Saturday at ArtFest: Captured Memory Boxes with Bee Shay

Saturday, I took a class from one of my favorite teachers, Bee Shay. We brought photos from home to incorporate into the piece. I brought several pictures with me, but ended up using this picture that I took in the Cinque Terre in Italy when the Sweetie and I were there in 2007. The trip has fond memories for me, and I love the colors and abstract shapes in the image - I've been wanting to do something with it for a long time!



We mounted the image on a wooden painting support that had a deep 2" cradle - like the one Bee Shay is painting in the picture below. The idea was to mount the photo on the front of the painting board and fill the back with tokens or objects that relate to the image . . . except all the tokens I brought with me related to the beaches of Oregon and Washington.


So I ended up focusing on the image and the quote inscribed around the edge - we did a marvelous series of things to distress the image, applying gesso, acrylic paint, colored pencil and even attacking the surface with sand paper.


I'm still interested in continuing to work the image - bringing more of the color out. I also want to incorporate some of the ephemera from my trip. My quote came out of some free-association writing I did around the image . . . "What we build and the places we call home travel with us, creating a map in our memory."

Here's another shot of the front of the piece and the back as they look now . . .




And here's a link to some images of Bee Shay's sample for the class - just so you can see the potential.

ArtFest! Day 3

By the third day, I was exhausted. I was in a class with L.K. Ludwig, supposedly taking mica and wire mesh and found objects and image transfers and using them to create a wall hanging.


Did I mention we got to walk on the beach? And that it was really, really cold? And that I took a lot of pictures?


I played with the very cool techniques she showed us, and made a bunch of different little things, but not a wall hanging. Here's one of them - made with a copy of an older bird-on-the-beach photo, a feather, a rock, and some wire mesh:



And yet the thing I did in that class that I really felt the most excited about was this photo of beach gleanings, arranged on the windowsill in the classroom:



And - Yowza! In the "completely random" file, I got mentioned on the Italian Recycling Website, Re-Creazione !! Or at least, my recycled bike inner tube jewelry did - how cool is that?!

Travel Work: In Process

I take a lot of photos when I travel - some good, some not so good. From August of 2001 to March of 2002, I spent time traveling in Southeast Asia - Cambodia, Bali, Thailand, Nepal, Singapore, Malaysia. I have a lot of photos of that time, and I've been wanting to do something with them. A few months ago, I took an image transfer on fabric class, and I've been playing with the different techniques using some of those photos.

This past week has been a studio-intensive week, and I've been trying to get a few of the SE Asia "Baggage" pieces (as I think of them) in a state where I could display them. This piece includes some of my photos and collected emphemera from Nepal along with some of my hand-printed fabric. It still needs to be quilted and have a hanging sleeve, so there's no way it's going to be ready to hang this weekend:



But this piece, which features photos I took while visiting Angkor Wat in Cambodia, just needs a little bit more detail work, some stitching, and then to be stretched on canvas stretchers, as I'm not going to quilt it. This one I'm hoping to have ready.

Ok, back to the studio!

More Challenges, or There's Gesso on my Breakfast!

Note: Don't miss it - I sneaked in my 100th post a few days ago, and have offered to design a flag for one randomly selected blogger who leaves a comment. I'll be doing the random drawing Saturday - the selection that is! The flag creation will be anything but random.

Challenges are a cool part of the Blogosphere. I had so much fun with Michael5000's Oregon Flag Makeover Challenge (here's the whole sordid story of my flag design process, in reverse, in case you missed it) that I've been keeping my eyes peeled for other creative challenges.

Two that caught my eye are Bigezbear's photo of the week challenge - this week's theme was "Breakfast" - and Jen Worden's weekly art challenge. Jen's project this week involved taking a magazine image, outlining it in black marker, then filling in the colored areas with gesso. I really liked the effect, and decided to try it out.

Here's My Breakfast:


The whole eggs-in-toast thing is a big comfort food for me. Spelt toast. Organic, cage free eggs. From happy chickens! The mug of coffee is not in the picture, but can be assumed. I was probably trying to drink from it and take the picture at the same time.

And here's my gessoed magazine image:



It's from Real Simple magazine - a photograph to illustrate an article on headaches. Really, I only buy Real Simple for the pictures.

And now, here's two great challenges that taste great together!

I love the effect of the hard outlines and selective gessoing on the photograph . . . and I'd love to hear about any cool creative challenges out there in the Blogosphere that you are particularly fond of!