Cabinet card polka

This a cabinet card that I altered this summer at Sharon's house. I know that cabinet cards are really in, but I'm having a hard time being inspired to mess with them. Too many times artists make them look silly and undignified and I have no interest in doing that, especially when I'm working with photos of my relatives. But I kind of liked this one. I'd like to think that my Grandma O'Reada liked the Beer Barrel Polka.

Serenity collage

Okay, so I won't proclaim anymore that I'm done with making mono- or dichromatic soulcollages. As much as I adore wild multi-colored art, I seem to have it in me to pump out these limited color collages. This one was inspired by the serene beauty of the model. All models are beautiful (duh), but too often their faces are vacuous, overly seductive, or very full of "attitude." This one seemed to exemplify the quote. Surely not me. Serenity is certainly not one of my defining characteristics, especially amid the storm.

Small Barn

Finally a new post! I made this small postcard quilt this summer at Sharon's house. It's 9"x6", actually a little larger than a typical postcard. Even though it's entitled Small Barn, the barn was actually so huge that I had a hard time squeezing it into such a small space. The pieces are on fusible web and then appliqued on by machine. I was hoping to get myself psyched to return to work on my larger wallhanging. By George, I think it might have worked!

Patterns Collage

I finally made a multi-colored collage. I was inspired by the large piece of paper in the bottom right. I produced it using the technique of citrasolve on a colored photo from the National Geographic. I love techniques that are totally unpredictable in what you end up with. I did a dozen or so pages; a few were stunning, some were interesting, and some were blah. The problem will be how to use them. This collage emerged when the colors reminded me of African prints.

Pond photos

These are two photos I took at the goldfish pond in front of my house. They make great desktop backgrounds.

My House

This is my second watercolor. Maybe someday I will do so many that I won't feel a need to number them. But for now I'm still amazed when I actually do one.

I did this with the intention of putting it in an art journal that I've been working in. I've lived in this house for nearly seventeen years - that's about 12 years longer than any other place I've lived. By my figuring, it's the 32nd home I've lived in!

I had to stand across the path at my neighbor's house to even see what my house looked like. After all these years, I wasn't even sure because our houses are so close together that I only had the perspective of walking up to it from the side.

Alan's Wheelbarrow Birthday

My son Alan is "into" wheelbarrows; I think they represent the real world of labor to him. I think it's pretty cool even though I haven't witnessed him actually wanting to participate that much in the real world of labor. Anyway, he'd been talking about getting a wheelbarrow tattoo. So for his 21st (!!) birthday I got kind of carried away with the theme. I took some photos of a red wheelbarrow we have at Muir Commons. One of the photos had a pretty plain background so that I could use the wheelbarrow for the t-shirt picture. The message on the t-shirt was the first few lines of a poem by William Carlos Williams (which I knew Alan was familiar with) "So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow." The other photo was set into a scene that I played with on Photoshop; this became his birthday card (message inside: Welcome to the world of work). I had decided that his other present was going to be a photo album since I had made several for his sister, but none for him. When I started looking through boxes of photos I found the one of him being wheeled in a red wheelbarrow! Amazing serendipity. The album that I had bought to use had a little window on the front and that's the picture I put in it. Alan liked his presents and was wearing his t-shirt when he left to go back to school. A success story!

Is there really a place where...

the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and the children are all above average? I made this tri-fold book for Sharon's birthday card/gift. The book itself was the container/display for a set of TV program DVDs. I removed the guts of the book which were cardstock glued in to hold the DVDs. Then I painted the outside cloth portion with shiny copper acrylic paint. At this point I really didn't know where I was going with the book. I knew I would be doing three different soulcollages but I didn't know how they would relate. They were almost complete when I thought they needed some words to pull it together. I came up with the Lake Wobegon words from Garrison Keillor and I was delighted that they worked with very little modification of the images. For me, the coolest thing was knowing that had I come up with the words first the images would have been really different (way too literal). The next step was the front cover and that nearlybrought the whole project to a crashing halt. I wasted a day fooling around with various cloth and paper combinations. At the end of the day in desperation I glued some things down. In the middle of the night I realized I'd never send it like that and that I would have to figure how to change it. In the light of day it became clear that due to my very excellent job of gluing previously that I would have to work with what I'd already done. Transforming the "hamburger" into a UFO helped and by adding more stuff to aid and abet that theme allowed me to finally call it done and send it.

Birthday Card for Deatra

The night before Deatra's birthday party at the Library I was watching an epidosde of Planet Earth and feeling guilty because I hadn't made a card for Deatra. So when Adele wanted to watch a movie I started pulling out some of my soulcollage files to see if I could throw together a card. When the movie turned out to have subtitles, it almost derailed the process. But two hours later I had managed to do most of this card (Ifinished it in the morning) and had a pretty good idea what had happened in the movie. But I think I'll watch it again later. Deatra liked her card.

Give Light

I made this soulcollage for my sister-in-law, Sarah, last fall when she was facing her annual bout with S.A.D. (Seasonal Affect Disorder). I had completely forgotten about it until I stumbled upon a photo of it in my pictures. So since I haven't posted anything else for awhile I thought I'd pretend I'm not going through a dry spell. Actually I have been working on some projects but nothing is ready to be posted.

Madrid, Spain Journal Page

This is one page from my Spain "haiku" journal. I did the drawing in pencil while I was in Madrid, but when I came home I went over it in ink and colored pencil.