Me and You

"Just Draw," Laura Tringali Holmes, 2011
Hand collage with papers, acrylics, and inks, 8 x 10 on canvas board
Text and image snips from Progressive Tailor magazine, Grade Teacher magazine, 
Popular Science Monthly, and Birds of America

An award! Received by me! For up and coming bloggers! A designation I embrace with great happiness and pride. I speak of the Liebster Award, which recognizes and showcases rising bloggers with fewer than 200 followers. The origins of the award are German--the word “liebster” in German means “favorite” or “dearest.”

I received this award from Amy at Four Corners Design. When I first started blogging five months ago, one of my first finds was Amy's blog: http://fourcornersdesign.blogspot.com/ If you look at her header montage, there is a little snip of text that says “ substance from a solution.” Her creations—and her blog—are just that. Her work is pure invention, her tableux winsome, her photos enchanting. Yes. Definitely visit Amy.

In accepting the Liebster Award, participants agree to the following terms: 

1. Thank the awarder and link back to his or her blog.
2. Copy and paste the award to their blogs.
3. Choose five blogs to receive the Liebster Award and let these bloggers know by commenting on their blogs.

Here are my five blogs. The first four focus on art. The last on the list is the blog of a young woman who was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma a day after her 24^th birthday. All of these blogs inspire me in all sorts of ways, and I am grateful for the internet community that makes this sort of communication possible. I hope you'll visit these bloggers and show them your support.

http://carolereidartist.blogspot.com/

http://wildthreadstudio.blogspot.com/

http://makinghandmadebooks.blogspot.com/

http://lawendula.blogspot.com/

http://meandthehodge.blogspot.com/

Women's Work

"New World Order," 5 x 7 hand collage, Laura Tringali Holmes, 2010.
Transfer techniques, vintage fairy-tale book, old photo,
old magazines, lace, dye inks

The danger in merchandising is that one must invariably compartmentalize things in order for buyers to understand them and...well...buy into the selling. We all start dancing around the narrow end of the funnel because it becomes what we understand. It becomes safe. Everybody starts doing it. Something that may have started out as an extraordinarily artistic risk, published by a far-seeing editor, over time self-neutralizes to reach the widest audience. Sadly, the path of least resistance can easily send us scurrying away from “other” because at the large mouth of the funnel, things are far less defined, far more uncomfortable, and even a little scary, especially if you've got a five-year book-publishing plan to structure or a year's worth of magazine content to get into the pipeline.

Not so long ago publishers adopted the genre of “women's fiction” (as distinguished from “women writers”) to market products that could easily be targeted to a specific set of buyers. As an interesting aside, you don't have to be a woman to write “women's fiction.” I wonder if "women's art” can be far behind “women's fiction.” More likely, I suspect it's already among us, the elephant in the middle of the living room, swallowed up under the catch-all heading of “mixed-media art.”

Certainly the majority of magazines and books dealing with mixed-media artwork exist in the maelstrom at the small end of the funnel—predictable, repetitious, focused in directions that seem to overvalue the heartfelt (even if slipshod) and the acquisition of technique for technique's sake. Design pops up now and then but hardly ever does it share a refreshing cup of tea and have an interesting tete-a-tete-a-tete with content and context. Oh the magic that can happen when these three get chatting! Creativity can veer off into a thousand million directions! And all of a sudden nothing looks exactly alike!

But that would put us at the large end of the funnel, wouldn't it, and that's not a place where people who sell stuff typically like to go.

As always, thanks for listening.

Out and About

I'll be showing and selling here next weekend. If you're in the Hudson Valley area of New York, I'd love to see you!

Slapdash Courage

I am by nature precise. In this age of frenetic spontaneity, I still sweat the details. In the little collage below, for example, the placement of that man's foot is not accidental. Nor is the placement of his hip. In the design of this piece, I was shooting to express the contrast of lift versus drag, to achieve a visual expression of the feeling of ascension that can come when listening to music that engages, charms, and uplifts.

“Man with Vim,” acetate photo transparency on playing card, old text,

sheet music, October 2011

So what's going on with the seemingly imprecise placement of that first line of text on the collage below? The heart can be a strong dictator. While my intellect was pushing for symmetrical placement, my heart was egging on my glue brush in its act of slapdash courage. Its argument? A placement of text blocks that oozed uncertainty would express the difficulty inherent in choosing to act with the courage of one's convictions. A difficult design decision to express difficult emotions.

“Woman with Fig Leaf,” acetate photo transparency on playing card,

old text, October 2011

As always, thanks for listening.