It's a Secret

Coming Sunday November 22 to The Altered Page!

My Backyard

The always amazing Julie Prichard from The Land of Lost Luggage and the equally amazing JeriAnn from Commuter's Journal have been hosting an online collaboration called Getting Arboreal: A Nature Collection. The brief in brief: chose a tree and follow it through the seasons. You can follow the links to all the participants by clicking through the list on the sidebar of Julie's blog. And you can read more about my choice in this previous post on my blog.

I chose a grove of trees to follow in my backyard...well, in Central Park that is.

Here are my trees captured from Bethesda Terrace in late August...



Here they are in mid October...



And here they are today...

On the Other Hand

Handbook: journey on...


A glimpse of me, sheathed in armor
Lock or key, take your choice.
An offer made is now rescinded
Break the silence, hear my voice.


Fragments of a dream you once had
Lost my bearings, such is life.
A deep regret comes to the surface
A shattered conscience pierced by strife.


In an instant, endings happen
No guarantee, you understand.
What's left is right, there's nothing to it
You find yourself on the other hand.

Second Hand

Hands down, this is one of my most favorite book projects to date...


With each page completed, I have become more and more intrigued with adding objects to book pages. Call it assemblook, perhaps...


With every new object, more and more depth is added...


And with every new page, I am learning new ways to work with and combine wood, metal, fabric and paper...


Handbook. The story continues...

Mountain Views

Mountain Crossing...
On top of the world
An unending future
A promise unfurled.

Mountain Crossing...
A ladder of clouds
A dream for the taking
Erase all the shrouds.

Mountain Crossing...
Catch that which you seek
Anointed, appointed
You've now reached the peak.

Mountain Crossing. Available for purchase in my Etsy shop until listing expires on November 3.

Calling all Artists

It is once again time to take your pulse! The Pulse is an online and print project that has been part of The Altered Page since January 2008. Its purpose is to "tap into the pulse" of the online, mixed-media arts community. With so many talented and creative artists to follow, I thought it would be fun, informative, and inspiring to bring them together through a series of ongoing projects. The aim: to introduce you to new artists, help you get to know familiar faces even more, and to provide a window into the creative hearts and minds of a talented group of individuals.

Prior editions of The Pulse can be accessed online by clicking the links on the sidebar of my blog. The 3rd edition, an artist survey, is also available in a print zine and can be ordered here.

At this time I am working on the next edition of The Pulse. Over 150 artists have already signed on to participate, making this the largest project to date. But why stop there? I would like to put out an open call to all mixed-media artists with a blog and/or website who would like to participate. Please email me and I will forward all the information you need to join in. Go ahead. Email. You know you want to!!

Hand Made

I continue to work away on Handbook...



adding some rusty found objects...



to give it a little depth...



to tell the story of the page...



to add layers to the book...



to fill the binding...



and to spread the idea...made by hand!

Recycled

Recently I have been spending some time "recycling" some of my own artwork, especially pieces that ultimately I feel were not fully satisfying to me. In some cases, the original piece has been painted over, making it virtually unrecognizable. The first artwork has become just one of many layers in a new artwork.

In other cases, I have cut larger work into smaller pieces and then added additional elements. That approach can be seen in the following piece which, along with another new piece made from the same original artwork, is available for purchase in Etsy.

And I am curious how many other people recycle their own art. Feel free to leave a comment sharing your recycling stories.

Earth Works





Ingredients: watercolor paper, book board, acrylic paint, wax pastels, dry transfer, gel marker. approximately 6 1/4" x 6 1/4". click to enlarge.

Available for purchase in The Altered Page on Etsy.

Contained Continued

I am continuing to collaborate with Viv and Steph on our project Self Contained. And I have to say, working with these two creative individuals has me very, very inspired. We promise there will one day be a big reveal but until then, here are some glimpses of the recent work I have completed on my own part of the project. Click each image to enlarge for detail - it makes a difference!






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Opening Day

The opening of Below the Surface was held this past Saturday. The show was co-sponsored by The Book Arts Round Table and The Printmaking Council of New Jersey and was held at PCNJ.


I was happy to be there to experience an exhibition from the other side. Thirty seven books created by twenty three artists were on display and so many different styles of book arts were represented. There were books made from paper, metal, felt, wood, mica, and other materials. And every type of binding seemed to be on display.



The opening was well attended and I was lucky to have met many, very welcoming books artists.





I am happy to be able to share with you the fact that my book Undergound sold.


Billboard remains available and is for sale at the price of $210. If anybody out there is interested in purchasing this book, please send me an email. Sold. Thank you!


The exhibition runs through December 5. Stop by if you are in the neighborhood. You can find directions in PCNJ's website.

Underneath it All

The second book that is being shown as part of the exhibition "Below the Surface" may also be familiar to some of you, as it has been previously posted on my blog. It is "Underground" - my hand bound book of altered photographs celebrating the urban beauty of New York City. All the photographs were shot in New York to capture the impact of time, change, and movement.




I am glad that this exhibit has given me an opportunity to once again showcase this book and to unearth the layers that exist in this special city!







Sold. Thank you!

On Board

Just want to send out a big thank you to everybody who commented and/or emailed after I posted about being accepted into my first juried exhibition. I am quite excited about this and am really pleased that the exhibition is sponsored by The Book Arts Round Table and The Printmaking Council of New Jersey.


PCNJ is an organization that is involved in not only promoting and teaching the art of printmaking but is also becoming very active in using art to highlight and express social and political issues.


The first book of two that were accepted into the show is "Billboard." Some of you may remember the start of this project, which had been previously posted on my blog. Only a few pages were completed when I put the book aside. It remained unfinished until I was inspired by the theme of this exhibition, "Below the Surface."


Now completed, this book is loosely influenced by both the shape and the visuals of old, previously used billboards.



These old billboards become abstract canvases which totally resonate with my love of things with a history, things distressed, things with layers, and things that have been changed by time.





And, in the case of this exhibition, they reveal what is below the surface.












Sold. Thank you!

Next Stop: Ephemera

Sometimes road trips take place through the streets and sometimes they take place travelling through cyberspace. So we interrupt our regularly scheduled posting about my new discoveries on the road to share with you one from the blogospshere. Marty Weil has a fascinating blog called Ephemera.

His love of all things paper is instantly clear from his postings. His focus is on collectible, vintage paper items such as letters, newspapers, advertisements, photographs, and the like. He also posts interviews with people who have some sort of connection with ephemera and/or paper. And I am happy to tell you that he has just posted an interview with me. Click here to go straight to the interview and click here for the general link to his blog.

Thanks for the opportunity Marty!

A Day at Dia: Beacon

Next stop on my road trip...Dia: Beacon. This museum is the home of Dia Art Foundation's collection of art from the 1960's to the present. Located on the banks of the Hudson River in Beacon, NY, the museum is housed in a former Nabisco box printing factory that was redesigned by the artist Robert Irwin. It is impressive place to view an equally impressive collection of art.




I planned my trip to Dia: Beacon to see a temporary exhibit of one of my most favorite artists ever...Antoni Tapies. Tapies is a Spanish Catalan painter whose work tends toward abstract expressionism but truly transcends this approach. His artwork, though usually canvas-based, is highly sculptural and textural. He often incorporates marble dust and sand, and sometimes uses material and objects to create assemblages on his canvases. And he often adds numbers, letters, and sweeping gestural marks to his paintings. I first read about the exhibit here in the New York Times.

The exhibit, entitled "The Resources of Rhetoric", was well worth the trip. Unfortunately, Dia: Beacon allows absolutely no photography. (This is one of my pet peeves, as for me, viewing art in a museum or gallery seems incomplete if I cannot photograph it). However, several of the paintings in this exhibit were borrowed from the Fundacio Antoni Tapies in Barcelona and I had photographed them on a visit there several years ago.




And just because I am so inspired by Tapies' work, here are a few more images not from this show, including an accordion book that was exhibited at MoMA:





I discovered the work of so many more amazing artists at Dia: Beacon. Again, as there was no photography allowed, I will post examples of the work of each artist from my own photographs that I have taken at other galleries, museums, and at Sotheby's, the auction house.

John Chamberlain: Creates freestanding and wall hanging sculptures from old automobile parts.



Louise Bourgeois: Sculptor of abstract and organic shapes. Also famous for her spiders, one of which was at Dia: Beacon. This photograph was taken at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.



Joseph Beuys: German artist who created performance art pieces as well as installations, paintings, sculpture, and assemblages. His work was often political and humanistic.



Gerard Richter: Diverse artist creating blurred figurative paintings, abstract paintings, and overpainted photographs.



Bruce Nauman: Artist working in a wide variety of media, including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance.



Richard Serra: The museum has several of his monolithic, 13-feet high, curved steel plates, which you can enter and/or walk through. I was most amazed by the "skin" of the steel, composed of a natural patina of peeling and velvety rusts, ochres, blues, browns, and greys. I have included some close-ups below taken from a previous posting from his show at MoMA.

This Ain't Trash...It's Art

Continuing on my Road Trip, but still close to home, I saw an exhibit at Sikkema, Jenkins & Co. in NYC showcasing the art of Mark Bradford, an American artist who just won a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. He uses mostly material that he finds on the streets of LA to create highly textured, abstract works. His process is about adding layers and tearing away to create what look like to me to be urban landscapes. Here are some examples, with close-up, detail shots included.








Take 1 minute and 34 seconds out of your day to view this video about Mark. I guarantee that many of his statements here will resonate deeply. After all, "This Ain't Trash...It's Art."

On the Road Again

I am hitting the road and want to take you along for the ride. Over the course of the next week or so, I will be sharing some of my stops along the way. And what better place to begin than NYC, my home base.

I just visited an amazing exhibit at Pace Wildenstein highlighting the work of Maya Lin and entitled "Three Ways of Looking at the Earth." Maya, well known for her design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, is an American artist that works in the space between art and architecture. The exhibit presents three large scale installations that allow the viewer to almost become part of each, as you walk through, around, and under the work.

"2 x 4 Landscape" consists of more than 50,000 two-by-four pieces of sustainable wood, set vertically to portray the swell of a hill. At its peak it is 10 feet high and covers a space of 1,900 total square feet. It changes from every angle and I found it to be mesmerizing, sensual, serene, and powerful...all at the same time. Click each image to enlarge to get a better view.






"Blue Lake Pass" consists of 20 separate blocks of particle board and represents the narrow passageways through the mountain passes of the Rocky Mountains. I found this piece to be the perfect combination of ordered grid and undulating curves.





Here is a short video of all three installations that was filmed earlier in the year when the exhibit was at the Cocoran.

Below the Surface

I am happy to be able to share the news that I have been accepted into my first juried exhibition. The show, entitled "Below the Surface", is a collaborative exhibition sponsored by the Printmaking Council of New Jersey and the Book Arts Roundtable. The original call stated that "entries may reflect the passive nature of what is below a surface, or the active process of scratching the surface of things to reveal hidden layers. Artists may choose to look into the layers of meaning, as they relate to our own personal experiences. How will the layers speak to you? What surface will you choose? In what way will you interpret what lies "below the surface."

Well, as you might imagine, this description spoke to me! I have two books in the exhibition and I will post them on my blog on Saturday, October 10...the day that the exhibit opens.

Handle with Care

From Handbook - Page 3. Click images to enlarge.

Dyad

Ingredients: altered paper, found paper, vintage dictionary page, tissue paper, book board, acrylic paint, wax pastels, pigment ink, dye ink, colored pencil, marker, shellac, dry transfer, masking tape. approximately 5" x 4 1/4" when closed. approximately 5" x 6 when opened. click to enlarge.

Available for purchase in The Altered Page on Etsy.

Sold. Thank you!

Trilogy

Ingredients: altered paper, found paper, tissue paper, book board, acrylic paint, wax pastels, pigment ink, dye ink, colored pencil, shellac, dry transfer, found objects, linen thread, metal brads. approximately 4 1/4" x 3 1/2". click to enlarge.

Available for purchase in The Altered Page on Etsy.

Sold. Thank you!

Nobody Here

Do you like your entertainment a little off center? Grab a seat. Settle in. Get your mouse. And get comfortable. Once you get in here, you may never get out!