Grooving with the Glitch

I've been prepping a travel journal that I will take to Italy in a few months. It's turning out well. The papers that I'm using for background come from a 1960s schoolbook, Italian Made Simple, which I stumbled upon in a stack of free books at my local library. My theory is that as I work in my journal on the trip, I can refresh my (extremely limited) Italian language skills at the same time. Molto bene! I've also added solvent transfers to the pages, using maps and directions for walks I plan to take.

The journal is built on a Moleskin Japanese album (5 x 8.5), which has 48 folded zigzag pages.
That first page, way over on the left? Well, that would turn out to be the Glitch.

My design inspirations come from what I think Italy will feel like when I get there. Over the base prep I've been making patterns in thickly brushed gesso, then layering on glazes of phthalo turquoise (and various Madonna blues), yellow ochre, siennas raw and burnt, and burnt umber. Vintage European postcards and other materials from my various collections make handy lift-up trap doors and pockets for tags.

Here's a selection of prepped pages and tags. I've managed to stick to my predetermined
 color pallette for the most part. On most projects I wind up doing random color additions
that wind up looking awful. I'm steely about not doing that here, although hits
 of chartreuse and purple have managed to sneak in.

The bad news is that despite all my progress today, at day's end I find myself back at the beginning. My days' ends often work out like that, and I am learning that this is not necessarily a bad thing. For refreshment for the work ahead, I call upon a brooding Malbec.

There was no chianti in the wine rack, so I thought a brooding
Malbec would be a decent substitute.

My last task of the day is not to glory in the progress of my work but to detach the first page in the journal in order to add width. I am doing this because the first page won't even pretend to approach flat when opened, and I just can't stand that. So I slice apart the front page from its neighbor and in so doing liberate the entire page block from the book. I fold over some paper from the second page onto the first, make a new crease, and lay on a ton of packing tape for reinforcement. Geez, it looks awkward. Luckily, I remember that I have a couple of scalloped metal page edges in one of my bins. They prove to be workable and hide most of the packing tape. I'll use one metal edge on the first page, and, for balance, one on the last page.  I know that there will be physical and design repercussions from doing this.

The first repercussion is that the old Italian postcard of the Madonna now sits way too close to the gutter. I will have to rip out the postcard. Such are the dangers of working with original materials.

The metal page edges are made by 7 Gypsies and are nice and heavy—the page
 edge looks okay and as a bonus it weighs down the page to keep it open.

Because I used paper from the second page to widen the first page, another issue is the new narrow width of the second page. The metal edge draws attention to this. I see that I am going to have to lean heavily on the third page to balance out the second page. I fashion a tag holder and insert one of the tags I've already made. The visual weight helps a lot, plus the tag will give me more surface to write upon when I am in Italy.

The tag holder is made from the cover of a music book for voice (1948). It needs
 work but is good enough to give me the basic idea. I've barely sipped my wine, but before
tackling the Madonna, I definitely need a break.

Back to the Madonna. I realize that I actually like the rip in the postcard. Venice is sinking, frescos are deteriorating, we are marching toward the grave, Mother Earth is roaring--at least here on the East Coast of the United States--with an earthquake past and a hurricane future. A brooding glass of wine indeed! Yet I have the luxury of piecing together a Madonna. And for pure serendipity, there is the way the infant's feet point the eye to my little solvent-transfer line of text, the one that says, upside down of course (because that is sometimes the way I am), "introducing myself."

Still life with Madonna and Malbec

And that is what I did last night. Thanks for listening.

With A Simple Change of Hats

There's nothing as potent as an act of creation to shift one's tectonic plates, to shake out a new perception or two from the old truth. I suspect that when people get into “a zone,” their brains forge brave new neurological pathways. And surely the personal defense network loses some of its force when one is on fire with focus. Not that I have been on fire with focus. On the contrary. I've been coping (or not) with that most difficult of adult transitions, the loss of a parent. Still, or maybe because of, there is capacity for movement forward.

As illustration, below you will find two pieces of work. One is a "before" and one is an "after." I collaged the "before" in June of this year (about two months after my mom was killed). I loved the old photo, and especially the lady on the left. I loved, and still love, how the lady looks into the camera, how she wears those long black gloves in a rowboat. When I first saw her, I wanted to sail her off into the sunset in fine style, as a sort of tribute to my mom. My goal was to conjure a flying-off-the-edge-of-the-earth feeling, and, in fact, as a design reference I used the Peter Pan attraction in Fantasyland at Disney World, a ride where one goes careening over London in a flying pirate ship.

I made an acetate transparency of the photo, back-papered the rowboat with assorted paper scraps, and developed light and color. At the end of the process, on a whim, I opened a brand new jar of tar gel (never used the stuff before, had scooped it off a clearance rack), and soon found that by whipping the gel really hard I could get ocean-spray-like bubbles, which I liked. (I also made plastic-looking swaths, which I didn't like, but that's a subject for another time.) At the last minute I gave the lady with the long gloves a whimsical yellow hat using paper cut from an old notebook. While I felt that the work had areas of disjointed composition, I didn't know what to do about it, so I called this piece done.

The BEFORE collage
 8x10 hand collage on canvas board
Photo courtesy of the collection of Mrs. Inman

Fast forward to just a few days ago—mid-August, two months after the original composition. I find myself in my workshop trying to scratch off that damn yellow hat. What the heck? It seems that I was having an allergic reaction. There was something about the whimsy of that hat that was really bothering me. And those gloves? I was having a problem with them, too. My mom, the copilot of my dad's sushi fishing enterprise, would never have seen the humor—or the statement—in wearing them, although in her youth, before children, I understand she was quite the fashion plate. And then there was this. The woman's direct gaze.

I can't remember the last time my mom looked at me like that. 

Clearly, some truth was trying really hard to get out.

And, as most truths will do, if we listen, this one eventually rose to the surface. 

And this is what I heard. The "before" collage is more about the mother who I wished I had than it is about the mother who I actually did have. This piece is not about my mom at all. It is about me. When I took breaks from digging at the the surface of the work with my fingernails, there emerged tantalizing bits and pieces of the truth, and I eventually realized that the disjointed elements I had come to criticize in the piece were a reflection of my own disjointed emotions, nothing more and nothing less.

But although I'm talking pain here--sadness and regret--I'm also talking epiphany, and that is where the "after" version of the collage comes in. If you hang around in your head long enough, I find, connections emerge, and in this case I realized that while the lady in the long gloves had nothing to do with my mother, she had everything to do with one of my daughters (who, coincidentally, is celebrating a birthday later this month). This daughter wears the photo lady's confident and determined gaze. This daughter values precision but delights in play and whimsy. This daughter is as comfortable on the ocean as she is on shore. This daughter, a born traveler, would as easily wear long black gloves as Thai fisherman's pants. Most important, this daughter, the girl born with maps in her bloodstream, wouldn't hesitate to board one of  Peter Pan's pirate ships for a careening voyage anywhere.

And so an imperative was born, and I challenged myself to redo the collage for my daughter's birthday. Which I did, reflecting not only my love for my daughter but the connection she shares with her grandmother, my mom. The hats were key here. I made them out of postage stamps, and the postage stamps at the bottom of the piece reflect not only the places to which my daughter has already travelled, but many of the places yet to be seen.

Past. Present. Future.

Here is the result. Thanks as always for listening.

The AFTER collage
"The Travelers"
 8 x 10 hand collage on canvas board
Featuring  many postage stamps

Watching the Woodpeckers Grow

Our deck rail continues to host fledgling groups of goldfinches, house finches, purple finches, tufted titmice, and sparrows. But the woodpeckers seem to be long done with child-rearing. Back in July, we were lucky, for the first time ever, to have a family of red-bellied woodpeckers bring its young to our house for fledge practice.

Here's one of the parents on the feeding ring. At first this parent was feeding its baby by beak, bringing food from the feeder to the fledgling.

That strange baffle on the feeder is my tin can squirrel-buster, held in place by packing tape.

With tinfoil smooshed into the front feeder points, it works well to thrwart our resident squirrels.

As you see, the desireable diners chow down at the back.

Here is the woodpecker fledgling, facing away from the feeder and into the viburnum bush. The parent would grab feed, hop into the bush, then hop out again to where the fledgling was parked on the deck rail, beak open, making food cries.

Here's the fledgling (or a sibling) again.

And here a fledgling has managed to make it to the feeder ring. First steps are hard! I love that face! The thing about baby birds is that they literally grow up before your eyes. One minute they're falling off the railing and the next they're flying comfortably along.You can see from the level of the feed in the feeder that time has elapsed between first lessons and this important step. Don't worry, there was still food to be had in the feeder—the level is just lower than the feeder collar, so you can't see it, a problem I rectified once traffic died down.

And in between bouts of birdwatching and reminiscing about my nest and the growth of my own three children, I had my nose deep in this, one of my favorite books ever. I would never rip this one up for collaging!

Translated from the German, 1959. If you love birds, this is well worth a read.
It's a page-turner about the "secret lives" of these shy and beautiful birds,
and contains incredible b/w photographs.

Once again, thanks for listening!

The Altered Playing Card

Sometimes altered playing cards are just the thing. The small scale presents a million challenges, not the least of which is deciding how much of the playing card to reveal in the collage. How much of the card is too much, what amount is not enough?

This card takes the overkill approach and actually shows the faces of two playing cards. There's the regular old card on the bottom, and then, over that, an acetate transparency made from one of my deck of Cyrillic playing cards. The French text is from my 1837 copy of Journal des Demoiselles, a precious book lovingly featured in my last blog: http://lauratringaliholmes.blogspot.com/2011/07/letting-it-rip.html.

Queen of Clubs altered playing card, 2011

On the following playing card, I also featured card characteristics: the aces for a sort of two-thumbs up to the guy behind the wheel, and the "Bicycle" because it keeps that Queen song "Bicycle Race" looping in my head. Which at the moment is a good thing, although I can see it getting very bad very fast.

Lessons Learned the Hard Way altered playing card, 2011
(Wheel photo courtesy of the collection of Mrs. Inman)

This next card is about seeing. Since there are three sets of eyes, it felt right to me to leave in the two 3 symbols. I made sure they were dreamily floating in the starscape to anchor the corners, but didn't need them to do any more than that.  

Star Dust altered playing card, 2011
(Old photo courtesy of the collection of Mrs. Inman)

By contrast, in this piece the playing card symbology assumes a more important role. I needed the darkness of three of the four spades to balance out that honking big tin star.

To the Stars altered playing card, 2011

For a completely different approach, these two cards show nothing of the playing cards on which they were built. Early on in the process, I realized that I should have chosen Jacks or Jokers for these cards instead of the mundane numerics I did select. Once I got the Jacks  and Jokers in my mind, nothing else would do. I could have thrown out the cards and started afresh, but chose instead to seam in the pieces of the photos that I had originally cut off. These cards now remind me to take a breath and give myself a chance to let design ideas develop.

Turn Of a Phrase altered playing cards, 2011
(Photos courtesy of James Sorby)

If you enjoy altered playing cards, you will want to keep up with Liz Cohn at http://lizole.deviantart.com. Liz is currently gathering cards for a May 2012 show in Portland, Oregon, where over 150 hundred artists and well over 800 altered playing cards will be displayed. A large scale installation for small-scale works of art--how cool is that? Even cooler is that many (or most) of the cards are collaborations—sometimes involving three or four artists. Like angels dancing on the heads of pins, yes, it's amazing what can fit on a playing card. Here's a collaborative card that will be appearing in the show:

He's Such a Gas collaborative altered playing card, 2010
Liz Cohn, Audrey Smith,& Laura Tringali Holmes

Thanks for listening!