collage

setting the table
for new structures
for projects and places
and paper and poems
with color and watercolor
and natural dyes

working on  prototype for
an upcoming project
 
thanks Josef Albers
“Why colored paper instead
of pigment and paint”
 
-paper provides innumerable colors
-sources are easily accessible
   (HTSI magazine)
--makes an inexpensive paper ‘palette’
-unnecessary mess, quick easy juxtaposition
--no spoiled or paint mixing failures
--no big equipment, but paste and cutter
--no drying time
--ease of solving problems
 
[from Josef Albers, ‘Interaction of Color:
50th Anniversary Collection,’ Yale University Press
2013, pgs. 6-7]

today marks, literally,
making the first mark
in a new journal
finished exactly a year ago
at Backyard Art Camp

the old journal
swollen with--
observations
to-do lists
calendars
paintings
musings
collages

the new journal’s
blank pages
await
marks
& fullness

Backyard Art Camp takes place in just a few weeks
under a tent in the backyard of writer artist bookmaker
Suzi Banks Baum.  There are two sessions
and each has just one spot left.  

I can’t wait to make past paper and then
construct a new Coptic stitch book.  We make
other types of books as well.  Message her 
HERE for info if you are interested.

text & typeface

words on the side of the road
as in the Shaker “Wayside Pulpit”
words found in advertisements 
as in the work of Corita Kent
words about to be printed
at Melanie Mowinski’s studio
words printed, read, used, perused
aptly, just begin

--Wayside Pulpit included in 'Unexpected Shaker' a pop-up show in Kinderhook, NY until 8/25
--Corita Kent, ‘bell bound’ found in ‘Corita Kent and the Language of Pop’
--Melanie Mowinski, Press:LetterPress

flipping flapping
through days & pages
of moths & butterflies
of collage & happenstance
of colors & moons

White
Yellow
Orange
Scarlet
Green
Blue
Crimson
Violet

Find more information on Alexandra Loske and her colour research, here. Mary Gartside (c.1755-1819) Abstract Visions of Colour published by Thomas Heneage Art Books

morning collage/watercolor
responding to the objects on my table
Geoff Young chap book
paste paper folder
tangled threads
or the grey outside

greyed:
            palest grey to white
            violet grey
            pink cosmos grey
            violets dropped in milk grey
            a drop of cobalt blue grey
            orangesicle ice cream grey
            sunpoked through yellow grey
            old yellowed newspaper grey
            grey green sky portends rain

one of my teachers used to say

make one, make fifty

and so here a kaleidoscope*

made sixty five or more

and still no wiser

as to the whys

and wherefores

* a group of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope

.

.

and a Mary Oliver poem
.
.
One or Two Things
Don’t bother me.
I’ve just
been born.
 
The butterfly’s loping flight
carries it through the country of the leaves
delicately, and well enough to get it
where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping
here and there to fuzzle the damp throats
of flowers and the black mud; up
and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes
 
for long delicious moments it is perfectly
lazy, riding motionless in the breeze on the soft stalk
of some ordinary flower.
 
The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I lay
on the grass listening
 
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,
and never once mentioned forever,
 
which has nevertheless always been,
like a sharp iron hoof,
at the center of my mind.
 
One or two things are all you need
to travel over the blue pond, over the deep
roughage of the trees and through the stiff
flowers of lightning—some deep
memory of pleasure, some cutting
knowledge of pain.
 
But to lift the hoof!
For that you need
an idea.