Friday 27 September 2013

"If You Haven't Got Anything Good To Say About Anybody, Come Sit Next To Me"

Alice Roosevelt, daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, sat for a portrait when she lived in the White House.

Did you know the Teddy Bear was invented in honor of President "Teddy" Roosevelt?

http://www.nps.gov/thrb/historyculture/storyofteddybear.htm

Of her quotable quotations, her most famous found its way to a pillow on her settee.  It is the title of this collage.

Butterfly Mind


Wednesday 25 September 2013

Those Eyes, That Mouth


New Weekly Theme...Multiples

A very clever group of artists who call themselves "The Glue Society" has an approach to art they call "moreing" -- they create works that feature numerous copies of an object or multiples of the same type of object.  The more, the better.  You can watch a short and very entertaining video about them here (my favorite line in the video: "I'm wearing 27 pairs of underpants right now").

So,  take a quick peek at the video and let's do some moreing!


Housekeeping Update:  The lovely Miss CC (aka Collage Craft or in some circles, Angie Naron) has volunteered to do the theme work for October, and we are all looking forward to it!

Monday 23 September 2013

polar glare


Sunflower + acupuncture chart + Landsat image of Antarctica.

Flower Terror!


untitled


One from my archives. The flower is an amaryllis. The black & white photo is of the dome of San Carlo alle Quatre Fontane in Rome, by Francesco Borromini, 1638-41. The background is a cotton & wool blanket made in Laghouat, Algeria, early 20th century.

Saturday 21 September 2013

The Pink Rose in The Loge

The background is a detail of "La Loge" 1874 by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago's monthly magazine.  The black & white photograph of the woman on the left is American soprano and film actress Geraldine Farrar circa 1915.  She made her singing debut at The Metropolitan Opera House at the age of 24.  The black & white photograph of the gent on the left is none other than the brilliant Leonard Bernstein circa 1958.  Both performers certainly spent their share of time in facilities that included a loge so they were perfect candidates for my collage.  Plus all four images that came together were the perfect size for this piece.  The pink rose is snipped from an antique postcard.

The soldier and his flower garden



Sorry if this is a bit small, I'm uploading from my ipad so I can't resize it:(
To see the image bigger you can go here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/104477813878011164254/September212013#5926247347222958514

This was a fun and a bit adventurous theme for me. I don't usually work with plants/flowers but I really like how this turned out.


Flower Sellers


Friday 20 September 2013

Thursday 19 September 2013

Late Bloomer


My First Flower Entry in Honor of the Petunias


New Weekly Theme...

These are the last three days of summer, Scrappy Friends, and for us here on our little island, it has been a lovely one.  Yesterday I noticed that there are a handful of brave white petunias still blooming in a big pot out on my deck, so (in honor of the petunias), the theme for this last week of summer will be...flowers.

What flowery things will you create for us??

Al Fresco


Monday 16 September 2013

The Cardinal Points

Sorry for being a bit late with my collage for this theme but I have been away for a few days visiting old friends in Yorkshire. Coincidentally went to the excellent Media Museum in Bradford and saw some zoetropes and other optical toys that used strips like the one above to trick the eye into thinking that drawings were actually in motion.

alienation of affection


Don't worry: this wasn't prompted by anything in my personal life, just by the fact that these Charles Rennie Mackintosh chairs are facing in opposite directions. The background is from a series of 1948 Texas highway maps.

Sunday 15 September 2013


The background is raffle tickets, the chair is from an architectural digest magazine, and the clown head, sherlock holmes figure, and black circle are from other assorted magazines.

Saturday 14 September 2013

fun with layers 01


This is an interesting challenge, Lynn. I'm always hearing about collage artists who work by adding successive layers until they feel the piece is done, so I thought that would be fun to try for a change. I somehow ended up with two chairs and six black circles!

The bird is a South American species—a bare-throated bell bird, named for its bell-like cry. The plant is Australian—a green hooded orchid. The fish is an opah, a strange species that is nearly six feet (two meters) long: as it swims, it beats its long pectoral (side) fins like wings. The thing in the upper right is a front foot of a cane toad.

Some Kind of (Collage) Creature!


The dark side of the moon


Friday 13 September 2013

Collectible Convergence

Three elements - a black circle, a chair and a touch of red!  Loved this challenge.

The 1924 model 10C Atwater Kent radio is one of the "breadboard series" so called because the components were set out on an open board, easily accessible, rather than being enclosed in a cabinet.

This rare Superman, of jointed painted wood with a cloth cape, was produced by the Ideal Novelties & Toy Company in 1941.

A mixture of woods was common in many Shaker chairs of the late 1800s.  In this case walnut was used for the frame and maple for the rungs.

Thursday 12 September 2013

Mother Earth Teeters on the Edge of a Black Hole


And the New Weekly Theme Is....Common Elements [What??]

I don't really know if this will work very well, and we may all hate it.  But, I am ALWAYS ready and willing to experiment on my fellow snippers, so, let's try this:  the theme this week will be "common elements" and that means that you may give us a piece in any style, on any subject, as long as it contains these three common elements:

(1) A black circle, any size, and
(2) a chair, and
(3) something red.

Feel free to throw anything else in there, as long as you include the three common elements.  I just did one to see how it went, and it was actually pretty fun.  So give it a try!

(Oh, and extra points if you find one in your archives that follows the rules...W, I'm looking at you...).

Tuesday 10 September 2013

death waits for us


Between the title and the imagery, this one's probably over-obvious. The thing is, I'm not very good at being subtle. Maddeningly oblique, perhaps...but not subtle.

I don't know who photographed the Minotaur. The spider web is a tattoo on a dried-out piece of human skin. The arrows are a rubber stamp. The labyrinth, of course, is New York City.

Fortean Times


Monday 9 September 2013

Dragonfly


A species of creepy little dragonfly you perhaps have not seen before....

éloge des serpents


In this Year of the Snake, I keep finding excuses for celebrating our serpentine friends!

The title means "high praise for snakes." The red-and-white critter is not a collage trick: that's a real two-headed albino milk snake. In the upper left is a Minoan snake goddess figure, circa 1500 B.C.E. In the lower right is a Greek marble relief, circa 400-575 B.C.E. The black and white snakes are from a Navajo sand painting, 1930s.

Alien Trio


Friday 6 September 2013

Mermaids in Miami


Or maybe they're anti-mermaids, or maidmers, or...

Thursday 5 September 2013

Cthulhu R’lyeh

Inspired by the stories of H.P. Lovecraft.

They Seemed To Have Many Human Characteristics


To start us off, here are a few unusual life forms from a recent collaboration between Sabine and me.

And Our New Theme For This Week Is.......

Unusual life forms...flora/fauna, wherever/whenever, real/fictional, terrestrial/subterranean/intergalactic, subhuman/human hybrids, non-carbon-based, icky, strange, whatever.  You decide.