Process Papers Yet Again

One part of my process that took a while to develop is how I start a piece.

When I first started doing collages on canvas, I used to only cover the actual front surface of the collage with my creation.  This meant that the sides were plain and white, and after a while I realized that this was rather ugly and wasting space that could be prettied up.

I tried to amend this by painting the sides of the collage with colors that sort of matched the collage itself.  This looked even worse.  Sometimes the colors did match, but often they were off just enough to ruin the effect of the whole piece.

Eventually, my cousin Jan Lawson, a great artist herself, said to me, "Why don't you just extend the collage out over to the edges?"

DUH!

Why had I not seen this before?  It made perfect sense.  I often had extra paper hanging over the sides that I used to just cut off.  Now I could feel free to glue that paper on to the sides and it would extend the design and, I hope, heighten the appeal.

I've extended that further.  Rather than add the collage design to a blank white canvas, I've been covering the entire canvas with a sheet of handmade paper with a color that compliments the piece I plan to make.  This is what I mean

The base of this collage was originally a piece I'd shown in a pop up exhibition honoring my home town.  A few weeks later, I looked at that piece again and realized it just didn't work.  In truth, I cringed at the sight of it.  It just looked so awful.

So I removed what parts of the collage I could save, and just left the canvas to sit for a while until I decided what to do with it.  Close to a year actually.

So then I restarted the piece by covering it with a sort of bronzy paper that I just love and can no longer find.  (Sorry about the photo)

Then I started to add paper that I'd picked out earlier when I was figuring out what to make.

It really is trial and error.  Some things work, others don't.  I have the option to change it until I glue it down, and even then I can cover it over if I don't like it.  But usually I test drive the stuff until I am ready to use the glue.

I had had several images of people I wanted to use at the beginning, but I found this photograph in a bin of photos at an antique shop in Bristol, and really liked the woman's face, so she was the one for me.  

As you can see, I continued to add elements after the previous photo, and came up with something I like quite a lot.  I'm hanging it in the Member section of the Mill Gallery, run by the Pawtucket Arts Collaborative - a perk of being a Gallery volunteer.  

By the way, you may have noticed that this collage doesn't have one of my usual tag lines.  I considered adding one, but decided that it worked without it and actually, I think, a tag line would have spoiled it.  

Do you agree?

later,
lin

Art on My Wall

When I moved into my current apartment, three years ago this month, I had to ask Maintenance to put up my pictures which is SOP for my complex.  

Not a problem.

Doug, the maintenance man (whom my cat adores, and the feeling is mutual), came in to do my pictures and was surprised by what I had.

No photographs.

No Elvis pictures.

Instead, I had a few paintings and a couple of my collages.  And, he said, (more or less) I can't remember an apartment here that doesn't have photographs and just has paintings.  I love it!  He was also impressed by my wanting lots of white space around the art.  Most apartments here pack tons of stuff on the walls.  

The art that I've purchased is stuff I love.  The collages of mine that I put up get changed out often.  Often I will put something on the wall that I'm not sure of and need to live with for a while before deciding to keep or destroy.

So here's what's on my walls

I had to photograph this on my bed because when I tried to photograph it on the wall, I kept getting a reflection of myself taking the picture.

I bought this painting about 15 years ago at a Providence Art Club sale.  To borrow a cliche, it spoke to me.  There's something about the profile that appealed to me.  It is obviously not a portrait of the painter Kathe Kollwitz (one of my favorites), but I felt as if there was something that reminded me of her.  It hangs in my bedroom and I can see it from my bed and I love it.

This is one of my earliest collages, done on a cheap wooden heart I'd gotten at Dollar Tree.  I had the idea of making small pieces that could hang on a cube wall or in a small niche.  I love the little girls and have used them elsewhere.   It hangs below the above painting and makes me smile whenever I see it.

This piece was purchased in an art cooperative shop in Cooperstown, New York.  I loved the black on white, I love embroidery, and it was just a piece I fell in love with.  It hung on one of my office walls for years, and when I moved here, I knew just the place for it in my bedroom.

This is one of my collages, a fairly recent one.  It's not one I'm testing, but one that I really like a lot.  I'd done it for an exhibition in 2013.  The woman character is one that I use frequently and, indeed, the piece I did about process the other day includes this woman.  It's another piece that makes me smile.

Not the greatest photograph, but it's a great painting.  It's a landscape by my cousin, Jan Lawson, and I was thrilled when she gave it to me last year.  It's moved around a lot in my apartment but is now in a corner above my collage work table.  I can see it from my couch and from the area where I use my laptop.  I'm proud of my cousin who is finally getting some local recognition for her work, having won an Honorable Mention at a recent show at the Rhode Island Watercolor Society.  She loves to paint things that others think are ugly or strange.  I just really like her work.

This painting is by Irene Allen, a well-known Rhode Island artist.  She often does paintings that can be both abstract and representational and, in fact, won two prizes in a show for the same painting - best abstract and best representational.  She's still wondering about that.  Irene and I shared a space at a show two years ago and I basically lived with her paintings for a whole weekend.  I knew I had to buy one of them, and this was my final choice.  Some have looked at it and thought it shows water flowing under a bridge.  Others see it as the abstract that it is.  Either way, I love it.  It's in my living room and I see it all the time.

And now for the final painting and my favorite of all of the work I have hanging... It's called "Enigma" and by a former Rhode Island artist named Claudia Cockerill, and co-worker at Brown University with me.  I saw it hanging at the Providence Art Club and had to have it.  The painting is mysterious, dark, and to some dreary. I love the interplay of shadow, and the way the woman wears her clothes.  When Claudia brought it to me after I paid for it, my then boss looked at it and said, "Why on earth did you buy that ugly thing?"  To some it is indeed ugly.  I think, though, that it reflects the darkness within me, and I appreciate it.  It's beautiful to me (and the artist) and that's really all that matters, isn't it?

Later,

Lin