Can a bird rest in a nest?

Can a bird rest in a nest?

I was given some huge letter stamps recently and I am trying to figure out how and where to use them effectively.  My first attempt was to stamp on a piece of Japanese ledger paper that had some red acrylic paint on it.  The jury is still out on whether or not I like this piece.  I thought I did when I finished it.  Again looking at it after it is scanned and on my computer is somehow different.  The piece in person had more life somehow.  I have heard from many people that my art looks so much better in person than on the screen.

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Barbara Kasten: Beauty Was a Problem | Art21 "Extended Play"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDr6lSYIyVo

Do you like ice cream?

Do you like ice cream?

Success!  My 13 collages arrived in New Zealand safe and sound.  One always worries about sending art through the mail.

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Caroline Woolard Flips the Real Estate Script | ART21 "New York Close Up"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz4SqjC82vA

la sorpresa (surprise)

la sorpresa (surprise)

There is a lot going on in this collage, maybe too much.  It is funny how a collage may be considered done, we put it away and revisit it weeks later.  It does not seem to be what was intended as time passes.  On this blog you get the good pieces and what I call the warts.  I put up everything I have completed or am working on.  I learn from myself as well as others.  Putting it on the blog gives me another perspective especially if I look at a piece several days later.  It is a distance.  It is like having a different eye on the subject.

On this piece I am thinking there are too  many circles.  My eye is doing the ping pong ball thing, back and forth between the green and the pool balls.  Now that is movement but is it the right kind of movement?

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Robert Mangold: Sol LeWitt & MoMA | "Exclusive" | Art21

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2_50PXmlWk

Some of Robert Mangold's work.....

Meet Me in Taos

Meet Me in Taos

About two weeks ago I decided I had to deal with a box of magazines in the garage.  They had been given to me for free by an artist friend and they were sealed in the plastic box.  The only thing was that they reeked of mildew smell.  That is the reason that I had not done anything with the magazines for almost two years.

I spent about two hours on our deck going through the forty or so Life magazines looking for ephemera that I thought I could use.  I actually did not find all that much but what I did find I had to put in a baggie with a dryer sheet to see if I could get rid of the smell.  It does work by the way.  The adobe image was in one of the magazines.

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Mark Dion: Methodology | Art21 "Exclusive"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Nzo0foijI

Some of Mark Dion's work........

Saturday, Mother

Saturday, Mother

There are many things I like about this collage.  I like the white space.  I like how the splotches of paint interact with the white space.  I like how the definition of the brown paper and the substrate paper is set off to the right.  I like that the name of someone long ago is on the substrate.  I like the clustering of the main part of the collage.

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Arlene Shechet: Sculpting Time | ART21 "Exclusive"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7zKM7gDw54

Veiled Woman

Veiled Woman

It is really hard to tell but over the portrait of the woman is a cloth teabag.  You can see the stitching of the teabag to the right of the face though.  Scanning it flattened out the cloth "veil".

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Judy Pfaff: Making & Feeling | Art21 "Exclusive"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll28NSvV0sU

View - B

View - B

In this case, the substrate is definitely part of the collage.  I love the transparency of the sewing pattern paper.  Usually I like to use the lines and arrows found on sewing paper.  In almost all the pieces in this series of 13 has photographs that I manipulated in iColorama.   I have not lessened in my usage or like of this application.

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Martha Colburn Cuts the Boring Parts Out | "New York Close Up" | Art21

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtKPPe9L1sU

Inquisitive

Inquisitive 

I love the look of the big horned sheep.  So inquisitive hence the title.

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Pepón Osorio | Art21 | Preview from Season 1 of "Art in the Twenty-First Century" (2001)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzKenn_ypzc

So. Dakota

So. Dakota

Getting comfortable with white space has been something that I have to spend time thinking about.  White space and negative space are one and the same.  For me, handling it sometimes is easier when I actually create the white space out of, for instance, a piece of paper.  It is much more difficult to create it placing papers together like this collage.  One might say there isn't any white space because the background substrate is part of the collage.  One has to decide is it there or is it not?  For me it is there but I can see from a different perspective that there is no white space.

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Trevor Paglen: Power & Perspective | ART21 "Exclusive"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzYoAiueQo8

Take the Lead

Take the Lead

Is a work ever done?  Does it need something else?  Did the artist overdo it?  Going too far is a problem just like not going far enough.  Deciding when to stop.  That is always the question.  It must be the question every artist asks him or herself.

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David Brooks Tears the Roof Off | "New York Close Up" | Art21

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz2-pqCmjAs

Fruit Paid

Fruit Paid

I am entering 13 pieces in a collage exhibition that is held each year in New Zealand.  Fruit Paid is one of my favorites of the series.  We can offer one piece up for sale in the exhibition and this is the one that I selected.  I will include a link to the past exhibitions on another day. 

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Rebecca Nisenbaum -Art21 Adaptation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3tG7HosF4s

Abnormal Field and Nature, Man

Abnormal Field

Nature, Man

These are the last two of the pieces I made in the Melinda Tidwell workshop.  I find that Abnormal Field is way too busy!  Toning it down with some paint might help.  I will do that at one point.  I have been busy making some new work to send off to New Zealand and have not gone back to work on these two pieces.  There is a suggestion to add more of the brown around "an weaver".  I might audition something.  For me, time has to pass on some works and then inspiration will come.  No need to worry about it.

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Glenn Ligon: Layers of Meaning | ART21 "Exclusive"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJNiVr-wHlM

TVA

TVA

We were challenged to do a five minute collage.  This is what I came up with from materials I had in front of me at the time.  It is sort of a quad collage now that I look at it longer.  I don't remember being cognizant of making a decision   The four parts are connected and yet seem disparate.

The title for this piece comes from the stamp.  TVA is Tennessee Valley Authority.

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Paul McCarthy: "Central Symmetrical Rotation Movement" | Art21 "Exclusive"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHChdtXnfRw

Tim O'Brien

Tim O'Brien

Again, not one of my favorites, not even when I crop it.  You win some and .....well you know. :-)

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Arts.21 | Let there be light! Painter Matthias Weischer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6LOz3zco0Y

273

273

If I had to put a label on the type of collage this is I would say it is mostly cluster or perhaps just free form. It is not one of my favorites of the workshop week.  I put up what I call the warts and the winners both.  It just does not seem to come together as a total composition for me.

I can learn from this collage though.  Using the framing tool in Photoshop I can take sections of the collage to study.  Doing that I might just find a collage that I do like.  For instance, the study below is a section of the larger collage.  There are things about the study version that I like much better than the original.

a study

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Trenton Doyle Hancock: "The Former and the Ladder or Ascension and a Cinchin'" | "Exclusive" | Art21

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1n-3_lqaco

4567

4567

Quad type collages are not easy for me.  This one took several hours over a few days to complete. Basically creating four separate collages and then having to tie them together, that is the challenge.

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Samuel Price Collage Artist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO4BsP1s_Tk

NO!

NO!

While in the workshop with Melinda Tidwell we had access to piles and piles of ephemera that was sorted into colors.  I found the orange ephemera and immediately love the negative space it created.  Everything else was built around this piece.

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Art 21 Memory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNQMpYKDh-8

Swiss Cheese

Swiss Cheese

I particularly like how this piece turned out.  It was quite the discussion during critiquing time in the Melinda Tidwell workshop.  One of the most valuable portion of this workshop was when each day we put up two or three pieces of work to have the group evaluate.  Usually Melinda went first.  She would say what she really liked about each piece and then she would zero in on something that she felt was not quite right.  The orange "rising sun" bothered her until she tore a piece of paper that looks sort of like a cloud and held it to the piece.  Voila!  It is just what was needed!  

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Tokar Art 21 Woodturning - Little Sunday Game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8XWIYB0OqQ

Perplexed

Perplexed

This is one of my favorites from the workshop on Whidbey.  The man and boy came from a vintage book that had short stories all about Boy Scouts.  The split photograph came from a stack I got from my mother’s estate.  It is a photo taken around 1948 in the house where I grew up in Kent, Washington.  I think the actual bed/cot was used by my brother when my family first moved into the house.  I like that I came up with the idea of splitting it.

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Jeff Koons: Money & Value | Art21 "Exclusive"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl1zyCzQ_BQ

Use Until Spring

Use Until Spring

Very simple yet effective.  I love using book covers.  Even though this collage appears to be simple, it was difficult to cut out the figures and then glue them.  The figures came from a vintage children’s reader.  Glue over and under the boy and the girl proved challenging.  It just does not look it.

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Bryan Zanisnik Goes to the Meadowlands | Art21 "New York Close Up"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__KjSns7gQI

One Hundred Minus Ninety-six Equals Four

One Hundred Minus Ninety-six Equals Four

I had a great time making this one.  One method of creating collage is to create a grid.  So we were tasked with that in the Melinda Tidwell workshop.  Melinda suggested that I scan this with a high resolution and then have it printed giclee.  I think I will.

The background is collaged Japanese ledger papers.  The individual pieces in the grid part are sanded paperback book covers.  During our class critic I mentioned that I thought the collage looked dirty from a distance.  It does not close up.  So I wonder what will happen once it is blown up.  Melinda suggested that I might want to play around with it in Photoshop and see what happens.  Stay tuned.

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WOLFGANG LAIB, Pollen from Hazelnut

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeQfeUU8kyg