Wow! A double-post day! J Perry Fitzhugh's Found Glass Sculptures

Bopping over to Facebook after my last post, I discovered that my dear friend J. Perry Fitzhugh is having a show of is found-object glass sculptures at the Barboursville Fine Arts Gallery here in, you got it, Barboursville, Virginia.  Check out  the show here.

Perry's explored the delight of combining found glass and other objects in other times of his life, but this series is quite special.

        

Wonderland!

This art moved me so much I just had to share it in a post.

Driven by deep loss and emotion, artist Kirsty Mitchell says, 'Photography became my voice when I couldn't speak about what I was going through.  She calls this the Wonderland series. The wealth of detail and creativity is indeed a 'wonder' .

These photographs are not collages, but rather, photographs of created scenes; every element conceived, designed and made by Kirsty.

The Story Teller by Kirsty Mitchell

The Queen's Armada by Kirsty Mitchell

The Stars of Spring Will Carry You Home by Kirsty Mitchell

Click here for the whole story and more images

Check out Kirsty's Flickr page here

Gifting! Giving and Receiving and working in a small space

Dear friends recently got married.  I wanted to give them something personal, so I made a little wedding box for them.  This project was special in another way too, as it was the first assemblage I did in my new space.

My old studio had tons of space and all my tools and supplies were out on the counters, hung on the wall, on every shelf.  My new space is much smaller and all my tools and supplies are tucked away in cabinets or drawers or in storage boxes in the garage.

Certain assemblage parts, paints, beads etc that I remembered as once having, no longer were evident, even in my well-labeled boxes, so this piece had several trips to the craft store..

The new space asks me to be more thorough in my planning of a piece and more focused in the doing of the piece.  I set up a couple trays on the work surface for the specific bits and pieces and tools I was directly working with. Otherwise, everything else stayed tucked away.  I have an additional work surface where I can place some bits for drying, while I work on my main work table. I have found it an interesting energy to have to work more 'concentratingly' [is that a word?].

I found an inexpensive solution to protecting my work surface - heavy but flexible plastic runners for hardwood floors!  I found it at Lowes in the rug section and at only a couple dollars a foot, it is perfect.  I also use a piece to protect the rug in front of my work space.

The box in this piece is a purchased hardboard & paper book box, 8"wide and 2" deep.  The inside is filled with pearls, crystals, flowers and hearts and the large glass ball.  The couple is an amped image, printed on high gloss photo paper and mounted on styrofoam, the back of which is collaged with hand-made paper

Wedding box for Morris & Liz

Recently I received a great gift that was certainly chosen just for me - shoes for art, a curly haired doll and a lovely book on personal altars and icons by Jean McMann

Thank you cards are a perfect opportunity for a collage.  The background is from the book, a car altar by Harrod Blank, amped a bit, of course.

Mimi Yellow Shoes Thank You collage

I'm a fortunate girl indeed.

Mondo collages! Vintage! Pinterest binging!

I've been making a lot of collages lately.  Sometimes when things are stressful, there's just nothing like going through the image portal, flying with Photoshop elements and collageing as a way to find balance.

I also found that I've been reviewing, organizing and renaming my image collection. I've had special fun with looking through my images from the wonderful Mischief Circus site.  Not only do they have great images, every week their email sends inspiration as well. 

The two main images here are from found images.  The evocative woman in yellow is by Mark Demsteader. and the enigmatic male is Sebastian Horsley, a true character indeed, a London artist who sadly is no longer with us.  I think he'd appreciate the touch of Goth in this collage, which uses black roses from Mischief Circus.

Yellow Gothic collage ~
 acknowledgment to Mark Demsteader & Sebastian Horsley

Mischief Circus uses a lot of vintage images and that sparked me to do a Google search for others. An image really attracted me and took me to Pinterest, which I had to sign up for to view the image. Isn't she delightful?  She was part of a collage sheet that I found on Etsy at Lisa's Altered Art shop

Lisa offers many wonderful images and a whole collection of collage sheets with transparent backgrounds in png format for only $1.00 and up.

Although early vintage has not been quite my style, I've learned that there are many such images available, as most of them are copyright free because of their age.  

Here our Casino Girl is the key element in Vintage Play.

Vintage Play collage

So I had signed up for Pinterest and quickly received an email with other suggestions for images like the first one I saw.  I had heard of it, but had never checked it out.  Basically Pinterest is an free image sharing site, where people can 'pin' images they like to 'boards'.  I find I really like how the images are aggregated.

You can search for specific topics, such as vintage people, and then add other criteria, such as printables or ephemera, etc.  And as you search, Pinterest offers many criteria suggestions.  I have done versions of such searches in Google, but I really have come to like the Pinterest screen view. You are invited to 'pin' and like images and categories you view, but so far I haven't done that.  You can set up 'boards' in general or by topic and you can set up private boards.

People are very generous and there are many 'freebie' images for personal collage or one-off art.  One of my favorite sites is Land of Nod Studios, on Pinterest and at Etsy.

I used this young man from Land of Nod Studio, albeit altered with a zebra head.  The background image in this collage is an amped photo by my friend Perry, of a thrift shop right here in my town.  I love how he included the open car door in the composition.

Thrift Shop - They Have It All & Tacos Too! collage

Searching for  retro images from the 1940's at Pinterest I came across the powerful images of Horst B. Horst, a famous photographer for Vogue magazine.  The woman on the right and the hand with the paper opening to red are from two Vogue 40's  covers.   

Vogue Super Service collage

The bathing beauty with the beach ball was a summer Vogue cover.  The background is a vintage Miami hotel postcard.  The retro woman are from Mischief Circus, with my altered heads.  I've always used alternate heads in my assemblage work, so now they are appearing in the collages.

Vogueing Poolside Collage

Lastly, I got the Pinterest app for my tablet and find its a perfect accompaniment to watching television - searching Pinterest during the commercials.  Now I've come to appreciate that bit of commercial time!  What's even more fun is thinking of new topics and categories.  I may be late coming to the party , but I'm having fun now that I'm here.

And you can Pin this very post at Pinterest yourself!