Thursday 28 December 2017

haunted by thoughts of eternity



This is a great theme! I'm going to make at least one new collage for it, but in the meantime here is one from my archives. For as long as I can remember I've been fascinated by the numerous things that over the years have been used as oracles. One of them is the Ouija board, which had its first bout of popularity with the spiritualists of the late 19th century. The numerals on this collage are from a Ouija board. They are superimposed on an image of a seance being conducted by spiritualists, to illustrate a magazine article on that movement.

Image of Niagara Falls is not a photo: that's a black-and-white reproduction of Frederic Edwin Church's oil painting. Background from a women's sportswear catalog. Contemplative young man in harlequin attire by Pablo Picasso. Doves from the lid of a children's magic set.

Daisy Petal Precognator

From the archive . Hazel used to get invited to make things for the Victoria and Albert Museum Craft Shop back in the 90's. This was one such Valentines Day project that I got roped into - making the instructions and packaging for a gadget she made for finding true love!

THEME of the week: ORACLE

Christmas is over (hope it was a good time for you all) - New year is coming closer.
There are plenty of New Year rites all over the world - and many of them consult the oracle.
Lets do the same during our next week.

I am wishing you all a very Happy New Year - may your dreams come true, may it be a healthy and lucky 2018! All the best to all of you!

This is my last chosen theme for us after two month.
Who is next in line?

Friday 22 December 2017

Merry Crimble and A Collage Full New Year!

One from the archives - was this a Xmas card ? I can't remember now. This years collaged card coming up next if I can find the photo. Do have a lovely time with your families and friends and look forward to seeing your collages in the 2018.

Thursday 21 December 2017

Happy Christmas to All You Scrappers!


Merry Christmas From Mary & the Boys

"Joyous voices sweet & clear, sing the sad of heart to cheer..."

The title are words from the song
"Caroling, Caroling"
by Wihla Hutson & Alfred Burt

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SboRl-4g8y4

THEME of the week: Merry Christmas

Only three days left until Christmas Eve- so what could be more reasonable than this theme?!

I wish you all a Merry Christmas !

Saturday 16 December 2017

LOST IN THE STARS

The title of this collage is taken from a wonderful song by Maxwell Anderson (1888-1959). You can hear this song, sung by Judy Garland, here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqPqux11QSE

The mountains & lake are a found, hand-colored photograph as is the photo of the lady and her dog. My trusty astronomy book provided the sky full of constellations.

Wednesday 13 December 2017

THEME of the week: Space

This week´s theme is pretty wide ;-)
Have fun!

madonna with the green dreadlocks


I think this one is quite silly—if not godawful. But when I read the mail art call with the Madonna theme for that Bosch place, they talked about displaying Madonnas that are contemporary. I figure green hair in dreads is pretty contemporary. This Madonna's hair was already twisted up and dangling. All I did was to color it green.

The Madonna and Child is a detail from a rather peculiar Renaissance painting—Giorgione's "The Tempest" (1506-1508). (The Wiki essay you get to from that link is short and fascinating: I recommend it.)

Tuesday 12 December 2017

Which Came First?

Another from the archive - too busy with 'zine and other stuff.

Saturday 9 December 2017

Tricollage by Josephine, Lynn and me


We made three Madonnas in "Exquisite Corpse" style - one made the head, covered it, passed it to the other who made the body and passed it to the third in line to finish. Here is one of them.

Friday 8 December 2017

protect us from madonnas and mad cows


"Mad Cow" and "BOOB" artistamps from a book titled The Stamp Art and Postal History of Michael Thompson & Michael Hernandez de Luna. Two stills from a 1973 British movie, "The Wicker Man." (That's Britt Ekland's famous dancing spell nude scene—plus body double for lower part of body—in the background). "Who, in watching..." was a scrap on the floor of my bedroom: I have no idea what it's referring to.

The white text on black is hard to read, so here's what it says: "Howie makes a cross in the abandoned churchyard. He sees behind him not a beautiful Madonna and Child, but a filthy pagan desecrating once-hallowed ground."

By the way, the picture with the strange white horned beast, over Ekland's blonde head, is there on the wall in the original still. All I did to it was to cut off the mette and frame.

My life has been a weird wreck recently, but aside from saying that I'm so much more bedridden than I was before, I made this collage literally in bed, I'll spare you the details. Angie wanted to know the names of our new kittens: they're Stevie Ray (for the late great Texas blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan) and Emmylou (for a stunning vocalist who's still with us—Emmylou Harris).

Madonna Postcard

From the archive. Madonna project postcard printed by Red Fox Press in Ireland- 1990's.

Thursday 7 December 2017

Lady Madonna ... mail art



               My contribution for the mail-art exposition in Den Bosch.,
               another 'rorschach' dress.

Wednesday 6 December 2017

Lady Madonna


This is my entry I´ve send already to the Netherlands.

THEME of the week: Lady Madonna

It is Advent Season - and here is a kind of "seasonal" theme - but beside this it is an interesting mail art call of The Jeroniumus Bosch Center - NL - which you can find here: Lady Madonna
I thought you might like this theme because many of us are fans of Hieronymus Bosch.

Tuesday 5 December 2017

Rotating File Device


Freshly unpacked - my "new" old rotating file decide ready to get collaged - 
there are only 500 cards for addresses and telephone number - 
so where is the problem?! ;-)

Monday 4 December 2017

Homage to Marilyn Miller (1898-1936)

Found photograph of Old Faithful. Old Faithful is a cone geyser located in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, United States. It was named in 1870 during the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition and was the first geyser in the park to receive a name.

Kodak Instamatic camera advertisement circa 1970.

Dancing woman from an Old Gold cigarette advertisement circa 1930s. I just GOOGLED the advertisement and discovered the illustrated woman is Marilyn Miller (1898-1936) a Broadway musical star who died much too early.

Saturday 2 December 2017

Making Putz Houses for My Studio Window

So, back home in the historic little waterfront town of La Conner, and I've spent the last two days making small paper houses covered with old book pages and glitter, with black paper silhouettes to decorate the front window of my studio space.  Not collage, but lots of scissor work; I feel like Martha Stewart...!

Here are my little creations laid out on my kitchen counter prior to installation:





Collages of Christmas Past ( Card-Making )

*About to start making this year's Christmas cards....*

Friday 1 December 2017

Diary front covers.

This is a kind of ongoing project that I do every year with all my diaries - some going back to the 80's. Some of the pages inside are collaged to - will try to show a few of them in future posts.

A book about life's sorrow and joy - on the way to the endless aim

different transfer techniques, linoleum print 

"The victim lies down, the ravens descend" Friedrich Schiller
Transfer on an old military postal letter.



Round about one year ago I got a more than 100 years old photo album and I was very  glad to get such a wonderful present! I kept it in my "project rack bay" in my bookshelf and was not able to work on and alter such a treasure.  Only after I visited the exhibition
 "The Architecture of Memory" by Sigrid Sigurdsson at Osthaus Museum Hagen and browsed through all the wonderful artist books I finally could encourage myself to start working on my own foto album project.
First I had a specific idea, but the book developed a life of it´s own.
I used many different techniques which I tried over the years, already before I concentrated myself on collages, to create the pages. It was a big joy for me to combine all the different techniques in this book now. The base material is the Victorian photo album and cabinet cards. There are many (collage-) artists working with this material - and each one create his own art work - and here are some pages of mine, freshly finished after weeks of work.