Tilting@Windmills.Gov

I was cleaning my work room and came across this piece that I made awhile ago. I can barely remember working on it, but I suspect I was more motivated by the political message than I was to make art. Since little has changed politically since then, it still seems relevant. I can see that I was also experimenting with using gel and metallic pens on black.

Half Full/Half Empty: A Tale of Two Glasses

For Sharon's birthday, I made an 8"x9" card/booklet out of paper, fabric and fabric-paper. I had participated in several discussions recently about optimism vs. pessimism and I wanted to do something on that theme. I chose the opening paragraph from Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities where he contrasts five opposing statements. I took the 5 postive ones and put them on a page with a large sun. The background substrate was paper-fabric covered with Lutradur. The sun was made of many fabrics stitched on. I also used stitching to provide details. The negative statements went with an old gnarly tree in the moonlight, again made of fabric on fabric-paper with stitching for details. For the covers I sewed a half red, half blue fabric background and sewed on a cardstock title. I attached the two pages by sewing them both to a link of chain at three places. I'll let you decide, "Is the glass half-full or half-empty?"

Balance

I've been wanting to use up some of my green collage elements and also wanting to do a collage about balance. Voila! Synergy!

Antiquity Challenge

To help me learn Photoshop CS5, my sister Sharon challenged me to produce a piece that included "antiquity" images that each of us chose and then used with a background of our own making. I welcomed the challenge in order to learn some new techniques, and I thought I welcomed the theme because I have used antiquities many times in my art (mostly in soulcollage). Interestingly, she and I independently chose images from Central American cultures. Since I wanted to use my own photo graphs for backgrounds, culling through years of my pictures of trips through Mexico, Honduras and Turkey was overwhelming. But I learned a lot about blending modes and adjustment layers. After spending way too many hours struggling with it, I finally decided to call it done so I could move on to my next project. Thanks, Sharon, it was fun!

What to do?

I made this soulcollage a couple of months ago when I was going through a hard time and wasn't sure what I wanted to do. The statue of a woman pondering somethings so deeply inspired me to express my own indecision and ambivalence. All the images are taken from magazines (mostly advertisements or National Geographic). Working on this helped me get through a difficult time in my life by focusing painful feelings on a creative process.

Tractor Collage

This was a birthday "card" for my brother-in-law. Recently when I saw him on his little tractor, it reminded me of the big tractors I loved in my childhood. So I constructed him one by using some of my large stash of magazine pages cut into appropriate tractor parts. I expecially liked the tire made from chainlink fence and a mudhole. The background is a photo/acrylic paint transfer. I mounted the tractor on top and coated the whole thing with several layers of gel medium. The border is cardstock with holes punched out.

Crossword Puzzle Pieced Wallhanging

I made this small (33x33) wallhanging for Alan for his birthday, partly because he loves crosswords but also because I have been collecting way too many black and white fabrics and needed to use them. Piecing went easier than I thought it would and it actually turned out looking like the puzzle I modeled it on (called BTW New York, New York). My friend quilted it for me because I don't have a walking foot for my machine.