Almost Done

This is today's; one more day before I start the black and white series.  However, since I still have lots of ephemera from all the old papers I've unearthed I'm planning to continue this series.  They won't all be 4 x 4 but most of them will be.  

Some will be even smaller.  A friend gave me a bunch of small canvases that will make their way in to this series.  Here are a few more of the recent pieces.

Once they are all done I may go back in and make a few changes.  I'm also thinking that encaustic would be a good way to finish them.  That's yet to be determined since I haven't done a lot with encaustic.  Then.... I've not done a lot of collage before either so may as well go for it.

More Collage and a Picnic

I am enjoying playing with these little pieces, it's a great way to start the day...  This is 14.  Here are 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19.  I haven't scanned today's yet.

And the picnic.... Yesterday we celebrated our friend Karen's remission with my high school buddies.  Fourteen years ago we girls got together for another weekend get away.  When we were younger we did that a lot.  Karen was going through chemo but didn't miss the trip.  She wore her blue hat and rested a lot but didn't miss anything.  That was in May.  On the way home, while laying down in the back of the van we rode down in, she told us she was going to have a Remission Picnic in July.  Yesterday we celebrated her 14th Annual Remission Picnic.  Unfortunately we did lose another friend this past year.... to cancer.  The young one with the dark hair is her daughter.  We're missing one other member of the group; she's still with us but had another commitment so couldn't make it to the picnic.

More Dailies

I said there would be 37, I meant 27.  Numbers are not my thing.  Here is the 3rd one and I have been good about getting them done.  This is day 7.  Here are days 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13. 

 Today's is a little different, it's 6x6 on a wood cradle.  I went directly to the wood rather than work on paper which will eventually be attached to a wood cradle.  These berry pickers are family and friends.  the towheads are my little brother and me.  Our mother is the one on the right.  It was not unusual to take our old rowboat to the other end of the lake I grew up on to pick berries.  I believe the place we are in this photo is very close to where my aunt and uncle built their last house many years later.

A lot of memories stirred up with the sorting and the collages.  It's helping me to recall stories to go in the memoir I'm working on. 

I'm not sure it is officially a memoir; it's stories .... some from my own experience and some based on stories I heard about family and friends when I was growing up;  My grandmother and my dad had many stories and I regret not having recorded them.  Some I remember and I'll include them; the main reason I'm writing them is so the next generation will know the stories.

Doing A Daily For A Month

I've challenged myself to a daily collage for this month using some of the parts I've accumulated from the deconstructing I've been doing.  Since most of my day has been clearing clutter from the studio I want to stay with that but want to keep making art as well.

I started July 5, this is the first one.  By the end of the month there will be 37 and hopefully some of them will be good enough to mount on a 4x4 cradle.  I'm not giving a lot of thought to the work, just getting something down.
This is Day 2 finished this morning.

Now back to the clutter clearing.... a huge bag of trash went to the curb this morning!

A Treasure Found

I have a couple old photo albums that were falling apart.  One had some great hardware on it so I didn't want to just throw it away.  The covers and spine were in bad shape.

I'm in the process of trying to eliminate some of the clutter in my studio -- old books and photo albums take up valuable shelf space.  After checking their value I decided it was time to deconstruct.  The material in the books is wonderful and good ephemera for collage.

One of the pieces set aside for deconstruction was the photo album.  You may know the type -- about 5 x 4 inches with 1/8th inch thick pages, one photo on each side of the page and gold on the edge. I first decided to remove some of the hardware, there is an inscription on the inside of the two brass clasps....

Fannie was my maternal great-grandfather's half sister. I'll have to look back at the family tree to see which family, she was older than my great-grandfather, his mother's child by her first marriage.  Back to the deconstruction.  It was a faux leather cover and much was torn and worn but not in a way that made it usable, at least on that side, so I began to remove it.  That's when I discovered how wonderful the gold page edges were.... as long as they stayed together.

WOW!  I knew that part had to stay together so I removed photos and began gluing the pages together.  I've finished gluing it together since this photo was taken, it is now the substrate for a college.  I've started it using some of the pile I had from other books I had recently deconstructed.

This was the start.  The more I looked at it the more I didn't like the coat of arms... here is where it stands currently....

I'm going to have to look at this for awhile before I decide if this part is done.  I still need to come up with something for the top...

or not...