Artist: Randel Plowman

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Collage-A-Day: Randel Plowman

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.

Altered book collage

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Altered book collage

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.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen

Shelter

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

~ Marge Piercy

The start of something new

I read somewhere that the periods in which inspiration and productivity run dry in the life of every creative person is as all part of the cycle of creativity. They are a necessary, though often frustrating and painful, part of how artists produce work and should be used as a “rest period’ in which to gather strength/thoughts/inspiration/whatever it is one needs to move forward into the next phase of work. It is much like the cycle of the seasons, with growth in some periods of the year eventually leading to dormancy and rest in others. It’s just not humanly possible to always be productive, and the creative muse likes her time off too.

It was with these thoughts in mind that I gave myself time off over the summer. It’s never my most productive time because there are so many distractions and I want to make the most of the gorgeous summer weather while it’s here. I decided I would ponder what I wanted to work on after the end of the 52 Weeks series of self portraits and begin something new in September.

Taking shelter

The above shot is the first in the new series and is inspired by the self portraits I took for 52 Weeks. I wanted to take some of the themes, ideas, and techniques I came up with in that series and apply them to portraits of other people. I’ve decided to concentrate on women as my subjects because I think my style is better suited to the feminine. My goal is to shoot one portrait about every week or two, which means planning ahead and being organized.

I’m excited about working on this and can’t wait to bring more of my ideas to photographic life.

Variations of film in a holga camera

Mannequins

When Boris and I were in Victoria earlier this year I came across the motherload of medium format expired slide film in a small camera store in Bastion Square. At first I was hesitant to buy it all because most of the film was 220 and I wasn’t sure I could shoot this in my holga. For those not familiar with film formats, medium format film come in 120 rolls which allows for 12 exposures or 220 rolls which allow for 24 exposures (this varies with the type of camera). The larger roll also doesn’t work with every medium format camera, at least that’s what I’d been led to believe. I went ahead and bought the lot deciding to take my chances because of the cheap price of four year expired film.

Mannequins

The shots I’ve included in this blog post were the first taken on the roll of 220 with a holga. As you can see, I had a lightleak and it went through the entire roll. With 220 film the whole camera has to be taped up, including the window at the back of the holga, because the film doesn’t have a paper backing the way 120 does. I’ll add more tape for next time. The trickiest part of shooting 220 is keeping track of the number of exposures because you can no longer see the numbers at the back, as well as being careful to count the number of clicks between frames.

For more detailed instructions on shooting 220 film go read “How to Use 220 film in a Holga.”

Mannequins

Making Cheese is as easy as…pie…?

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A few months ago I read the wonderful book Animal Vegetable Miracle written by Barbara Kingsolver. It’s an entertaining and inspiring recounting of the year she and her family spent growing their own food. The book includes meal plans and recipes at the end of each chapter that are based on what is available by season. Some of these, like the asparagus and morel bread pudding, sound mouth-wateringly good.

Cheese making-4

About three quarters of the way through the book there is a chapter where Barbara describes making her own cheese. And not only does she make her own mozzarella but she does it in just thirty minutes! Boris and I were really excited about this (Cheese in half an hour!! WE CAN MAKE OUR OWN CHEESE!!!!!) and I started to track down the ingredients. This ended up being the most complicated part because though the cheese is made with only three ingredients – milk, citric acid and rennet – I had no idea where to look for two of those three. In the end it was Anne who found everything for us and we owe her a cheese of her own in thanks.

For future cheese makers based in Vancouver here’s where to get ’em: citric acid can be found at most pharmacies and rennet is sold at Bosa Foods. After that it was easy-peasy and we ended up with delicious cheese, fresh and hot. The mozzarella was tasty and went beautifully with the heirloom tomatoes we’ve been picking up at the Farmers Market throughout the summer.

Cheese making-2

The 30-minute mozzarella recipe is available as a PDF download from the Animal Vegetable Miracle companion site. Boris and I have made the mozzarella twice now, the first time with friends and the second as a tag team effort. Two key things we discovered: resist the impulse to keep stirring the milk because it’ll separate into curds and whey faster when still, and add a bit more citric acid when the milk reaches the highest temperature mentioned in the recipe.

Cheese making

We’re still both AMAZED that cheese making can be this easy and this fast. And thanks to the recipes included within the box of rennet tablets there are more cheese experiments we’re hoping to try in the near future.

Cheese making-3

Ten Good Things from the Weekend

Oranges

1. Time to myself at last!
2. Down time at last!
3. Quality time with my cute boy at last!
4. Asking for an adventure on Sunday and getting an excellent breakfast at the Twisted Fork (found by chance) followed by fun times at the PNE.
5. The return of my freshly repaired Contax film camera in just four days.
6. Shooting the first roll of 220 film in my holga. Fingers crossed everything turns out great.
7. Awesome summer weather.
8. Getting started on two large scale long-term projects that have nothing to do with art per se and everything to do with getting digitally organized and backed up.
9. Dropping into Xoxolat on Burrard for the first time ever and leaving with some of the most delicious chocolate I’ve recently tasted.
10. Feeling relaxed and recharged. FTW.

52 Weeks Blurb Book

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I feel as if the summer of 2009 has been a very satisfying one as far as finally accomplishing some of the things I’ve been meaning to do for years… The collage post cards were one of those things I’d been thinking about forever, and publishing a Blurb book was another. Finally both are a reality, and it feels pretty damn good.

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52 weeks blurb book

Because I plan to have a show of the 52 Weeks self portrait series I decided I would produce a self published book using Blurb as part of the process. It felt like the first step in narrowing down the selection from the 52 images (which is too much for a show), and also figuring out whether it could actually work as a show at all. I really struggled with that last part because I experimented quite a lot with different styles and techniques over the course of the series and felt it wasn’t very coherent as a show. Showing the work to a new group of people helped me see it more clearly and convinced me I wasn’t crazy about showing the 52 Weeks photos in a gallery.

The blurb book features only a small selection of the 52 Weeks photos. I chose what I felt are the best and most creative work, while trying to keep in mind how these will work together/compliment one another both in book form and hanging on walls. The 12″ x 12″ copy I ordered this week will work nicely as a one-off portfolio of this body of work that I hope to shop around while looking for a space to show. If you have any suggestions for places that could work in the Vancouver area, please let me know.

The 52 Weeks book can be purchased online through blurb.com. The size is 7″ x 7″ and comes in softcover or hardcover with dust jacket. Click the blurb badge below to see a sneak preview or purchase it on blurb.

A Year of Self Por…
By Rachael Ashe

Other Blurb books I thought were cool:
Masque de Gaz | Geoffrey Nicholson
The Devil’s in the Details | Laura McCabe
BenoitP | Benoit Paille

Postcards. Get your red hot postcards.

Postcard set

One of the many bits of terrific information I learned in my “Artist Survival Skills” course with Chris Tyrell was about creating a vertical inventory of my work. This means creating a variety of work with different price points that allow me to cater to more than one audience. The idea behind this is to make the most of what I do by taking work that is time consuming to produce and therefore expense for people to buy and reproducing it in a way that is more affordable. A great example given of this was reproducing artwork as greeting cards.

Postcards!!!!!!

I am a bit of a stationery junkie and write snail mail letters regularly so it was a no-brainer for me to turn my artwork into postcards. I selected five of the collages created in my moleskin sketchbooks, scanned them, tweaked and cleaned them up in photoshop, and created a postcard backside image to compliment the front. My friend Kirsti helped me put together the final print files and then off everything went to the printers. I used Minuteman Press in Vancouver, and I’m pretty happy with the quality reproduction of my work. (They also produced my new business cards and the labels I’m using to package up the postcards.)

The postcards are available for purchase through my Etsy shop as a set of five. Get ’em while they’re hot.

Artist: Morgan Brig

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While in Seattle last weekend for a conference I came across the extraordinary work of artist, Morgan Brig. My friends and I were wandering back to our hotel along Second Avenue when her work caught our attention in the window of Patricia Rovzar Gallery. We were immediately drawn in to take a closer look.

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Her wall sculptures are like collage in three dimensions, made with copper and enamel instead of paper and mixed media. They are magical, colourful pieces that incorporate texture, symbols, icons, and bits of text with the theme of “personal circus” running throughout. The titles of each piece, such as “She Said, I Too, Am of Wonder” or “Her Inner Child Was a Show to Behold” are as striking as the pieces themselves and compliment them beautifully. Brig’s work reminds me a lot of the crazy and colourful collage work of Teesha Moore sprung to life in 3-D.

brig09_6

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My friends and I were blown away by her work and left wishing we had the money to buy one of her pieces to take home. Though if it were possible for me to purchase one I’m not sure I’d be able to decide which I liked best because they are all so amazing. The online photos of the work don’t quite do justice to how striking they are in person. This was easily the best art show I’ve seen in a very long time.

(Photos used with permission of Patricia Rovzar Gallery)