Having Doing Being Art

Fashion conscious I’m not, but fashion conscience I’m becoming.   Anyone who has observed me knows that my style would be described as comfortable blah!  So why would I devote time, energy and resources to create a series of assemblages related to fashion…good question?  As an ordinary woman with an organic pear shape,  I know it takes a village to fashionably fit into contemporary society.  Creating these art pieces has caused me to reflect on just how much I adore those who balk at the idea of fitting in.

Fashions from the middle ages into the early 20th century meant men and women we were cloaked head to toe, now in the 21st century inked skin is in.  Trends what are the costs?  Who pays the price for us to reveal our personality through our wardrobes.  Examining my own closet of the ordinary, I realize how much I desire to simplify and lighten my moral footprint and so I begin by looking at a tiny bit of fashion history and making assemblages.

For these assemblages I gathered  mundane materials a dilapidated Godey’s Ladies Book 1863, old sheet music, antique scissors, old wood & cardboard boxes, sheets of roofing copper, national flags, antique mirrors and scanned images from numerous copyright free resources.  The pieces include inkjet pigment prints on paper, canvas, linen and clear film, gelatin monoprints on papers, pigment transfer prints to mirror and copper, & collaged elements from all the source materials.

Bathing Beauty, Assemblage with pigment prints in antique clothing box. 20.5″ h x 24″ w

POD (Print on Demand)/Altered Book Challenge

Last winter I accepted a challenge, artists were asked to create a book for printing by a POD (Print on Demand) company of our choosing , alter the book and document the process with photos.  Great idea in concept however I doubt I will ever work this particular way again.  At least I’m certain I won’t screw up the semi-expensive paper back in quite the same way!

The final result is a drastically different book than the first rendering as a simple photo book. This rendering invites the viewer to adjust their eyes and look carefully at the slightly out of focus pages that comment on the ugly side of America’s love affair with the automobile. Fast & Shiny scanned book

Several of my original concepts never ever made it the POD stage but Fast & Shiny book did, and I chose Blurb for the POD.  The plan was to take apart the Blurb printed book alter it with transferred text and to rebind it with a woven spine.  What really happened was completely different.

Added title page and colorful end sheet.

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Playing around in my studio a while ago, I created a self portrait by combining images and collaging the print with a (another type of print) gelatin monoprint on a piece of organdy cloth, a piece of polyester film (trash) and acrylic paint.  The result  has an encaustic quality due to the depth carvings on the board and the way I combined the real bits.

In Photoshop I began with a photo of my braid and  a scan of a “distressed print” (*explanation below)  After getting the digital image to a point where I was ready to crop it and size it,  I found something to transfer the print too. (it wasn’t going to be a print on paper).  I  found a 14″ square decorative board (picked up in a tag sale) and previously painted with metallic paints.  With my iphone I took a snap shot of the board brought the board image into my Photoshop file as a new layer.  I adjusted the layers of my image to work with the board.  I linked all the layers of the figure and scaled those against the linked layers of the “distressed print” and the board.  I’m very glad I took the time to do this because I did shift things a bit to take best advantage of the carvings into the board.

Once all the layers of the digital collage were arranged the image was cropped and saved. Next I turned off the board image layer,  flattened the file, and flipped the whole file horizontally and “Saved  As” my print file.  I printed it onto a clear polyester transfer film.  Once the print was out of the printer it was time to test the placement for the pigment transfer. Pigment transfer prints work best to even smooth surfaces and  this board has a 1/2″ deep recess in it’s midst.  I  knew transferring the pigments off the film would be all but impossible unless I either cut the print into pieces and transfer the pieces individually or I leveled the surface of the board.  I chose the later, leveling the surface by gluing a the fabric print to a (6 mil) sheet of clear polyester film and glueing it over the recessed area of the board.  That important layer made a nearly flat surface out of the whole board, so now I was ready to transfer the pigment print to the whole surface.  (sorry no photo of that I was on a role)

*The “distressed print” was created by dissolving the ink on a magazine page and brushing it around a bit.  In this case it was a National Geographic magazine that was spritzed with concentrated Citra Solv cleaner.  The technique is relatively simple, go outdoors, open the magazine, select a few pages with photos and text, spritz them liberally with Citra Solv concentrated cleaner and close up the magazine.  Leave it for a while….or a day.  Open the magazine and swish around the inks with a brush.  Let it dry.  Save it for future projects.