collage – Page 13 – Mixy's Art Blog

week by week 1/52

There’s something so deliciously enlivening about the start of a new thing

…a new year

…a new book

…a new project

In past years I’ve played with different art journaling projects, from page a day to a page a month. This time around it’s a page a week.

So, 2015, here we go!

Week 1 has been a painty brain-dump.

The only thing I had in mind to start was colour: I’m in a big ole red/magenta/turquoise vibe this week. Look at them ZING!

I primed the pages with gesso and began with some dollopy finger-painting. This process was fun but produced a textured surface so crunchy it really precluded writing with anything finer than a big soft marker. So the words are big n few.

I found some phrases through the week which stuck in my head:

Focus (my word for the year)

Let down your guard and Trust (I’ve read this in more than one place. So it’s a sign, right?)

Stand in your Light (I’ve heard myself say I’ve been standing in my own way a few times, this is a better place for me to be!)

Speak your Truth (it doesn’t have a meaning I can grasp at the moment, but I sense I might come back to this one later and see what I can’t see right now – ‘the woods for the trees’ maybe. What the hey, good solid advice.)

I wrote out the Holstee Manifesto. It’s mostly buried under layers of paint now. But I know it’s in there….the line “Some opportunities only come once, seize them” is just showing enough still to remind me: I want to compose a 2015 manifesto for myself.

Then there’s the three eye-fish. I’ll talk about them another day 😉

Meanwhile it’s day 7 of week1… I wanna get home and get my last bit of painting done for this page. I’ll post the finished version tomorrow.

Til then, g’night folks – sleep like kittens and dream of joyful things X

Thought forms

This is one where I’m beginning in the middle. I’ll catch you up on the beginning next, but let’s start off here, just coz I feel like it.

Thoughtforms are a series of relief collages I’m making from the dyed paper (way back… remember the dyed paper?)

and the don’t-know-why-but-compelled-to-keep-making-them funny little colored rectangle things.

So these loose ends are also finding each other and forming into slightly more coherent entities.

Thoughtforms are continuing that recurring theme: trains of consciousness & patterns of thought. More on that later.

I’ve made 6 of a series that will total 9, 3 are still in progress. These 6 are on display (and for sale – if you’re quick before they get snapped up!) at the Upstairs Gallery

Each one is named after a fragment of text found somewhere in the piece, serendipity giving them eclectic names such as: Spacecraft, Puddings cakes etc, Fortitude and Adversity amongst others.

The next series will include more textile elements, but the overall feel will be similar.

Still with that one theme leads to another, one thought folds round a corner and opens out into a coiled up spring, some buttons and a rivet, stitched onto the overarching idea of something else.

Or something. Y’know, like it does. The beauty is they can represent whatever you want them to. Or nothing at all if you .

More Than The Sum Of Its Parts – Part Next

I want to draw together some of leftovers and dangling ends from recent posts. The person who will enable this is Franz Ackermann.

Faceland/White Crossing I - Ackermann — Faceland/White Crossing I – Ackermann

There’s a charm to this portrait that hooked up in my head with the (so far very much) unconnected themes I was juggling. It was my missing link. Ackerman’s brought the map like quality in, and that high contrast, vector style I love as well.

So, am I going to show you the portraits now… or am I going to keep you hanging on?

Well, kinda neither…

The screen print portraits are still a work in progress as other priorities have leapt the queue in my sphere of makings.

But I’ve been dabbling with other prints and watercolor doodles. The first of which is………

More Than The Sum Of Its Parts – Part 3

If it’s all looking a bit disparate with uncongealed ideas; If you’re still following, I commend you! And I forewarn you – it’s maybe gonna seem more scattered before it starts coming together – but bear with me…

Yester-post I was explaining how the combined doodles that emerged from the Zak Smith – Dominic McGill ideas were the raw ingredients for my silk screen design.

Next step was to dismember and re-member them into new shapes and surprises. Photographed and scanned, reduced to monochrome, printed, chopped, rearranged, photocopied, resized, rechopped, glued back together. Began to look like this:

It’s taking on mappy qualities, and I like the metaphor of this too. It’s a journey of loops within loops. Mapping the ineffable unmappable.

Part number next: the silk screen printing.

Next exciting installment coming up soon 😉

More Than The Sum Of Its Parts – Part 2

Yesterday I was telling you how Zak Smith’s art was the starting point in this little project of mine. At the same show I got to see the work of another favorite artist IRL, Dominc McGill.

Moloch - Dominic McGill — Moloch – Dominic McGill

Again there’s a lot of mono with splashes of color, intensified contrast. I love the mishmash of text in art, increasingly it’s something I use in my own work. It was around this time the Tate Modern was showing Mira Schendel.

Much of Schendel’s work was displayed hanging so you could walk round, through and between the pieces, be involved, enveloped, almost engulfed.
So I’m aborbing this work, there’s an osmosis going on. I’m gathering ideas and doodling them together.

Some Klimt, some Zak Smith. Little bits of color

Elements are coming together to form something new, something else.

Not so much with the straight directions and the boxy, something else.

I really don’t know where I’m going with this, but I’m riding the wave.

Gallery postcards, chopped up, collaged.

Destination is way down the list. Would probably be a distraction right now. Fuck destination.

As is my way (whenever I can) I moved on from here to screen printing. I’ll show you where that went next time.

acetate printing

Messing about with the stencils I cut from acetate sheets…

progressed to monoprinting with the stencils

My challenge was just to use 2 primary colors: red and yellow.

(yeh, + black and white, of course)

strictly speaking reds and yellows (but restricted to only 2 of each)

Love the effects, but the urge to throw in a bit of purple…

turquoise… blue?…No. Temptation was resisted 😉

More soons!
Happy weekending to you alls X

a quick flurry!

Hey folks, I’m back! Not that I’ve been anywhere else, I’ve been right here inside your computer, I just haven’t been getting the words and pictures out to you for a few weeks 😉

So here’s a little round up since I last posted……….

Looking back over the last few weeks I can see it’s been centred a lot around stencils and ink spraying

I treated myself to a bunch of bargain stencils a few weeks back. They were 1/2 price, it would’ve been sheer madness not to.

I also started making some of my own, cutting from acetate sheets, paper and card.

The paper/card ones are getting recycled into collages as (or before) their edges n corners begin to disintegrate!

Ooh and stapling! I seem to have about a gazillion boxes of staples… so naturally they’ve joined the art ingredients

This is just scuffing the surface of the iceberg of things I’ve been busying at – more pics to follow soon! 😉

New Year: New Projects!

Day 2, and so far I’m quite liking 2013.

It’s demanded nothing to arduous from me.

It’s given me time to play with these square things!

They’re a work in progress, I think a little more to be done, then framing.

More pics soons! 😀

obsessions de jour

Hey folks – Happy Holidays to you all!

We’ve had a lot of dark, gloomy, rainful days here. Not a big grumble, weather happens, but the half-arsed grey wet daylight has severely hampered my ability to any good photos lately. This week, finally I got a few pics of my latest adventures and obsessions!

When time and people permit, I like to pretty much hibernate from around 21 December straight through to a couple of days into January. Not so much a big sleep, but a big re-charge. I spend most of these days actively pursuing colors and shapes in some fashion or another 😉

Recently I’ve found myself making a whole load of these. Srsly, like dozens of them. Ranging in size from about 1/2 inch upwards to 2 inches, they really satisfy the no scrap is too small to keep mentality!

To what end I can’t be certain, but I mounted a few up on some dyed paper and framed a few in little Ikea box frames.

Some of them have a very dimensional quality – consisting layers of paper and some with corrugated card – so they work well in a deep box frame. (pics to follow…)

Hang on… like a deja vu thing going on here… these things remind me of something…
Yes! these things
Curious… I’d totally forgotten about them til typing this post… But do feel encouraged, at least I’m consistent with my obsessions, even if I’ve no idea what they’re for (yet).

So, dear friends and visitors, whether you’re getting ready to party the new year in, or already have done, I wish you all the very best for 2013.
May it bring you what you wish for, and more 😀

Eph X