Canvas to the Imagination

I’m a little behind with posting on my blog about the work I’ve been doing on the portrait-series-with-no-name. These two photos are from a shoot I did with Kirsti a few weeks ago in Pacific Spirit Park. We went into the forest looking for the perfect location, but the early evening light was too low. Instead I found just the spot I needed in the bushes at the edge of the road right where we’d parked. I love how this portrait turned out with the beautiful green leaves and Kirsti’s striking gaze.

I have to say that Kirsti is one of my favorite people to photograph because she’s very photogenic (despite her claims otherwise) and she’s game for the dressing up or stand here, stand there requests I make while shooting.

I should mention Kirsti’s work has been featured on the Canadian Design Resource Blog twice in the last week. Once for the “Octopus & Frigate Birds” Illustration she created for Lulu lemon, and once for the logo design she created for me.

This is my second altered book, which I worked on in stages over the course of five days. It’s the gluing that takes the longest because I usually need to leave it to dry and set before I can move on to the next phase. I love making these because they require careful planning a few steps ahead, like putting the hanger on the back of the book before it’s even started, or knowing how many pages to leave unglued for rolling.

I decided to use the page rolling technique again even though there are about a zillion different ways to alter a book. The type and age of the paper makes all the difference in workability. This book’s pages were heavy and brittle which made it tricky to roll without ripping the corners.

The only thing I had in mind when I started was to cut into the rolled pages somehow and have the bits sticking up. The piece came together when I decided to use the wooden tiger and create a scene around him, with the cut pages as grass. The rabbit was added as an afterthought at the bottom because I felt it needed something to create more of a narrative and balance out the composition. I googled what do tigers eat? first to make sure tigers have rabbits (hares) as prey in their natural environment, and they do.

The tiger and rabbit came from a bag of wooden animals I picked up at a garage sale last year. I’ve been saving them for just the right thing. The collage also includes metal stars, Japanese paper, rubber stamping, ink, and metallic paper flowers.

The title is inspired by the following quote by Patrick Overton:

“When you have come to the edge Of all light that you know And are about to drop off into the darkness Of the unknown, Faith is knowing One of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on or You will be taught to fly”

I like this shot, but it ended up needing more post-production work than I’d originally intended. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, it’s just hard to see how this will fit in as the series evolves. The location of Jericho Beach park didn’t end up working well as a backdrop for what I had in mind, so I decided to shoot a new location to use instead. I went for an illustrated look, and I really wanted to capture an upbeat emotional quality, which is very different than my previous portrait of Susie.

Things are going well so far. I’ve actually ended up shooting these portraits more frequently than I’d originally planned. I’m working on the shots from session number three this week, and shooting session number four this weekend. Here’s hoping I can keep up the momentum…

Randel Plowman is an artist who inspires me. He creates beautiful collages full of interesting bits of layered papers, and often his compositions include birds. I came across his work about a year ago on Drawn.ca. They made mention of his a-collage-a-day blog, which I found an amazing project because I was having a hard enough time producing one collage a week.

Randel does a great job of not only producing work but also making it available for sale. All the collages posted to his blog are $25, which includes archival matting, documentation of authenticity, and shipping. I think that’s a steal, especially for original art work. Over the time I’ve been subscribed to his blog, I’ve purchased two of his collages (pictured above) and they’ve become some of the favorite pieces in my little collection of art.

I think this is a great example of the internet making the work of artists more affordable and accessible to a wider audience.

I’m not sure about other artists, but I always seem to have a bunch of ideas in the back of my mind that resurface every once in awhile, but never quite make it to reality. I think some of these ideas aren’t meant to be, while a very few seem to be biding their time waiting until I eventually have the right knowledge and skills to make them happen.

I’ve wanted to create art from old books ever since I came across Tim Karpinski’s illustrations painted in a book in a Portland art show two years ago. I made a few attempts at using heat transfer paper to print my photos in books, but the paper was too delicate to take the high temperatures needed for the process and I wasn’t satisfied with the results. Since then I’ve taken up collage which has involved figuring out techniques and exploring an art form that is an alternative to taking photos. It is also more hands-on than photography tends to be these days. I think it was a direction I needed to take in order to learn how to work with the books in the way I wanted.

On the weekend I went to the grand reopening of RubyDog’s Art House and bought (among other things) “New Directions in Altered Books” by Gabe Cyr. It’s full of ideas for turning old books into interesting pieces of art and has inspired me to finally explore my thoughts on creating things from old books.

Today I experimented with my first one, which is featured in the photo at the top of this blog post. It’s pretty basic, and is really more of an experiment than anything, but it was oh-so-satisfying to make, and I want to do more more MORE! (Colour me excited.) The collage contains sewing pattern paper, a silver coin, locking mechanism parts, a metal bird, and a watch face. The red spiral pattern was created with a rubber stamp and ink. I also used gel medium to glue the edges of the pages, and wash of gesso along the edges.