MIXED MEDIA: pushing the envelope(s)

At the left is a collage of actual pay envelopes from two jobs made for some art class I took somewhere. I can't even remember where or when, though it might have been the Design with Collage class I took at GLSP program at Weseleyan in the late 80s. I have had a lot of trouble deciding which way is up in this piece.

At the right is a digitized rendition of it which I think works better. I like the differing near and far feel of dark and light areas. This work is  not about pay, or mail or society. It's just about shapes in repetition and the way the eye moves through them.

MIXED MEDIA: the Conductress

This is one of my favorite works. It's fairly recent, from the last two years. I collaged shopping bags from Music Plus, (a local sheet music store in Danbury) and some discarded photocopied music  to a stretched canvas with acrylic medium. The figure I drew on heavy paper with a pencil and I cut it out with sissors as a hollow silloette. Then it was painted red and glued on top of the collage. I changed my mind just recently and painted the figure black and added the baton, which I had actually intended to add when I originally drew the figure. I toyed with the idea of a piano keyboard instead because I couldn't decide what angle the baton should take. The little areas of pastel color are highlighter. pencil, crayon. I like the sense of movement which is created by the angles of the staff lines, the edges of the pages, and where the photocopy machine made a dark area on the page. One little thing I did on purpose - inside the figure there are some blank staves. We are not finished works, new parts can be added, even if the previous melodys are never quite erased.

The tourist's shirt

Moved from the Metaphoratorium blog

It's a dark touring madness, all curled and twisting.

finding my way

I heard today that when wind chimes shimmer their bright bells on the wind, that the sound chases out the old stagnant fears.  Well, I have no idea but one left untried. It's not so much happiness I seek, as that is in the moments. It is sustaining income without the loss of sanity as a trade-off. I feel like this old pup - constrained by a panel of glass I am only dimly aware of, and looking sadly into the distance.

The argument takes a surprising turn

This seems very French to me. It's all digital and I think that most people will not like it, as it is not very realistic. It depicts the inner not the outer color of this fictional event. One crazy frilly oddball is getting ready to shoot another crazy frilly oddball. Go figure.

Electric sea of Turmoil

This item was moved from the Metaphoratorium Gallery. It was created in Corel Painter 9.5. I think it reflects the inner termoil I felt on this date, as I was stressed out working full-time for a newspaper as a land use reporter.

Things might settle down, not sure just yet.

Billowing bright life

After a day of heartburn and stomach knots, being asked to rethink something difficult - something I thought was settled - I wanted it all to be over. (I was trying to quit my job.... and my declaration was not taken seriously... and like so many other things I had said at work, was ignored.)

But circumstances required that I re-decide, re-agonize all over again. Just then in the inbox for Bent Pin, I got a piece of writing made me relax. The central metaphor was a box of puzzle pieces, the writing was experimental.

It was about not having a solution, about there being no perfect solution, no exactly right life, but making it up and just being instead of searching.

So I had chamomile tea, and made this wild bright billow of life in Corel Painter (the work to the left).

My puzzle, and wonderfully alive any way I choose to arrange it. So be it.

and thank you Danny Bernardi. Thanks very much.