Blanche No. 4

I've been working on adding collages to my Tumblr site. It all started with putting some links on my latest blog, Future Dead Artist, which showcases my sketchbook drawings. I created a new banner for FDA, as well as little image links to Quilts, Crosses and Collages. I discovered that I only had a few of my collage images up so today I am working to remedy that situation.

My favorite has got to be the Blanch series. Pictured above is Blanche Becomes Alanis (Blanche No. 4) which was a small study done for Blanche Big or The Inspiration (Blanche No. 6) my largest collage to date at 30x39 inches.

I was listening to Alanis Morissette a lot at the time I made No. 4. (Also love this one.)

The Perfect Square

This one I call "The Perfect Square" because it is one of the few drawings where I made a pencil grid first. Little quilt below:

The Magic Carpet

Funny how I don't usually like some things right after I do them, but then later I do. Today's drawing is in that category.

Darkening the background in photoshop changes the feel of it. Reminds me of batik in a way. And here it is repeated, just because I can.

Fortune Teller Cross

I call this one my Fortune Teller Cross. The repeat pattern has some problems.

I like how the colors can be manipulated in photoshop. Out of all the different versions shown on the gray background, I think I like the one in the center the best.

I've Got A Secret

I'm going to confess that there is something that I have been holding back. I've been hesitating to go public with my secret, although I have let the cat out of the bag to a few of you who have visited Anita's Beads this month.

I'm going to be interviewed about my collage work on television.

The interview will be broadcast on a cable TV show out of Massachusetts called The Total Woman Show. It will be shown in some 50 communities, and my web address (this address, the address of this blog) will appear on the screen throughout the interview. How cool is that!

A 30 minute segment will be taped during the first week in October. It's coming up fast. I think I'm getting nervous.

Happy Cross

It pays to de-clutter once and a while. I found this along with a few others that I will post by and by. What a happy find from back in June when my old computer died. The photoshop version on dark gray looks like a chalk drawing.

Today's Crosss

Too nice out today to spend much time at the computer. The weather is perfect to celebrate the first day of fall. I have spent most of the day trying to de-clutter my collage work area. I recently had a huge stuffed chair removed from the room so the chi is really moving. Tonight I will sit on the porch and smudge, as I found a box of my favorite incense herbs. I used to love making incense.

Thoughts of You on Gray

This is from a sketchbook page dated July something, cropped and given the Photoshop treatment.


I liked this next one on just black the best until I tried it on gray.


When I went over to my Tumblr site to post it I encountered this marvelous quotation. My goal is to bear it in mind all day!

Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that the mere fact of our existence should keep us all in a state of contented dazzlement. ( - Lewis Thomas)

(So dazzled that I can't even spell.)

Be Yourself Trivia

I noticed that Joseph Cornell and I had the same Little Golden science book. Note the vertical array of colored dots on the rectangle of black in my collage titled Be Yourself shown above. Look to the left of Mrs. Gardner. The colors change from orange at the top to blue at the bottom.

OK, now advance to 4:43 on this Joseph Cornell slide show on YouTube. (I mentioned it once before two posts ago.) In the bottom left Cornell has used the same array of dots in the same order, orange at the top to blue at the bottom.

Skip Battaglia and Norman Juster

Having a YouTube kind of day! I just watched this great short film called Parataxis made by Skip Battaglia in 1980.

Am I the Story I tell myself? Consciousness begins with the first lie. My memory is redundant so that I might begin to exist. I could tell you but this would tell you nothing.

And I found my all-time favorite by Norman Juster, The Dot And The Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics. I've posted about the book before here. According to Wikipedia, Juster's story was inspired by the 1884 satirical novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott (writing pseudonymously as "A Square") who offered pointed observations on the social hierarchy of the Victorians.

Flatland inspired me as well. See this post for a collage example!

Larry Jordan & Joseph Cornell

I was very excited when I discovered the animation of Larry Jordan three years ago. Today I noticed a number of his pieces on YouTube including Gymnopedies (1965, with an enigmatic score by Eric Satie) and Hamfat Asar (1965).

And here's another great find, Carousel-Animal Opera filmed by Joseph Cornell in the 1930's and later completed by Larry Jordan in the 1970's.

And speaking of Joseph Cornell, here's a nice slide show of his work, including some altered books which I have never seen before. And here's his strange upside-down, reversed and negative image world of By Night With Torch and Spear with a marvelously haunting sound track!

Here's an interesting bit that I learned on the YouTube site. Made by splicing together stock footage that Cornell had found and collected, the film premiered at the first Surrealist exhibition in New York 1936. Salvador Dalí, present at its first screening, was outraged, claiming he had just had the same idea of applying collage to film. He remarked that Cornell should stick to making boxes and stop making films. Traumatized, Cornell rarely showed his films there after.

Larry Jordan was one of a number of young assistants that Cornell hired to help organize his collections. I wonder if the blue predominating in Gymnopedies is a nod to Cornell's Rose Hobart (1936) which was projected through a sheet of blue glass.

And I can't close without mentioning this superb example of bizarre collage animation dating from 1959: Stan Vanderbeek's Science Friction! There's a bit with a television in there that must have inspired Joanna Priestley.

Blowing Things Up & Shooting Stuff

I discovered a great archive of the Du Pont Company periodicals via Things Magazine. There is much to read in the full text of 640 issues dating from the period 1913 to 2003. I'm going to enjoy exploring the Hagley Digital Archives in its entirety! I've added the link to my sidebar list of Reference Links.

Below is some of my favorite Du Pont cover art.

Dorje Drawing

Here's a drawing I did in my sketch diary last night of my latest collage titled Dorje (Theme No. 3). I hear it calling to me to repeat pattern it in Photoshop.

Dorje 2 Quilt

Here's a Photoshop manipulation of a sketch book drawing that I posted recently on Future Dead Artists. Do I have too many blogs? Is there a 12-step program for this?

Wouldn't these be cool as scarves?

Parliament Presents Salvador Dali

Here's a 1958 Mike Wallace interview with Surrealist Salvador Dali from YouTube. The dialog is interesting enough but the introduction featuring Wallace pushing Parliament cigarettes (they're Hi-Fi!) is really amazing! I discovered it via Brain Pickings.

Tumblr Categories

I have been amusing myself (now that I no longer have Netflix) by collecting Tumblr images in various categories: Art I Like, Crosses, Dots, Eyes, Hands, and Patterns to name a few of my favorites. I have expanded my sidebar list of Tumblr Links to 50 visually interesting sites.

I have a particular fondness for phrenological heads and palmistry hands so I was thrilled to discover the amazing piece pictured above. The artist is Simon Evans and you can see more of his work at the James Cohan Gallery.

The sections of color remind me of maps, particularly the ones that illustrate bedrock geology. I have a feeling that I will be doing my own version of hands, and perhaps even a head or two as well!