This week was primarily about progress rather than completion. Its one of the aspects of mixed media I like - layers and layers - and it is also one of the most frustrating!
I did manage to complete one piece very quickly - this collage of book pages and an image, both from the early 1900's. I purchased the book at a library sale for a dime and the photo I bought at a local antique store for fifty cents.
I enjoy rescuing photos from antique shops: I always wonder what happened that their family let such intriguing photos go?
I created this assemblage to take some outdoor photos including the collage - in it you see a piece of architectural salvage: a Victorian Eye Brow window I bought last week at Pasadena Architectural Salvage.
The box on the left was made to hold cancelled checks - definitely a relic from the past. On the right you see the collage which includes some quotes from Elizabeth Akers Allen, a poet from the 19th century. The quotes are primarily about again, which I thought matched the wistful expression on the mysterious man's face.
I hope by midweek I will have another report for you as I will be going to Florida at the end of the week to visit my new grandbaby and will be gone until Tuesday of next week.
What have you created lately?
This post was inspired by the annual challenge, Creative Every Day by Leah Piken Kolidas.
I have been creating consistently and reporting in the community for the past several years.
Consider joining - it is such fun!
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Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at a First Friday soon, when it is warmer than it was in December!, in Downtown Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.
This is yet another version than you will see in the collage below. It may, in fact, be my favorite. Which one speaks to you the most?
One of the lessons from Art Every Day Month I have learned this year is to look at my creations in different ways. I’ve been focusing on finishing and recycling my art projects as well.
I tend to do one of two things: start and not finish and stockpile unfinished gems OR finish gems and put them in a pile of finished yet unappreciated work.
I am in the middle of a mixed media work right now and I am not sure which direction it wants to be taken so instead of just setting it aside completely, I thought about what I might create with what I had.
1.Take photos of sections of the work of art, like cutting your work into pieces of cake.
2.Choose the “piece of cake" that tastes yummiest to you.
3. Playfully experiment with photo editing to consider and discover the many ways that particular art could become other art or serve other purposes both for you and also new products to bring to your art market.
In these examples, you will see how the same slice of my collage has been given three different makeovers.
I used pixlr. com, a very simple photo editing website, to revise my images. Each different one took literally less than a minute.
Once I had the main image the way I wanted it, the others were simply different filters. That's it.
Look at the variety of moods just from changing the filters:
I see the top image as the most conventional. It is romantic, feminine and probably the most favorable to conventional viewers.
The second image is using a newspaper style.
I wasn't wild about it at first and used it mostly to show contrast, but now that I look at it longer I see how well it would work under some circumstances.
It seems bleaker to me, more nebulous.
I can't see the clothing pattern as clearly so it seems more like mush that something creative. The dancer in the front looks sad, lonely, perhaps a bit lost.
There are some who may get the most excited from this particular image.
Do you see all the possibilities?
I like to think of the bottom image as perhaps the most interesting. I feel dizzy when I look at it, not unlike when I took dance lessons as a little girl and spun around before I learned how to eliminate that by strategic focus.
I also appreciate the more intense colors along with that dizzyness.
Looking at the complete ladder of images I also see how I could photo edit further by numbering each of the images - yes, actually adding a numeral - and some words right over each image.
I have heard wonderful reviews of PicMonkey but I have yet to use it. This weekend that is one of my goals. To check out PicMonkey and perhaps to begin using it.
Pixlr is so simple, I hope PicMonkey can match it. I used to use Picnik, which I heard is a lot like PicMonkey: another encouraging fact.
Between my use of instagram and pixlr and mixing them up together, I could play with images and create both digital art as well as 2D and 3D art probably all day long.
I know eventually a poem or an essay would come alongside me and slap me on the face to get my attention.... words are not ready to take "the mistress" position in my life. *Happy Smiles*
What simple image editing program do you most frequently use?
How could using one image in different ways spark your creativity both in your "play" and in your blogging and life work?
Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.
I decided all this paper from all these sources indeed would have been Emily Dickinson's friends. I still believe she was (and is!) highly misunderstood!
I have often referred to writing as my “anchor art.” It is
the artform I turn to first most of the time.
In fact, I learned through writing not only to love
language, but to love the silences between the writing. (Tomorrow’s post will
get more deeply into that!)
These two pieces I played with – and yes, one is absolutely
finished and the second is still a question mark.
The first one, the Emily Dickinson Collage – is complete.
The poem of hers is inside the heart and the other paper are from a variety of
books in my collection: an atlas, an old music book, a textbook and a novel.
There are times when I will just paste strips from a variety of paper sources
onto backgrounds for hours.
I also realized via Art Every Day Month 2013 how much of my
art also serves as meditation practice. I don’t usually have a plan on much of
my artworks’ earliest stages, I am following the lead of the Unknown. In both
cases today, that was where I started. I find taking the hand of the Unknown
and agreeing to follow usually births my best work.
I need to get out of the way in order for the best work to
be done. I make me laugh, but the truth is right there!
When I take control over a work, not so great – which is why
the second collage remains unfinished – I was using a preface page from an old
Random House Dictionary. I loved the language so much… yet I didn’t ever completely
let go. Now I am waiting to get word from the work where it wants me to focus
next.
I’m having WAYYYY too much fun this month!
What is happening along your adventures in Art Every Day land?
Julie
Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media
artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at First Friday each
month in Downtown Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow her
on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find
the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.
I spent my afternoon at a Soul Collage retreat which was
both restful, refreshing and inspiring. I knew my intention was to focus on
honoring women whose presence on the planet has influenced me both creatively
and also as a woman overall.
Here are the outcomes, including a little collage humor at
the bottom.
I included information for you in the captions, in case you
are curious who some of these women were/are. Can you see which collage has a pointillism
version of me within it?
Home & Hearth, Suffragists - Millworkers... You and I are all a part of the Women's Movement
I was concerned my painting of a woman's unclothed torso might get me "in trouble" with online censorship. So far, so good. I posted this on instagram as a test. No problems yet at all!
We love our Literary Grannies: still have edits to do on Anais collage and Vincent collage... oh, for realistic red hair...
I am a writer who respects my writing lineage. Too many literary studies only focus upon the male side of our creative lineage. One of my aims is to bring our Literary Grannies back into our consciousness. I'm Vincent's hair looks ridiculous, but I wanted to bring out that famous black and white photo of her with the magnolias. I learned last Spring that this particular magnolia breed was planted as far north as possible - in Upstate New York and Western Massachusetts - by landscape architect Frederick Olmstead who designed Central Park in New York City and other notable places. Now you know the amount of (not very useful) facts rumbling about my head!
Be alert for Billboard Man - Coming to Save an Artform in Your City!
This is an example of my flavor of art humor. I collaged my friend, Cameron Brian, into a broken billboard frame I photographed a while ago. I didn't know how or where I would use that photo and while collaging I couldn't help myself. :~)
What is happening along your adventures in Art Every Day land?
This is me, writing in a Baltimore Park. I am sitting across the street from an apartment building where Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald once lived.
Julie Jordan Scott is a writer,
performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art
will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown Bakersfield.
Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social
media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus
particularly enticing.
I finished something! I finished something! I finished something!
Even as or even more exciting, I really like what I finished.
Perhaps AEDM has some sort of pixie dust involved, but this mixed media piece has been in peaces, waiting to be born, since the middle of last Summer. The wonky house was made when I was babysitting my favorite (and only) godson. I had a concept but not so sure about execution until last weekend, when I tore apart a decaying desk I salvaged and committed to reusing as much as possible in my art.
This piece of a drawer begged to be put to some use, any use and for whatever reason, “Wonky Art House!” cried out from its hiding place inside a vintage dictionary where I had slid a bunch of other cut-out-not-used-yet scraps.
I started painting last Saturday, little by little and today, I put the house, the swirly smoke and walking path in place.
The Wonky Art House was made from pages from an Art Text book from the 30’s which I find hilarious. The wisdom from professors was carefully honed back then and the writing voice shows up as pompous as a blown up balloon cartoon character.
The stone footsteps are vintage atlas and there are also little rocks along the grassy areas. Tiny scraps, tiny. The swirling smoke (because it couldn’t be a child-like Wonky Art House without the requisite smoke) is from a dictionary page. Someone from my Writing Playground did the initial paint on the page which I went over with metallic crayon.
It was all sealed with Krylon’s Triple Thick and yes, I love the combination. Perhaps too much?
What is happening along your adventures in Art Every Day land?
>> -----<<
Julie Jordan Scott is a writer,
performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art
will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown Bakersfield.
Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social
media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus
particularly enticing.
Each
day, a quote, an image, several questions and a writing prompt are offered to you
to use for your personal and creative development. Enjoy!
The photo was taken on my birthday in 2010. I was driving somewhere near Wasco, California, with my purple whale mascot you see in the foreground.
Quote:
“No matter how hard you try to orchestrate your day, it
seems to have its own composition.”
Natalie Goldberg
Questions:
What are three components of your “scheduled perfect day”?
About how often do you complete those three components?
What can you do to feel satisfied in whatever composition
your day takes?
Writing &
Creativity Prompts
My average day sings the song of……
My ideal day, however, sings the song of…..
Bonus: The difference between the song of my ideal day and
the song of my average day is….
>> -- <<
This Blog Series was
created to increase your creative thinking process as well as inspire writing
and ideas to take form that may not have taken form without these specific
quotes, questions and prompts. If you find them helpful, I hope you will pass
them along to friends as well.
I have a friend who is an art professor at the local
college. I don’t know how
many times he has told me it shouldn’t be essential
for me to like my art, I just needed to make art, even if I despised it.
I have a much better time when I like what I create.
What I am showing you today is a mixed media piece I
finished this weekend which I really like. Its foundation was a plain, oak
colored frame. Blah, I thought. I painted it last week and waited for inspiration.
I had painted pages of Silas Marner by George Eliot I have used in a writing
workshop so I pulled them out to see if they would fit well. They did. And then
I thought, “Why not experiment with my new inks?” so I did, using the glass of the frame as my canvas.The final touch is a diary page from a woman named Bessie who was cataloguing her day in January 29, which is exactly twenty years before I was born!
Here is the outcome:
I'm so curious about the history of everyday people. Who was Bessie? What happened to her?
I have actually created some
collages to show you for next week AND I’ve been doing quite a bit of photo
editing. If you look at my blog for the A to Z Blog Challenge Series you will
see these photos on each blog post I write.
Thank you for visiting & Happy Creating!
*Visit CreativeEveryDay if you would like to participate in this artful challenge.*
I worked more on my “Fragments” piece focusing solely on
Emily Dickinson today. She’s been on my mind a lot lately, not precisely sure
why but I am sure there are reasons. After I share my images, I will share a
poem I wrote in her style, but definitely not a topic she had to write about
when she was living.
This piece includes acrylic, snippets of ephemera,
photography and crayon.
This top image includes flowers she pressed, a handwriting
sample, poem fragments, a photo of her and the color you see underneath is my
Tempest Zentangle from yesterday.
This bottom image shows my work in progress yesterday during
a rare rain in Bakersfield, I lit candles and kept this “fragment” beside me. I
wondered at that point if it was finished… and no, it wasn’t. The photo above
shows some final touches I added. (the photo and more random ephemera.)
And finally, the poem I wrote in homage to Emily's style after wondering, "What would Emily write if she was sitting at this intersection?"
Street Light, Corner of 21st and Union
Electric orb
Sharing luminousness with the
Members of the pearly ancient profession
And the shaking, tittering loose toothed
Hungry for the next, next, next….
As well as the cars who have lost
Their way and landed
Underneath you
Thank you for visiting my Art Every Day Check in. I look forward to looking at your art, too.
A question to tuck into the back of your mind as you read:
What is your creative process teaching you?
My day yesterday was flat out weird creatively.
I couldn’t get myself to sit still to create anything
meaningful or long lasting. I didn’t even write anything of merit and when
things are sour, at least my writing muse comes out to play most of the time.
I gessoed, I did some first coats of paint, I took some
photos, I collaged but I wasn’t happy with what I collaged.
For a change of pace
I picked myself up and visited Hart Park where I contemplated at my favorite
spot.
Something wants to float up from me, so I honored my lack of sitting
still with some quiet time out of the house.
I even brought some pieces of my art as my companions.
At least the day wasn't a complete loss as I look back at it.
I helped a sick friend, I purchased materials which were running low, I laughed at synchronicities that told me I was on the right track even though I felt wrong.
I allowed myself to feel nostalgic for being on the stage.
I watched yet another Hallmark movie and didn't beat myself for not making roses at the same time. I felt like I needed to rest, free from movement.
I had a very tough day yesterday starting at about 2:30 pm and yes, it is still continuing.
Before I go on about the visual art I created, I did write this lovely meditation on my blog about "Places Left Behind." You may visit it here (though please return to see the rest! or wait until you have read this to go back to the reading.)
I am so grateful I had a SoulCollage (TM) event to attend so I could retreat into quiet and contemplation. Without that island of time and creativity previously orchestrated, I don't know how I would have made it through.
My soul collage cards have several similar themes in this batch.
I only made three, which is a low number for me. I usually make six, but I was very slow - as is usual for me when I have had a shock or a burst of emotional pain.
This first card pays homage to Ophelia in Hamlet. She is the character I relate to in this card. See her, there? That little blue eyed girl in the water, looking up through the doorway while no one else notices?
I usually make my cards completely intuitively. Last night I was primarily intuitively, but I also had certain plans for composition. This one, with the large flowers, did not turn out as I wanted it to at all.
I wanted the orange head to be splayed open more, like in the Emily Dickinson quote,"If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."
This isn't poetry, though, this is pain and me trying to avert it. That menacing man is representative of all the negative thoughts racing through my mind and the flowers are the Pollyanna thoughts I always tend to replace the negative thoughts with rather than integrating the ouchy thoughts into something better.
Here I acknowledge I am working on releasing those menacing thoughts, not willing myself to pretend them away and lacquer them with Georgia O'Keeffe sized flowers.
Again, usage of windows and doors with my character represented behind the window or door, again, not being noticed, seen or heard.
It appears, I am actually giggling now - I was creating Shadow cards and didn't realize it. At Mercy we have a workshop coming up about shadow and these are sooooooo evident of my deepest, darkest, least integrated shadow.
A Divine poke, perhaps, to continue getting more and more real before that workshop.
GOOD NEWS: I have created tomorrow's art and it isn't even 9 am.
I know I will feel better tomorrow.
Have you allowed room for your shadow to show up in your art? How might that help you to grow as a human being as well as an artist?
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