A bit of whimsy

You know I have a fascination with all things altered - especially altered houses and cars and such.  My trip to Florida this winter was a feast of altered buildings - The Bowling Ball house in Safety Harbor and the Low Key Hideaway motel in Cedar Key.  Alas, altering my house isn't an option [yet! lol] but I did have some fun altering a model house.  

This little house was sold as an unfinished bird house at Michael's craft stores.  And I've been saving the bathing beauty [who once was a souvenier pen topper!] for years.  I just had a bit of fun with this.  I also bought a small dollhouse kit for a future altered house.  I love all these Florida colors but think a 'dark' house will be fun too.  After all, I do have heaps of doll heads and such which might be nice on the side of a house. 

Safety Harbor altered house 10"x9"x6"

I also noticed that the same colors seem to speak to me when Florida is in the background of a piece. Without plan the Safety Harbor house ended up to an older piece, Numeral Girls in St Petersburg.  Yay sea blue, pink and orange.

Of course, if I lived in Florida I might be moved to change my styles, since altered everything and anything is quite abundant there.  Not to worry in any event as what evolves will do just that, evolve.

Freestyle collage and Tim's Vermeer

I've been free-styling with collage.  One device is to use traditional cut and past collage, with  images from one source, this case a New Yorker magazine.  I also require myself to paste the images as I find them, which lets the whole develop in a somewhat different way than I typically work.

 It is interesting to me to have a 'forced' focus in which the overall concept of the piece emerges, if there is one.  The New Yorker piece are pleasing images and shapes to me, a concept here is unformed.

New Yorker Magazine  collage

Now I've tried a digital version.  The device here was to use only images I had saved to my tablet or images in my 'To File' folder. I allowed freedom of placement in this one.  I began with the Van Gogh boys, which was a clever Halloween costume for the two brothers.  But once I found the Jackpot Motel image [which is a photo from the famous Las Vegas neon sign boneyard]. the 'retro' theme emerged more strongly.  Obviously, I'm attracted to retro images, as all of these were on hand.

Jackpot Motel collage

This may not come to a theater near you, but I'm sure eventually it will stream somewhere.  We are a wonderfully obsessive species. Check it out.

Free Spirit

The magical spirit of Aelita Andre

Healing Heels! Collage inspiration.

Shoes and art are a definite combo for me and 'Healing Heels' definitely was inspiration.

One day the Ladie's Home Journal magazine began appearing in my mailbox.  Now I don't think of myself as a LHJ person but apparently it was coming free-of-charge, so here it was for a browse-through and recycle.  But this month I'm glad it came.  They have a little feature on the last page called "Back Story' where they publish photos from individuals with an accompanying piece about the photo.

Healing Heals is excerpted from photographer Lauren Wakefield's blog about her battle with cancer.  Her heading quote for the LHJ piece is 'My best friend knew that if I was going to kick cancer's butt, I would need a seriously fierce pair of shoes to do it.'  Laura goes on to share how she dressed up for her treatment days, as 'looking good made me feel better.'  Yes, mam!!

You can check out the full story at Lauren's blog, here.  Click within this blog-post to see her original post about the shoes.  

Healing Heels - Lauren Wakefield

Travels and Found Art

The month of February my husband and I had a lovely meandering trip through Florida, heading off via Savannah, Georgia.   My eye is always drawn to signage, murals and other found art wherever I go.  This trip, though, I actually had two destinations in the itinerary because of their art.

My old pal Donna, who lives in Florida, sent me an article about off-the-beaten-path places which included a piece on the Low-Key Hideaway motel in Cedar Key.  This is a funky, old 50's 5 room motel that the owners have transformed into a magical place.  Pat Bonish transformed the outside and grounds with an explosion of assemblage, including bottle walls, bicycles on the roof, dolls on the walls and the amazing Tiki Bar.  Cindy Bonish decorated the rooms with a comfortable eclectic mix.  For me, it was a wonderful stay in an art installation! Everyday I discovered one thing after another. I had found some great black & white dotted shoes in a 2nd hand store in Savannah and made some photo set-ups with them here, as it seemed the perfect place to do that.  

Cedar Key itself, by the way, is a great 'old Florida' town that, although it has its touristy aspect, is wonderfully laid back and still has a clam and fishing industry. Some of my own photos are below, but you can check it all out online at http://www.lowkeyhideaway.com/   By the way, we liked the Low Key Hideaway and Cedar Key so much that we went back for a 2nd visit during our trip.

   

  

In a book called 'Weird Florida' [and yes, it is a whole series of books about weirdness through the U.S.] I found out about The Bowling Ball House in Safety Harbor,  so this became another destination. Todd and Kiaralinda began this art house 20 years ago after discovering some free bowling balls.  They now have this house creation and garden, a guest house across the street, art cars and are just about to open an art center in downtown Safety Harbor.  When we were there, Kiaralinda and three women were making mosaic panels which will cover the exterior walls of the new center.  She also told me that they had just been filmed by HGTV and eventually their segment will appear on Extreme Homes.  Their garden has previously been featured on Outrageous Backyards.  I purchased their children's book about their art for my granddaughter and made a photobook of my own photos for her as well. Check it all out, including their art, restaurant design and more at http://www.kiaralinda.com/

Crazy art and signage is everywhere and I am always catching it in photos.  Travel is great.  Life is good. Art is alive.

Lorde & Taylor and Ghosts oh my

I just love Lorde, the intense young New Zeland singer who has sprung on the scene via YouTube and most recently won a Grammy for the best Song of the Year and Best Solo Pop Performance.  I like her music, her attitude, her social consciousness and her dramatic looks.  An Art Girl for sure!

Somewhere in a conversation about Lorde, I made the association to the elegant old-school department store, Lord & Taylor.  My husband laughed and said, 'Hey you should do a collage with Lord and Taylor, like Taylor Hawkins.' and that set me off.  Taylor Hawkins is the intense drummer from Foo Fighters.  Next up, of course, was Taylor Swift and then with a variation on the theme, Koko Taylor, Blues Queen.  The Lord & Taylor store image is of an appropriately retro 1953 store in New Jersey.

Lorde & Taylor Rock collage

Lorde & Taylor Country collage

Lorde & Taylor Blues Collage

An earlier combo of Lorde & The Very Large array.  I came across the two images randomly one after the other while looking for something else.  I've amped and altered the original images.

The Very Large Array

Another another note entirely, our gallery, Shenandoah Valley Art Center is going to feature altered books in March, so I was inspired.  I opened this book literally to the page featured here, with the chapter heading 'Do you believe in ghosts?'.  From that, and with a laugh out loud, the theme was set.  The wonderful oooky-spooky figures come from a set of images I purchased around Halloween at DeviantScrap.com and these were included in the Hotel Hell series.

Do You Believe In Ghosts altered book

A new year!

Sometimes the energy is a bit goony and a bit edgy and you end up with this holiday greeting I posted on Facebook.

I was busy before the holidays - inspired by an item from ArtsCow - zippered bags they called cosmetic bags, but I think are anything-you-want-to-use-them-for-bags.  What a perfect image medium and practical too!  

ArtsCow is a great resource for printing images on a all manner of items - including photo books - with good quality and reasonable prices.  They are always offering a deal, so be sure to google for artscow coupons before you make a purchase.

So I set about designing collages for my family and friends and having them made into these clever bags.  I also gave them a card with the collage on it and enjoyed when they were surprised to find the collage on a bag.  Of course, I made myself a bag and a couple to sell at the Shenandoah Valley Art Center gift shop.  I really enjoy creating collages with specific people in mind.  Thinking about them, looking for the images that I feel 'resonate' with them and then finding how it all goes together just has it's own unique flow.

Mermaid Collage for April

Eclectic collage for Mimi

Laughing Mermaids collage for Deb

Steampunk Shakespearean  collage for Rachel

Angelic Roses collage  for Kathryn

Soaring Butterflies collage for Nora

White Mystics collage for Oksana

Astro collage for Jacqui

Be True Shoes collage variant for me!

I want to end with sharing a collage I made as a thank you note for some wonderful gifts I received this Christmas time.  Mz Mimi certainly had me in mind when she found a perfect pair of  art shoes, a motorcycle trophy with a witch on it [actually won at a Halloween race by her partner Mike!] and a fantastic book of photographs of images in fish tanks [wow, wish I had thought of that one!!] Fish Tank Sonata by Arthur Tess.

Magical Mimi Shoes collage

The wonderful laughing mermaid images are from ARTchixstudio.com - a favorite resource and inspiration of mine.

Collage as respite

So I've been caught up a bit in the holidays.  Creating cards, making some gifts and so on.  Can't share them here yet, as someone might be watching. But when my head is ready to blow up, I take another kind of rest and immerse myself in collage just 'because'.  

Images catch my eye and I'm off and running.  In a recent wonderful email communication with Mili from DailyOasis, a collage sharing newsletter, she said that my collages seemed to move from emotional work to fun.  I hadn't thought of the less personally-driven pieces as 'fun', but it does seem to fit the bill.  I am very attracted to the stuff of pop culture - vintage, retro, present.  The images speak to me in ways I really don't bother to analyze.  And I imagine that it's in that 'don't bother to analyze' energy that I my spirit is refreshed with those collages.

The main image in this collage is photograph by Mark Selinger which was featured in a recent Rolling Stone magazine article on Eminem.  I'm a fan of Eminem and really like his film 8 miles.  Anyway, the image took me for a spin,  I amped the color, extracted the main figure so I could enhance the size and popped in some multiple Eminem.  I do like multiple images.  This and that and there we go.  

More trivia, the brass cage with the man inside in the lower right, comes from the opening photo sequence for Elementary, the new tv series featuring a contemporary Sherlock Holmes played most excellently by Jonny Lee Miller with Lucy Liu as Watson.  The opening credit sequence delights me each time I see it and I captured some of the interesting images. 

Eminem digital collage - inspired by Mark Selinger photo

While looking for who-knows-what, I found a neat image of the great actor Robert Mitchum. Something about the image reminded me of my father and I decided to make a collage with them in it.  As I thought about it, I recalled that people always used to say that Victor Mature reminded them of my father, so in he went as well.  The 'amped' Victor Mature is by Mark T and you can see more of his work at Stars Portraits.

Anthony, Robert & Victor digital collage

You can see the cool Rube Goldberg opening sequence to Elementary right here!

Collaging, and Bits and Pieces

I've been doing a lot of digital collage lately, for myself and gifts and cards.  Since the Fall Foliage Art Show I haven't done any multi-media assemblage work, except to complete a couple pieces.  Hmmm - maybe packing, repacking and moving the abundance of work I had on hand, dampened the energy for such work for a bit.  Of course, as soon as I write that, I confess that I just ordered online a wonderful torso that I am planning to alter.

This pieces are bits of whimsy and it makes me laugh.

Monopolized mixed-media

Route 66 mixed-media

This piece is made from a jewelry hanger. These 'torso' jewelry hangers are pretty available now and I've used them as bases for other pieces.  I was going to embellish her further by hanging items from her curly 'hangers', when I realized she would be quite nice to actually use as a jewelry hanger, so she is a practical girl.  She's on offer at the gift shop of the Shenandoah Valley Art Center now.

Blue Jewelrygirl

 I've been very intrigued by Mountain Lions as of late and she has inspired some collage work.

Mountain Lion Crow Mother

The wonderful crow woman on the right in this collage is a 'Mother Crow with Tree of Crows' gourd art doll by Jeanne Fry and you can purchase it at ArtFire.