Hampshire Hog in the Light of the Silvery Moon

Background is "Silver Moon" 1927

by Oscar Florianus Bluemner (1867-1938)

The Bad Art Casebook

One from the mail art archive . circa 1982.

some pigs

Still inspired by chaos, I took the lid off a box of unsorted clippings: what should be on the top of the pile, but a picture of pigs!

Most of you will catch the allusion, in title & image, to a classic children's book by E. B. White. Speaking of children's books, don't those straw creations photographed in B&W (on the right) look like Dr. Seuss trees?

home stomping ground

From the archives. As most of you know, I'm from Texas. This collage features, among other critters, a Texan wild pig called the javelina ("hah-vuh-lee-nah"). The arrows depict a trip my husband and I made, during which I saw a female javelina, followed by four tiny replicas, emerge from some tall grass and cross a trail in front of me. She was insouciant; she also appeared to be gentle and easy-going.

THEME: Year of the Pig

On February 5th begins the Chinese Year of the Pig (Boar). People born in the Year of the Pig are supposed to be simple, gentle, easy-going, and impetuous--to name just a few attributes. I sure wish our world leaders were more simple, gentle, and easy-going--but NOT so impetuous!

So give us collages with pigs (or boars) in them! Other stuff, too... whatever amuses you. =smile=

I can't resist showing you this postcard (a rubber-block carving) my friend Carroll Woods made:

Chinese Junk

Side Order of Chaos

At the side of my desk I have about 10 large organised files, packed with music related articles from Mojo and Record Collector etc....However,  I haven't looked through them for years.
Time to de-clutter, so I used a few before they go.

What's Bin Did...

I decided the most chaotic, but orderly, way I could make a collage, was to burn an old one!
So I glued my 'Denizen of the Deep' collage, from my second week on Kollage Kit – because despite it being made some months ago, it had never dried...
So I guessed that it must've been so saturated with spray varnish, and also that it was a fire hazard.

I was not wrong!
One tiny match, some glowing bits that looked like they were about to be blown out by the January wind, and then the whole thing went up so fast, big flames and all...

So the only thing left of it was a pyramid shaped bit of background, and the charred remains of Frieda Kahlo's brooch, and some of the cardboard envelope I'd glued it to, including its address sticker etc.

Took it back inside, started cutting it up, but there was a big burned hole, so I stuck Donovan over it. The Donovan pic was the nearest thing to where I was piecing it all together, so that was quite random too.

5 - 3

Yesterday I massed up my studio by dissecting an anatomy book (see below)

The collage above is  - finally - the result - 

but I also used several other images beside the anatomical ones.

So this is a "story" about "chaos versus order"

Numerology

Order v Chaos..

Found these two images today whilst sorting out an old mixed box of Mail Art, they seemed to fit the theme. Especially as I was creating order from chaos at the time.

Chaos In and Around the Birdcage

I would have NEVER made this collage if it were not for this theme.

I closed my eyes and reached into a box of precut backgrounds and pulled out the birdcage.

I closed my eyes and reached into another box of precut images and pulled out the bandaged people.

Lastly, I did the same to find the two sweater girls.

aleatory #3: little heroes & fragments of reality

Order: background from Things Organized Neatly, curated by Austin Radcliffe

Chaos: random number generator used to choose between 10 different boxes of clippings and to determine the position of each fragment

Natural order challenged by artistic chaos

Roll The Dice

One from the archives.

THEME: order vs. chaos, part two

It just occurred to me that the purposeful use of random events is a very deliberate way of injecting spontaneity into an artwork.

And then I was reading Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao Te Ching:

"If you want to become whole,

let yourself be partial.

If you want to be straight,

let yourself be crooked.

If you want to become full,

let yourself be empty.

If you want to be reborn.

let yourself die.

If you want to be given everything,

give everything up."

...and it made me think that this week's theme could inspire similar lines:

If you want to be orderly,

let yourself be chaotic.

If you want to plan,

let yourself be spontaneous.

If you want to be neat,

let yourself be messy.

If you want to be predictable,

let yourself be random.

If you want to control things,

open yourself to chance.

aleatory #2: zig-zag

From the archives. Another experiment in planned vs. unplanned. The planned part is that I pulled the clippings from which I cut the background clippings from only boxes of black, grey, white, and brown--although a little bit of blue popped in! The unplanned part is that I let chance determine the locations of the black painted lines: their positions are pairs of integers in sequence from a random number generator. (If you want to try out a similar technique, just google "random number generator," and you'll get multiple choices.)

Something else spontaneous happened, after I scanned this. When I sprayed it with sealant so it would be sturdy for mailing as a postcard, the spray made the big zig-zag of antique ledger paper translucent, so the writing on the opposite side showed through. The Universe wanted it to be more unplanned!

aleatory: fire water leaf1 leaf2

From the archives. This was my first experiment in letting chance design a collage. I took four images and flipped a coin to determine which image would go in which location.

I'm working on a new collage for this theme, using a random number generator, but health issues have slowed me down. Soon! =smile=

THEME: order vs. chaos

As y'all have probably noticed, I like themes that are pairs, where you can do A, B, or A + B. So this week it's order vs. chaos, planned vs. spontaneous, neat vs. messy, controlled vs. sloppy, certainty vs. chance, predictable vs. random... you get the idea.

A favorite word of mine: aleatory = pertaining to an art form including an element of chance

Most of the music of John Cage is aleatory.

GREAT MATHEMATICIANS

Going counter-clockwise:

Archimedes (c. 287 BC - 212/211 BC)

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855)

Isaac Newton (1643-1727)

Hypatia (c.350-370 - 415 AD)

Mini - M

New mini zine about science, art and nonsense -

The Science of Extraction

Channelling.

I'll just leave this here, without saying whether I think this is a science or a pseudoscience.
I know what I think though, and if you know what I think too, then how, exactly, do you know....? :)

Capo Colonna

Robots Fight Back

From the archives -

The Study of Moles or Moleoscopy

Developed by the Greek physician Hippocrates, the study of moles as an insight into character and the future peaked late in the 1600s with the publication of a treatise by Englishman Richard Saunders. 

Saunders included an engraving in his work (used in this collage) showing placement of moles most frequently found on the body. The position of the moles on the face and neck was thought to parallel the orbits of celestial bodies.

Neuroscience

This collage is from two days ago - but I have already prepared it once, because I have dealt with neuroscience, can now read thoughts and knew that Fi will propose this topic. 

Love Art Science

From the archives. 1995.

accretion of data

Various instruments and tools used in sciences of the past. The bird specimens are Darwin's finches, which were so influential in developing the theory of natural selection.

THEME: it's scientific! (or not)

This week let's make collages with images from a science or a pseudoscience--either current ones or from the past. Scientists, pseudoscientists, the things or organisms they study, their graphs & charts & photos, their instruments or other tools...

List of sciences (righthand side of page)

List of pseudosciences

Or invent your own science! Be silly! =grin=

BTW, I have a personal connection with this theme: My father was a geologist, my husband is a botanist, and I myself majored in chemistry.

Another Eye

Return of the Dodo

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

On Target

The Eyes Have It...

Clown

Recycled Eyes

From the archives .

the human gaze

THEME: part(s) of the human face

This week I propose that we play around with the human face--but not all of it, just part of it. Forehead(s), eyebrow(s), eye(s), nose(s), cheek(s), dimple(s), mouth(s), teeth, jaw(s), chin(s), facial hair... one part, more than one part, deconstructed faces... whatever piques your interest.

Two White Postcards

More floor sweepings and bits from the bin.

river through mountains

Mortified!

 On suddenly remembering that stupid thing you said, the night before the morning after...

Remembrance

may your white so shine

Wisely White

Background is a painting "Untitled", 1971 by Sam Francis (1923-1994)*

Snowy Owl courtesy of a book about birds.

Brooch and clothing from J. Peterman catalogues.

* the painting is an acrylic on canvas, 108 x 80 inches, and is pretty much all white with jagged black lines around the edges

like white on rice

From the archives...When I posted this to the KK back in 2012, I wrote a little FAQ for it. So what the hey, I'll repost that as well.

F.A.Q.

What are the white things in this collage? An incomplete list: white ice, white snow, white water, white fur, white feathers, white skin, white fabric, white trees, white flowers, white painted wood, white buildings, white ceramic, white plastic, white stone, white sand, white glass, white paper, white makeup, white diamonds, and white hair (the hair of Lady Gaga, Andy Warhol, and Leo Tolstoy, among others.)

How many individual pieces are there? 186. Seriously! I kept a tally as I glued them down.

How did you keep your energy up through the long hours of making this collage? Black coffee, black licorice jelly beans, and a tall stack of Talking Heads CDs.

What was the hardest part of making this collage? My black cat decided I had been spending too long at my table and too little time with her, so she jumped up into my work space...right at the gluing stage. She walked on all the collage materials and rubbed herself all over my hands and the front of my T-shirt. The hard part was avoiding getting her black hairs stuck with glue onto the collage itself. I know I didn't entirely succeed.

Have you ever used the expression "like white on rice" in speech or in writing? No, I've just read it in books. Sample sentence: "He was stuck on that girl like white on rice."

If this is an all-white collage, how come it isn't, like, all white? All right, that's enough questions.

Whitescape

From the archive. Not sure who the military gentleman is - reminds me of those snow sculptures in Lapland I just watched in the Beeb.

wondering what comes next

silver and/or white

Happy New Year! In my mind, the new year goes with both silver and white. So how about a collage that's white on white, silver on silver, a mix of silver and white, with any other little bits of color?

[In case you read that paragraph about my being snowed in at the farm: no, I'm not. We made it back to the DC area just fine, and I'm back on the Net.]

Feeding The Mail Art Cows

We shall be involved in a lot more mail art activity this year , namely the exhbition at M.M.U. in Manchester drawn from our 40+ year archive of correspondence from the 60's to the present day .

Happy New ATC's