Air Mail

Click on image to enlarge

Air Mail is a 21 x 28 1/2 inch, narrative collage/mixed media piece that tells the story of the world's first post-mistress, Nora Gami. She trains birds to deliver mail. To read her whole story, check it out on my web site, timbuctooties.com where you may also peruse some of the close-up details of the work. The next stop for Nora will be my up-coming exhibit at the BAC Gallery on Bainbridge Island in July, 2011. If you are around Winslow and Bainbridge Island in July, pop by for a visit. 

Not posting work or notes for weeks--until now: Work has been just short of overwhelming for the past couple of months with a host of minor family crises and age-74 "back" issues to deal with. But I still have an abundance of energy and pour a big batch of it into my work, trying to keep life in balance on a daily basis and myself standing upright. I sometimes wonder how any artist without a supporting partner and loving family and friends, manages. I know a few friend-artists who just manage to scrape by and do it with grace, humor and amazing creativity.  But you can ask my spouse if I kavetch, grump and show the same grace or humor under pressure. He'd say, "Yes on the grumping and often no on grace." But as a life long artist, I could not survive by any other route. No, not the grumping. But the daily making of art, which has sustained me during the bleakest years and bought great joy during the best. If we love doing what we do, then we keep at it no matter what. No matter whether it sells or not. No matter what the critics say (and that changes like the wind). Making art simply sustains us and we simply must keep at it. And so we do. And so I do. 

Ancestor Tree

Click to Enlarge

A painting I had done years ago was collecting dust in my daughter's closet. We had both gone on to more interesting and challenging art images--hers for her art collection and mine to create. So, one day she returned it and suggested I might make it into one of the new collages. A friend had given me some wonderful old Chinese tissue prints. The original art had a gathering of family crows in a tree. If a family of crows could gather in an old tree, why not a gathering of ancestors using the almost transparent tissue prints. And so it came to pass that The Ancestor Tree was incorporated into a new myth encouraging the people to honor their history and ancestors.

The center of the flowers came from diamond jewelry displayed in a magazine. The bling became fruiting flowers (nicer than real diamonds in my mind), the crows remained but grew in numbers and took on spotted feathers, the tree flourished with ancient relatives, and people came to honor them and enjoy the beauty of the Ancestor Tree. The story took some twists and turns to arrive at an acceptable conclusion and if you want to read it and see the image enlarged with details you can visit my web site.

The painting was in the collection of artist's works at The gallery at Bainbridge Arts and Crafts, on Bainbridge Island, Washington and sold to a local collector. It has a lovely home. To see more of my work you can also visit their site and request more information.

Monkey Business

                                                            Click on image to enlarge

As a mature artist of 74, I have explored, studied, taught and exhibited a variety of media, ending up today with a favorite--dredged from childhood, I suspect; paper, scissors, glue and paint. And this is a new communication media as well, this blog business, and here I am, sharing what I love to do most. My work can be found at The Gallery, Bainbridge Arts and Crafts on Bainbridge Island, Washington, or here in my studio in Port Ludlow, Washington. The piece called Monkey Business has been worked over an unfinished lithograph and is a layered mixed media/collage, 28 x 33 1/2 inches, framed and matted.

I haunt used book stores for materials, make my own ink transfer and marbleized papers, am given odds and ends from other artists which are incorporated into the finished collages. The process begins with a layout using cut pieces, eventually glued into place, then over-painted and after that more layers are often added until the muse says, "Enough, you're done."

Each collage has a story or poem, exhibited with the image. They are often slightly preposterous, emerging from my wandering mind. This particular piece, Monkey Business, arose from finding a wonderful second hand book of Japanese decorative elements, some of which were little wooden boxes. The boxes, many of them animals, became a modern collage version of the Bremen Town musicians fairy tale of old. Then cut fruits from a garden book were added to the tree, tempting the animals to climb to recover them. Old Japanese match book covers depict animal images. My imagination found them dying to escape, and so with scissors and glue they did. One escapee, the little monkey, ran off to push a baby buggy and encourage the rest of the gang into real Monkey Business.

The whole story and a larger version of the collage can be found on my web site.