Expanding my horizons

30" x 10"... the biggest collage I've made using shredded papers! It was a bit daunting to figure out a scheme to keep this amount of skinny pieces of paper somewhat organized. What I came up with was to first print out the scene in sections, so I had six 8.5" x 14" prints of the scene manipulated with a watercolor filter... six prints of a drybrush filtered scene... six prints of a poster edges filter. I laid the prints out in the proper orientation for the whole scene and proceeded to shred one area at a time, starting with the prints for the upper right.

In this photo you can see that I'm working on the center top section. I have a print at the top of my drawing board showing me the whole scene, divided into sections. Under it are three sets of shredded pieces sorted into the proper order for me to easily pick from as I build the scene. I also shredded some pale blue paper from an 1856 ledger to use in the sky (you can see those by enlarging the top photo) and some yellowed paper from an 1879 ledger and prints of a 1904 topo map of Yellowstone to use in the grassy area. Those give an additional interest to the piece when viewed close up.

The business of art

My old business cards don't reflect the work I've been doing the last two years with scenes from the west, so I decided to make some new ones using shredded imagery. We'll photograph this to make a digital image for the printer. When he trims them out after printing, I'll have ten cards each with different imagery out of each sheet of card stock.

Second Chapter

Ever since making the "book" two weeks ago, I've been wanting to make another one. In this one, I chose to use all pages from the same book (Natural Advanced Geography, 1901), so the overall tone is the same yellowed paper, but variation is achieved through the use of etchings, colored maps, and illustrations from the book. I put the page numbers at the top for these facing pages and had some fun in picking what images to use out of the geography book. I'm calling this piece "Earth Bound."

Lines

Last year my friend Bob shared a photo with me that he took of a country road that had such a sense of depth with the road and power lines receding in space. Using his photo last spring, I made a torn paper collage of altered versions of the photo (top) and thought it would be fun to print out those versions again, run them through my paper shredder and make a second collage with horizontal strips (bottom). I was interested to see what the horizontal strips did to the perspective of the road. My husband gave it "a big thumbs up". Let me know what you think.

"Light Bulb"

I was looking through a list of "call for entries" when I saw where a Santa Fe gallery had expanded and posted three calls for entries for themed shows to exhibit in their larger space. The three themes were BOX, BOOK, and LINE. A "light bulb went off" and I had an idea to shred book pages to make an abstracted book!

I shredded pages from several books, chosen for their yellowed paper, language or illustrations. I used The Earth and the Stars ©1925, 1946; The Home Book of Art ©1884; Devil’s Ditties ©1931; Les Temps Modernes ©1959 and L’Europe Gothique XII XIV siécles. I made one 6" x 12" cradled panel (on the left) and then decided it would be fun to do a "facing page" and connect the two panels. As I made the right panel, I tried to make it relate to what was on the left panel – including putting the facing page number (43) in about the center, across from page 42. At times it felt like I was making a wild poem with the fragments of text. (If you click on the image, you can see what I mean.) We used a 3/8" aluminum channel to "bind" the book pages.

My Women's Art Workshop has taken a few months off while two of our members were in warmer parts of the country. I've proposed that our first topic be BOOK and we can submit any finished pieces that please us to the Santa Fe show. Stay tuned... more books to come!

Anticipation

My thoughts are turning toward a summer road trip west. After visiting our friend near Bozeman, Montana, we're planning to drive through the eastern edge of Idaho, down through Utah and over through Colorado. We'll take photos all along the way for me to use in my artwork, stop at some galleries to leave portfolios, and pick up some alabaster at a quarry in Ft. Collins for my husband, Rob, to carve.
In looking forward to spending some time in the western landscape, I worked on the 12" x 12" piece above. I've digitally altered a photo from Utah and added in some art papers and segments of text from a yellowed brochure from a western park. I told Rob I'd meant to work in some vertical strips in the left foreground and was musing about adding something and his response was, "No. That would ruin it. It's perfect the way it is." Well OK then!!!

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?