52 Weekly Collages

Working in my local library is exposing me to so many books whenever I am there. (I am a sub and generally work 1 to 2 days/week). I rarely leave without a couple more to add to my kitchen or night table stack. Down in the children's room the other day, I picked up a biography of Virginia lee Burton called A Life in Art. You may remember her as the author and illustrator of childhood favorites including: Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel or my favorite The Little House. What interests me most is her development from a talented amateur into a professional artist and writer. What gives a person that confidence and drive? How do people take their art into the public sphere and get noticed? Of course, in addition to confidence and drive, they probably have an unusual talent. Or in the case of movie stars who then write books, it's who you know.

As always, I continue to write and make art for myself. I think lots of people on the internet are in the murky twilight of loving to do art, but not really having anyone to share it with. So I continue to share here and hope for the comments and support of others. Recently, I joined a flicker group 365 Somethings. It grew out of a challenge on the ihanna blog.

I don't want to commit myself to 365 works, but I'm willing to commit to at least one per week (52 collages). Above is the first one. It uses as it's center a picture of a french subway entrance that I cut out of a magazine years ago and have been meaning to do something with before it gets torn, wrinkled or thrown away by accident. I set the picture before me and went through a stack of paper scraps until I found colors or shapes that echoed the colors or theme. I wanted to highlight that it was Paris, thus the golden skyline, and emphasize the gorgeous copper color of the walls and the curving ironwork. It looks a bit busy here, I think. Maybe, my attraction here wasn't the photo as much as wanting to be in a city where even the subway entrances are entrancing.

Below is a photo of three collages that I did last fall in progress. They have painted backgrounds, lusty or lively ladies and coordinated edges. The finished products are hanging inside my kitchen cabinets and remind me to be bold or silly, or just make me smile.