It's an early morning tomorrow. I have to get up and make the almost three hour trek to Cambridge, NY for the Open House art show/reading at Bedlam Farm. I'm selling some of my photo collages and note cards and reading one of the pieces I wrote for this blog. I loaded the car earlier today as I had a busy night. The basket contains my boxed and loose note cards and the bags my matted and framed collages.
A few weeks ago I received a text from my sister-in-law Becky asking for some ideas for decorations for my nephew Avery’s E.T.-themed birthday party. I informed her that we must have Reese’s Pieces and offered to create a cardboard centerpiece featuring E.T.
Yesterday was Avery’s party. I toted my cardboard E.T. centerpiece up to the house and Becky placed it on the middle of the table amidst all the presents. A lot of the adults commented on it and the kids seemed to think it was cool. I found Avery sitting in the middle of the table holding it at one point.
Soon, however, the birthday party was in full swing. Kids swarmed around the table to watch Avery open presents and to sample the chocolate cake with Neapolitan icecream. The mothers soon were busy scooping icecream and cleaning up chocolate icing. It was about that time we noticed that Avery and a couple of the other kids are missing.
“Where are they?” his mother asked.
“They’re outside shooting at E.T. with their pellet guns,” his older brother Raine announced.
My brother and sister-in-law seemed upset and worried that I would be.
“It’s okay,” I quickly assured them. “At least, he liked it.”
And, I meant it. Kids should be kids and although I put a bit of work into my cardboard E.T. it was for Avery and his pleasure. Moments later he burst into the room proudly showing the pellet hole above E.T.’s head, a big smile on his face. Art should be enjoyed and Avery did just that. He just turned my static cardboard figure into a performance piece. It became a joint venture.
I've had an idea for this collage for awhile, but have been too busy to start it. In fact, it's been awhile since I started a new collage of any sort. Being home sick, but feeling slightly better, I had the opportunity this evening to start working on this one. It is far from finished, just the beginning -- well, maybe a little more than that. I started to add details such as the pug's shoes and ballet slippers. I wanted this piece to feel festive, joyful, spontaneous and also a little romantic. It also seems to me a bit old-fashioned. Some of the dogs remind me of the romantic lovers you see coming back after World War II and kissing in the streets. I'm trying something new here as well, adding the computer-drawn pugs from my New Year's sketch to the photographic elements. I think it really works here.
Funny, how often I have run into the idea of dogs dancing lately. My friend, Jon Katz, wrote a wonderful book of short stories called Dancing Dogs and during one of the give-a-ways I ran recently a woman told me all about the dancing work she does with her dogs. I originally started my sketch of the celebrating New Year's pugs as fighting dogs, but they looked to celebratory to me so I transformed them into dancers. The Akita in this collage is my brother John's dog. I remember snapping the picture of her standing on her rear legs and resting her arms on his and thinking they looked like they were dancing. Then, I began to realize just how many pictures I had with other dogs who also seemed to be striking a pose, such as the poodle I snapped out on a "doggie spa day."
I added the children (both my niece Catherine, actually) because at the heart I think my work is always a commentary on the relationship and interplay between children and animals, only here the dogs take center stage. I love how "the girl" in the red is reaching out to twirl the ball, just as if she belonged there. I have more I want to do with this piece, but I thought I'd share it as it progresses.
I started this collage a few months ago, but today with winter upon us full force, I decided this would be an appropriate time to share it. It is not yet finished. For now, its working title is "Dark."
It's been a long time coming but I finally finished my Mermaid collage. I'm calling it "Not Beyond Here." I was under the weather today, but being at home in bed gave me some time to do the sewing on the collage. So now it is complete.
As I said before, this one was a difficult one to pull off because of the black background and the light layers of the images, but I like how it turned out looking like water. The not beyond here signs were actually signs used after Irene to keep people from certain flooded areas. The mermaid tails were from a restaurant sign I passed one day. The moon in the corner was an actual reflection of the supermoon on my parent's pool cover. The pug belongs to my friend and the little girl is my niece Tori. but here, she has already taken on another identity for me. She is the mermaid. She looks older than my niece. Her eyes are different. She and the mer-pugs here are creatures of another world. One that simultaneously dares us to enter and warns us to stay away.
I went to my niece's birthday party this past weekend and was able to snap some shots of the little girls there. I also got some that I will be using in upcoming photo collages.
My sister-in-law Gretchin brought her sister and niece to my grandmother's pool this evening where we all enjoyed the day's last rays of sunlight. I took some lovely images of Gretchin's niece, Julia Grace, in this light. The shadow picture on the left and the middle portrait are not manipulated in any way. The final panel on the right I am making into a collage and this is the draft of it. I thought the three pieces went well together, so I added some text and tried them as a poster.
The text reads: "Shine little girl in the darkness and the light. Your shadow warms the waning sun. Your eyes hold its receding rays."
Hi, I've been getting a lot of new subscribers to the blog, for which I am very thankful, but I realized that many of you do not know much about me. In addition to being a certified "Pug Slut" -- it seems it's agreed upon now -- I am also a writer/teacher and a photographer/artist. I've been having a lot of success lately in showing and selling my collages, which along with my photographs I post here from time to time. Don't worry, pug lovers among you, just as they do in my life, pugs have a way of showing up in my work as well (as you can see in this picture here).
I thought I might share with you all a little bit about my process. This is an unfinished draft of a collage I have been working on for some time. It is a difficult piece because in order to capture the ethereal nature of the water and the mermaid the figures need to be intentionally blurry, but I still want something for viewers eyes to grab on to. I work from "recycled photos" -- digital images that may not quite work as stand-alone images, but when manipulated in Photoshop can really tell a story. I then print out these images and draw, embroider and whatever else I think will provide a more three-dimensional aspect to the piece, before scanning them back into Photoshop and manipulating some more. This is my sixth version of this collage and I have yet to print it out to work on it. The first version featured the girl alone. I wanted to add a companion and put in the pug on the righthand size of the image, but where I originally placed it, it looked as though he and the girl were engaged in some unsavory business (I'm not that much of a "slut") so I moved him around and added another and have been playing with the piece ever since. There still needs to be something going on in the left hand side and I have some ideas, but I thought I'd share it with you now as a work-in-progress. And, don't worry, there's still another pug post to follow later today!
Please understand I am opening Pandora's Box. Curious to see what I can create,
I allow my monsters and fairies to crawl out and escape.
Closing the lid I capture this hope. You will be considerate
and judge gently the druids and nymphs of my mind.