I love collage!

I love collage!  I used to do a lot of it, mostly paper collage, then I switched to mostly digital collage, and now do a little mixed media collage.  But for 2014, I think one of my resolutions will be to get back to some paper collage.  It's a great way to blend texture, color and even lettering.  Here are a few of my paper collages from years past.  You may see more examples of various art I do on my website.

This one incorporates a Nietsche quote in black letter calligraphy.  To get the red lettering to show up on the black paper I first lettered in red to no avail.  I lettered over it with white, then again with red.  Tediously exacting, but worth it.  I could have sold it about 7 times at Art in Speed Park the year I made it, but a couple bought it and left it at my booth while they shopped so others seeing it were disappointed.  I still love it.  I hope they do too!

The Earth Speaks, The Moon Listens.  This is on of a series of layered paper collages.  They often incorporated handmade and/or hand painted papers and calligraphy.

This is Asia Blue I.  It was one of a pair in the same colors and theme.  It has calligraphy, painted papers, embroidery threads, embossing, thin sticks and a small paper-cut meant to emulate a Chinese 'chop'.

Here's one from a couple of years ago, made as a birthday card.  Papers were painted and lettered, cut to shape and glued on flat.  Details were added in colored pencil.  I used to do a lot of torn and cut paper funky bird collages, but made no photos to document them.  I want to make more! 

 This was an early one, and won a first place award in a state competition.  I called it Ya-Te-Hey.  It has a peahen feather, homemade papers, sticks, wires and embroidery floss echoing the colors in the papers.

Latin Wisdom was part of a small hanging booklet, made like a Jacob's Ladder.

2014 for me will at least partially be ' The Year of Collage' - or at least the year I revisit collage.  Of course, I will still mostly do my wedding calligraphy!


by Jan Hurst

Teri Dryden & Collage

This week I took a couple of hours off to attend a Food for Thought luncheon at the Louisville Visual Art Association at the Watertower. The guest speaker was Teri Dryden, a collage artist whose work I admire. I was very happy to meet her - she has a winning personality with smiles to match. Her collages have great subtlety. I love them and think you might too. I took one photo of the wall display, but did not get a photo of the slightly more crowded table display of smaller pieces.

Collage is a favorite medium of mine, but unlike Teri, I usually include some lettering in mine, combining my love of calligraphy and collage. I liked the purity of hers, which are made from discarded books. The textures are delicious, and I repeat myself, very subtle. Her talk was interesting, and was accompanied by slides of her collage work - and a couple from her days as a clown with Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. I'm so glad I made the time to meet Teri Dryden, see her work, hear her story, reacquaint myself with some fellow artists and meet some others. It was a good afternoon, well-spent. The lunch was good too!

In searching for more information for this article I ran across an excellent blog post by Keith Waits with great photos of both Teri and her work. Please check it out here.

I'll Be Home for Christmas

I've never been away from home at Christmas, but that song always makes me wistful. Maybe that had something to do with my sudden urge to make these little (4 x 4 x 1 1/2") house collages on canvas this week. They were fun to do. I think I'll continue with the small canvases, but move to different subjects. I think I'll try embellishing some too. I may add buttons, spool feet and handles, etc. to some mini collages, and may do some on wood blocks too.

Here is a photo of a trio of the houses I'm calling "It Takes A Village". Unoriginal, but I like it.

This is the first one I did.

For this one I added a little bird cut from a fairytale book page.

For this house, I went to the split-level and evergreen trees. It's fun creating my own neighborhood.

And here is the image I used on my Christmas card this year. When I saw the small 8th century statue, Flight to Egypt, in an ancient cathedral in Moissac France this summer I knew I wanted to take a photo of it for my card.

Merry Christmas to all, and Peace on Earth.

DVDs and More - What I did on Black Friday

Why do I always buy for myself when I am Christmas shopping? Here's what I bought when everyone else was doing "Black Friday" - two new art DVDs. I have taken this workshop from Jacqueline Sullivan, but decided I should have the DVD to be able to refresh my mind on what we did and how we did it. I haven't opened it yet, but one of these cold winter days - that I know are just around the corner! - I will be ready with the warmth of Jacqueline's personality and instruction to cReAtE! I also bought an Anne Bagby DVD. I've not had the pleasure of her instruction, but am very familiar with her work and look forward to watching it.

Here are a few DVDs that I already owned. I loved the Ann Baldwin and the Carrie Brown. I have not viewed the other one yet...but I had a coupon!

I took a couple of watercolor workshops from Joe Fettingis, and made the online acquaintance of Elizabeth St. Hilaire-Nelson.

Now, can anyone tell me how to change these VCR tapes to DVDs??? I loved Fran's tapes, but can't view them now.

I also own a Michael Sull video, but somehow it has separated from my 'collection'.

(And you may or may not wonder what I did on "Cyber-Monday". I bought books and gifts online. Yes - many of the books were for me. I'm so bad.)

By the way, through another blog (eSynergy - link to the right) I discovered a great art journal blog. Diane Salter's art is cool and she is having a giveaway to mark her 2nd year of blogging. I need to have a giveaway one day soon - maybe after Christmas to start the new year.

Older Work Revisited and a Monkey Painting

Because the holiday season is here and so busy, I'm sharing mostly older work today.
This one is from a cityscape in orange and blue. The only calligraphy on this one is the scratched into the paint scrawling shown in this detail.

And here is the piece in toto. I may gild the small yellow rectangle near the center to make it pop. (Do not adjust your monitor. The yellow wall behind the art is making everything look very yellow.)

Here is lettering detail from "Dreaming".

And here is the entire piece. There's a companion piece, much larger, that begs for bigger, bolder lettering. I may get back to it one day, but for now it's on my studio/den wall.

I love this piece I did in a Jacqueline Sullivan workshop years ago. I've always loved collage, and this Jacob's Ladder booklet was a nice twist. I hadn't done many tiny collages except as greeting cards, so it was fun to make nice work from scraps.

One side of the book.

I was criticized at an art show one year by a woman who couldn't understand why I'd used these colors for a piece about mercy. I hadn't thought of it, but I had mercy on her for being so critical. It won first place that year in the KY State Fair for calligraphy.

This is a little practice piece that I'm including because it happens to be on my desk right now. I love doing this pressurized Roman lettering.

The only current painting project at present: a monkey painting I'm working on for my grandson's bedroom. I hope I get it finished before Christmas. The foot needs some re-working and because it was done on a previously started canvas with lots of paint strokes on it, there will be some hiding and some highlighting of the colors underneath.

Lucky Me! I Am the Winner of MB Shaw Stencil Giveaway!

I recently entered a contest on Mary Beth Shaw's blog for a set of her small stencils. And I won! I had previously ordered her new book, Flavor for Mixed Media, and include photos here of my booty (not THAT kind!) along with her book and the lovely inscription she wrote inside my copy.

I was thrilled to "find" Mary Beth in a Google search for collage and mixed media many years ago. Her aesthetic meshed well with my own; I loved her sense of color and her subtle layering of textures. A couple of years ago I was pleased to meet her in person at the Cherokee Triangle Art Festival in Louisville. Meeting her again in her book and on her blog completes the image of her as a fascinating mixed media artist and a lovely personality.

Here's a photo of Mary Beth's book and my prize package. The tiny work on the left of the book is the backside of her business card, and is a photo of one of her pieces.

This is a snapshot of the first page of her book, inscribed to me. (The blue stencil is a 'tip-in' that came with the book.)

Here are the three stencils in the prize package I won. Yippee!

Thanks, Mary Beth!!!!! I'm going to love playing with stencils again.

An April Fool's Joke on Me

April Fool's Day is special at my house. It is the day my husband and I met a million years ago. We considered having "My Foolish Heart" and "What Kind of Fool am I?" played at our wedding, but we resisted. It is also the birthday of our dog Max.

Today I set about making a new book. I'd been anxious to do so since returning from the Rosie Kelly workshop in Memphis a few nights ago. I had painted a piece of paper and had cut out the rectangles to be glued onto the pages. This morning I chose a poem to be lettered on its pages. I chose and cut cover papers and end papers. Everything was looking good. I was happy. I made the covers. I assembled the book, double-checking cover placement. April Fool on me! I glued the covers on backwards. The covers opened the wrong way. I used PVA glue which had set tight. No changing it. What to do?

I made it a two-fer. I turned the back into a two-sided book. The end papers were too pretty to not be seen when the book was open. So, two poems by Carl Sandburg grace this book now. "Mask" is the first part of the book, and "Choose" is the second part.

Rosie Kelly! Books! Fun! Calligraphers! Rosie Kelly! Books! Fun!

The Rosie Kelly book workshop a friend and I were headed to was worth enduring the rigors of the drive. The ride from Louisville to Memphis took 8 hours! Roadwork, a self-imposed detour and heavy, heavy rain caused delays. (Thankfully the trip home took more like 6 or 6.5 hours.) Shirley Sawyer and I met our other friends that evening and ate Thai food at a wonderful restaurant near Emily's condo. Donna Hacker's daughter was so sweet to let us use her premises while she was out of town. The nasty weather held throughout the weekend.

We only noticed the depressing weather when we were out in it. When we were inside the classroom with Rosie and other friends, or dining out in the evenings, the cold rain outside was a non-issue. It was all sunshine indoors.

The Memphis Calligraphy Guild hosted the workshop, with Rosie Kelly coming in from Chicago. Rosie is a wonderful teacher. She gives you just enough instruction and encouragement to let your own creativity take wing. (She is always around if you need advice, however, and her models are always inspiring.) In addition, there is an aura of creativity surrounding all the participants. What fun we had!

And what work we produced! I took over 300 photos, and when re-visiting them today I had a hard time in many cases telling which were Rosie's books and which were students'. Enjoy these photos:

The above are collage pages we did as our first exercises. They were a great warm-up to what was to come.

Some class books done on the third workshop day.

A classmate's book on day one. Yes! Day one! I think this is Mary Lou Sherman's.
(Can't forget the adventurous Mary Lou lettering on the toilet seat covers she snagged from the lady's room - unused, of course.)

Rosie's lovely abstract book. I want to play with this idea!

Another Rosie Kelly book.

And here are my books:

Here's my day three accordion book; the next photo is the same book opened. I did the cover of this book as one of day one's exercises to fill papers with lines and marks. These marks were made with a tongue depressor pen I'd made many years ago.

This is my first book from day one. Wonderful Sharon gave me the closure idea and wonderful Deb gave me the little square brads...round buttons just wouldn't have worked.

An inner page of the above book. This one has an attached quote done in black on black with Sumi ink. (Some were calling me a glutton for punishment for lettering the hard-to-see black-on-black, but I naturally preferred Rosie's complimentary term: elegant. When I prepared those pages, I had been working on wedding envelopes and used my usual wedding calligraphy style to letter this enclosure piece. I used other bits of black on black, black on white, white on black and also some white on white writing in this book.

The little triangle cut out on this page may have been the class favorite in my book. It was a sweet little surprise.

Another page from my first book. This one incorporates snippets of a page I did in Judy Melvin's Neuland workshop that I took last year in Indianapolis.

My little pink book. I did the lettering first then came up with the cover paper, a small doodle sheet I had in my 'stash'. Using it for the cover left only a little scrap left for collage elements in the book, but I had just enough, I think. When asked, "How little is too little of a piece of paper to save for 'stash'?" Deb replied, "When there is nothing left." We were making lots of jokes about our friends' stash elements and there was, I have to admit, a little coveting going on too. Peggy Kunkle had some gorgeous little pieces, and Leslie Barnes from the St. Louis Calligraphy Guild had to take first prize for the amount of stash* (*the papers we brought with us from home.)

I really like the way this delicate little pink book turned out. I selected two complementary quotes with an eye to the small amount of space I would use in lettering them in pencil in an informal pressurized Roman style. I love, love, love the way the embossing makes the pages pop in all the books. Unfortunately that hasn't translated too well in my photos. I can hardly wait to make more books. It's so much fun! (Read more about it on my website in the Handmade Books album, and on my Jan Hurst Letterlady blog. .)