Sketching

My friend Penny came over on Friday so I could show her my technique for doing collage. As she started making a "sketch" using color aid papers and fabric to be a study for an art quilt, I began gluing down leftover shredded paper to work on a few ideas.
I see with the top one that making a landscape with random pieces could easily happen... weaving or using vertical strips has possibilities... and abstract scenes can work, too. What feelings are evoked for you when you look at these sketches?

Ya'll come!

I submitted images of three of my pieces to the National Juried Contemporary Exhibition at the Western Colorado Center for the Arts and was surprised to be notified that all three were accepted into the show! 134 artists submitted works and 53 pieces were juried into the show. I'd just finished my first two pieces using a paper shredder before the submission deadline and decided to see if they caught the juror's interest. I'm thrilled that they did as I find this new direction to show a lot of promise. I'll be packing them up soon to send them on their way to Grand Junction.

More abstracted shredded landscapes

In the last few weeks, I inched my way closer to abstraction with the shredded imagery. First I used leftover pieces and added some art papers to make a 12"x6" mountain and valley scene. I was pleased with how that turned out and decided to try a desert view.

I worked with a photo I took in Arches National Park in Utah and was planning to make a 14"x11" collage. I ran out two sets of filtered imagery, shredded them, started to organize the strips and decided it just felt like too many pieces, too hard, too too much!

In mulling over my options, I concluded that less height really worked best for the shredded work, so I made a 12"x6"(the one on the left) and shortened the height of the rocks as I built the scene from the bottom up. Since I had so many leftover pieces, I made a second 12"x6" and created my own rock formation. (In both I've added some art papers in green, rust, gold, and some ledger paper with handwriting; if you click on the image you can see those details better.) When I put the new collage on the shelf with the first one, they made a nice diptych! I'm calling it "Entrada" which is Spanish for entrance or entry; it is also the name given to the Jurassic-era sandstone layer that gives the park's arches their form.

Workshop with Students

I had a lot of fun Saturday conducting a collage workshop with eight students at Knox College. I showed them some of my work from a few years ago that used only found papers and old photographs, did a demo of my technique, and then set them loose. All of the women had brought in some items they wanted to work with, and they supplemented with some of the photos and papers I'd brought along. Two seniors in the group said this was just what they needed as a break from their busy schedules; we had a fun couple of hours creating together.

One of Seven

Well... I was thrilled to get juried into the "Open Small Works Exhibition" in New York City and be one of 65 that made the cut out of 600 entries. The icing on that nice cake arrived in my email Sunday, congratulating me on receiving one of the seven recognition awards at the February 9th opening reception. (The image above is on the news page at N.A.W.A.-National Association of Women Artists | National Association of Women Artists)

3rd in a series

After seeing the first two pieces in this series, friends asked how I kept the image together after the print went through the shredder... the answer is, I didn't! I took photos as I worked on the third one to show the process I've worked out. I started with a 12x12 cradled panel for this collage. I cropped a photo to that size and ran out three sets of prints: one without filtration, one with a "dry brush" Photoshop filter, and one with a "poster edges" filter (If you click on the image to enlarge it, you can see the different look each has.) I then printed the images in two sections on my color laser printer (the white lines show how I divided the 12" wide images for printing on my 8.5"x14" paper).

I put all of the top sections through the shredder and placed those in a pile on my drawing board and then shredded the three bottom sections and put those in another pile. I printed out a small photo of the scene to help me as I sorted and tried to assemble the image out of the quarter-inch wide strips.

As I adhered strips, I purposely did not line up the images exactly and would add sections straddling strips to further abstract the image. I varied the lengths of the strips as well.

I let the piece dry overnight and, in looking at it the next morning, decided to add a few more pieces to the bottom left to add a bit more interference.

2nd movement

I continued experimenting this week with running my imagery through a shredder and piecing together a landscape on two 10x8 cradled panels. Two friends whose art opinions I trust saw this piece and really raved about it, so that made me feel good. I got it done in time Friday to photograph it and submit it (and the 8x8 one from last week) to a juried show in Colorado. (click on the image to enlarge and see the details better)