something new - inchie row houses

Well I certainly seem to be very tardy in posting here these days. It is mostly because I seem to be having difficulty in finding time for art/craft even tho' the weather has been atrocious.

This post concerns a set of "inchie row houses" which I have made for a swap on PDA, Kim Newbergs Ning web site . I have posted these on my Flickr photostream, but as usual they are here as well so that I can say just a little more about them than is possible on Flickr. Many of my long-time friends from blogland will know that my background is the world of painting. Important because of the two-dimensional nature of the work involved. I adapted very easily to the ACEO format after I discovered it by accident because of my love of sketching. The originality and freshness of a sketch was what kept me involved with art. Somehow I never quite achieved this feeling in most of my larger works.

Of course you can't get involved with ACEO's on Ebay without coming across many different media and techniques, collage was one of the first non-painting media that I tried. Mostly because of the death of my mother and the subsequent discovery of a large cache of family photos stretching back to my grandparents youth. These photos were just right for collaging to recreate some family memories. Anyway, I tried out collaging and was hooked. I couldn't do enough and joined groups and sites on the web so that I could start to trade with other artists.

Since then I have tried other techniques, always ready to try something new, but I keep coming back to two-dimesional collage work. Of course I use 3-D embellishments, etc and often use stamps to create backgrounds but my first love is collaging. These "inchie row houses" are a result of that background. The small size is a bit of a challenge but I had already accepted that becoming interested in inchies and twinchies because of a recent article in Lisa vollrath's Monthly Muse magazine.

In any collage, I like the images to be connected in some way. I have used some very tenuous links and sometimes even had to resort to shoehorning ( is that a word?LOL) images to make a link. But at least in my own mind there is something that links the images. Let me give an example.




In this set, the second from the right I have called, " No Strings Attached". I used a marbled backing paper and the swirl called for a set of images to follow it. The girl and her "beau" die-cut from the printed images were easy, but I wanted another.... As this was one of the first I did, I was still unsure of wether I should have windows or doors on the little houses. I compromised and put a house number on! The wire was wrapped around the house to finish it off. The title then fell into place for me. Very tenuous links.

Of course one of the great things about collage is that you do not really need to create this way, and many artists will use an image because it is the right colour or size or..... it grabs them, whatever. And I sometimes do this myself in desperation. This is purely an explanation of what I think is becoming a style for me and in no way is meant to deprecate the serendipitous use of images in collages.

Anyway, I printed a specially small set of images and set down one cold night to create, I really enjoyed the process - lots of thinking time - and was pleased with the results. I had cut twice the number of blanks that I thought I would need, thinking there would be some discards but found myself doing another set, and still liking them:-


The two smaller ones will be posted as a pair, don't want to appear mean, LOL.

Having mentioned 2-D / 3-D art above, I have made one of my New Year's resolutions to be that I will try to branch out in 2010 to start producing assemblages. Been looking at this artform for some time and need to try my hand at it. One source of inspiration is Michael de Meng I will of course keep you up to date on this aspiration.