Finally! Some Art

The Paper Studio in Tempe, offered a Book Art Workshop with Lisa Kokin earlier this month. It was the first time I was able to take a class there. It was a great one to start with. I visited Lisa's website prior to the class and I was blown away by her work. Turns out I've been following her art thru the years in Fiber Arts magazine. As always, there's nothing better than seeing the work in person. She had some of her books at the workshop. Wow!

If you know my work, the lack of color in these collages may seem different. I was inspired by Lisa's work and chose to use a limited palette of white with black. The one thing I forgot was gesso but I found a bottle of brown paint in my bag, plus some of the telephone wire I'd packed was brown too.

I confess! I start projects during workshops with the intention of finishing up on my own. It doesn't often happen that way. I came home from the workshop and I worked on the collage of my mom as a teenager. The image is a photocopy of a b/w photo. I cherish this photo of my mom as a young woman with so much promise. The copy was glued over a wash of brown paint and lace inherited from my mom's sewing room.

The buttons are more treasures from her sewing room, some my dad gave me and some came from my stash. They're fastened with twisted telephone wire that's left hanging. The wire is also used for the blanket stitch along the edge of the page. Behind the buttons are paper flowers punched from the b/w bars on magazine subscription cards.Another collage from the same book. I have a chronic case of TMC, (Too Much Crap), with frequent flare-ups. As a result I had the scalloped edged packaging from Fancy Pants Designs that I couldn't bring myself to toss that was used here. The workshop also involved drilling into and using a variety of saws to shape books. I wasn't too brave but Lia Roozendaal cut out some stunning shapesout of books. I hit her up for the circles left from drilling into books. The collage also has writing in pencil and patterns drawn with marker that's been white washed, the circles are stitched.

Spent some time in the mechanic's waiting room stitching on this while my car was being serviced. I've been using the same mechanic since 2002 and/or the last 90,000miles. He couldn't help himself and had to ask if I had some kind of compulsion disorder. He apologized. I laughed.
This collage isn't finished. I'm currently stumped but do have one plan I'm going to try.The collage on the back inside cover-torn pieces of book pages overlapped. Never know where inspiration will come from. I've been chomping at the bit to try this after seeing dresses made with layers and layers of organza rectangles in Vogue magazine. This is only the first stage of this collage.

I'm crossing my fingers that I'm getting better with the technology stuff. I'll post more pics as this book progresses.

Marissa