The Green Gate

12" x 12" "The Green Gate"

This is the piece I made for the Art For Art VSA Idaho/Creative Access Art Center Fundraiser set for Oct. 3, 2013. The Boardwalk will include the work of local artists using a wide range of media on a consistent substrate which is a 12' x 12" plywood board. 

My assemblage/collage is centered on the theme of an original children's workbook copyright 1947. I have taken certain sentences from the story and illustrated them using things I have found such as a green gate, a goat and colorful flowers.

Come by on First Thursday Oct. 2 for a free public preview. Tickets for the event are $30. each or $50 per couple. The Creative Access Art Center is located at 500 South 8th St., downtown Boise.

Peace

Here is another project where I start out with a project from my friend Miriam who got rid of ALL of her art! She gifted me with many shadow boxes. This was one of them.

This was the perfect piece to show off my encaustic collage. 

Peace 12" x 8" shadow box mixed media 

Reflect on Your Life

 The focus of this mixed media piece is my life after retirement from teaching.  It's about moving out west and at age 50 taking up mountain biking and working through some of my fears of height and speed. 

Exhibit A

The piece of art featured in this blog post also started out from these pieces given to me to re-imagine.

This was the mixed media collage that needed finishing off. I like to use something more original than just a simple frame. If you have been following me for a while you have realized by now that  I never buy anything new for my art, so it's not like I'm going to be going to my local frame shop anytime soon.  I only use things gotten second hand, except for some glues and mediums. I even buy paint at garage sales and thrift stores. 

 

 

I had my mixed media piece cut to fit into the frame. I then sanded the existing paint and glue and took off the glitter and left it at that without painting over the design.

Here I am gluing the piece into the frame with weights to hold it down.

To fill in the space on top and bottom I poured white glue and spread it out with an old credit card. I then added beads and buttons and some old jewelry parts and filled in the spaces around them with sand from glass beach in Kauai that contains more glass, porcelain, coral and pottery than sand.  When that dried I poured Mod Podge Dimensional Magic on top.

Exhibit A 15" x 15" Mixed Media $250

The title to the piece came from the theme of the collage of A's.  Contained within the collage is an image of an Ant, the words Amaze, Adventure, Adore, Africa, an ace of spades and a vintage dictionary page of A's.

Famous Potatoes

This piece started with one of three pieces of art that were given to me by an artist friend who was cleaning out all her art and what she couldn't sell, she was giving away or throwing away. These had colorful loops of hand painted paper glued on top. I hated to destroy her art but she gave me permission and said If I didn't take them they would go in the dumpster. I didn't know what I would do with them and didn't want to just hoard them so I only took 3 of these. I emailed her yesterday if she still had the others and she said they were all thrown away! That makes me sad. Not only for myself but for her, and for the landfill. 

So what did I do with the frames? Below is one of the pieces of art and the process I went through.

I had this encaustic collage hanging around the studio waiting for something to finish it off.  I made it at Karen Bubb's encaustic workshop   It was just a tad too wide to fit inside the frame so I asked a builder friend if he could cut a 1/2" off the side. Now it fit.

 

The next decision was what to do with the frame itself. It had paper and blobs of glue and glitter on it that I sanded off. I liked how it looked sanded and decided not to paint over it.

Next was how to finish off the top and bottom as I was left with an inch or so of space on top and bottom of the collage. I tried vintage children's blocks but they looked too blocky, even if the colors were good.

Next I painted around the edges of the frame with black, so the bright colors of the back ground would not show up.

This same day my husband was called by the elderly neighbor if he could go over and help change out her license plates on the car. He came back with two license plates and said "I thought you could use these for something" now if you know my husband, this is a rarity! He usually throws things away before I can say, "can I have that?"  My initial reaction was no thanks I don't want them but on second thought I said, well what the heck give them to me an I'll see if I can find something to do with them.

Here are 2 of my pieces drying in their frames with all my button and bead jars to help hold them down and glue flat.

Famous Potatoes 15" x 15" $250 Encaustic Collage/Mixed Media

I love serendipity. I had to cut the edges of the license plate off but I love the way it turned out especially with the truck. Can anyone guess what state this license plate is from?