Mixed Media – Page 18 – Mixy's Art Blog

Full Moon Everything 10/52

Week 10 began on a full moon. It was a big full week.

Tidal changes of hope and spirit, plans formed and crashed with barely time to get a good grip on them.

It’s the first week I’ve really found difficult to ‘make’ – in terms of the page, but also I guess in terms of making sense of myself as well. Massive overwhelms kept colliding – giddy highs and their plummeting opposites. It was minimal in comparison with the other weeks in terms of word-spew. Just summed it up in a big fat EVERYTHING.

Again with all the eyes peering out at me. Even they are looking a bit more deranged than usual this week.

I can’t tell you how many layers of mismatched colours and unhappy paint coated these pages. It was a nothing’s looking right covered with another no that’s still not it under a coat of wtf really? And then some.

Then the Wednesday came to a close, and that was that, turn over and start again Thursday. Glad to report, this week’s looking more harmonious!

butterfly overflow (9/52)

Week 9 of this year is made out of the colours of Spring, honoring the sense of Spring as the world comes back to life after her quiet dormant months. And some of last week’s butterflies have flitted across into this week too. I had a big old tidy up after finishing that project and all the left over butterflies have landed here. (I say all of them… a few got away as you’ll see on the next page).

The week fell on the crossover from February to March, so warranted another list. Seems like there’s a reason for a list pretty much every week now. It’s in the background, but it can germinate there. I’ll patiently await the first shoots of development as the month wears on.

Another week, another meme:

When you do what you fear the most you can do anything.

Ok, yeh, I can take that on as a challenge. I’ve crossed some metaphorical bridges lately, and my metaphorical-bridge-crossing skills are notably sharper as a result. I’ve also come to realise I can’t always tell the difference between the pit-of-the-guts anxiety feeling and its close cousin, the visceral buzz of anticipation feeling.

So I’ve actively decided that henceforth, if I’m in any doubt, I’ll assume its the latter.

It is the feeling of butterflies.

New Beginnings

It’s that time of year, time of life, time of day.. it’s also the name of an exhibition I have some work in.

The title is open to interpretation but it got me thinking about the saying What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.

an untidy desk is the sign of... — an untidy desk is the sign of…

So with my fav kind of glorious inky messy, the divinely joyous, the snipping up of little bits of paper, the gluing bits accidentally to my sleeves, hair, floor… and the itsy small doodles on the wings… the magical making process, another project began to unfurl.

I remembered how I hadn’t done this for so long – let the inner kid out to play without any rules or boundaries – well, one – just do butterflies. We jumped in with both feet!

I began with 3 different butterfly images, digitally reduced to grey-scale, then high contrast mono before printing in a few different sizes. Some flipped over to fly in the opposite direction.

Enough of the tidy digital world, enough of the pristine pixel arrangement. Time for IK to make a mess with layers of inky goodness before cutting out the little beasties for collaging, and extra doodles.

So far there are 2 framed collages, and a series of cards. I’m in the process of setting them up over on DeviantArt so prints are available too ……….. and I’ve got another little side project where they’ll be flitting through too -> watch this space!

Shadow Monkeys (8/52 cont/d)

Week eight of 2015: a busy page that’s warranted 2 posts…

And that’s without any mention of the butterflies.

Or Steve Jobs. But that’s all for another day…

The thing I wanted to tell you about now is monkey related:
Since I spent a weekend in conversation with my daemons, they’ve been magicking themselves into apparency here, there & all over. This week they’ve manifested in a semi-Cubist, heavy handed biro scrawl, merged, their tribal Día de Muertos faces peering out from the recesses of the page.

We’ve been sharing the available space in this mind for a few decades. It’s refreshing to shift the power balance between ‘them’ and ‘us’ (for want of better terms).

So when I read the post from Danny Gregory this week, asking for tales from our Monkeys, another bunch of dots connected: Monkey minded me, the battles with my daemons, and all the reasons it took me so long to go to art school.

I dedicated a corner of a page to the Monkeys (they were chief trouser-wearers and direction-choosers in my life for way too long. They get a corner to play in now. I get the rest of the page. That is ALL) A place to start unscrambling some thoughts:

These are the bare bones of those thoughts:

My monkeys bewilder me with their faultlessly formed logic.

They have faith only in the opinions and the hard-hearted snipes of the the hardcore cynics. They know why I can’t and what I can’t and all the reasons why.

They will poke at me with pointy sticks if I turn my back on them for long. They stand in my way. They say: don’t show yourself, not your real self, cos then the haters aren’t hating the real you. You tricked the haters, the mean kids, the ones who know. You win. See?

The monkey’s logic is flawed at a level so deep I sometimes forget : Do not trust the monkeys.

It was the Monkey’s determination that as art isn’t a real job, and work isn’t supposed to be fun, and all the associated hooey, that defined my existence until quite recently. A large part of life (by my reckoning) is unpicking the knots that we spend the preceding years tying ourselves up in. Unattended monkeys will continue tying knots.

An Unintentional Mermaid (8/52)

Week 8 of the page a week looked like this:

And it must be the most colourful yet. It’s also the most full of subconscious tells – I’m only starting seeing now I look back from a few days later. Like the green mermaid/peacock – I didn’t draw her but she emerged from a funny little cross-leggedy figure and the phrase ‘move toward’ and some doodles.

I’ve got no idea at all what that means (yet).

There’s a lot of scribbly writing on this week, from an outpouring of encouraging words & phrases I was trying to sooth my brain with. You’ll catch glimpses of them here n there altho a lot are now buried under drawing.

She believed she could and she did.

Cos gosh darn it if that hasn’t been the case recently! And I’ve still riding that wave, so it goes down in the book as a marker of the time I’m in.

Move Toward. If I had a strategy for life, it would be that. As opposed to the alternates: running away from, or worse: sitting in stagnation. I’ve tried both of these approaches in the past. The results haven’t been so good.

Since I began this page-a-week game I’ve become aware how often the opportunity for another list of intentions comes up – it’s almost weekly!

Since forever it’s been a thing I do at the start of a month, and on a New Moon. The big ones are New Year (often I begin this at Winter Solstice), and there’s Chinese (Lunar) New Year which fell last week.

You see what I mean?

No wonder I’m so often listing the same things.

So for the record, here are my intentions for Year of the Goat/Sheep/Ram/Ovicaprid

Raise my vibration – belong
Use my time – spread my thoughts
Make more – share more
Love more – Read more – learn more
Collaborate – Assimilate – Consolidate
Stretch out – Drink in
Sleep well – Eat well
Trust the process
Find my tribe – Share stories

These flooded out in a sorta stream of consciousness so I can’t offer much by way of explanation for them. More I hope will become apparent in the course of time. Hey – they’ve got a year to puzzle themselves into fruition!

Odoodem

A project I began working on as college brief in September 2013 finally came to fruition recently. The task was to design a site specific artwork for the National Spinal Injury Centre.

I described earlier my design of a ‘Totem’ honouring and celebrating the spirit of the Spinal unit, the great work that is done there and the kinship that develops between patients, the therapists and staff, the patients’ friends and families – the community.

The perfect location turned out to be an eight-sided brick pillar in the centre of reception: the spine of the unit, and conveniently totem-esque in shape; so defining the design, and informing the scale.

I decided early on that the artwork would consist of a series of portraits of people who have shown a level of determination and spirit that can inspire others. The stories I read in the course of researching who to include were often beyond awe-inspiring. Testament to the strength of character that comes to the fore in times of crisis, and a need to share that sense of possibility with others.

A really strong sense of people are amazing. I’ve also had some really wonderful feedback from the folks whose portraits I used. Absolutely heartwarming, I’ve so loved this project.

I’d like to thank everyone involved in the project:

Aaron Baker, David Weir, Mike Nemesvary, Jared Duntan,
Mark Pollock, Melanie Reid, Catriona Williams, Pete Donnelly,
Erica Davis, Bonnie Lewkowicz, Trish Downing, Darius Glover,
Andy Walker, Suzanne Cowan, Barry West & Frank Gardner.

Week 6: Confusion sets in.

All that about loving weeks beginning on a thursday…. what was I on about?! I’m not embracing this self-imposed confusion right now! (I’d meant to type I’m NOW embracing, but clearly I’m not, that’s a subconscious truth leakage!)

SO quick before this week’s gone as welll … Week #6 of 2015 looked like this:

The week that my daemon manifested himself in glorious turquoise velvetty form.

See, he did look a bit more cat than dragon in the planning stages… His early plannings are nestled up with left over fabric (sorry, fur – feathers – scales??) snippets

Close you eyes, fall in love, stay there. (Rumi)

And the best advice I heard all week.

A Sacred Space

I was pondering this thought: a sacred space doesn’t have to be a physical space.

It can be a space in my day, a number of minutes I hold back from everyday use.

A little bit of room in the day to release some thoughts into the ether.

And ask the rhetorical questions.

A few moments to flick water at a book and not care if you get ink splashes on your face.

Time to draw round the edges of that beige smeary paint. Because you like the sensation of pencil over grainy gesso. Also, just because.

These times the what and the why don’t matter. Only the doing matters. And the allowing the chance to do that matters most. This is a sacred space.

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………