Two Years & Two Days

Feelings, feelings, feelings. My Dad passed away February 2, 2008. Now, two years and two days later I realize it was the beginning of a change in my family’s lives that’s continuing. My sister told me yesterday that our family home was cleaned out—”Cleaned out.” Ready to sell. Nothing stays the same, right? But, even after my Mom went into the nursing home and even when I didn’t stay at the house when I visited it was still there with everything in it, waiting. It’s not even the “things” themselves. It’s that all of them together made up a personality. So, no more things. Another grieving process starts. I don’t know what I would do without being able to express myself with my art.

One of the things I remember about when my Dad was dying was looking out a window at the cold New England winter and seeing a group of crows. That image appeared in a lot of the art I did around then about my Dad’s death. I recently did another piece that included a crow. I call it “Harbinger.” Crows are symbolic for me.

Harbinger

What I do on Tuesday Evenings

About 9 years ago I took my first stone sculpture class at Atlanta College of Art Adult Ed. My good friend Sue suggested taking it to relieve some stress from a medical issue I was dealing with. The first piece was a fist carved out of Texas sandstone (Sue has it now.) I really enjoyed working in 3D—so different from flat 2D—made me think a lot more since it would be viewed from many sides.

They stopped offering sculpture in Adult Ed but started again about 6-7 years ago so I took it again. This time I carved a hand (is there a pattern here?) out of pink alabaster. The instructor, Jane Jaskevich, was a great teacher—very patient and would easily communicate what parts of the stone to keep and what should be taken away.

Well, they stopped offering the class again but Jane taught students at her studio during the day and decided to offer a night course as well, Tuesday nights. So I decided to continue sculpting with Jane and almost every Tuesday night for 2 hours I go to Jane’s studio and carve stone. I love doing it! It’s the only medium I work in that’s completely for me. The thoughts of “will this sell” or “will this be commercial” almost never creep into my mind when I’m sculpting. It’s all for me. I can hardly believe that I’ve done it for this long. It’s become part of my life, “Tuesday Nights At Jane’s.”

Two years ago at the request of some of the students my partner Bob and I started having a student sculpture show at our gallery. It’s a time for family and friends of all the students to come and see what we’ve done for the past year. Here’s a link to a video of this past year’s show.

I’ve continued with the hand theme recently—carved 4 so far as well as other figurative pieces. Here’s my newest one that I just completed. I’m calling it Sacred & Ancient. It’s Black & White Alabaster about 16″ high.

Sacred & Ancient

Sacred & Ancient

The Salt & Pepper Shaker Collection

My visit back home to Massachusetts was great and I didn’t get stuck at the airport trying to get home Sunday even with all the snow. My flight was the first not to have been canceled so I had a seat assignment! There were 77 unfortunate standbys from previous canceled flight.

This was probably the last time I will have seen our home not emptied of everything. It was pretty much in disarray because my brother is getting it cleaned out and ready to put on the market. I took some last photos of my Mother’s salt & pepper shaker collection that I think I’ve mentioned before. They are mostly “displayed” in the room that use to be my bedroom. There are 5 bookcases full and various other wall displays not counting the ones that are in other parts of the house. I’m not sure where it went from a hobby to an obsession. She use to come back from flea markets and yard sales with bags full. Some never made it out of the bags.

I Haven’t had time to make any art but here’s a sampling of my Mother, Ada Simonetta’s art.

bookcase 1

bookcase 2

Christmas!

Halloween

Rabbits

Frogs

Cats

Assorted Produce

Boxed up

blueberry paper

This is kind of a weird post but,

Sunday morning I was making blueberry pancakes with frozen blueberries. The recipe said to rinse the blueberries first and let them drain on paper towels so that they wouldn’t turn the pancakes completely blue. As they were draining on the paper towels they were making the best stains, like blue star bursts. What a waste of color! I ran up stairs and grabbed a thin sheet of white paper and moved the blueberries to it. Luckily there was still some blue to drain out.

I’m going to use it in some future collage. Also thinking about making some paper and using blueberries to stain it or draining them on a different color. Not sure how stable the color will remain but it’ll be fun.

A Few Smaller Pieces

collage – various papers, acrylic on 3/4″ gallery wrapped canvas – 4″ x 4″

Fly Away

collage – various papers, acrylic, photograph on watercolor paper – 6″ x 6″

Beneath The Sky

collage – various papers, acrylic, aluminum leaf on 3″ gallery wrapped canvas – 8″ x 8″

Bound Sun

More Collages

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

I never throw anything away

I think I may have mentioned in a comment that I never throw any art-making materials away. Whether it’s a piece that didn’t work or a small scrap of paper that didn’t fit, I keep it all. I have limited myself to no smaller than 1″ x 1″ but that rule has its exceptions—a favorite kind of paper or a tiny composition that catches my eye.

The small pieces of paper usually hang out in front of me where I’ll scan them to see if I can use them while I work. This goes on until I don’t have anymore space to work then they get sorted by size and stuffed into bags for another time.

The pieces that I’ve made that don’t work get cut up, usually into squares or rectangles, and are combined with others into new stuff. I cut out a square hole in a piece of mat board and move it around the existing piece until I see a composition I like. I trace the square with a pencil and move on to find another composition. Then, after getting tired of doing that for a while, I’ll take an exact-o knife and ruler and cut out the squares. I lay the many squares out in front of me from several sessions of cutting and start to create, moving pieces and turning them until I’m satisfied. They get glued down to either mat board or sometimes to gallery wrapped canvas.

Here’s a few examples of what they look like. There is every kind of medium you can think of in these pieces—oil, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, papers, pencils, crayons, found objects, even some etchings that I made in college. They range in size from 5″ x 5″ to 12″ x 12″.

Afternoon Pursuit

Remixed

Spring

Golden Hour

Quilt

Passing Through

Sunday in Atlanta was chilly and rainy so I got a lot of time in to make art. I completed this larger collage on canvas that I had started a few weekends ago. I initially glued down three pieces of paper, the copper, blue and light green, that appear in the background. Last weekend I glued the blue “swoosh” across it. I let it sit all week studying it from time to time. This weekend I finished up with the amber “swoosh”, yellow and blue acrylic paint and a little caron d’ache to darken some areas. It’s difficult to see on screen but I played with some areas of just acrylic gloss medium with no color to add some diversity without adding more colors.

I had gotten in the habit of being able to complete two or three pieces in a weekend when I was making smaller collages. Now, making larger ones, it’s taking me two or three weekends to finish one. Mostly because I have this funny fear of not wanting to waste paper so I’ll analyze the piece to death before committing to the glue! I just received two large orders of papers so I’ll let that fear go.

various papers, acrylic, caron d’ache, acrylic medium on gallery wrapped canvas. 16″ x 16″

Passing Through

This is a detail of above piece

Passing Through detail

Weekend’s Collage Work

Bob and I had work in an art festival at a local private school this past weekend. They have it every year and we’ve participated for the past 6. The best part is you drop off your work for the weekend and they display it and sell it for you. They do take 40% but at least you have your weekend! I showed some of my new collage pieces this year and it’s the first year I didn’t sell anything. Disappointing, but I’ve learned to process that quickly. Bob did very well. His photography is very good and has wide appeal. On the way home from picking up our pieces we talked about why people may not have bought any of my work. Bob said he thinks they are some of the best collages I’ve done. I said maybe I’m a “Van Gogh” and my descendants will be very wealthy!

Oh well.  It’s not like I make things to sell anyway. I have to make things. One of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite books, “To Kill A Mockingbird” is about how Scout feels about reading and learning how to read from Atticus. “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” The first time I read that tears came to my eyes. It’s exactly how I feel about making things. I have to. It’s like breathing.

So, here are some things I made-

collage on gallery wrapped canvas — various papers, old piece of watercolor. wraps around canvas edge. 4″ x 4

Morning Serenade

collage on gallery wrapped canvas — various papers, acrylic, aluminum leaf 4″ x 4

Cloak

collage on gallery wrapped canvas— various papers, vintage postcard, colored pencil, caron d’arche. wraps around canvas edge. 4″ x 4

Asian Influenced

collage on gallery wrapped canvas — various papers, acrylic. 6″ x 8″.

Gesture-1

Collage Making

 

Collage making is all about decision making for me. I sit there on the floor with all these papers everywhere, a big mess really. Sometimes one might catch my eye, sometimes I have a definite color or texture in mind to start with and search through the pile for something specific. I most often cover the canvas with a single background and work from there. Inspiration can come from colors I see outside or I’ll pull an idea from memories. What follows is lots of tearing, cutting, placing, painting, drawing, turning the canvas around. Sometimes it’s hard to commit to gluing a piece of paper down. If I’m not sure I’ll leave it for a while and see what I think when I return. Other times I’ll place things and know immediately that it’s right. Just a satisfied feeling. The process continues, at times drawing with crayons or using some acrylic paint when I want that kind of texture. I’ve recently started to use acrylic mediums on some areas to get a glossy look. I’ll stop a lot,  hang the piece on the wall and stand back to get a different perspective on the composition. After a while, it’s done.

8″ x 8″ x 1.5″ gallery wrapped canvas. various papers, acrylic, caran d’ache, vintage postcard, handmade paper

the design goes around the edges. The first time I’ve done that in a while. Still not sure this one is finished.

Origins

6″ x 8″ x 1.5″ gallery wrapped canvas. various papers, caran d’ache. This one changed a lot as I worked on it. Lots got covered up as I progressed. I need to document the process along the way. I’m trying not to give representational titles to pieces that are abstract so people don’t read anything into them. I thought “constructions” would be appropriate.

Construction-1