Monday, February 29, 2016

Spring Art Show

Two Women No. 2, collage, African sculpture, vintage newspaper cut out, antique postage stamps, antique photo frame, book cut images, black and red snake, red flowers, snap dragons

Recently a local art gallery, The New Zone Artists Collective, held an open call for submissions to artists working in any medium for their upcoming spring show. I usually contribute at least one piece for the gallery's semi-annual shows, but I haven't shared too many of them here on the blog. So, today I'm stepping a bit out of my comfort zone to share a collage I created for New Zone's show. 

My interest in the history of the Modern Art movement has led me down many paths; I've read stacks of library books, visited art museums, took some painting classes, and have written a few blog posts about my interest in art. With each journey, I've come away with new knowledge: an education that ultimately helps me not only explore the endless variety of artist's mediums and methods, but also to solidify my own art style, in particular, collage. 

Being a collector of, well, almost anything, I've accumulated a large variety of fascinating ephemera, or collectible memorabilia, from different eras. The older the better! The fun and challenging part of collage is to create a piece of art out of seemingly unrelated bits, and I find that I love working with bits of printed material from the past. 

I've written blog posts about my interest in African art, in particular sculpture, and that interest is expressed in the collage I'm now sharing with you: Two Women, No. 2. In this piece I've combined an antique pressed paper photo frame, with postage stamps, also antique, and various images hand cut from a newspaper and some old books. Since I'm also concerned with the role of women in society and culture, that is why I've brought these two images of women together. This is the second in a series with that theme, and I plan on executing more in the future.

Here's a closer look at this piece of collage:
Two Women No. 2, collage, African sculpture, antique photo frame, antique postage stamps, black and red snake, red flowers, snap dragons, paper, scissors, glue
Two Women, No. 2
This coming Friday will be the opening night for the show. There will be a city sponsored First Friday Art Walk, music, wine and snacks. I'm looking forward to seeing what other members of our art community have created.    

Thanks for reading, and if you also enjoy making art, I would love to hear from you!

SHARE:

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Welcome To The Plum Blossom Blog Redesign

vintage telephone, vintage rotary telephone, vintage phone, vintage rotary phone, black vintage rotary dial telephone, origami birds, origami cranes, paper cranes, blue origami bird, blue origami crane, pink origami bird, pink origami crane, flowers, flower bouquet, rose bouquet, rose flower bouquet

Hi friends! I'm excited to share my new blog redesign with you today. When I started this blog two years ago, my preference was for an easy to use platform, coupled with a clean white background, so the focus would be on the photos and words. And while the first Blogger template I was using did serve those purposes, I found myself wanting a more seamless and consistent look, which would ultimately provide an improved reader experience.   

I found what I was looking for with pipdig, a UK based company which I discovered while reading one of my favorite blogs The Villa On Mount PleasantPipdig offers both Blogger and Wordpress templates at what I think is a reasonable cost.  

Pipdig's install process was way easier than I would have imagined, and their customer service is superb! There is still some final cleaning up to do, which my editor James is giving his usual careful attention to, but for the most part it's done! I hope you like it and will come back and visit again. And if you do enjoy what you see here, you can subscribe via email in the sidebar under my profile picture.

I would love to hear any feedback you may have about the redesign of my blog, so if you want, please leave me a comment!

Thanks for reading!

SHARE:
© Under The Plum Blossom Tree | All rights reserved.
Blogger Template Created by pipdig