from it into Autumn: 2.

I'd love to know more about Lillian but geographical references are not to be found in the notebook. The first few pages were nibbled by mice and text is missing. In any case, I'm pleased to give her notebook new life and a wider audience. Speaking of wide audiences: the book spine is from an early edition of "A Garland for Girls" by the wildly-popular children's author Louisa May Alcott. It belonged to my late mother-in-law but was water damaged beyond repair, so I salvaged the spine. 5" x 10" on archival mat board.

The Incredible Lightness of Being

Welcome summer! Given that it's the longest day of the year - for those of us in this hemisphere, at least - I thought I'd post this vivid, sun-themed collage. The piece was done as a commission for a friend, who is giving it as a birthday gift to a friend of hers with breast cancer who has chosen the sun as her healing image.

The images are from a vintage atlas, catalog covers and book proofs. The girl was extracted from an early painting by Picasso - "Child Holding a Dove." It's a well-known image that I thought would be copyrighted, but discovered isn't. It's in the public domain, because it was created in 1901. That's well before the 1923 cut-off date, after which copyright gets tricky and requires investigation to be on the safe side.

The words encircling the girl are from the first stanza of Emily Dickinson's oft-quoted poem "Hope," which begins with the line "Hope is the thing with feathers ..." 5" x 8" on archival mat board with pencil and ink {SOLD}

Shape shifting

A few months ago, I posted a photo of canvases that I had covered with papers as first layers for future collages. One of them became April and another one - papered with a fantastic map by Guyot - now is this escapist collage. I've been itching to make this piece for a while. I spotted the engraving of the balloon in an issue of Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly last summer and added it to my "collage ideas" bin. I knew I'd use it to aid Victorian women trying to outrun the strictures of the time.

The idea of corsets as ballast came next and I began clipping them from advertisements in 19th century women's magazines - looking for a variety of sizes and brands from Dr. Warner's Electric Corsets (yes, they were wired) to Armorside and Glove-Fitting. I'm not sure if the women atop the balloon are approving or disapproving - I'm leaving that up to viewers to figure out.

12" x 12" on stretched canvas, with acrylic and watercolor paints, colored pencil and ink. Ready to hang. $75 + $10 shipping & handling

Mind Games IV

This was fun, because I was able - finally - to use one of the color phrenology heads I photocopied a year ago from an image in my archive. I created the copies - the only time I use copies in my work - specifically to use as image transfers. The brain sections were left empty so text or images could be added as the urge hit. Looking at it now, well, I'd like to embellish it ... but the piece is hanging at Redtree Art Gallery for tonight's opening so, that's that.

Beneath the head is a tarot card from one of the dozens of decks* I own; this one happens to riff on Edvard Munch's famed "The Scream" painting. Serving as the cap: a puzzle from The Chatterbox children's magazine, circa 1900s.  4" x 8" on book board, with watercolor and ink.

* when I find the deck, I will add more info about it

Mind Games VI

Another one of the series. I thought this might be a good time to explain what "mixed-media" means. It's not only using different types of paper or elements in a piece but also using different media. This is a good example, because it includes:
- watercolors (on hands & eye).
- ink and pencil (along edge of main cut-out to tone down white edge and help it blend into the background,  and ink that continues the spiral over the eye).
- acrylic gel image transfer (top hand, which was transferred onto the piece by applying acrylic gel to the background and to the inked-side of a photocopy, then burnishing the lines and hoping like heck that the ink sticks to the paper - always a suspenseful moment).

4" x 8" on cloth-covered book board

Mind Games: a new series accepted for Redtree exhibit

I just finished a series of six collages, Mind Games, that began life as a book. Let's back up. I attended a book workshop last summer and came prepared with scads of brain and phrenology images. My intention was to create a book titled Mind Games. I am obsessed with phrenology and hope to create more works around the science - pseudo-science? - of categorizing the brain.

Well, as generally happens when I take a workshop, everyone else finished while I was still mulling over designs. I did manage to cover the book boards, paste some medical text down as backgrounds, and clip images to the pages I intended to use them on.

After that, the book languished. Well, I pulled it out a few weeks ago and decided to turn it into a series of freestanding collages - each 4" x 8" - for entry in the exhibit Mind & Matter at Redtree Art Gallery here in Cincinnati. I learned today that all six were accepted for the show, which opens Friday (June 10). Woo hoo.

After En pointe: Off pointe, of course!

Oops! Forgot to post the sequel to "En pointe" yesterday. So, here it is. I didn't mention this in the pervious post but the tools are from a number of antique/vintage sources, most notably "Educational Woodworking For Home and School" (MacMillan, 1916). It is quite a treasure trove and I'm mining it to the last page. The sheet music is another section  of "Air de Ballet," the piece used in the first collage. 5" x 5" on archival mat board.   {SOLD}

Note: If I can find similar images of dancers, I'd like to turn this into a series for later reprint as greeting cards or prints after the collages are sold. I could bend my rules and copy the women - yes, they're scanned into my digital archive - change the colors of their dresses, etc. and put them in other situations. I'm thinking that the series could turn into a fundraiser for Cincinnati Ballet. Stay tuned. 

Lila's magical night garden

After starting this piece, I came to the realization that I need more color botanicals. Adding them to my flea market list. This started as an ordinary daytime scene but changed once I found the evening sky - a page proof from a children's picture book received back in the day when I wrote a syndicated children's book review column, and proof that I never throw anything out.

Speaking of that, the flowers are mostly from recycled publisher catalog covers, except for the small red fuschias that are about to bloom - they were snipped from a damaged color engraving in John Lewis Childs Catalogue of 1887 (below). It's the only page I have from any of his catalogs, which were renowned for their artwork, so it's precious. I'm parceling out the rest of the spectacular illustration in a number of pieces. 9.5" x 7.5" on archival mat board with pencil, ink and watercolor {SOLD}

Emma's daily stroll caused quite a buzz

I'm in a spring/summer groove - finally - and working on pieces that are turning out to be whimsical takes on Victorian illustrations as opposed to my usual dark ones. The engraving is from a children's book, whose cover was missing and whose title page I misplaced, but am hunting for. It was tough keeping the umbrella spokes intact but I learned a trick: a coat of clear acrylic spray helps older papers from tearing during cutting - well, mostly.

Most of the butterflies are from recycled postcards, greeting cards and catalog covers. But the sweet bumblebee carrying an elf, yellow butterflies and praying mantis are from the delightful and stylish 1920 children's book "The Turned-Intos" about a girl's discovery of "garden folk." It was written by Elizabeth Gordon, illustrated by Janet Laura Scott and published by Volland - one of my favorite American publishers. I'm an avid collector of their holiday postcards, which often go overlooked by those not in the know. I snap up their books whenever I see them and can afford them, but that's not often enough.

5"x 6.5" on archival mat board  {SOLD}