Fertile Glass

Fertile Glass

After being mesmerized by a Dale Chihuly exhibit at the Bronx Botanical Garden I felt I had to capture the exhibit and try to express the magic it made me feel.  I printed out some of my photos and created this book adding some lyrical marbled papers and other collage material.  You can't barely see it in the photos, but there are many "cut out" windows that let you peak through to the next page - very fun.  The cover (middle) was a digital collage I created in Photoshop.  

Feminine Mystique

Feminine Mystique

One of my online digital collage friends noticed that a favorite composition of mine is "faux symmetry" - I liked that term.  This is a fabric collage. I printed a spider web onto silk gauze and I loved the way it created the transparency over the shoulder and arms.  This is hard to do with fabric, since so much of the fabric is NOT transparent enough (and it is not easy to get your printer to behave with it!).  

I was the Executive Secretary for the CFO of Nabisco at one point and it made me a slave to the telephone. I was also a relocation counselor for a number of years. This was a 24/7 job that required me to wear a headset and talk all day to people around the world.  I escaped from that world before I went completely insane.  (The first tip off is when I found myself mooing in the elevator)!

Now I manage the phone, it does not manage me. If it rings and I am busy, I do not leap up and leave my dinner to get cold. That's why we have voice mail.  

Snow Crystal

Snow Crystal

One year my quilting friend wanted to make a complicated snow crystal quilt.  I took the challenge and made three of these beauties and declared i was done. My eyesight couldn't handle the strain at squinting at all of my blue and white fabrics trying to make these complicated beauties. How Paula Nadelstern does it, I will never know!

Nightmare - 2 spreads

Nightmare - 2 spreads

By now you know I love paper collage. I made this artist book when I was in a "bad patch" of my time-line! It was cathartic to release all of my anger and pain.  I spliced and diced the images so that they expressed something that I was feeling and changed them enough that I feel I had reinterpreted them from what each one of the original artists intended.  

Nightmare (opened)

I hope you can see the structure of this book. It is called an accordion book and here it is opened.  When it is closed and you flip each page there are cutouts that you can see to the back of the next page.  Very fun to play with! One side of this book is red and the other is peach.  I tried to have a line connect from one page to the next in some way. I was amazed how much better I felt once I had completed the book - it released a lot of my anger.  I know what they mean when they say "art saves lives"!  

This Collage is looking for a Title

This collage needs a title

This is my newest paper collage. I don't seem to be able to "interpret" it. Usually the work tells me what I have been thinking about of late, but the meaning of this one eludes me. Any thoughts?

One of the gals of my "Content Group" suggested that we all "crop" our designs. I had fun playing with that and here are the results.  I like the mini compositions, but it hasn't helped me figure out what it all means.

There is just nothing like selling a piece of art

Pre-Occupied (sold)

A good friend of mine saw this quilt on my blog and asked me if he could buy it.  I couldn't be more tickled! What validation!  He did suggest a better name - Pre-Occupied and I loved it!  So it is now hanging in a friends house - how terrific is that!

Under the Ice - Artist Book

Under the Ice

Now that winter's snow and ice have left us I begin to the appreciate the beauty of that season, and I'm not talking about Christmas.  The quiet beauty that you can find in the ice is amazing - if you have trained yourself to really see.  

The Passaic River had risen in the fall and then we had a blast of cold which froze the surface quickly. Then the river went down leaving plates of ice hanging above the river. It was very cool to photo - if not very cold!  I paired the photos with some light marbled paper I had created and wrote some Joni Mitchell lyrics.  I made an edition of 6 books and shared them with my friends.