oregonstreet

oregonstreet
Originally uploaded by paperwerks

this collage was made on a postcard blank made of watercolor paper by strathmore from my stash of found and vintage papers. the upper right hand corner has the return address from my package from printtroll, from when he sent my swarm. thank you, printtroll! not only do i have a wonderful swarm of miniprints, you provided some good collage material:)

s is for shoe

some of my best memories are spending monday nights, "art night," with my sister and one of my closest friends. we working in clay, painted, made collages -- anything that we wanted. at the time there was a wonderful art center where we could pay a nominal fee per night and use the space. it was also open pottery studio night, so we we joined by other creative types:) at one point we decided to make an alphabet book -- hence "s is for shoe." we each made one print, so three letters were completed.

a few years after that i decided that i missed the collaboration and gentle critique of having a regular group and i started an art group with three other women. it didn't last terribly long -- two of us were working full time and in graduate school -- but it was invaluable. this next weekend i'm going to franklin, tn, to meet some other etsy artists. i know we won't be able to meet that often, but i'm very much looking forward to it.

fly

i worked all weekend on making art and going through my huge stash of papers to decide what to get rid of. i am having storage issues! this is one of the postcards on watercolor that i made this weekend in the 10 minute collage tradition:)

how to draw a bunny

i finally watched "how to draw a bunny" about ray johnson tonight. thank you randel (acollageaday.blogspot.com). sometimes a great piece of cinema is like a great work of literature -- you have to see it or read it at just the right time for it to make sense in your life.

i've been making postcard collages tonight -- just a coincidence. i'll post some later this weekend depending on how they come out. for some reason the mat medium i usually use with watercolor paper doesn't want to work on the watercolor postcards. go figure.

this is, of course, one of ray johnson's collages.

working large

i love working large. not that i don't enjoy the 4 x 4 inch collages, mind you. but they entail an entirely different process than the large mixed media pieces i do on canvas. the mixed media works take a loooong time to finish -- sometimes months. i put them up somewhere in my house and let them catch my eye at unexpected times -- an idea will start to form about what my next step is -- but i will wait until i can't stand it and have to work some more. i flat out abuse the canvas on the larger pieces, too. sanding, scraping, gouging, more sanding, glueing paper down simply to be ripped back off. lots of physicality. so here's mona. she barely fits in the back of my little car. she's finished:)

moo cards!

these are just a sample of the moo cards that i ordered and just received. what a great art week, swarm number 15 is now in my possession, and my business cards have arrived. i think moo does an exceptional job -- they cards are beautiful. i love how many different images i can put on them and how easy it was. i got both traditional sized business cards and the small moo cards. i will definitely be reordering from them when these are gone!

if you want to see how a few more cards turned out, check out my flickr site. http://www.flickr.com/photos/paperwerks/

again, swarm

i am so happy to say that i am the proud new keeper of swarm 15. i haven't figured out how i am going to set up the swarm's abode, so i don't have pics yet. but printtroll is a genious. pure and simple. the swarm is just about the coolest thing ever. i suggest that everyone obtain a swarm. your life will improve. you will become instantly hip. you will lose 10 pounds and grow 2 inches taller.

visit printtroll and you, too, can be a keeper! (links in previous post.)