I spent the first 2 weeks working on a new artist's book called "Mansion of Happiness", based on Victorian board games that I photographed several years ago at the American Antiquarian society. Most of them deal with vagaries of fate and fortune, and as I worked with the images I realized I was thinking a lot about our economy, unemployed friends, and people who have lost their homes and that proverbial American Dream.
Working on this meant days and days on the computer, so last week as that first draft started to come together I stepped away to work on collages based on Victorian wallpaper (there's a theme here...). This work stems directly from what I was doing in Wyoming, but moving into more abstraction (abstraction! I thought it was dead...) and color. In the end they are just plain fun to make, and that alone is enough right now. There are lots of pleasures in studio work, but not too many times that it is straight-out fun! I will make layered encaustic pieces out of these in the end, so everything is in sketch form so far.
My collage work has slowed radically in the last few days, as a combination of too much shoveling and too much paper cutting has made an old carpal tunnel problem flare up again. So I'm turning my focus this week to writing and my third project (not in any way Victorian in genesis), an artist's book that I started in Ireland last summer about my mother's illness and death from Alzheimer's. With all the images done, it has been waiting for a text, and at last that is beginning to happen. I've been working my way through the library's poetry collection, reading and writing every day.
As we go into the last week, I'm realizing that the solitude here has really helped my focus, keeping me in the "zone" through the day. Later this week we will all prepare for Open Studios on Saturday, which sometimes attracts a very large crowd. And one of our dancer's troupe will arrive to work with her, and the Caldera staff will be convening for a weekend retreat, so the vibe will change a lot in a few days. Then it will be time to pack (again??) and head out.
This morning, more snow, now rain... snow/rain/rain/snow, the sun was out yesterday! |
The Mansion of Happiness |
Starting to use all that studio space— |
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