I think I have a bit of an obsession with gay men…I made it myself!

Bedtime Stories is this week’s theme at Mixed Media Monday, and the wonderful quilter Beth, has created the most gorgeous example to inspire us – “Babes in the Woods”.

I have been practising image transfers in my altered art journal and had chosen a pic from an article about the Mayans, where a man is laying down and a lady is tending him. It reminded me of 1001 Arabian Nights’ Tales – Scheherazade… and when I was little, it was my favourite book. My Mum used to read me the stories every night at bedtime – Ali Baba & the 40 Thieves, etc. I’d be hard pushed to name them now, but I did know them off by heart!!

Anyways, here’s how the page ended up!

Knowing how much I love to recycle, it’ll come as no surprise to you that I’ve become a contributor over at Going Green Crafters and Artists blog, where I posted the scrap fabric bookmarks I’ve been making as small gifts for Christmas…

And, I’ve got all my “Darker” altered cutlery, soldered pendants and Day of the Dead jewellery in my friend’s new ‘unit’ in The Strand Shopping Gallery in Bude! Yay! Lyn Soutar’s a very talented beader and jewellery designer. She makes OOAK lampwork beads and pendants and has sold her designs in Canada and the US too! I love what she does and we’re complete opposites: Lyn = perfectionist, neat and tidy… Rosie = messy, grunge-monkey and well outside the box!! Could be why we get on so well!

Remember these?!! Yeah, baby!!

Four days off for Thanksgiving and spent most of the time making collages. By Sunday it was actually difficult to stay focused and feel like I was making good creative decisions. I can’t remember when I took that much time and devoted it to making things.

Here’s what I completed.

This one started out with an idea that I had while looking up at some branches that still had a few leaves on them. Everything was in silhouette. I painted a coat of light blue acrylic and while it was still wet pressed down some torn handmade white paper someone had given me. I arranges wire “branches” on top of that and held them in place with some light blue paper with threads in it. I started to cut and tear leave shapes and arrange them but it was too representational for me so I let it sit for a week or so.  This is how it looked at that stage.

At some point I just decided to play with it and tore papers into rectangles, crumbled them up and glued them down. I filled in some areas with smaller pieces of papers and some more acrylic paint. The amber tissue paper is my new favorite. I just ordered a bunch more!

Collection-1

collage on watercolor paper, 16″ x 16″ – acrylic, various papers, wire, acrylic gloss medium

This one has an undercoat of acrylic paint on a canvas that had several old paintings under it giving it a nice texture.  I used yellow ocher and burnt umber around the edges and naples yellow in the center. I was happy with the “glow” I got after gluing down the green tissue paper.

Collection-2

collage on gallery wrapped canvas, 16″ x 16″ – various papers, copper wire, acrylic

There’s an undercoat of caron d’ache on this one. I was trying to do something similar to the one above. While I was gluing the teal tissue paper down it started to tear and get stuck to itself. I felt like that episode of “I Love Lucy” where she’s trying to throw pizza dough in the air! I just kind of gave into it because it was the last large piece of teal tissue paper I had and let it fall in a somewhat square shape. I was happy with the little tears and overlaps that happened. Not sure I’m completely satisfied with how I completed this one.

Collection-3

collage on watercolor paper, 16″ x 16″ – various papers, acrylic, caron d’ache

Nod…

And indeed, I am becoming famous (sic)! This image is being used on the cover of Outbreath, a Tufts literature magazine, only in black and white. Or possibly in color. I’m not really sure. I guess it will be a surprise!

This is an updated version of a previous post about how I like to do my collages. This one is more complete, because I have taken photographs of the steps.

I don’t ever like to sit down with one collage and create it from start to finish. For me, this doesn’t allow the spontaneity I enjoy. Instead, I like to work in a very intuitive way on several possibilities at a time. I call them possibilities, because I’m not attached to the outcome on any of them. Some will turn out well, some will really surprise me, and others will go into the scrap pile to be incorporated into other pieces. For this project, all finished collages will be 5 x 7’s mounted on an 8 x 10″ piece of heavy paper. I am looking for surprising combinations of imagery, color, and texture. Approaching this intuitively will give me a better outcome.

As I showed yesterday, I will first roll out a big sheet of good acid free paper onto my table top. Then I use a variety of brushes, squeegees, and brayers to apply fluid acrylic colors very quickly all over the surface. The messier the better.

Next, I select a pile of interesting papers, magazine clippings, interesting fabric scraps, cutout freeform shapes, and papers with my own color and drawn marks. The best magazine clippings are from large scale graphics and photographs that are a little bit mysterious when cut into parts that are smaller than their original size. At this point I’m not interested in subject matter.

I place these completely randomly all over the painted paper and glue them down with clear acrylic gloss medium on a large brush, working quickly.

Here is a closeup of some of the photographs I’ve chosen. I want to wait and add some of these later after my basic compositions are established.

Here are some closeups of areas showing more detail. Nothing is supposed to make sense at this point  . . .

I use a lot of the undiluted medium, both on the surface of the first layer, the undersides of the applied pieces, and again over the top of everything, so what I end up with is a fairly wet application. This will help later after it has dried.

Papers absorb the moisture in the medium and expand, causing wrinkles. But after it all dries, there aren’t as many wrinkles. I don’t worry about this right now. In the next picture you can see how some of the papers are curling. The thickest ones are the worst offenders. After all of it dries, I’m going to show you how to fix this. Now it’s time to leave it to dry overnight.

More pictures after this basic background has dried. I plan to add more imagery on top tomorrow. In addition to some photographic realism, I will be possibly painting back into it and adding some of my own graphics that I will iron on to the surface for a translucent effect.

A friend of mine visited my studio and asked me about the current state of Philippine art, to which I showed him this work titled: “The Filipino Artist Pushing a Modernist House Filled With Modern Art Lost Somewhere In The Junctures Of A Contemporary Landscape”.

To which he retorted: “parang si Sisyphus no?” (translate: “looks like Sisyphus eh?”), and I said: “Oo nga, sana ihulog na niya ang bahay sa bangin.” (translate: “yeah, and I hope he pushes that house off a cliff), and we both laughed.

Marilyn Weiss, an accomplished artist for more than 30 years, considers herself to be first and foremost a collagist.  The constant changing nature of this special medium always offers something new and allows her to work with an infinite variation of colors, textures and shapes.

A material world

While there is no specific material that is her favorite, Marilyn finds herself drawn to those that elicit history.  She uses “bits and pieces” from her life or the lives of family and friends.  Old papers, thread, strings, and buttons will often turn up in her work, as will fabric or yarn from a baby sweater or, possibly, a vintage dress.

The material is not used literally, rather it is melded into a piece so that it loses its original identity and takes on another.  But each collage piece chosen has to have meaning and be relevant to the specific work  – it is not just “stuck on”.

And yet, in the end, for Marilyn, collage is strictly an emotional process. She does not try to figure out why something works – she just feels it when it does.

Take “Cool Space” for example. The work is a hand-worked monotype, one of a series of three – this being the most colorful. It is a whimsical, bright and happy piece  inspired by children and one can easilyvisualize the play between the real and the artificial.

Cool Space

“Just Me,” is a sweet and sentimental mixed media, collage.  We witness a female figure sitting by herself, seemingly content and happy.

Just Me

A feminine touch

A self-proclaimed people person, Marilyn’s art usually includes human figures, and most often they are women.  Fascinated by relationships and the way forms and figures interact, there is a dominant feminine theme and form in much of her work.

“You can say that I’m a feminist,” she explains.  “Not in a beat- yourself-over-the-head kind of way, but in the fact that I always paint women.  I guess I’m saying that we’re here and we’re important.  It’s subtle, but it’s there.”

Some great examples of this genre of her work are “Studio View, Grays” and “Sister Act,” both intricate collages with a distinct feminine theme.

Studio Views, Grays

Sister Act

Weiss is quite clear that she loves what she does – creating art gives her great pleasure.  She believes that art is meant to be seen and enjoyed, and hopes that her work stirs sensibilities, provokes emotions and most importantly, brings joy to those who experience it.

After meeting her and studying the pieces offered in our upcoming December auction, we can say that her hopes have been achieved – we have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know both Marilyn Weiss and her wonderful body of work.

To view the ArtistsinAuction website click here.

To view more of  Marilyn Weiss’ work, click here.

IN and OUT

Sunday Morning

Mikko Rantanen
http://broadcastbeach.wordpress.com/category/art/
http://www.mikkorantanen.com/

“UNKNOWN ALLEYWAY” Photographic print – Courtesy of the FANTOM FACTION

Last week was Thanksgiving. The only art related thing I got done was to read Neuromancer by William Gibson.

As a result, I will be presenting a selection of art created to be destroyed. Like cattle! This is art meat. So turn this video and take a walk with me down memory lane /death row.

Acrylic on Canvas

Graphite andMarker on Paper

MORE AFTER THE JUMP!

Acrylic on Masking Tape on Paper

Acrylic on Paper

Acrylic on Paper

Acrylic on Canvas

Random Stuff on Paper

These last pieces were all made to be incorporated into a collage of the image they represent. They are all Graphite and marker on Paper.

Anyways, pray for them if you like. The appeal process is usually long and fruitless. I will share the results when the time is right.

-JD

Body Armour Stage 1

I’ve made a start on this. The mannequin cost $15 from a shopfitters. I was going to collage it in decorative papers, but the shop I was going to get the paper from has gone out of business. Sooooo, I had to rethink what I was going to do. I decided to use text as a base for whatever might appear next. I purchased a couple of ‘discard’ books from the local library for $1 each, but I wanted a variety of size in the text so I ripped interesting words from the newspaper and used those too.  I also found a big picture of a watch, which took my fancy, so that also went on.

I don’t really have a plan. I want to just go with the flow and see what appears. I will cover the whole thing in paper before applying anything else.

Now reading: Guilty Pleasures, by Donald Barthelme.

Reading next: Dombey and Son, by Charles Dickens.

Don B gets my vote for coolest writer of the century: he’s like the Miles Davis of literature, unassailable in his hipness and his knack for finding the joy in (and audience for) experimentation.  But coolness is not an unalloyed good.  Some prefer warmth, after all.  Or sincerity.  Or finely drawn character.

I love Barthelme, have ever since I first read him in college.  I can’t even hold it against him that he was the New Yorker’s darling for so long; that’s how much I love him.  I can remember reading “The Joker’s Greatest Triumph” and thinking it was the greatest thing ever.  In this collection, we get “And Now Let’s Hear It for the Ed Sullivan Show!”, which is simply a recitation of the events of an episode.  Proto-TV fiction, in other words.  These TV-episode stories are still delightful examinations of how TV was fun and how it was banal (it’s both fun and banal differently now, 40 years down the road, of course).  I love the staccato incantation in “Ed Sullivan,” the flat judgments of the everymannish narrator, and the weirdnesses of people being on camera that it exposes.  (These, of course, are still weird, for all their seeming less weird to us: we are so used to the mannerisms and rhetoric that TV inflicts on us, now.)

But somehow these are less impressive to me, now, though I certainly see them as crucial for American experimental lit’s development.  I love Don B when he’s in pure play mode, especially: when he’s messing around, creating narratives around his collages of old engravings and illustrations, or compiling lists of real and/or imaginary things (“Games Are the Enemies of Beauty, Truth, and Sleep, Amanda Said” is an absolute classic of this type), or when he’s throwing his narrative and/or argument off the rails (or at least onto a sidetrack) just because it pleases him to do so (like the old-style s confusion in “An Hesitation on the Bank of the Delaware”). Is it weird that this is when he seems most important to me — not when he’s being “topical,” or “satirical”?

Mostly I love his mimicry: his perfect synthesis of tone, form, and vocabulary.  His story “That Cosmopolitan Girl,” an extended parody of an ad for Cosmopolitan magazine, is quite funny at first just for its silly exaggeration of the ad’s own rhythms and mannerisms and utter emptiness.  But it stays funny due to phrases like “pure unshirted hell” and its gonzo plot: when it moves beyond satire into surrealism.  He was a perfect sounding board for his time, was Don B.

There’s guilt to be had in the inconsequentiality of so much of his subject matter, I suppose, but Barthelme always seemed to get in at least one sentence that actually made you consider why he was writing what he was writing, or see why he loved what he was doing.  Sometimes he can seem a little too smooth for his own good — all of those seemingly tossed-off New Yorker pieces must have grated on his less fortunate contemporaries.  But hey, people love Kind of Blue for a reason, too.

This is the longest title I have ever used. And it is one of the most absurd of historical fictions. And yet. Is it possible in some other dimension? In some other possible universe? The image itself might well spin out an entire novel. In the viewer.

For the final entry for this year’s Art Every Day Month, I have finished up some handmade greeting cards that will be on sale at the craft fair I’m participating in on Thursday. I love these cards because they are made with paper that I had given up on. I took a paste paper class a couple of years ago at the Fuller Museum of Art in Brockton, Mass., with my art buddy Susan, an interior designer. We had a great time working for hours painting paper and making designs on sheet after sheet. But I don’t think I liked any of the results. So I put the stacks of paper away in my basement. While looking for some Christmas-y papers to work with this weekend, I dug it out, cut it up, combined pieces and voila! Once again, I see that there are no mistakes in art.

One of my gifty jewelry boxes available on ruthsartsandletters.etsy.com

It’s cyber Monday.  The Christmas season is upon us, whether we are ready or not.  (Personally, this past year went by entirely too fast, but that’s another thing altogether.)  The thing is, I did a couple of craft shows this fall, so I worked like a demon to crank out stuff I thought would sell well as Christmas gifts.  But, I overdo everything.  I made way too many cards and ornaments and jewelry boxes, and even worse, the work – and the holiday preparations - stopped being fun.  

It was time to refocus my efforts.  I reminded myself why I’m doing this — how good it feels to create something that others find beautiful or evocative.  The best compliment I ever got was from a young woman who told me my collages were like treasure hunts — you kept finding little things hidden here and there.  I love being able to create meaning for people — or more precisely, helping people create meaning for themselves.

So, it’s back to the artistry and away from giftable gadgets.  I decided to spend the holiday dabbling in something new — encaustic art.  I’ve ordered some supplies and look forward to experimenting and learning.  This may not be proper proceedure, but I like to experiment a little first, before I learn actual techniques because it frees me up to see all the possibilities.

Once this decision was made, that glorious feeling came back.   I don’t know that my encaustic work will be masterpiece-ful.  But the process of learning it will be.  Plus, Christmas can be Christmas again!

meet: KURT HALSEY, artist of little moments & simple thoughts

Kurt Halsey Fredericksen (better known as Kurt Halsey in the art community) was born on January 26, 1978 in the small town of Racine, Wisconsin.  As a youngster, Fredericksen developed his artistic personality and empathic storytelling approach by dabbling in cartoon imagery and four-panel drawings.  He was inspired by the comic strip “Calvin & Hobbes,” and had aspirations to one day become a newspaper cartoonist.  However, fate had other plans.  Fredericksen would later have a semester stint at Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, and then go on to graduate from Minneapolis College of Art and Design with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Painting in 2000.  He explained his shift in mediums:

❝Paint on canvas- you can never go wrong with that. It has history and staying power.❞

With meager beginnings, his simple sketches and compelling paintings gathered an underground following and soon became an internet phenomenon.  Fans and critics alike were able to find some, if not all, of his pieces to capture a time, sense, or being that left an imprint on their life–be it fleeting, lasting, or tragically nonreciprocating.  Although Fredericksen is elusive, as are most artists; he has been featured in Herbivore Magazine, ISM Quarterly, and Hi-Fructose Magazine.  Thus, the latter affiliations support this artist’s identity as a proud vegan.  He often portrays animals, especially felines, with heart-aching cuteness, and at times, a touch of anthropomorphism.  Perhaps, most identifiable are the witty titles, empathic one-liners, and thought-provoking scribings on almost all of his pieces.  Fredericken enlightens fans of his style:

❝Influenced by my hopeless romantic and super sensitive mindset, I pay far too much attention to the little things in life and in the relationship between two people. In constant need of reassurance, explanation, closure, and attention, my paintings are made.❞

At present, Fredericksen resides in Portland, Oregon with his fiancé, June, and their cats.  He continues to create drawings and paintings, but has since expanded his repertoire to include calendars, embroideries and buttons.  His works can be found in art exhibitions across the country, and can be perused/purchased through his website, artstar, and every so often on ebay.

On a personal note, I discovered Fredericksen’s work in the early 2000’s.  Needless to say, the feelings of loneliness and nonreciprocated likings resonated with my middle-school self.  I would use the library computers to print out his pieces and plaster them inside of my locker, while most of my peers had teen heartthrobs in theirs.  Over the years, I have grown up, as have his pieces.  Below are a few of my Fredericksen favorites ❤

Collage © Peaceology

Images © Kurt Halsey Fredericksen

Quote source & portrait image © Wikipedia

“La vie aprés la mort” è stata la prima mostra solista di Nicolas Malinowsky, un artista francese che lavora a Pargi come graphic designer.

Vi posto qui la descrizione della mostra:

“The show looks at the contemporary terms of heritage and transmission by building on a rather specific event. While browsing a second hand shop, the artist came across a wide-ranging ensemble of objects stemming from a deceased person. The original batch was largely made of books and vinyl records that reflected a pronounced interest in world culture and art. Over a certain period of time, Nicolas Malinowsky bought many of these objects without knowing that they all came from the same person. When he later found out, he realised these objects had much to say about this person’s life, passions and perhaps travels.

“This man must have been very knowledgeable and well-travelled. He may well have been an anthropologist, or at least a genuinely humanistic person, someone with a passion for the world, particularly India, the Ottoman world and Central America. Most of his books contain lavish illustrations and some of the records are rare research editions. He must have spent much of his time building up his collection before it landed between a frying pan and a discounted porcelain figurine at my local second hand store. I wanted to honour this man after meeting him in such an odd posthumous way”.

“Knowing that he was a music lover, I worked from both image and music-based elements – I am influenced by the practice of sampling, which combines, reworks or even redefines the legacies left by previous musical generations. I hope that he will somehow appreciate this afterlife tribute”.

Just like a classic early 90s Hip Hop album, “La vie après la mort” combines rare samples ranging from music to iconography. Each piece also draws on Nicolas Malinowsky’s own inspirations which include science, mysticism and surrealism. Thus, the show provides an illustration of how the past, past objects and cultural legacies are understood, read, consumed and shared in contemporary social practice.”

Time was the subject for November at il studio.

Le temps sujet du mois de novembre au studio.