altered book – Mixy's Art Blog

My Indigo June

Twelve Colors in Twelve Months: 2017 is my year full of color. I called it Twelvty. Because that’s just the way my mind works… and because I like made up words.

Each month I take another step around the color wheel, and focus on making art in just this color.

I like the liminal places – like dawn and dusk – neither one nor the other – just on that tipping edge in between. So naturally, I’m especially drawn to the tertiary colors (which is great – there are six – so every other month I’m back into one of my favourite color zones).

Last month’s color was blue-violet: the moody-mauvy, midnight-indigo, and the fragrant bluebell & lavender space in the spectrum.

Last month also marked the half way point through the year, which is a place I like to step back and reflect.

These are some thoughts on the story so far.

Each month, along with its own color, has its own flavour, it’s own particular energy. It moves in its own speed, and I’m coming to realise, this is something over which I have next to no control.

Each month as I focus my creativity in the current color, I’m learning to bide quietly and see what comes out. To begin, I thought this was from the associations each color invites, but now I’m seeing it’s also from the cumulative volume of spirit this entire investigation is amassing.

The power of a single pointed focus in color is in its absolute simplicity.

Restricting the dither attached to one choice frees up space to play with the others, and to maximise them beyond the usual stopping point: tone and shade, materials and media, size and shape. Or then stripping it all back to its origin: just pure color.

I’m compiling an art journal of my ideas and experiments as I move through the year. It’s a re-purposed world atlas (cos this is an adventure – it seemed fitting). Each month’s has about 4 pages of playing space, and at the midway point this book is bulging with inspiration, expectation, and possibilities.

Would you like to see this month’s pages?

If you enjoyed that, you can see the previous month’s pages here

All through this summer I’m offering a special discount in my Etsy Shop to all the folks on my mailing list – so clickety-hop aboard today if you want to snag a bargain!

<a href="https://mixygecko.wufoo.com/forms/z1pfxfus0jq7ftl/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Fill out my Wufoo form!</a>

(and I’ll send you my ebook A Year full of Color as a thank you for joining)

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because

because a squillion things need doing.

because my eyes have soaked in so much color lately.

because time-lapse is the most fun thing in world.

today I made this:

Altered Thinking

I’m away from home and away from this blog for a few weeks… I’m missing my studio but I know in my absence the ideas are bottling up and there will be opportunity for outpouring before too long. Meanwhile I’ve had time to ponder on where I’m at, and how I got here. From here I can figure out where to go next!

In all my experiments and adventures with mixed media art, there’s usually something that takes me by surprise.

Something amid this endless opportunities to combine, dismantle, re-imagine, reconstruct, with new permutations of media, materials, techniques and style – way more than any one person could exhaust in one lifetime. Sometimes I forget this though. Then I forage around online for ideas, and something amazing happens.

Take, for instance, the concept of an altered book.

I grew up in a home full of books, maybe the last generation for whom this primary source of information, books hold a sense of reverence. Over the years I sought sanctuary in books, a hiding place, a wonder world of mysteries, of dreams and spirits, of characters too colourful to exist outside. A key that unlocks the worlds within another’s imagination, in the words of Stephen King, ‘books are uniquely portable magic’.

I can honestly say, some of my best friends have been books.

So then, altering books…. Although I’ve seen some truly exquisite sculptural paper-folding from books, and some ingenious creations, something still felt uncomfortable. Something made me wince just a little bit. And I know I’m not alone in this.

It was when I saw Brian Dettmer’s TED Talk that my thoughts became altered too. He describes the art of book altering as reinvention, as comparable to a DJ remixing music. He compares books to bodies – living creatures – with a capability to evolve, and as a parallel to the expansion of painting and drawing beyond simple reproduction after the invention of the printing press and the camera, now perhaps books have a freedom to be more than what they were before.

What I did here is nothing like the art that Dettmer makes, his talk opened my mind to more possibility. It liberated my thoughts.

In the resonance of his words I felt my thinking shift from ‘…but why?’ through stages of creeping curiosity, a crescendo of allure to the new level of possibility. These thoughts were gathering momentum to the level of irresistible fascination. Fuelled by online tutorials and videos, with a tatty orphaned volume of short stories I set out to see what would happen with paint, pens and collage cuttings…

After just a short time I found the spirit of the exercise had taken hold: part drawn, part collaged, pieces fell into place alongside doodles and paint splatters. My eye would catch a fleeting glimpse before the sentences were lost under colour. Patterns and ideas formed organically

All of my habitual ways were finding their place in this new sanctuary for busy thoughts. With no expectations I set about seeing what serendipity would surprise me with, and I watched the layers build up. It was becoming an illustrated stream of consciousness. The book was developing a character all of its own.

I worked on this book over the course of a few months, skipping back and forth through the pages with paint or pastels, doodles and drawing. This is where I went when my ideas ran dry – there was always a space to fill and patterns to follow. Ideas fed on ideas.

So the lesson I learnt from this project is that the spirit of a book isn’t just caught up in the meaning behind its text, a book is much greater than its story.

You can see this completed book in three parts, here

imaginary animals

Some of the characters I collected in my camera at the V&A last week, having filtered through my imagination, turned up in my art journal.

As they evolved along the way,

some got a little lost under the layers.

faces merge animals and human,

some characters from other projects join them.

As the weekend wore on,

the colours developed

The doodles built up

The tribe became established on the page

I can’t think of any meditation I enjoy more than getting lost in patterns and colours.

Heart Wide Open 3 of 3

The final chapter of the book

“I believe in the good things coming…
More pages more words to my story,
More grace, more meaning unfoldin’…
Everything’s already alright,
Everything’s already alright…”

~ Nahko Bear

Find all the book here……………..

~ Part 1
~ Part 2
~ Part 3

Heart Wide Open :: Part 2

Yesterpost I showed you the first of three chapters of my book. So without any further fussing, here’s the next one.

~ Part 1
~ Part 2
~ Part 3

The Year of the Heart Wide Open

Earlier this year I embarked on an art project that crept up on me and took me unaware. I didn’t see its approach – no rustling in the background – no warning at all.

One moment it wasn’t there at all in my world, then BOOM it was there: front and centre in my field of attention, large as life, impatient to be made. Suddenly the biggest most important messy painty colorful thing in my life was this book:

The Complete Short Stories of W Somerset Maugham (volume 3).

I’m not sure where it came from, but somewhere down the line I rescued this shabby orphaned volume from an uncertain fate.

It’s destiny now was to become an ingredient for ART.

Along with the stacks of magazines I set to work on filling the book with colour and collage.

Over the course of a few months this book became my retreat from the doubts and the obstacles in the outside world. When ideas weren’t showing up for me, I dove into the book and let my unconscious put together shapes and words. When in doubt, play.

I’ve shown you some of the developmental stages already, but now the book has got to a point I’m calling pretty much finished I thought you might like to see it altogether in a flip through.

The song, from whence I adopted this title, is by Winterbloom* and is in the movie Indie Kindred. *since I put together the video a couple of months ago the Winterbloom website seems to have fallen off the interwebz. Such is the constant moving and changing of the world.

When I watched the film this song got caught up in the wheels of my mind. It’s all about creative collaborations and the mutual support of the tribe, which mirrored a lot of what’s been going on for me lately. And this year I have felt my life open up to a new phase. This book is one of its illustrations.

With more than 40 pages the flip is separated into 3 episodes. I’ll share them over the next few days by way of something bright and fun as my holiday gift to you, dear digital friends. With much love X

~ Part 1
~ Part 2
~ Part 3

Chapter Next: The Letter

Another week, another page in the altered book to show you.

I notice sometimes when I’m working on a project, just how little control I have. It’s not that I don’t know where it’s going, I’m not even steering the way. It’s going its own course and I’m simply wielding the brush or the pen or the whatever-it-is.

Some sort of external force does all the decision making. It took my inner control freak a long while to learn to rest back and let this happen. (Sometimes she worries so. I distract her with thoughts of cheese and music and cushions. She chills, we move on)

This page was a bit of a hotch-potch til the latter stages when it seemed to start coming together.

See what I mean?

I mean it’s not lost it’s hotch-potchery vibe, but I feel like it’s crossed the line from uncoordinated chaos to cohesive vision. Although you aren’t seeing what will be the finally finished thing, it’s a large part of the way there. More again soon.

Chapter Next: Mirage

Some the pages in my altered book are already conveniently titled. The book began as an orphaned volume of short stories, and some of the tales’ titles just appealed too much to cover up.

Doesn’t Mirage just conjure such magic?

I haven’t embarked on any of these pages with a plan. Planning just isn’t in my spirit. I didn’t get that gene.

So to begin I just do something, and let that define where it wanders next. The first something that happened on this page took the form of sprinkles of Brusho swept about in circles with a wet brush.

Oh my how I love how these dusty crystals explode with colour. This stuff is the definition of less is more. More than a wee bit makes for a super rich gravy of an ink, which is gorgeous, but when you use an imperceptibly itsy amount each tiny trace of this magic erupts into zingy pigment on contact with moisture.

It is more than gorgeous. It is actual magic.

Another early layer was gesso scraped through a stencil, then extra messy gesso scraped haphazardly. If you’re a fellow scraper of gesso you’ll recognise those characteristic windshield wiper patterns of clearing excess off the scraper 😉

In the years preceding this project I accumulated a shed load of design magazines, rich full of the most gorgeous graphics and illustration. Just lately I embarked on transforming the knee high heap into 4 boxes of delicious collage ingredients, and a small mountain of recycling.

Thing is, I don’t know who this half a face belonged to, and as an artist I’d like to credit the creator. Any reference to the inventor got lost in the snippings. If it was you – thank you – and I hope that you like the new other half I made. In the spirit of self-portraiture I’ve mismatched the eyes for a familiar wonkiness!

Hope you’ve enjoyed this little trip through the putting together stages. Here’s how the page developed as a whole………

Chapter Next: Unity & Variety

I’m having so much fun with this altered book.

As it develops more meanings are attaching themselves. For instance, it has 42 pages, and as we all know 42 is the meaning of life, the universe and everything. So suddenly it has a theme attached… it’s a book with elements of life, the universe and everything. Reckon those are parameters I can keep within!

Plus I’ve brought in elements of Somerset Maugham’s writing. Seemed only fair as I’d already obliterated so many of his words in paint and collage and whatnots.

This page is titled from his quote:

“The Essence of the Beautiful is Unity and Variety.”