The Children’s War

Today I spent about four hours working with my new artist friend, Phil, at Arts Benicia hanging this year’s Arts of the Community Show. I learned so much today. I was partnered up with Phil since he is the pro and I’m a newbie, and he did most of the work while I held the paintings and tried to keep up with all the mathematical calculations.

The idea is to keep the center of a pair of vertically hung paintings at 56” from the floor. So you have to add the length of the two paintings (or three, or one), add two inches to four inches for the space between them, divide by two, find the center, find the measurement for where the wire hangs and . . . well, you get the idea. Even with a calculator, I’m still mathematically challenged, so I was lucky to have Phil there to help me get the hang of things. I learned that the larger of a pair gets hung down at the bottom so the top doesn’t look heavy. And that you have to hang a pair so that they’re centered with the paintings beside them. I know it sounds complicated, but it’s not so bad, really. The best part was getting a preview of all the amazing art work, although I didn’t get too much of a chance to look around. The exhibit runs from January 21 – February 26, so if you’re in the area, I encourage you to stop by and have a look. You can find directions, hours, and other info at the Arts Benicia web site.

This is my third year (I can hardly believe it!) showing art work at the community art show. Every year I’ve shown something different. The first year I had two pieces that were assemblage and collage on book covers. The second year I showed three of my Reliquaries. I got a lot of positive comments about those. There was nothing like them at the show.

This year I made three book sculptures; they are different from anything I currently have on my web site. They are pretty dark and serious. I used a lot of found objects, burning, tearing, painting. They were so much fun to make but very time intensive. My husband doesn’t know what to make of them, and my youngest son says they creep him out. My oldest son says they’re”sick,” which is supposed to be a good thing. So overall, I’d say response from the family has been fairly positive!

Going to the artists’ reception for the show is crazy. The gallery is pretty small and it’s always packed with people. You have to nudge your way around the room. It’s a good time to schmooz and meet new people—not really my strong points, although I’m really going to make an effort this year.

After I look at all the other art work, I like to hang-out non-chalantly by my pieces and eavesdrop on peoples’ conversations. I love hearing reactions to my work. This year should be the best. I’m sure there will be a variety of lovers, haters, and people who are just plain puzzled. I can’t wait!

I recently visited Sheila’s blog DelineationDotOrg and left a message for a post she’d written about her Crisis in Art. I could relate to much of what she was talking about and left a message of my own. The next day she sent me the following email: You and I need to have a long talk… Especially about those lovely reliquaries. I’ve been wanting to make one, but I haven’t a CLUE where to start. ~Sheila

I’ve been thinking long and hard about what advice I could give her about “where to start.” Maybe she wants to know the mechanics, the “how-to” behind making the reliquaries. Or maybe she just wants a kick in the butt. I don’t know Sheila at all except that she makes some very cool collages that she posts on her blog. But it got me thinking about my own process of beginning a piece of art, and that seemed like something worth writing about.

There are a lot of things that inspire me to create the art I do. The idea behind my Reliquaries was inspired by a magazine I picked up in the doctor’s office where I found photographs of a home filled with antiques and gorgeous calendar reliquaries hanging on the walls. They were like small architectural gems. I love the beauty of architecture in art, so it got me wanting to create my own.

Sometimes I’m inspired by the smallest things: my second son’s baby teeth, a lock of my oldest son’s blonde, blonde hair (which he now dyes jet black, shaves, and mowhaks for special occasions), or a fishing lure. My most recent altered book was inspired by a baby doll that I found lying in the gutter a couple of years ago. That doll had been sitting on my cluttered bookshelf, just waiting to be enshrined. It was the idea of children soldiers that finally got me moving.

Other times I’m inspired by a piece of beautiful paper. In one of my favorite stores, I happened to come across some incredible paper that I’d never seen anywhere else. So I bought it in several different styles and colors and once I started working with it, I didn’t stop until I’d used every piece. When I went back to the store six months later, it was gone.

I have been inspired by a shade of paint that I bought—Golden’s Quinacridone Gold—and used it in a series of collages I did called Mixed Media Collage :: Woman’s Ideal of Man.

I’ve found inspiration from old postcards, photographs, holy cards, and pictures in books.

And of course, my number one source of inspiration is the book itself, particulary book titles, chapter headings, and text. I wouldn’t have created the same set of collages with the Quinacridone Gold paint if the book chapter I opened to had been something other that “Woman’s Ideal of Man.” The title, the paint, they both swam in my mind and caused me to move in the direction I did with those collages. So much of it is just kismet—opening a certain page in a book, finding the paper with vintage clown images for Clown Art Reliquary :: Angel’s Bone and then the bone, and then the clown pin, and then the red fringe. What makes something fall together that way? It’s luck, fate, magic, fun work, an obsession for collecting—all these things inspire me.

So . . . decide on the medium- canvas, watercolor paper, board book, regular hardcover book, board, bottle . . . Or . . .find that special thing that lights a spark of an idea inside . . . a feather, a photo, a crushed can, a piece of bone . . . Or . . . find a color of paint that matches your mood or sends a little shiver of optimism through you.

Or . . . Don’t wait. Don’t think. Just plunge in and go! Who cares how it ends up? If it’s crap, toss it or hide it, or give it to your best friend who’ll love it because she/he loves you. Then go on to the next piece, and make it a little better. Just keep going, because in twelve months if you don’t create something, you’ll still be a year older.

I finished a new altered book yesterday. It’s a little darker than my usual style. I’m not ready to photograph and post it just yet . . . maybe tomorrow.

I am doing my best not to make any new year’s resolutions. What’s the point? I never keep them. If I were to make one resolution (which I am NOT going to do), I would set a goal to make myself more organized. Is that even possible? I think I have a bad gene, which I fear I’m passing on to at least one of my sons.

My studio / office is a tiny bedroom that is filled wall-to-wall with so much stuff that I can barely walk through the door. I have a little path between a box of canvases and a pile of old printers and scanners that I swear I’m going to donate to someone someday. Occasionally, I try to cull through the debris, but it just reappears, as if by dark magic. I shift piles around so I can get to my books, and then shift another pile to get to my papers, and so on and so forth.

I have some plastic boxes and drawers labeled with where things go—this would be almost impressive if I put things right back into the proper place when I’m finished with them. But no . . .

The other day, while working on this altered book, I was looking for a little spool of red wire. I must have spent 45 minutes wasting my time and energy looking for that wire. (And in my head, I’m still looking!) Now, I have some outer forces that conspire against me: a son who likes “my stuff” and picks things up to use occasionally, and a husband who loves to tidy up and puts things back in the wrong place, God bless his soul. But really, those are just excuses. This is all on me.

Back to the wire . . . I had to think back . . . when did I last use it? Oh yes, I made a wire heart. I was working in the kitchen because I was burning the wire by the sink. But it’s not there. And I was using my orange handled wire cutters. Maybe if I find the wire cutters, the wire will be lying next to it. Miracle of miracles, I find the wire cutters, but the wire is not there. Maybe it fell into a drawer, so I go through a few drawers. Nothing. God help me if it fell on the floor somewhere, between the crevices of one of my piles of junk.

Soon my energy is depleted and I’m pissed off at myself for not putting that spool of wire back in in the little “Wire” drawer. Yes, I actually have a drawer for wire. I feel angry and stupid at myself. So I end up using red thread for the book. I doesn’t look bad . . . in fact I kind of like it.

Later, when the book’s all done, I call in my son for a critique. John is brutally honest and I trust his judgement. He says it’s “okay” but he thinks I should have used a thicker red thread because he can barely see it. Of course . . . I should have used the damn red wire!!

From my notebook. June 13, 2005

It’s mother’s day. We’re sittng on the porch outside my parents’ home. There’s six of us, sitting, talking—my mom and dad, by sister and her husband, and my husband.

A house sparrow has made a nest in the painted metal sailboats that hang on the wall. She’s tucked it beneath one of the brightly painted sails. There’s a little rust here and there where the paint has worn away. I can’t see the eggs, but I know they’re in there. Small, pale blue, lightly speckled.

We’ve scared the mother off, and she sits anxiously in a nearby shrub, waiting for an opportunity to return to her nest. Sometimes she tries to make it—bravely swooping in, but then quickly darting away when someone moves an arm or speaks too loudly.

I feel sorry for this bird for her and her anxiousness. I almost want to move everyone inside so she can get back to her nest.

She tries to approach again, resting on the top of the metal mast, watching warily, but then my dad waves his arm for emphasis and she flies off again. I’m agitated, like her. I can’t follow the conversaton. I watch her watch us, waiting.

She swoops again. This time she lingers on the edge of the boat and stays, gaining confidence. She slowly works her way behind that sail and settles down into the nest. She feels safe, hidden, protected. I see her small brown eye looking towards me. But I feel better now, knowing she’s back in her nest.

Two weeks later I’m back to help take care of Mom and to look after Dad. I walk onto the porch again to check on the birds. But when I look behind the boat for the nest, I find that it’s gone.

Inside the boats are seven delicate eggs. Remnants of the nest are strewn about here and there. I wonder if an animal got to it. But then, the eggs would probably be gone.

I ask my dad if he knows what happened to the nest.

“No. I didn’t even realize it was gone. Sandie,” he says to my mom, “do you know what happend to the nest that was in among the boats?”

“Oh those messy birds! I just can’t stand it. I had to clean up that mess.”

“But honey, that was a bird’s nest,” my father says gently.

“I just don’t care. They just can’t come around and leave a mess like that!”

“Okay, mom,” I say. “It’s okay.”

This is my new mom talking—the one who’s on the edge of being a stranger to me, and I to her. She’s the one I’m trying to get to know. Old mom cherished birds. Old mom took care of three or four bird feeders hanging full of seed near every window where she could watch them. Old mom could name every bird she saw. Old mom filled hummingbird feeders with sugar water, and called her daughters over every time a hummer came near.

My old mom was heartbroken by every bird who lost its life against an unseen window. She had bird guides and binoculars always at the ready. When two house sparrows built their house foolishily and precarioulsy in the narrow porch rafters two summers ago, she didn’t even want us going outside so as not to disturb them.

This new mother is a stranger to me. I want my old mother back, the one who would have done just about anything to protect the bird’s nest in the boat.

It’s five months since that I wrote that entry. I have created an altered book and written a poem about that moment. You can find it on my web site at Found Object Assemblages :: The Gift.

I recently received the following email from an aspiring altered book artist: How do you prepare the hard cover itself to receive what is to be glued onto it?

First of all, I suggest leaving the cover for last. The reason is that if you plan on doing a lot of work in your altered book over a period of time, you don’t want to have to worry about damaging the artwork on the cover while you’re working on the inside of the book. Plus, if you put any three dimensional items onto the cover, it will be difficult to work inside the book if you need it to lie flat.

When you’re done with the inside, there are a lot of possibilities for how to decorate the front cover. If you plan on adding any embellishments, I would suggest using Golden soft gel medium. It has a nice, creamy texture that isn’t runny and it dries clear. Keep some baby wipes handy to wipe up any stray medium that squishes out as you press down on the items that you’re applying.

If the book has a cloth or paper-type cover, you can paint it first with acrylics. You can use a brush or even sponges to apply your paint. Be careful about over-wetting the cover; you don’t want it to warp too much. If the cover does warp, wrap it in waxed paper and put a weight on top of it. I use my pasta machine as a weight and it works great.

If the cover of the book has a glossy finish, I would recommend sanding the cover first to remove the plasticky surface so that things will adhere properly. You may even want to paint over the sanded surface with gesso to eliminate any artwork that is on the cover. This might take two coats of gesso to accomplish. I often sand the dried gesso again for a really smooth surface. Or if you’re looking for a textured finish, use rubber stamps, bubble wrap, combs, burlap or other textured items to press into the damp gesso to leave an impression.
On the other hand, you might want to allow parts of the title or cover illustrations to show through. It’s up to you.

Another possibility for finishing the cover of your altered book, is to cover it with decorative paper, which can be painted, embellished, or collaged for a really nice look.