Monday, January 31, 2011

Speed Indeed

Art at the Speed of Life: Motivation and Inspiration for Making Mixed-Media Art Every Day


Art at the Speed of Life, Pam Carriker's new book, is now available. This book is filled with high quality art, tons of step-by-step projects, essays that cover the most current topics, and suggestions that will help you to better integrate art into your busy life! I am blown away by the quality of this publication. This book is a reference that you will return to over and over.

I want to thank Pam for inviting me to be a part of this book. I am honored to have four pieces of art and an essay included in its pages. I will be sharing my work from the book in upcoming posts.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Collectors Edition: Chapter 5


Welcome to the fourth edition of The Pulse -- The State of the Art -- a survey in words and pictures of the online artist community. Nearly 150 artists have answered a list of questions which make up The Pulse. Their responses will be presented as a series of online and print projects. Links to the first four projects (Secret Sunday, The Book Guild, StudioScapes, Viewer's Choice) can be found on the sidebar of my blog.


Collectors Edition is the fifth installment in which your favorite artists share their favorite collection or obsession.
_______________



I collect unmounted stamps, postage stamps showing people´s heads for using them in my artwork, and vintage papers.
_______________



I collect earrings. I have over 200 pairs from all over the world. Some women feel naked if they leave the house without make-up. I don't wear make-up, but I feel naked if I leave the house without earrings. I also collect tarot decks (I stopped counting at 400), Devil figurines and statues, skeleton figurines and Day of the Dead sculptures, and Betty Boop figurines, bobbles heads and snow globes.
_______________



Golden's iridescent and interference acrylics
_______________


You only have to look at my blog or etsy shop to see I am a bit Buddha obsessed. I am drawn to most things with an Asian flavour and style. Here's a painting of mine. The fun thing about it is, it was a palette and had so much wonderful colour and texture that I couldn't throw it away. I painted over it and then with an exacto knife I cut the little nubs of dried paint so that they emerged from the background. I stamped the words "form is emptiness, emptiness is form" which is from a Buddhist text called The Heart Sutra but it also speaks to art work. Then I put a little box frame around it made from some old pieces of trellis wood.
_______________



My current obsession is gouache paints.
_______________



Old books. Some I repurpose. Some I just keep to look at and smell.
_______________



My current fascination has been using holiday windows as a kind of ready-made photo collage.
_______________



I do think it is awfully enlightening to see what we unconsciously collect. The things we imagine we do not have enough of and keep gathering. In my last organizing purge of the studio I put together a pile of dice, a stack obsolete library index cards, and a mound of smashed souvenir pennies.

Consciously, though, I collect things that I can not make. the rusty bent nail, a flattened flour scooper, those old telephone connectors. Even when I cannot imagine (imagine that) not using these time-altered items, the history of the thing pulls me and muses me into the building in texture, words, and crossover from 2D into 3D book form.

As others may find also, the longer one works, obsessions seem to cycle and rebound. Moving from one burner to another. As working with one media gives energy and rise of another, more familiar channel. I do think it has something to do with wanting to exhaust all possibilities. An intuitive relationship with my own workings go from the visual vocabulary to the written word and altered planes. Looming big, for me, is the religion myths as a tool to understand and evaluate the human condition searching for the threads of resonance that connect us all.
_______________



Art Journals 
_______________



Including bits and pieces of everyday life into a journal made of leftovers!
_______________

Thursday, January 27, 2011

CreateMixedMedia

Hot off the presses...


I am so happy to tell you about a new website that has literally just opened its doors: CreateMixedMediaRice Freeman-Zachery, Christine Doyle, Julie Hollyday, Nancy Soriano, and Tonia Davenport have been working in secret for many months to build a new community for all of us to visit, share, learn, and be inspired by. The site is so new, it is literally being filled with content as we speak. And new content will be added daily. But it already seems clear that CreateMixedMedia will be the go-to site for our community. There are videos, pictures, slideshows, podcasts, blogs, tutorials, e-books, wallpapers, artist profiles, and shops. Everything that you want in one place. As the site rolls out, I will post more information about it here on my blog and on my Facebook page.

Head on over to CreateMixedMedia. You can look around and register at the site. While you are there, sign up for your free e-book and newsletter. Maybe take a video class with Keith Lo Bue or Diana Trout. Listen to a podcast with creativity coach Quinn McDonald. Download a PDF tutorial on Thermal Book Binding by Dorothy Simpson Krause. Read an interview with contributing editor Leslie Riley. Stop by the shop and order a book or some supplies. Read the first, weekly blog post from Christen Olivarez, Director of Publishing for Stampington & Company and Editor-in-Chief of Somerset Studio. Well, you get the picture! Just plan on spending a lot of time at CreateMixedMedia. And if you find a link that is empty, click on it again soon, as the site is and will be continuously updated. See you there!

Paper Dreams

Paper Waffles


The Color of the Clear Sky


Paper Steps


Turn the Page


357


Sideshow

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Behind the Scenes


Painting behind the scenes tonight. I am working on a lot of projects that I am very excited about but none that I can show you...yet!

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Collectors Edition: Chapter 4


Welcome to the fourth edition of The Pulse -- The State of the Art -- a survey in words and pictures of the online artist community. Nearly 150 artists have answered a list of questions which make up The Pulse. Their responses will be presented as a series of online and print projects. Links to the first four projects (Secret Sunday, The Book Guild, StudioScapes, Viewer's Choice) can be found on the sidebar of my blog.



Collectors Edition is the fifth installment in which your favorite artists share their favorite collection or obsession.
_______________



My favorite obsession has to be books. I seem to have been looking at everything differently lately and trying to find the possibility of turning it into a book. I discovered some scrap wood in the garage and have mad several tunnel books. There is a lot to explore with this concept.
_______________



This is a little vignette/collection off the bulletin board in my studio. I love the sacred hearts from Mexico and Central and South America. I don't think I've consciously collected them, they just seem to find their way home with me. The same for hands. Hands and Hearts, it's what it's all about.
_______________



My growing collection of colored pencils and oil pastels.
_______________

 
_______________

 

I collect everything African from artifacts and books to my gatherings from the countryside around me. Here are just a few of the books in my collection.
The carved artifact is quite a rare Baule mouse oracle from the Ivory Coast. The belly of the pot is divided into 2 levels. The floor of the dividing partition has a hole in it so that the mouse can climb through from one level to the next. When someone consults the oracle the mouse is put in the bottom of the pot and flour, cowries and small bones are spread across the floor of the partition. Once the lid is put on the pot the mouse climbs through the hole and inspects whatever is on the floor of the partition, moving the bones and cowries and leaving imprints in the flour. After a minute the diviner removes the lid and reads the configuration of the bones etc. Oracle consultations can take from as long as an hour to a day.
_______________

 

Photos of birds on limbs against the sky....
_______________

 

Blocks. This is about half the collection...maybe I'm getting too many to choose between. Hard to edit!
_______________



50's mags: about 65 magazines from the 50s and 60s I bought some months ago for 6 dollars! I want more!! One of my cats likes them too!
_______________

 

My vintage school collection. I have an old student desk and school lockers where I store art supplies and lots & lots of old school memorabilia including a round robin "School Days" altered book. When I moved into my studio I had the intention of giving homage to the "Life is the school and love is the lesson" philosophy.
_______________

 

Partial ampersand collection.
_______________

Next posting: Sunday 01/30/11

Friday, January 21, 2011

Frame of Mind



With all the snow in NYC so far this winter, I have been in a black and white frame of mind...


Monday, January 17, 2011

No Limits


Don't just dream it...do it!

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Collectors Edition: Chapter 3


Welcome to the fourth edition of The Pulse -- The State of the Art -- a survey in words and pictures of the online artist community. Nearly 150 artists have answered a list of questions which make up The Pulse. Their responses will be presented as a series of online and print projects. Links to the first four projects (Secret Sunday, The Book Guild, StudioScapes, Viewer's Choice) can be found on the sidebar of my blog.



Collectors Edition is the fifth installment in which your favorite artists share their favorite collection or obsession.
_______________



Books...with a special emphasis on architecture and design at the moment.
_______________



At the moment I'd have to say that collecting and altering books is an obsession. I never know what I want to do but I start to work on them anyway. I'll prepare them for sketching and painting even though I already have several on the go. I can't pass up books with fun titles that might contribute to the eventual contents.
_______________



Pens!
_______________



Had to think about this! I don't really collect anything but I do have quite a large paper collection, so I guess you could say I collect papers. But then also I guess you could say I collect junk also! LOL! I scour thrift stores for anything that really "speaks" to me at the time, for use later in an assemblage. This picture is only a glimpse :)
_______________



My current painting obsession is my mini-paintings that I call flapjacks. When I finish a few and stack them up, they looked like a stack of flapjacks. They're quick, colorful and people love them!
_______________



I collect everything, in multiples . . . dice, doll heads, arms, legs, marbles, buttons, boxes, papers, nuts, bolts, bird feathers, hummm, maybe it would be easier to list those things I don't collect.
_______________



Urban exploration, documenting old abandoned buildings.
_______________



Keys!
_______________



One obsession is these wood articulated dolls. I call them theatre dolls and I have been creating theatre scenes beneath their skirts.
_______________



I have a few children's drawings hanging on my refrigerator. This one in particular makes me smile.
_______________

Next posting: Sunday 01/23/11