She's a ballerina. Her wings & legs/feet will be in the first position. Her feathers are felted silk & threads. I'm using Maureen's baby lock felting machine.
Aug 31, 2011
Aug 28, 2011
Aug 27, 2011
Life of a Collage Artist: Joseph Cornell
Not quite finished (p. 364) -- Cornell made art out of things he collected, & I am beginning to do the same. We talked about him briefly in April's collage class at LeMoyne Gallery (class ended Sunday). Kurt Schwitters is considered the essential modern collagist, with Cornell right behind. Reading this makes me aware of the definitions (does anybody care?): Collage is two-dimensional pasting & maybe layering of cut-out images, either drawn or found. Decoupage gets three-dimensional, things sticking out from the surface -- like seashells or forks. Assemblage uses things, unaltered. It is related to sculpture but it's not shaped by the artist in the way sculpture is. Assemblage shapes come from the connecting of things. (I'm writing this to clarify for myself.)
Cornell made collages & assemblages. He is famous for his boxes with things glued inside. A long time ago I was drawn to Cornell, when I saw pictures of his assemblages. I just liked them. But in my 20's I saw some of his boxes at the Chicago Art Institute. I found them gloomy. Now that I've read Cornell's life, I know why: he had a gloomy, airless personal life. He was in his own box, unable to break through & relate to people. He had an intense family life, boxed into a plain house in Queens with his handicapped brother & smothering mom. (Two sisters escaped through marriage. The father died early.) Cornell sold wool in the city, then quit to spend more time in the basement making things. I identify! But he kept going to New York to attend the Christian Science services & to pick up stuff from sidewalks. Again, I identify! At home in the middle of the night he took a cup of tea to the basement & cut things out & glued them down, juxtaposing the unlikely. After a time he presented them to galleries, & some were shown. He got really famous only after he was 60, shortly after both his mother & brother had died. By then he was annoyed by the demands of fame.
Cornell was a Surrealist when they were on top; then an Abstract-Expressionist. Then a Pop artist. All the while he was himself, morphing through his stuff. Now people call him a genius. I like that he wasn't a reckless egomaniac. But he was wrapped up in himself, often depressed & inhospitable ... and maybe just as often elated by the miraculous interconnection of things & the holiness of scraps.
Aug 23, 2011
Collage 5: Just the beginning
April tries Inktense pencils
I'm learning--better video to come!
What is collage? I asked April. She thought about it: "Getting two images (found or made) & putting them together in a 2-D way."
With another moment for consideration & checking her sources, she went on:
3-D is decoupage.
3-D with found objects, combined in an artistic way is assemblage.
She said Kurt Schwitters was a major collage influence. There's an overview of his work at Berkeley until Nov. 27.
Definitions are a jumping-off point. This LeMoyne class has taught me collage = timeless + useless. I love it.
Aug 18, 2011
Collage 4: inspiration
Here's April, my collage inspiration, at LeMoyne.
This week April shared inspiration -- books & names of artists she loves. Her favorite is Vik Muniz.; he's from Brazil, lives in New York. She also loves Takashi Murakami, a Japanese artist who plays with images, enlarging toys into sculptures & miniaturizing sculptures into toys. Kind of God-like. He calls the toys super flat. I guess that's a contemporary art idea. I think it tries to explain the Japanese psyche. April's eyes light up when she talks about German artists from the 1920's, whose work was shown in Glitter and Doom, a 2006-2007 exhibit of portraits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. April also shared a fat book of contemporary women artists, including Tracey Emin and Shirin Neshat. My favorite (not in the book) is Agnes Martin.
Aug 13, 2011
Aug 12, 2011
Collage 3: tape transfer
Last Sunday April taught us how to transfer ink to packing tape. You take an image that's on paper -- photo, newspaper, a magazine page -- & whoosh! do what April says, & it becomes one with the packing tape.
It's simple.
1. Find an image you like.
2. Tear it out or cut it out.
3. Cover the image with packing tape. Leave a little tape around the edges. If the image is big, cover it with two or more strips of tape. When you do this, make sure to overlap it. Don't put the tapes side by side. They have to be on top of each other (as in the photo here).
4. Put the whole thing in water. I used a plastic container for pineapple from Fresh Market.
5. Soak the image. In my notes I wrote 2 days, but it is more like 2 minutes. Or maybe 5 at most. You want to soak it long enough so the paper rolls right off. At first I didn't soak it long enough. I had to scrape the paper roughly. But with a little longer soak (sorry -- I didn't time it!) the back paper rolled right off. Experiment.
6. Take the image out & look at the back. The white stuff (paper!) on the back is not necessary anymore. Scrape it off with your fingernail. Gently.
7. You end up with tape that has your image on it-- a shiny, durable single-layer image. Stick it somewhere.
*If you use an image from a printer, make sure it's a laser. Ink-jet ink does not stick onto the tape. I used a printer at Staples, thinking all their printers must be laser. But when I scratched the back off, the front, colored side came off too. Back I went to Staples, & asked specifically for a laser print job. That one worked.
Experiment. I tried a color photo of sunflowers from the front page of an old Tallahassee Democrat. They turned out faint, not the vivid look I expected. But I like it. It's shiny. Like packing tape.
I taped photo transfers of favorite dogs to the covers of tiny Moleskin notebooks. Next, I think I'll applique tape transfers to fabric.
Aug 3, 2011
Mom's Nut Rolls
When we lived in Steubenville, Ohio, we had many Polish friends, & they made nut rolls. Mom tried lots of their recipes. I remember large ones sliced into pinwheels. Some were heavy & bread-y, & some were less than sweet. Then Mom found these.
Mom's Nut Rolls
(I usually make half this recipe.)
1. Cut 5 C. flour into 1/2 pound sweet butter. (I use the food processor.)
2. Add 1 tsp. salt.
3. Mound this on wax paper. Shape a hole in the center. Into this break 3 eggs. Mix with your hands.
4. Soften 1 1/2 envelopes dry yeast (or 1 1/2 cake) in 1 C. canned milk or heavy cream. (I prefer the cream .) Add this to the flour, half at a time. Mix with your hands.
5. Then roll into a big ball & wrap in wax paper. Keep overnight in the refrigerator.
6. The next day, make the filling. Mix 1 1/4 C. toasted walnuts, ground. I use the Mouli mill -- I like doing it by hand; think this makes a better texture than grinding in the food processor. Mix the ground nuts with 1/2 C. sugar.
7. Roll out the dough on wax paper heavily covered with granulated sugar. Cut into squares.
8. Add 1 tsp. or more of the filling, press it down into the dough, & roll up, shaping into crescents. Place on parchment-covered cookie sheet. (Cookies can be frozen at this point.)
9. Sprinkle generously with sparkling sugar crystals. Bake at 350° for 15-20 minutes, or until light brown at edges.
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