Erosion Bundles - One year later!

Last September, I started an Erosion Bundle" project.  I gathered various ephemera, such as pages from old books, art papers, cardboard, and book covers, and wired them together in bundles.  I wrapped one of the bundles in a piece of muslin.  Then I hung them outside on my deck to be deteriorated by the elements.  Here's what they looked like last year:





I could hardly wait for things to happen, and actually, I don't believe anything happened for months.  But winter came and we got rain and snow.  And finally, one year had past and I could open the packages and see what nature had done.  Here is what one packet looked like before I took it apart:

And here is what the two bundles look like now that they have been taken apart.  There is a lot of mold/mildew on the papers and also some tiny insects, so I haven't brought them into the house yet.  I'm trying to figure out what is the best way to store them.  If anyone has ideas, I'd appreciate suggestions.

And today, I did my first art project with one piece of eroded ephemera.  Because the paper was still a little damp, I used a hot iron to press it between two sheets of paper before I started to work with it.  When I was finished, I sprayed it with a fixative to keep the mold from dispersing any more into my environment.

The drawing is after Picasso, and the idea of drawing with ink on old book pages/music came from an exhibition of Robert Kushner's work that I saw last week at the Huntington Gallery of Art.

Escape!

The Creativity Prompt for the month of January was "White".  I sure didn't need this prompt to make me think about the unusual amount of snow we have been having.  But I did need to have more positive thoughts about the white stuff.  What struck me about all this snow was the fact that it's not just white.  The morning sun tints the snow with a warm orange. The shade of trees and houses makes blue patterns in the snow.  The late afternoon sun causes a magenta glow.  With a camera, you can sometimes capture those colors of snow.  With a paintbrush..... well... it turned out to be a little harder than I expected.

My idea for a mixed media painting was to put down a lot of texture, covered by snow, in all its shades of white.  I started a 12-inch square canvas with collaged pieces of newspaper and other papers, some  corrugated cardboard, a photograph, and tissue paper.  Then I covered it all with diluted gesso to blend out all the words and other dark items.  Then for the hard part - turning that into a painting that was shades of white.

Even after I worked through tinting different sections of the canvas, the painting didn't have any feeling  or meaning in it for me.  So I started straying from my original intent and began adding elements with my newest art supplies, oil pastels.  Still the painting didn't please me.  With the little circles I had added, this was beginning to look like an underwater scene.  A Fish!  I had just drawn a fish as a watercolor practice piece, so I photocopied that drawing in three different sizes and added them to the canvas.  One of the fish was situated on part of the background that sort of resembled a net, so what if I added some cheesecloth over and around the fish to make the netting more visible?  A few more elements, and more coats of polymer medium, and I'm happy with it.

So, I know it's not White, but I've decided to forget about snow.  Escape is all I can think of right now.

"Home"

The December prompt in the "Creative Dreamer" blog Creativity Challenge was "Home".

I started an abstract in acrylics and began to see a map of my hometown, with its rivers and bridges, in the lines that had appeared.  I added a few more lines to make a house and a capitol dome, and it was done.  I added a mat that I had  textured with modeling paste and stamped designs.

Catching up - October Mail Art Challenge

The Creativity Challenge for October was "Mail Art" and I was fortunate to be selected for an exchange with Eileen , the Artful Crafter.   Her web site is a resource for people like me, who are looking for new ideas and techniques to use in our mixed media art.  Here's what she sent me:  isn't it lovely?  And there are all sorts of hidden things to discover!

the front of the envelope was a collage of colorful papers, vintage papers, and colorful doodles.  The back of the envelope had more of the same, plus a couple of peek-a-boo places.  After I removed the clear acetate covering, the doors opened to reveal the garden in Eileen's back yard.  Since Eileen lives in Mexico, she decorated the envelope with Mexican colors and designs.    On the lower left, there was a see-thru sun, with chili pepper confettin inse.  And inside the envelope were some special  handmade gifts of notecards, sticky-notes, and a canvas.  The envelope was machine-stitched to keep everything intact, and it came through the mail in almost perfect condition!  I'm afraid the one I sent to her  didn't make it to Mexico in pristine condition, even though the Postal Service clerk who hand-stamped the envelope for me did her best to preserve the art and got a charge out of doing something new like this.    It was fun to put together the package and make an art envelope for mailing, though.  I loved the exchange.   

Thanks, Eileen!  

T-R-A-N-S-I-T-I-O-N ...... NO - IT- ISN - ART (yet)

The August creativity prompt from A Creative Dream was "Transition...." I did a little word play and came up with a bad anagram, but it triggered an idea for me.

I've been wanting to try making some "erosion bundles" or "disintegrations" as described in the May/June issue of "Cloth, Paper, Scissors." There was a great article by Seth Apter that describes his techniques and the collaboration project that he started and called DisCo for short.  Bundles of every kind of material imaginable were hung or buried to be eroded by the elements of nature over a period of months.  When the material has decomposed to an interesting point, the bundles are brought in and the materials are used in works of art.   Doesn't this sound like fun?  And a "transition" takes place as the materials are gradually eroded by Mother Nature and then used by the artist.  ere are the bundles I put together and hung from my deck last week. 

 Included in the bundles are:  pages torn from an old dictionary and other books, magazine pages, plain cover stock and art papers, watercolor paper scraps that I had tested the paint colors on,  a paper towel that had watercolor paints on it, plain cardboard, acrylic-painted cardboard, yarn, ribbon, raffia, some metal things that will rust, e.g. nails, paper clips, a couple of black and white photographs, a couple of hardback book covers and a few other things.  On the edges of some of the pages, I smeared on some Neocolor II water soluble wax crayons. 

Midway through putting my bundles together, I misplaced the magazine with directions, so I forgot some of the steps, like putting a brad through the middle of all of the pages to hold them together.  Oops.  But I did use wire to wrap the bundles and I think they will hold together long enough without the brads.  Oh, and one of my bundles is bound with a piece of muslin cloth.  That should help it get nice and wet and probably mouldy if I leave it out long enough. 

Now if we could just get some rain.....

A Midsummer Dream

The July challenge from blogger friend June at "A Creative Dream" was "Dream".  (Why not!)  I have gone back to trying to paint with watercolors in order to use them in a sketchbook when I travel.  I ordered a 24-half-pan travel set of Cotman paints that I could travel with and have been trying them out.  This little piece is what I came up with on the Dream theme.  The hot colors seem perfect for July dreaming.