Big Blue Moon

Gel transfers are so much softer than tape and acetate transfers, and sometimes that softness is just right. Acetate transfers were all the rage a while back, and I know you can burn the edges of acetate and underpaint it for goulish effects and roll it up into Christmas ornaments and such. And nothing beats a packing tape transfer for adding gray tones to the work (not to mention the joy of upcycling such a commonplace material).

But I find myself, these days, returning to the humble (albeit labor-intensive) gel transfer for pure workability. In particular, there are no hard edges to figure out how to hide. Which can be a Big Thing. You know, you have something to say, and you want to say it, to flat-out-work-to-express that "something"  to the best of your ability. Everything you know about various techniques cooks in the background (and I hasten to add that I love learning new techniques), but at the end of the day, it's not really about the techniques, is it?

Here's one of my recent collages that incorporates a gel transfer. That would be the lady, whose skin you can see through to the paper beneath. It's easy to lose count of the number of coats it takes for me to do a transfer (because there's so much drying time in between the multiple thin coats of the gel medium), but it's safe to say this one took at least half-a-dozen.

Big Blue Moon, 5 x 7 paper collage with mixed media. Laura Tringali Holmes, 2012

The photo is one from my personal collection. No idea who this lady is--I pulled her from a sun-scorched box at a flea market, and I'm delighted that I can keep her spirit alive in my work. The background paper is from a book of manners for French jeunes fille published in the 1800s. The moon is cut from handmade paper that has blue-next-to-green, my favorite color combination. The little text strip at the bottom is from a New York plantsman's catalog, also from the 1800s.

What you can't see is the sound that filled my ears while I was constructing this piece (in my loft, I typically work to a lovingly constructed iPod playlist, simply called "Collage"). Cheers in particular to Joni Mitchell's "Night Ride Home," and this lyric in particular:

Once in a while
In a big blue moon
There comes a night like this
Like some surrealist
Invented this 4th of July

 
As always, thanks for tuning in.

Un-jerking the Reaction of the Knee

I'm not exactly in the mood for new things. It's almost the year anniversary of when my mom was killed by the guy who rammed a catheter through the wall of her main heart artery, causing her to bleed to death. And my dad just had a mini-stroke, requiring a good measure of step-up-to-the-plate-ism on my part (and swallowing the detritus of our lousy relationship). One of my kids is living on the wrong coast, and I miss her terribly. Another of my kids will be leaving to spend six months in Asia almost before I can say "Bob's Your Uncle." The littlest kid has just twirled past 21, pushing my midlife-crisis button. So when Carl Heyward, an artist in San Francisco, offered me the opportunity to participate in his KNEE(jerk) Fragmentation Project, which essentially has you creating an 18″ x 24″ work and then cutting it into 25-30 individual cards, MY knee-jerk reaction was 'Holy Hide-My-Head-In-the-Batcave, Batman!"

I therefore responded to Carl that I didn't think my work, which tends to be deeply rooted in a literal and literary perspective, would suit the project. What if nobody liked it? Oh, the hurt! I speculated that the typical content of my work might appear...well...twinky...to the talented cadre of abstract artists who were already participating in the project. Plus, the size of the canvas was way out of my comfort zone. And the scissoring thing! Whoa! And on and on and on.

...but Carl pointed out that sometimes the thing to do with unfamiliarity (or, in my lexicon, fear), is to look at it.

...and I began to wonder, could I make it fly?

So I straightened out my jerked knee and pushed myself to move forward. When I look back at my life, I see that most of my best decisions have been based on courage and not on fear. With all of this other stuff going on, courage seems like a really good thing to actively cultivate. 

What follows is the result of this forward motion, captured in a series of process snapshots with my cell phone. The head I've found myself creating in during this project feels both alien and familiar, and I've traveled to some interesting places without leaving the comfy confines of my loft. I know I'm going to want to think about all this when I come up for air, so it made sense to document the doings. Follow along if you have a moment. If not, wish me well, because there's no way I'm finished with this yet.

I started with an old copy of Harper's Monthly (late 1800s), given to me by a friend.
This paper has good vibes, which I felt would be helpful in this endeavor.

This is what the paper looks like pasted down to 18" x 24". I
lifted off sections of text with masking tape to texture it up a bit.
Also threw on some glzae. One of the stories in the Harper's was about
"Anne looking the other way," and this was the theme that wound
up informing my work. I've had lots of Annes who looked the
other way in my life.

I love the people-printed tissue paper! It came with the
box of Spanish boots owned by the daughter who is on
the wrong coast. The photo of the couple is a tape transfer
that I made from an old photo in my collection--you can see a
Topshop mailing bag (from my other daughter) underneath
the tape transfer. But that background, yikes! It got out
of hand! It has to go!

So I SCISSORED out that background! That's right, I cut up the
work, saving only the stuff I liked and that had meaning to me.
Wowzers!  I was feeling the Fragmentation! I was also beginning
to get a sense of  the symbolism of  "Anne who looked the other
way." But I was back at square one with the background.

Once I got rid of the misleading background, things began to
clarify thematically in my head. To the 18" x 24" paper I added text
from a couple of old books in my collection: Childrens' Rights by
Margaret Wiggins and The Ideal Fairy Tales, both from the late 1800s.
One of the things I love about collage is choice. But all that choice
can be frustrating. I felt good about these paper choices.

No longer a scissoring novice, I blithely cut apart the tissue-paper
people section and rearranged the parts for better balance in the
composition. I also needed to balance out the big ogre on the right 
and chose to use some color to do that. Hence the figures and
halo thing over the head of the guy in the photo. Another revelation:
I didn't have to work flat! I could add physical dimension! 
I went for it. With a little pulling and tugging, I was able to create
flaps here and there so I could make the figures--and, in fact, the
tissue-paper-people cutout--3-D.  3-D! Never did
that before! I used eyelets to attach things and hid them
under the flaps.

While I was at it, I added some editorial comment to the guy's shirt,
as you can see in this detail.

Another detail, showing the 3-D effect described earlier.

So this is where I'm at as of today. Yup, that's me in the
mirror, using my cell phone to capture my courage.

The KNEE(jerk) Fragmentaion Project is well worth a look. You can read more about it here.  http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000788732562&ref=tn_tnmn#!/events/311538705559253/ , and the project will also be documented in catalog format later in 2012.

As always, thanks for listening

The Un-Journal

Way back when, I had prepped a travel journal to take to Italy. I talked about the construction here: (“Grooving with the Glitch” http://lauratringaliholmes.blogspot.com/2011/08/grooving-with-glitch.html ). But I never used my journal. As it happened, and as I was warned might happen, I wound up liking my journal pristine, untouched by pen-in-human-hand.

Here are some of the pages from the journal. I had such fun with it, creating pockets for secret thoughts and making extra writing surfaces by recycling clothing tags.

But it wasn't just the love of pristine-ery that kept my hands off my journal during my trip and afterward. Truth be told, and as it happened, the pages were just too scratchy with texture for the good ink glide that I demand from my pen while journaling.

Hence, an un-journal. But just for now. My plan is to make prints of my journal pages on rich paper, design a cool binding, and then allow my ink--and my thoughts--to flow.

Thanks for listening.

Perceived Perceptions

I finished this piece a few days ago. The red dots were critical to me...a last touch, a grammatical ellipsis as well as a visual connection between a text snip about absence and a fragment of a poem mentioning a "dark week."  I was working to connect the two, bolstered, I thought, by the image of poor Bambi, who certainly had his work cut out for him surviving in Disney's fearsome forest, and that big "I" by the television knobs. I was expressing emotions involving escape by a very narrow margin, something I happen to know a great deal about.

"Oh Day Most Calm," paper on paper collage on 5 x 7 canvas board, January 2012
---
Paper sources:
Pathfinder magazine, 1928
Aus der Kindermelt, late 1800s or early 1900s
Phrase from Italian Made Simple, 1960
Icelandic children's magazine, 1968
Various ephemera from personal correspondence, travels, and friends

But those weren't the perceptions that were most widely perceived, at least according to the opinions of the viewers I've talked to on my gallery website. Most viewers experience a warmly nostalgic vibe when looking at this piece rather than the vibe of the quiet but triumphant escape from an oppressive situation that was in my heart and hands when I was putting this together.

Needless to say, I'm intrigued. I'm cogitating the notions of artistic success and failure as they relate to communicating emotions. I'm wondering if my original emotions really matter or if what really matters are the perceptions of viewers at the end point. I'm also studying the components of my design, trying to figure out where I could have stacked the deck more effectively to express my particular hand.

Every day brings more to learn, and I love that.
As always, many thanks for listening.

Longitudes and Lattitudes

Eight playing cards for collaboration flew into my life about four months ago. I was drawn to the variety of birds on the playing cards—avian creatures ranging from eagles and egrets to chickadees. Even the humble junco had a place! But I think it was this very diversity that, in the end, threw me. If the cards had contained a bunch of iconic Big Black Birds I would have run with the symbology. I love Big Black Birds. But real birds? The type I watch in the pond and at the feeders and everywhere I travel? Nope. The feeling was strong that I needed to honor these guys. I wanted to unify the set of cards to reflect my thoughts about the birds I so love. But how? Enter paralysis. And so I perched on the cards for about four months, with nothing feeling right.

And then I was lucky enough to spend a half-day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was there for other exhibits, but one of the last things I managed to squeeze in was the Photographic Treasures from the Collection of Alfred Stieglitz show for no other reason than that my companion is interested in all things photographic. The images that I saw unmoored me, carried me off to someplace with different longitudes and lattitudes. I was reminded yet again that when we give ourselves opportunity to look at viewpoints other than the ones we are used to every day, we give ourselves the freedom to change perspective.

And thus the Birdwatcher series was born. Here are a few samples from the set of eight cards.

Birdwatcher #4, Laura Tringali Holmes & Liz Cohn, December 2011
Paper on paper on playing card with mixed media

"Birdwatcher #7," Laura Tringali Holmes & Liz Cohn, December 2011
Paper on paper on playing card with mixed media

"Birdwatcher #1," Laura Tringali Holmes & Liz Cohn, December 2011
Paper on paper on playing card with mixed media

This set of cards will be part of a travelling exhibition created by Liz Cohn called “Playing With (more than) a Full Deck." The show's first stopover is February 2 at the Cannon Beach Gallery in Cannon Beach, Oregon. From there it moves to Portland. At last count, there are over 1200 tiny collaborative works of art featuring over 150 artists.

It was a close call, but I'm so glad that these eight cards will make it in time.

Thanks for listening.

A Dangling Conversation

A long time ago, in the 1970s and 80s, there developed a rather lively conversation between those who practiced art and those who practiced artisanry, or craft. The conversation talked around the boundaries of each of those disciplines. What is art? What is craft? We'd crowd around wherever we could find a flat surface and discuss this every which way over endless meals and drinks. At one point, in the field of furniture design, an informal term was coined--art-iture--to describe furniture that was considered as sculptural as it was utile. Furniture such as shown in the book below. Visionary in nature, the book didn't tell you HOW to make a piece of furniture, but how to make the design decisions needed to create what you wanted to express in the process of the making.

Yes, that is my name, pre-Holmesian, at upper right. The book was published
in 1989 by The Taunton Press, and is, sadly, long out of print. 

From the book: "All American Make Up Mirror and Dressing Table," Paul Sasso (photo by Paul Sasso)

"Roadrunner Chair," Mark Hazel (photo by Seth Stem)

From the book: Table inspired by gems and architectural buttresses, Seth Stem
(photo by Gary Gilbert)

I feel an undercurrent of a similar conversation brewing today. What is art? What is craft? This time of year, especially, you'll hear it while browsing holiday markets. Your friend the photographer carping about the number of tables containing crocheted toilet-tissue holders and such like. Still, the discussion is rather more underground than in the past. In these days of enforced inclusivity, it's not exactly polite or politic to draw perimeters around anything.

I've made no secret of my feelings that, with few exceptions, the publishers and editors of the magazines and books of mixed media have dropped the visionary ball that once they carried. I do not subscribe to Somerset Studio (I do have an extensive collection of way-back-when issues), yet I occasionally flip through the pages at my bookstore, as I did several days ago. As always, the magazine was chock-a-block full of projects that mostly looked the same to my eye, but then...an interesting twist. Not long after a project on making gift wrap from dryer sheets appeared a breathtaking selection of works by Mary Beth Shaw. These were fascinating in composition, and oh, the color!

Reading through the article, a profile piece, it was revealed that Shaw had at one time read every book on color theory she could get her hands on. Aha!

When I got home from the bookstore, I took a look at the book review (not favorable) of Shaw's recent book that I had posted here on my blog (on the Book Reviews page http://lauratringaliholmes.blogspot.com/p/book-reviews.html ) and on Amazon. “Wouldn't it have been great,” I thought to myself, “if the editorial perspective of that book had been reframed to share Shaw's knowledge of and passion about color?”

Which got me to thinking. If that first book was from the artisan's approach, how awesome would be a book from the artist's insight.

To describe itself, Somerset Studio magazine uses, on its website, promotional language thus: “Paper crafting, art stamping and the lettering arts are elevated <italics and underlining mine> to an artistic level <italics and underlining mine> in Somerset Studio!”

"Elevated.” Hmmmm. "Artistic level." Interesting word choices there. What exactly do they mean? Somewhere, perhaps, there is indeed a conversation going on, and if not, I suspect there needs to be one begun.

Thanks for listening.