Moonshine, Starshine by Yuji Hiratsuka

Hello friends and Happy New Year!

Back in 2018 when I started seeing the end of the child rearing years ahead, I started to focus on what I would want my home to look like once my kids grew up and moved into their own homes. That is when I discovered the Style Matters podcast, hosted by Zandra Zuraw.

Zandra calls her approach to home decor 'slow style' and it's all about "developing a personal style in your home and surrounding yourself with beauty in a way that is meaningful." As an avid collector of mid century and antique home wares, I was attracted to Zandra's philosophy and method and have been working on developing a cohesive eclectic style ever since.

So when I started getting the idea that it was time to purchase an interesting modern, colorful (and fun!) piece of art to add to my living room, I visited the White Lotus Gallery in downtown Eugene. I've been there many times over the years and chose that particular gallery for their selection of original Chinese and Japanese prints and paintings.

On one particular visit the gallery was featuring printmaker Yuji Hiratsuka. There were many of his whimsical, yet metaphysical, intalglio prints lining the walls. Most all featured a central human figure or figures engaged in some activity. I found myself drawn to Mr. Hiratsuka's use of character in this way and revisited the gallery a couple more times, trying to pick a favorite to purchase.

After much thought, I settled on Moonshine, Starshine. It is an intaglio and chine colle', meaning it is an intaglio print that has been collaged.

I wanted something that would jazz up the room and I think this piece does just that. I enjoy the fact that it is modern, yet traditional and incorporates both eastern and western influences.

Have you purchased original art for your home? What were some of your considerations? Let me know in the comments.

Thanks for looking and bye for now!

Happy Halloween from Matilda

Friends, it's the night before Halloween and my friend Matilda is stopping in to wish you a Happy Halloween!

By this time tomorrow evening, she will be sitting at a large round table with a group of strangers, each one anxious to have 'Madame Matilda' summon their dead loved ones.

They will all gather in the 'Occult Room' of Matilda's large, dark, musty Victorian house. First, she will dim all the gas-lit lamps. Then she will instruct the group of strangers to close their eyes, and when they do, she will raise her arms and commence to move them in a counter clockwise direction. She will then call out to the unkindness of ravens she keeps as her assistants and they will gather on the rooftops. They will flap their wings and cackle loudly. The winds will blow and the gas-lit lamps will flicker, and Matilda, now in a trance, will beckon the dead as they float and rise above the table. And the strangers, terrified, will call out their grief loudly as they learn the secrets of their dead ancestors - secrets they were never meant to know... 

The strangers will beg Matilda to cease her summoning. Matilda, still in a trance, cannot hear their pleas. Suddenly the ravens have mysteriously gotten inside the house and are flying inside the room with the dead ancestors, croaking, cackling and hissing at the strangers! Matilda, laughs maniacally, picks up her wand and thrusts it into the air. A bolt of lightening crashes into the house and the light, now bright and blinding, flashes! Suddenly all the dead ancestors vaporize and the table is littered with shiny black rocks that look like ravens.

The next morning, Matilda is walking slowly through her garden, tending to her flowers, plants and trees. A stranger walks by and lets out a loud croaking, cackling noise. Matilda pretends not to notice and the stranger croaks and cackles even louder. Matilda raises her arm, then brings it down quickly, pointing to the ground. The stranger, animated and lively in their demand that Matilda look their way, suddenly becomes mute.

Matilda smiles, picks a bouquet of orange chrysanthemums, walks into her house, and shuts the door.

Her Majesty the Queen

Friends, I don't know anyone that can love Queen Elizabeth more uniquely than Canadian collage artist Danielle Krysa.

Of course by now everyone the world over has learned that the beloved Queen of England passed away today. As I was reading the news and thinking about it this evening I thought I would revisit Danielle's Instagram page and then realized it would be fun to share some of her works to honor the Queen's passing.

The piece above, titled “yes, liz had a little nibble because 1, any good baker would do the same, and 2, ‘shut up, i’m the f’n queen’.” is just one example of Danielle's ability to bring a humorous and joyful approach to an otherwise very serious subject.

In “‘use the pom poms sparingly’ they said - unfortunately liz and her creative muse were already knee deep” (below) we see the queen getting carried away with pom poms and like in the first piece it's fun to imagine the queen in this kind of situation.

I have enjoyed Danielle's use of round canvases. This one called “in her daydreams, liz was an avon lady” I love all the various pink paint colors and how she used just a few images to get her point across:

Then there's this gem, entitled “arm’s length away” where Danielle informs us that "yes, that’s liz’s arm waving complete with swarovski crystal bracelet".

Danielle has also had fun utilizing vintage costume jewelry on some of her canvases. In “queens carry the weight of the world - and we make it look f’n easy” we see more of her humor shining a unique light on Her Majesty's complex role in society.

I hope you'll agree that Danielle's visual approach to celebrating the life of Queen Elizabeth has been a powerful way to honor the queen and so much of what she has represented in the world.

May Queen Elizabeth rest in peace.

The Meeting Place

Hello again!

 

I'm so glad to be back sharing another collage with you. Since I never quite know which direction the creative part of my brain is going to pull me in, it always feels like a miracle that I managed to not only execute a project, but get it photographed and sit myself down to write about it.

 

In my post last week, I talked about the challenge of creating atmosphere. Since then, I've been thinking about visual story telling. As I survey the collage works that I've been making I see a common theme: character development. There is a lot of talk in the political world about finding common ground in our humanity. Of course right now, that idea is the furthest thing from our current situation, but I digress...

 

When choosing images to use in my pieces, it appears that I often start with the human figure. This might seem obvious but the truth is that I am not a 'people person' at all. Rather, I prefer solitude and need a lot of time and space for processing thoughts, actions and words. This reality came to me slowly over the last twenty years as I watched my son grow up. We are so much alike in this respect! It's like looking in the rear view mirror sometimes.

 

But again, while it feels ironic to me to start the creative process with the human form, I am beginning to understand the reason for it. Not only am I looking to create an atmosphere but I am trying to get to the heart of what it feels like to be human, which again, is how I am digging into how we relate (and react) to the world around us. I have to laugh at myself as I re-read what I am writing here. And then I want to cry because I should have been doing this kind of work in my twenties!

 

So what is it about the human dynamic that are we looking at in today's collage? The simple explanation is that I found a vintage book about the history of dance (which I also talked about last week) and the ballerina (above) is cut from that book.

 

And because in the book she was leaning in a doorway, I needed to capitalize on that posture. So after I cut the image out I went traveling through my bird books to find her a companion. Meet the Ascension Island frigatebird (Fregata aquila). Once I placed them together, it felt like their relationship to one another immediately took on a 'fairy-tale-like' quality.

 

Also, I realized right away that in order for both images to be better viewed, that the dancer needed to be standing on something, otherwise the pair would have to sit too far down on the bottom edge. So I found the dancer a plinth and suddenly, when placing the pair on my painted background in that way, the atmosphere began to come alive!

 

I like how it looks like a genuinely personal moment between the two 'characters' and decided to give the piece an aura of a taking place in a garden. I debated with myself about completely filling the space with flowers and maybe more birds. But, being the minimalist that I am, instead settled on just two other red elements, creating a visual triangle with the frigatebird's inflatable red pouch.

 

From this vantage point, the rest is left to the imagination: is the ballerina a statue, permanently affixed to the top of a column? Or is she a real human that must climb up the column to meet her friend? Lover? Or is the frigatebird enamored with either a statue or a human and perches on a nearby branch to rendezvous with her? More importantly, (in the traditional vein of the fairy-tale) what could be a lesson here?

 

You might think of a completely different take on the scene above. And that's okay, because we're all on the same journey and we need to explore, address and express how we see the world around us and communicate those thoughts and feelings in healthy ways that can advance a conversation or cause to find that common ground that the world desperately needs right now.

 

How do you make sense of the world these days?

James Waring Dances the Merz

Hello Friends!

It's been fun getting back into the groove of collage.

I've been working on creating painted abstract backgrounds to add more color and interest to my compositions. I'm also challenging myself to be more selective in my gluing process so as to allow more dimension. I'm using just enough raised foam adhesive to glue the pieces down yet allow for some shadow effect. If you look to the right of each of the elements above you can see this happening.

With Covid restrictions easing up, Jimmy and I were excited to read that the public library was bringing back their annual Library Book Sale. He likes to read mystery authors such as H.C. Bailey and I enjoy looking for 'collage fodder' so we donned our masks, headed to the sale, and had fun getting lost in the world of books.

One book in particular that I was excited to find was Anthology of Dance. It's from the 1970s and is a compendium of the modern dance movement from that time. I had been waiting to find a vintage book on modern dance, so this book, with its somewhat grainy black and white photographs was perfect!

As I flipped through the book, this image of James Waring (1922-1975) caught my attention immediately. At first he reminded me of Sherlock Holmes with his dark hair and top hat. But I was also enamored with his dance outfit and pose. And when I read the short paragraph accompanying his photo and learned that he was not only a dancer, choreographer and teacher but also dabbled in collage, my interest was kindled! The book also mentioned that in both dance and collage he was influenced by, prioritized and embraced experimentalism.

I love the challenge of creating atmosphere in collage (another reason for adding paint), and I will often add birds in flight as part of that idea. There is something about a grand landscape where, as one takes in the stillness of an expansive panoramic view, the sight of birds flying across the sky seems to slow the passing of time and allows the space within ourselves to expand. Some might call it Buddha-nature.

In that spirit, I thought it would be fun to place Waring in a time and place where he is in the process of, well, it could be collage... but it might be dance.

His outstretched arm led me to think how that gesture could be a part of the story and I also considered how experimentalism, like Dada and Merz, challenge the viewer's perceptions about what art is. In particular Waring's choreography is considered 'collage-like' in its experimentation and unexpected juxtapositions. So why not place him within a fanciful atmosphere, casting his cards, and relying on the serendipitious landing of the cards to tell him what the next dance steps will be? Or perhaps his intention is to create a collage, based on chance, wherein he will paste the cards in the exact arrangement they will fall in. Either way, the viewer is a witness to Waring's expressive pose and his creativity in that moment, slowed by the sight of a migrating bird...

Election Day 2020

Hello Everyone,

In just a short while, I will be heading out to cast my ballot in the United States general election. It's being said today is the most important election day in our lifetime and I couldn't agree more.

So if you live in the USA, I hope you will be out there voting also.

Take care.

Flattening the Curve, Day 66

Remembering Voyages Past

Dear friends, for over sixty days now I have been on a mandatory leave from my work site due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and have been blogging about that experience from the very first day of my leave.

And although my situation will not change, for the foreseeable future, my status has changed. I no longer am on mandatory leave, rather I have been furloughed until July 25th.

Although the county in which I live has done an excellent job of avoiding catastrophic illness and has, indeed, 'flattened the curve', the State of Oregon now has a severe deficit and many employees, including me, have been furloughed.

That doesn't mean that the coronavirus pandemic is over - far from it. We are only at the point of a slow and cautious reopening. Lane County petitioned to reopen and my town has entered 'Phase 1' of reopening. It's still early days in the efforts to keep everyone safe and I will still be following the stay home order, only going out for essentials.

So I will still be here on the blog, however I won't be titling every post 'Flattening the Curve' anymore. I will name posts according to what the subject matter is and use Flattening the Curve only when I have something specific to share about the status of the pandemic in my town and in my life.

With that, I hope you and your family are safe.

Thank you for reading and see you again soon.

 

Flattening the Curve, Day 64

She Took to the Wind, No Longer Tied Down by Him

Hello friends. Today is my sixty-fourth day of mandatory leave from my government job due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and I have a question for you.

Have you ever had to leave an unhealthy relationship? If you've seen any of my recent Collage Journal posts, you'll know that I have been thinking a lot about the decade in which I came of age and am working on documenting some of those memories in my journal using images cut from a stack of 1970s National Geographic magazines. The 70s were my coming of age decade.

As I was searching through the magazines and choosing what to use for the Collage Journal, I saw the image above of the woman sitting on the hood of the Buick LaSabre and I immediately remembered my own experience of owning just such a car.

And ironically that Buick turned out to be my escape car. It was a harmful relationship. There was no physical abuse, but there was plenty of emotional abuse and a pernicious control of my behavior. I knew I needed to escape or I would never become my own person.

That was a long time ago - and what helped me get away from that unhealthy relationship was a 1975 Buick LaSabre. So I took to the wind.

Flattening the Curve, Day 63

Hello friends. Today is my sixty-third day of quarantine due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and I'm back with another page spread from the vintage Boorum & Pease Miniature Account Book that I have been repurposing into a personal collage journal.

My plan for this layout is to write about what it felt like growing up in the 1970s with the societal expectation of being the pretty, dutiful girl. Something I always felt like I was failing at. But also rebelled against. Maybe you felt those things too when you were growing up?

Again, in sticking with my plan of just using three elements, I cut the images of the girls from various 1970s National Geographic magazines, added washi tape to the top and bottom borders and ink stamped a few butterflies. It's ready for the journaling which I plan to do with a calligraphy pen just as soon as I get my confidence up! Hopefully, by the next round of photographing more pages, I will have some examples of my writing...

If you would like to see more of the collage journal pages, just scroll down to 'Topics' in the right side bar and look for 'Collage Journal'.

Thank you for looking and see you again soon.

Flattening the Curve, Day 61

Hello friends. Today is the sixty-first day that I have been quarantined at home due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. I'm spending my time on creative projects that I enjoy while I wait to return to my government job.

Welcome back to my Collage Journal series where I am sharing how I am repurposing a vintage Boorum & Pease Miniature Account Book into a personal collage journal. I have several pages prepped and ready for the journaling. I plan to write with an old fashioned calligraphy pen.

This page spread will be about my love of photography. I have been interested in taking pictures since the mid-1970s which were my early teenage years and the time frame that I am documenting in this journal. The images (the cameras, the flowers and the flamingo head) are all from a 70s era National Geographic magazine.

Following the rule I set for myself in using only three basic elements for each page spread, I finished the layout by adding washi tape and ink stamping to the images I cut from the magazine.

If you would like to see the other pages in this series, just scroll down to 'Topics' and click on the 'Collage Journal' link in the sidebar to the right.

Thank you for looking and see you again soon.

Flattening the Curve, Day 60

Hello friends. Today is the sixtieth day that I have been quarantined at home and away from my work site due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The town that I live in is slowly reopening but I won't know when I'm to return to work until about June 1st. So, until then I am continuing to work on creative projects while I stay home.

This is the fifth blog post where I'm sharing how I've repurposed a vintage Boorum & Pease Miniature Account Book into a personal collage project. If you would like to see the other posts, they are Day 2, Day 56, Day 57 and Day 59.

I'm following the same pattern in my choice of materials throughout the journal. For the page spread above the two images of young women are from old National Geographic magazines. The sparkly butterfly and the folk art flowers and heart are from a sewing and craft magazine. All the images are from the 1970s. I used washi tape and ink stamping to give it a modern feel. The journaling will be done with an old fashioned calligraphy pen.

For this page I intend to write about becoming a teenager in the 1970s. There was a lot of turmoil in my country during the time that I was coming of age - the war in Vietnam, civil rights, and women's rights to name just a few. It was a very confusing time for a young girl trying to make sense of the world.

I can't say it was an especially happy decade as far as the current events of the day, but because of my young age I was more focused on the things that kids should be paying attention to. In the early 1970s it was school, friends, games and play time, drawing, pop music and television shows. Then in the mid to late seventies it was boys. That, of course, was a big shift and I remember how it felt like the world was very good at shining a light on all my doubts and fears.

Maybe you can relate.

That's all for today and I hope you are having a peaceful Sunday.

Flattening the Curve, Day 59

Hello friends. Because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, I've been quarantined at home for fifty-nine days now and away from my job for the same number of days. Today I'd like to show you another page in the vintage Boorum & Pease Miniature Account Book that I am repurposing into a collage journal.

In the early 1970s the Polaroid SX-70 instant film camera was a big sensation. I still have quite a few photographs of myself that were taken in the mid-1970s with an SX-70, so the images I used in my collage journal, above, had meaning for me. If you aren't familiar with the SX-70, it folded flat and that is what the image of the girl in the photograph on the right hand page is sitting on top of.

I added a few pieces of washi tape and some ink stamping and the page is ready for the journaling. This spread will be the introduction. The who, what, where, why and when to give the journal context. I plan to use an old fashioned calligraphy pen and have been practicing how to write with it.

If you are interested in the story of how I am putting together this collage journal, the other blog posts were published on Day 2, Day 56, and Day 57.

Thank you for looking and see you again soon.

Flattening the Curve, Day 58

Changing the Rules of the Game

Hello friends. This is the fifty-eighth day of my mandatory leave from my work site due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the county in which I live is officially opening back up today under Phase 1.

That means there are still restrictions in place and masks and social distancing are strongly recommended. For example restaurants are allowed to open but travel is still prohibited. It is good news that we are moving forward and that it is being done cautiously. It's still going to be a little while before I know definitively about my returning to my job, so until then I will keep making art and sharing it here.

The collage I'm sharing today, Changing the Rules of the Game, is my way of stating that the rules that we have been living under, up until the world pandemic hit, have not worked for so many people and need to change.

The silver figure, above, is thought to have been made by a young Leonardo de Vinci as part of an alter panel titled Beheading of St. John the Baptist and was created for the Baptistery in Florence Italy. In my depiction, he is contemplating the world as it is while at the same time reflecting on ways in which governments, economies and people can shift to make the 'game' more equitable for everyone.

Thanks for looking and see you again soon.

 

Flattening the Curve, Day 57

Hello friends. Today is 'Day 57' of my mandatory leave from my work site due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and I'm back to show you another page spread I created in my vintage Boorum & Pease accounting book which I am repurposing into a collage journal.

This spread (above) will be the preface. Depicted is Ariel from Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. The story of The Little Mermaid has an interesting Jungian psychological theory which involves an unconsciousness vs. consciousness analogy that intrigues me.

As I've explained in my first post on this subject, my intention with this journal is to capture some of the memories I have of my growing up years by utilizing images cut from old National Geographic magazines from the 1970s. By referencing The Little Mermaid in this preface, my intention is to emphasize my own struggles with a lack of awareness which kept me from developing a sense of self and an inability to think independently.

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I admire Helen Colebrook's approach to creative journal pages and that prompted me to choose a simple combination of the cut images (mentioned above), washi tape and ink stamping for the decorative elements. This made the process of getting the page done quick and easy. It is now ready for the journal writing, which I will do (at least in part) with a calligraphy pen.

Thank you for looking and I hope you are well. I will be back in a couple of days and share another page spread from this journal with you.

Flattening the Curve, Day 56

Hello friends. Today is my fifty-sixth day of mandatory leave from my government job due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and soon I may have some idea about when I might be going back to work. Each county in Oregon must petition to reopen but certain health and safety standards must be met in order for that to happen. So, we'll see.

I started repurposing the Boorum & Pease Miniature Account Book (above) several months ago as a fun project to capture some memories of my growing up years. (I wrote about this in Day 2.) The idea came to me as I was paging through several National Geographic magazines from the 1970s and realizing that I could relate to the images of many of the girls and women depicted. I began cutting those images out from the magazines and accumulated a good amount of them to start assembling the collage journal.

As so many of us do, I turned to the internet to look for inspiration for how to approach my journal. That is how I found Helen Colebrook's YouTube channel. Helen uses a standard travelers notebook, which is a very hot item in the memory keeping and journaling camps right now, to create her pages. I like how Helen uses the same basic tools and techniques on each page, yet every page looks different. I also became enamored of her use of an old fashioned calligraphy pen.

Because I also like to scrapbook, I have quite a lot of supplies, so all I did was 'shop' my own stash, buy a calligraphy set and get to work. I have several pages made and ready for the journaling. The photo you see above is me practicing with the calligraphy pen.

So my plan is to show you one page from my collage journal each day or every few days as I will continue posting my other collage work as well and any other stories that may come up.

With that, have a good night and see you tomorrow.

Flattening the Curve, Day 52

Hello friends. Today is my fifty-second day of mandatory leave from my work site due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and it's World Collage Day.

And tomorrow is Mother's Day. So I baked some cupcakes - a traditional vanilla cake recipe and a vegan chocolate frosting - a first for me.

I needed to elevate my mood for the weekend so I put together these photos as a celebration of my having actually made some progress in my art practice.

Here's a selection of some of the source materials I use to make my collages. I have a strong attraction to vintage books and magazines.

So Happy World Collage Day!

Thank you for looking and I hope you are having a good weekend.

P.S. I edited my iPhone photos with the A Color Story app and I love how they turned out. So I just want to give a shout-out to Elsie Larson of A Beautiful Mess because she is a genius in so many ways - this being just one.

 

Flattening the Curve, Day 51

Hello friends. Today is the fifty-first day that I have been on mandated leave from my work site due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and it's Friday. And that means that I am here tonight to share with you one more of my favorite art and creativity podcasts.

If you are looking for practical advice, real world examples and the steps involved in building a professional art career, you will want to listen to the Creative Pep Talk podcast by freelance illustrator Andy J. Pizza. And bring both your thinking cap and your sense of humor because Andy delivers his message about what it takes to become an art professional honestly, authoritatively and with a comedic sense through analogy, metaphor, science, his own real world experiences and those of his talented guests.

As with any profession, nothing happens overnight and what Andy digs into with his podcast is the importance of 'just doing the work' without judging yourself or getting caught up in results. Andy encourages his listeners to choose a personal creative project of their own making and to use that project to further develop those skills that can only be attained through a diligent art practice and the constant refinement of those skills.

But Andy goes even deeper than that. For me anyway, it's when he talks about using the creative process to tap into the emotional core of who I am and how my intuition can be a guide for knowing what my art practice is. Artistic concepts tend to be abstract ideas that can stifle creativity if we get too caught up in what they mean and then question ourselves during the process. Sure, we have to know the rules before we can break them. But we have to know how to develop and give shape to the abstract connections in the mind and that is best practiced through a disciplined approach to our own senses as our hand realizes them in line, shape, curve, color, and texture.

From my understanding of Andy's message, this is how we come to know our own taste, sensibilities and sensitivities in our personal art practice (and how to subjectively recognize these things in the greater world). I think this is what Andy means when he talks of making invisible things visible. That only through a commitment to an art practice can we develop and express that which is difficult to articulate any other way. It reminds me of how when each of my children were little, in order for them to verbally articulate what they were thinking, feeling or experiencing, each would do the same 'walking thing'. Either pace back and forth or in a circle while talking a thing through until their brain exhausted the subject. It was a process!

These concepts Andy talks about keep me going in my artistic endeavors no matter if it's collage, photography, writing or any number of creative personal projects. And at the end of each episode Andy asks his listeners to do just one thing - to stay pepped up until the next episode. And, indeed, I do!

 

Flattening the Curve, Day 49

And The World Won't End - It Will Just Change Its Name

Hello friends. Today is my forty-ninth day of mandatory leave from my government job due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and I'm continuing on my 'stay home and create' journey.

I decided to shake things up for myself with this collage and used a couple of images from more current publications, rather than all vintage sources. The large yellow poppy is from one of my vintage garden books but the background is from a fairly recent issue of National Geographic. I don't remember where I found musician David Byrne (a new-ish Smithsonian, maybe), but I snipped him from whatever it was quite a long time ago. I have a file folder of images of famous people which I have not done anything with, until now.

It seems appropriate, given the current pandemic, to start thinking of some ways to make artistic statements about the situation. As I was looking through the aforementioned file folders, I thought David Byrne probably has something suitable to say about the world. The title I chose for this piece, And The World Won't End - It Will Just Change Its Name, is a line from Doing The Right Thing, on his American Utopia release, published in 2018.

Indeed, according to an article in The ARTery, Byrne said of his theatrical production of the album "It's meant to be visceral living proof that alternatives are possible. A constructive way to respond to what's going on in the world, rather than just yelling and screaming."

There is a lot of talk about how the world will change once the pandemic subsides. Let's work towards change that is for the betterment of humankind and hope that the new name for our world reflects peace, love and kindness.

Thank you for looking and I hope you are having a peaceful evening.

Flattening the Curve, Day 47

Emerging

Hello friends. This is 'Day 47' of my mandatory leave from my work site due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and today I have another collage to share with you, entitled Emerging.

This was a very tedious project! I have labored over this piece on and off for several months. One of my goals since being on a forced leave from my job has been to complete unfinished projects and this was one of them.

I started with the black and white image of the woman, which I cut from a vintage magazine. I've forgotten which magazine it was, but I do remember that it was an ad of some kind. My interest was piqued when I noticed that it was a skinny column ad where the woman's left side was cropped so that it would fit in the column. I thought it would be a fun visual challenge to see what I could do with it.

Then I paged through Flowers, A Guide For Your Garden (a public library book sale find) for all of the floral elements. There are two volumes in the guide, each about 700 pages, so plenty of images to choose from! It was a slow process - for me anyway. When I saw a flower that looked liked it would work, I cut it out to see how it looked. It requires a bit of imagination and sometimes I'll go through all the trouble of cutting out an image and then realize that I don't like it at all or that my imagination had something else in mind. Nevertheless, it is good for the brain to do these kinds of exercises.

Gluing it all down was also tedious. I was very reluctant to dismantle the whole thing. I was concerned that it wouldn't fit back together correctly (which was probably superstitious) so I used glue dots and worked slowly and carefully to adhere all the bits in situ!

I am happy with the result, and I hope 'Emerging' brings a little bit of joy to you today. Goodness knows we all need it during these long stay at home days.

Till next time.

Flattening the Curve, Day 46

The Oystercatcher Dreams

Hello everyone. Today it has been forty-six days since I was last at my work site. I've been out on mandatory leave due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and have been spending my time practicing the art of collage.

What I love about today's piece, The Oystercatcher Dreams, is that there are just three elements - the two large birds in the foreground and the one tiny Oystercatcher flying away in the background. Which Oystercatcher is the one dreaming, I don't know. I'm leaving that ambiguous. That way, the viewer can decide what the story is.

It all started with the floral headdress, which I found in a bridal magazine. I had it in my mind to use it to give some bird within my collection of vintage bird books a dignified status. So I cut it out and went through the bird books holding the cut image over many different bird heads until I found the right one. I never would have thought to buy a magazine about weddings, but it said 'the flower issue' and it was fifty cents at my favorite charity shop. That's what I call a lot of fun for fifty cents! All three of the American Oystercatchers used here are from those same vintage bird books.

American Oystercatchers are, not surprisingly, a recovering species. In the 19th century they were hunted for their eggs and feathers and nearly became extinct. Recovery only came about after the passage of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in 1918 and yet they are still considered a 'species of concern' because of low and declining populations. They remain on the 2014 State of the Birds Watch List due to loss of habitat, sea level rise, pollution, disease, and invasive species competing for food.

So I would say that American Oystercatchers are worthy of our respect and attention.

Thanks for reading and I hope you are having a peaceful Sunday.