Tag: collage

A to Z Blogging Challenge

I is for Insect

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If you’re here for a post about insects, sorry. This is more about creating and failing.

And yes, I know that a spider is an arachnid, but the bee is an insect, so I used it.

Last fall I went to a collage art workshop in Nashville taught by Wayne Brezinka. His artwork is stunningly beautiful and thought-provoking. I had been dabbling in my little cards and thought it might be interesting to see how such an acclaimed artist tackled collage.

First, we all had to introduce ourselves, telling why we were there. Immediately I was intimidated. The others in the class were artists, museum curators, people who were somebody. Mary and I sat on the far side of the circle. When it was our turn, it was another instance of I’m-with-her, as we both slouched in our folding chairs wishing we could disappear.

 

Wayne had planned several projects. First everyone made a picture of either a coffee cup or an apple. Some turned out gorgeous. Mine turned out odd at best.

After lunch, we spent most of the afternoon working on our own project. With you-don’t-belong-here you-don’t-belong-here throbbing through my mind, I stared at my canvas and wished I could leave. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that Mary was there, I may have made some excuse and headed for the door.

But I didn’t.

I made this, a piece I still don’t really like. A house is adrift on stormy seas.  A man in a row-boat is about to be swallowed by a wave or a fish or a giant snake. The Mr. Peanut sun doesn’t shed much light.

It’s probably reflective of how I was feeling. Overwhelmed. Sinking.

When I got home from Nashville, I wasn’t invigorated to do collage. I felt so inadequate.

I really enjoy making collages though, so, good or not, I continued.

Teddy Roosevelt said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.”

’tis so true.

And Tim Gunn said, “Life is not a solo act. It’s a huge collaboration.”

My collages now bear a little influence from Wayne Brezinka. I had to realize that I will never make art like Wayne because I am not Wayne.

I’m just me, and what I do is mine.

This insect card bears his influence though.

Wayne uses a variety of materials in his collages — found items, sticks, rocks, as well as the obvious paper.  Our Christmas cyclamen was dropping its blossoms whole, so I pressed a few to see how they would dry. One appears on this card — a fragile white blossom for the spider to sit on.

Wayne adds physical depth to his work by layering and using cardboard to “pop” parts out. I popped the spider with a little cardboard behind.

I was frustrated that the child’s hand somehow got damaged, Mary said, “It’s okay. Nothing’s perfect.”

And she’s right. I kept the card because of Mary’s influence.

Now to unravel the rest of the (unwitting) collaborators — The background is from Ezra Jack Keats’ Over in the Meadow. The child is from The Silly Sheepdog by Heather Amery and Stephen Cartwright. The bee (and maybe the spider, but I’m not sure) is(are) from A Trip to the Yard, pictures by Marjorie Hartwell and Rachel Dixon.

 

A to Z Blogging Challenge · family

H is for Helping

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Laurel sat next to me on the couch last night when I started this post by writing the title and inserting the picture I planned to use.

“Are you going to write about me?” she asked. “I help.”

Indeed she does. Laurel is an outstanding sous chef. She is often with me in the kitchen at dinner time helping with meal prep. She scours the internet for healthy recipes and sometimes volunteers to make dinner, on which occasions I am her sous chef. I think that’s pretty remarkable for a 13-year-old.

Mary helps, too, in her own way. She empties the dishwasher, unasked and often unseen. She brings my father his nightly beer. She makes sure he has the baseball game or Wheel of Fortune on after dinner. She has fixed him lunch on days when I’m not available. My father will say, “Mary is solid,” which I think may be cringe-worthy words for a 17-year-old to hear, but by which he means that he can count on her, a high compliment.

And the truth is, all my kids are great helpers. They have acted as gardeners and landscapers around my parents’ property, mowing the lawn, weeding the myrtle, cleaning up sticks and debris. They have chauffeured, accompanied, and assisted, attending to their elderly grandparents in so many ways.

Lately, some of my adult children have been caregivers, staying with my father over weekends when I need to be away. It’s a huge help to me.

I’m quite sure they inherited the helping gene from their father. Bud is one of the hardest-working, most generous people I know.

So thank you to all my helpers. You know who you are. I see what you’re doing and I appreciate it.

This picture is very early in my whole cutting-up-books-to-make-cards adventure.

The tree is from Garth Williams’ beautiful book, The Rabbits’ Wedding, the book that started it all. I picked it up at a yard sale, a gorgeous oversized picture book that had sat in the rain. It was starting to mold and smell — but the illustrations were so beautiful that I couldn’t stand the thought of it going to the dump. So, blindly, I paid a ridiculous amount of money for a soggy moldy book — 50¢ — and brought it home not knowing what I would do with it.

The girl is from Sarah’s Unicorn by Bruce and Katherine Coville. The illustrations in the book were all black-and-white, so I watercolored her, as well as the background.

I don’t know where the bird and nest are from.

family

Tenacious

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The other day I stopped by the thrift store again.

I have a routine. When I drop my father at the nursing home where my mother had been — he likes to visit some of the employees — I make a quick trip to the thrift store. One is just down the road from the other.

I headed for the bookshelves where I found a worker was pulling books off and tossing them into a box.

“Are you getting rid of those?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “Who would want them?” She picked up a paperback novel that had obviously either sat in the rain or been dropped in the toilet and held it out to me.

“I might like some of these picture books,” I said, pulling one out of the box.

I hit the mother lode that day.

Bedraggled, colored-in, torn, falling apart books are my favorite. I have no guilt cutting them up. I feel as though I’m giving them a new life.

When I made Laurel a coupon book for her 13th birthday, I cut up our personal copy of Tikki Tikki Tembo (author – Arlene Mosel, illustrator – Blair Lent). The book about the younger brother with a short name and the older brother with a very long name was a favorite with my children.

Chang is tenacious about getting help for his brother, the title character.

I think that’s what I love about the story. Brother looking out for brother.

For Laurel, my youngest daughter, a girl with seven older siblings, she has a lot of people to look out for — and a lot of people who look out for her. I thought it was okay to use that book. A good reminder.

Because that’s what family is all about — life/love in brokenness and care for one another.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · prayer

G is for Giggle

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Here’s what I see in this collage: The rabbit is giggling because it sees the bigger picture. The man is so annoyed at the rabbit, probably because it had wreaked havoc his garden, that he is unaware of the wolf on his roof.

I can remember watching a bunny nibble all the pansy blossoms in my garden and I was helpless to do anything because I was nursing a baby. If I got up and shooed the rabbit away, I would have disturbed the baby. So I just watched as the rabbit hopped, lippity-lippity, from plant to plant, nibbling away my pretties.

Sometimes, though, we can be so distracted by the little problem that we miss a bigger one — like the wolf preparing to head down the chimney.

The bunny thinks it’s funny.

The man can’t get over his annoyance — and that makes him clueless.

Lord,
help me to keep little things in proper perspective
so that I can be aware of what’s most expedient.

Background from Mother Night by Denys Cazet

House and wolf from The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf illustrated by Keiko Motoyama

Man in the window from A Boy Who Wants a Dinosaur by Hiawyn Oram and Satoshi Kitamura

Rabbit and bushes are from two different books, but I don’t remember which ones.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · family

F is for Family

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The background is from Mother Night by Denys Cazet.

The family is from Wheels on the Bus (a Raffi Song to Read book) illustrated by Sylvie Kantorovitz Wickstrom.

I love the way this picture turned out. The family is the point of light in a dark world.

The question is, are they coming or going? Are they refugees fleeing a greater darkness? Or are they arriving home after a long journey?

Whichever it is, I see them pausing to look at their house.

In statistics, an outlier is an observation point that is distant from other observations.

I don’t think of my little family as outliers, though. I think of them as looking at home.

 

A to Z Blogging Challenge

E is for Escape

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Jennifer Trafton Peterson, author of The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic and her brand-new book, Henry and the Chalk Dragon, explained her writing process something like this — “I think of a picture that makes me laugh, something funny, and I write to it.”

When she read aloud a portion of Henry and the Chalk Dragon last fall at Hutchmoot, the annual gathering of Rabbit Room peeps, it was the funniest thing I had heard in a long time. Of course, I immediately pre-ordered the book.

It arrived the other day. Every time I see it — and I set it in a place I would see it often — it gives me impetus to finish the book I’m currently reading so I can dive headlong into Henry’s adventure. Yes, it was written for 3rd grade boys, but I can’t tell you about a time that I’ve been more excited to read a book.

Henry and the Chalk Dragon has absolutely nothing to do with my “E” collage, except that I used the Jennifer Trafton method of creating. I sat one day with a pile of pictures spread out before me and thought about which ones would be funny together.

One of the results was this one — a butterfly chasing a pig.

It made me think of Monty Python’s Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, when the knights were in denial of the danger, but it quickly turned to “Run away! Run away!”

My picture depicts a narrow escape from the Bloodcurdling Butterfly of Baoithein.

Fence and bunny from Catch Me, Catch Me! A Thomas the Tank Engine Story illustrated by Owain Bell

Fleeing pig from The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf illustrated by Keiko Motoyama

Butterfly from — I’m so sorry, dear illustrator, I don’t remember!

A to Z Blogging Challenge

D is for Danger

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Rabbit from A Boy Who Wants a Dinosaur by Hiawyn Oram and Satoshi Kitamura
Train tracks from Catch Me, Catch Me! A Thomas the Tank Engine Story illustrated by Owain Bell
Lego guy from Lego City: Snow Chase — Scholastic Books
Extraneous bushes from ??

Ways to deal with danger (note — not all these are optimal):

  • See it. Recognize it.
  • Be immobilized by fear/horror.
  • Yell for help.
  • Be the help.

Things to do in the wake of tragedy (note — not all these are optimal):

  • Nothing.
  • Weep.
  • Clean up.
  • Prepare against further tragedy.
  • Push back with good.

Yesterday my Facebook news feed held horrific images from Syria.

I don’t do well with horrific images.

In fact, I turned off the television for years after seeing bodies floating in the Kigali River during the Rwandan genocide.

Mary was asking me about my memories of the Vietnam War era the other day. I told her that Time Magazine had images that I can’t erase from my mind.

I never watched Schindler’s List because I knew I couldn’t handle the violence of it. Someone told me that you get sort of used to seeing a Nazi pull out a gun and shoot someone in the head. I never want to get used to that.

At the same time, I don’t to be unaware, sticking my head in the sand. I read the news avidly.

I want to push back against the darkness in the world. How can I do that?

At the very least, I can champion for good with my words.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Life

C is for Christmas

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That moment when you realize that there really is a Naughty/Nice list.

I fell in love with this little girl when I saw her, head in hands, sitting in the overstuffed chair. Who can’t relate to what she’s feeling?

One of my sons, when he was in the midst of a bad day, used to ask, “Why does everything bad happen to me?”

Some days just feel like that.

But, as Anne Shirley said, “Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”

We’re always sitting on the cusp of a new day.

The little girl is from The Terrible Thing That Happened at Our House by Marge Blaine and illustrated by John Wallner.

Santa — and I love the grim look on his face, like he’s thinking, This is the downside of my job, but I’ve got to do it — is from Sandra Boynton’s Christmastime! I have been a HUGE Sandra Boynton fan since I first picked up a “Don’t let the turkeys get you down” mug at Logos Bookstore on Marshall Street in Syracuse in, maybe, 1980. I think we still have it. Once, probably 20 years ago, we drove to Stamford, NY, where she had an exhibit at an art center. She autographed some board books for us, but mostly I wanted to meet her. When I found her book at the thrift store, I felt a little sad that someone abused and discarded it.  At the same time I was thrilled at the chance of giving it new life in scenes like the one above.

The flooring in the room is from Ox-Cart Man (illustrator – Barbara Cooney).

The wallpaper is some leftover origami paper.

A to Z Blogging Challenge

A is for Ambush

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or,
A Preview for my 2017 A-to-Z Blogging Challenge

My topic for the A-to-Z Challenge this year is my kitschy collage artwork.

Sometimes I think of it as quirky; today it feels like kitsch.

I’ve planned out every day except one. J is giving me problems.

And some days, like A, I had multiple to choose from.

This was my initial A.

AMBUSH

I have two self-imposed rules for each card.

  1. No two pictures from the same book.
  2. It must tell a story.

I used to have a rabbit rule. A rabbit was to appear on every card, but I nixed that one. Rabbits can be hard to come by.

In the above picture, the monkey is Zephyr from Meet Babar and His Family (Laurent de Brunhoff),  the Lego Santa is from Snow Chase, a scholastic Lego book, the little boy is from Mother Goose Treasury, and the background is from Little Polar Bear, Take Me Home! (Hans de Beer).

You can make up your own story to go with it. I know what mine is. The collage definitely suggests a story.

But the picture bothered me. The boy’s scarf is blowing one way, and the Lego man’s beard is blowing another. Zephyr is actually standing on the polar bear but his head is hidden by the snowmobile. So I got this bright idea that I would “fix” the picture.

I added some greens to hide the scarf and partially mask where Zephyr is standing.

I wasn’t happy with the final product.

Oh, I’ll still send the card to somebody.

Just for laughs.

And because I know enough people who don’t mind imperfection.

But A is no longer Ambush.

Tune in next Saturday to find out what it is.

family

Explanation

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“What’s something I say a lot?” I asked Mary.

I was reading another person’s post on Facebook that contained a list of questions parents can ask their children to get funny answers.

I knew I was in trouble when Mary answered, “I’ve suddenly forgotten everything you’ve ever said.”

“Really?” I asked.

“My mind just goes blank sometimes,” she said. “Once in geometry class, the teacher asked me a question and I told that I had just forgotten everything I ever knew about angles. She thought that was pretty funny.”

Mary’s answers revealed that she recognized my penchant for coffee.

      Q: What makes me happy?
      A: Coffee.
      Q: What makes me unhappy?
      A: Lack of coffee.
      Q: What’s my favorite food?
      A: Is coffee considered a food?

And that she understood how important home is to me

      Q: If I could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?
      A: Home

But one answer definitely needed more explanation.

      Q: What’s my favorite thing to do?
      A: Cut pictures out of children’s books

Yes, this is true. But it may not be exactly as it sounds.

I’ve been playing with collage, and using old picture books — the ones with pages falling out, or colored on, or ripped — and cutting out the pictures to use in my collages.

For Christmas, our place holders didn’t have names on them, just pictures that made me think of that person. img_0899To make 20 place-cards required a lot of pictures. Mary watched me spend a lot of time snipping. And she saw me get excited whenever I found a beat-up copy of a favorite book.

Some of my cut-out pictures have made their way onto cards. Quirky cards, at best. The possibilities are infinite when combining children’s books.

A dear friend (and recipient of one of these strange cards) sent me a stamp so I can add my name to the back of the cards and make them official.img_1033

They are made with love.

And often while sipping a cup of coffee.

Mary can attest to that.