Assemblage - Katsina I

Haven't posted in a while, so here is a peek at my current work in progress. My wire dolls are evolving little by little. My goal with this piece is to combine the wooden piece on the left with the wire sculpture, and I need to figure out the connection. The wooden piece on the left was a wooden dowel that my hubby shaped for me on a lathe. He is terrific at woodworking! It's very handy to have access to someone with that type of talent. He has also created some of my bases for my dolls and he refuses for me to name him as a collabrative artist in my work. Should I be taking that as insult or compliment! Sometimes he doesn't understand my work but is %100 supportive. He's a great guy with talent!!!!

I've been taking a peek at some mixed media jewerly artists work and it is amazing to see some of the techniques they use in their work. It's actually very inspiring and I try to figure ways to incorporate some of their techniques into my art dolls. I wish I had the time and money take a workshop with some of them. I will have to make do with reading and looking at magazines, books and blogs. One jewerly artist's website that I love to visit is Richard Salley. He does some amazing work and he has a really great tutorial you can view that takes you through step by step on creating one of his pieces. I love his use of cold connections in his work and I did try one in his tutorial. It was a challenge to keep your wire even and centered while you were bending and hammering away.

Assemblage - Chained Angel

This angel assemblage was created from part of an Altoid Tin, found objects, metal, chain and clay. I haven't used painting much with my pieces, but I do like the effects I got with this piece.
The blue colored metal behind the figure is a technique of aging metal I used on a piece of bronze. It is an ammonia and salt recipe I tried from Linda & Opie Obrien's book titled Metal Craft Discovery Workshop. This book is filled with interesting techniques!

Post Cursillo

Today I begin my 4th day!
A Big Thank You to those beautiful women who shared and gave so much of themselves.
You are inspirations!!
God bless each and everyone of you!

DeColores!

Collagraphs

Collagraph Print "Spirited Horse"

I spent the good part of yesterday afternoon printing in the studio and demonstrating for people who were visiting our annual print sale. We had a great turn out in regards to the number of people who attended. I was just thrilled to be in the studio and printing several new plates for 4 hours. The time went by way to fast.

Collagraph Print "Untitled"

This is an 8"x10" collagraph plate that was printed in one color. It's a bit busy design wise but there are some interesting things going on. This piece was inspired by Native American Mixed Media Artist Tony Abeyta.

Collagraph - W.I.P.

It's been a while since I've created or printed a collagraph. Our printmaking group is getting ready for the annual show and sale in a few weeks and I have voluntered to demo all day at the sale and this is one of the pieces I will be working on.
This print was a quick run just to see how the image was going to look. What I really love about collagraphs is the element of surprise in what your print will look like. You give up some control working with this technique.

Paper Dolls for fun

I came across an article by Pamela Hastings in an old Art Doll Quarterly Magazine about paper dolls, and became inspired. So, my daughters and I worked on paper dolls yesterday. The bodies are made from recycled items such are cardboards from tissue and cereal boxes. My main contribution was helping to get the main part of the body drawn and opening the back end of the brads, which were used to attach the arms and legs.

Kepa - The Apostle

Assemblage represents St. Peter, the fisherman from Galilee. His Aramaic name "Kepa", which means rock, was given to him by Jesus. He was the very first pope and was crucified upside down.

In creating this assemblage I formed a wire spring and attached it on the back of the head. I've had this fascination with bobble heads and decided to somehow incorporate it. It's my weird way of visualizing a bobbing head.

The only thing lacking on this piece is the name Kepa, which I would like to place at the very top.

Hope to have that done soon.

Assemblage - Madonna and Child

Assemblage Mother and Child was created with a metal light switch cover, found objects, rusty hardware pieces, metal, wire, and clay. The angel glass charm was a give away by a friend at our local doll group. Some of our doll club members are very generous in bringing items to give away to fellow members. I love it because it's like free flee market with lots of goodies.

Necklace by Jen Worden

I received this really amazing and interesting necklace from Jen Worden a few weeks back. I love the way she created the whole chain link and all the interesting charms she attached . This piece was created from a project in a book by Stephanie Lee titled "Semiprecious Salvage."

Works in progess

I have about four projects I've been working on for the past two weeks, and this one is about 50% done. Just ran out of E6000 and will continue to glue my way through the rest of this project with Liquid Nails. These mini clamps that I have borrowed from the hubby are great! I also use some small plastic clamps that are just the right size to use with these small projects.

I am taking my very first assemblage class and this is the fruits of my labor. I painted the doll's legs with black spray paint used for plastics. The legs were painted a very beautiful black color and very shiny. As I was moving them around they kept getting nicked, so I just gave up on keeping them prestine looking and took sand paper to them to give them the worn look.

It also helped to have body parts from a very well made doll! I'm now at the point of trying to figure out on how to design the inside of the cigar box. What you see currently are a few torn pieces of ink covered tarlatan(stiff cheese cloth). Tarlatan is used in wipping down plates in printmaking. Some of the ink covered tarlatans have some beautiful colors on them. I guess this is my part in recycling because I think the studio discards them when the are too soiled with ink.

I like indirectly incorporating printmaking into my assemblages.

I was tagged by Robinsunne to tell 6 random things about myself and then tag others in turn.

1) I love to eat pickles and chips.

2) I have a breakfast burrito most mornings.

3) I am originally from the Land of Enchantment.

4) I am a very blessed person to have and know all the wonderful people in my life.

5) Most times I feel that I have an old soul, which is a good thing for me!

6) At another time in my life, I had served 8 years in the military.

As another friend put it so delicately in his blog regarding these tags, I too will have to be a party pooper and decline on tagging other artists friends because they just wouldn't care for this

to show up on their blogs.

Assemblage - Angel of Peace

I had finished this piece some time back and she needed some tweeking, so it was back to the drawing board for a while until I made some time to finish her. After working out problems with this piece, I had the strong desire to rename her as well.
What I really enjoy about creating assemblages is the process of figuring out what structurally works. Just when you think all the gliches have been addressed, something new arises that puts your creativity back to the test.

Assemblage - The Disciple

Finally found some time to post an assemblage piece I've been slowly working on. Created from rusted old hardware pieces and tools.

Raining Art Doll Show - Holly Baby

One more doll for the Raing Doll Art Show. First two dolls sold before opening night, so Tricia asked if I could send one more. No problem! The show will be up until the end of the month of September.

Assemblage - Queen For All Time

For this assemblage, I used a black watch band and it's mechanisms from the inside. Everything else is found objects and various pieces of hardware. I've been using E6000 to adhere pieces together and it has been working really well for me.

Assemblage - "Angels Among Us"

I finished this assemblage piece a while ago and I am just now posting it. I have plans on exploring more on the angel theme, but the journey is so slow with so many other things on the front burner right now. I do try to sneak in a few assemblage pieces here and there until busy season is over.

Pics from New Mexico vacation

Victory Ranch in Mora raises Alpacas. You can feed the animals for a fee, but you need to be careful with these guys because they like to spit. There seems to be quite a few ranches in the area that are raising Alpacas.

Mountain view on the drive from Mora to Taos.

I was intrigued with all the jewelry Jen Worden was working with and so I took a jewelry making class with Tito Chavez at his gallery Tito's when I was home visiting family in New Mexico.
The last time I ever worked with a torch was back in high school and that has been a very LONG time!


This a pic of Tito and myself after 4.5 hrs of working with the torch! Loved every minute of it and learned or lets say relearned a lot. Tito has been making jewelry for over thirty years and is very good at it.


These pieces of silver were shaped by placing popcorn seeds in a can of water and then melting the silver down and pouring it into the can. The silver then curls it's self around the popcorn creating these neat little pods. They are very cool to see in person! Very organic looking.



I had two projects going on at the same time, so the picures jump from project to project. Both project are pendants made very differently.


This pile of scrap silver is waiting to be fused together without using flux or solder. This pendent will have a dichroic glass piece set in it.



The two photos above are of a bezel being soldered. This pendent will have a square shaped turqouis stone.


Fused scrap pieces of silver


The stone setting was then soldered on to the fused scraps.


My bezel actually moved on me while I was soldering it on and I left it right where it landed because it looked good off center. The little silver balls were made from small pieces of silver solder heated until they formed a ball. The rope is made from twisting two pieces of silver wire together and then soldering it on. The soldering wasn't too bad as long as you remembered not to leave the heat on too long.


Before polishing the pieces.

Finished product.

Raining Art Doll Show - California

Here's the scoop on the upcoming art doll show in California! I was so graciously invited by the very talented Tricia Anders to participate in an art show coming up in Sept. at The Tenwomen Gallery in Venice Beach California. She has invited 29 artists from across the country to show case their talents! This is going to be awesome!!


This doll is titled "Dice Baby" and is an assemblage doll. The body of the doll is handwoven wire.
This assemblage doll is titled "Marble Baby".

W.I.P. - Doll for upcoming show

This doll is called "Dice Baby" and is a work in progress. This and hopefully another doll will be complete for a show I was invited to participate in. I'm very excited about it and will have more details about the show later.

Wire wrapped fuses

Found some time to work on some very small projects and this was one of them. Took some old fuses and wrapped them with wire, however, I was not successful in opening them up, so I used them in their natural state. They have a lot of potential for further experimentation. I'm always on the look out for new embellishments to add to my dolls.

Sumo Warrior

Here is an assemblage/art doll that I completed a few months back and just now posting. This doll is similar to the Mica doll in that they both have wooden dominos for their feet. My husband has all these great tools that I use in shaping some of these figures. Only if I put away the tools that I use! Sometimes that is hard to do.

W.I.P. -Work in progress!

This is a sneak preview of an assemblage I've been working on very slowly.