Mid-month Experiments

Recording for posterity. (Ha!)

Balance

OH!

Purple Grid

Jest of God

Rainbows and Experiments

Last month I finally got to a pride parade (in Victoria, BC) and also finally teed up with an artist friend, Lucie Duclos, who I met at a workshop at the Port Townsend School of Art. (Lucie has—wisely, I think—relocated to Victoria after a few decades in the US, and she’s doing workshops, online and in person.)

Inspired, I made this collage using books from the New Canadian Library series published by McClelland and Stewart.  (Deconstructing them would probably make this collector’s heart ache. Although I used books from series 2 [there were 6], which The Ignorant Intellectual did not like much, so maybe he/she wouldn’t mind!)

And here are a few recent experiments. Maybe they’re done, maybe they’re not!

An En D?

Lines & Dots

Never Ever Him

Ouch

Fly With Mi

Widgets

Pay No Attention

Dream Week

In the fall I got a text from my friend (and fabulous artist), Marion Syme: Melinda Tidwell was coming to the Pacific Northwest Art School on Whidbey Island, Washington. I’ve long-admired Melinda’s work, so we jumped on the opportunity. And what a week it was. (Well, aside from the first night at a horrendous motel. And it’s hard for to get me creeped out by a motel; my standards are pretty low.) It was one of the best workshops I’ve ever attended, just the right mix of instruction and time to experiment and practice. Melinda was there if we wanted her, but happy to lay off if we weren’t quite ready.

Here are a few of the collages that I created during that week (ah, a week-long was so fabulous), and a few I’ve created since. If you love collage, or even if you want to learn more about abstract collage and composition, I can’t recommend Melinda’s workshop highly enough. Hopefully we can entice her to come to Canada for a week or so!

My classmate Dayna also posted about the workshop. Go!

Wrecked

Wobbly

Totter

Triple Strata

Hammer Poems

Wuthering

Fish Do Physics, Too

Strata 1

Not for Resale, Ann

His Destiny Stolen

Gold Lips

3918

Serendipity

Viaticum – 17.5 cm x 12.5 cm (7″ x 5″)

One of the things I love about collage are those unexpected surprises that just appear in your work. I was making a few quick collages to warm up, using the random bits of paper that were on my desk.

I wanted a bit of text so ripped a page from the nearest book, which happened to be a tiny Spanish-English dictionary. Then I just carried on. When I was placing the black strip, I noticed the word viaticum was visible. So, of course, I needed to know what that meant. Here’s what the Oxford English Dictionary says:  “The Eucharist as given to a person near or in danger of death.” Kind of appropriate for that swooning woman I started the whole thing with.

I have been collaging, but I haven’t been posting. That, I plan to rectify. More soon.

 

Vietnam Collage

Last November I was fortunate to be able to take a fabulous trip to Singapore and Vietnam. I’ve been slowly making some collage (and a “bonus” sketch, which I don’t do, or at least post, all that often) based on the trip, mostly using ephemera I hauled home. And I finally pulled a few photos off my phone. Enjoy!

 

Found Abstracts and a Giveaway

I’ve just returned from a weekend workshop on Whidbey Island at the Pacific Northwest School of Art. I had a great time learning from Jane Davies and hanging out with my friend and artist, Marion Syme. I don’t have any finished pieces to show from the workshop as it was primarily about technique and exploration, but suffice to say you should check out the school’s offerings as well as Jane’s work and workshops (many of which are on-line).

Before the workshop we spent a day exploring Port Townsend, which was a fabulous way to spend the day — funky old townsite, antique shops, art galleries, good food, a parade (which we missed, but still!; it was Rhodo Fest or some such). I picked up this wonderful etching by artist Kenji Ushiku. I loved it as soon as I saw it, but resisted going back to buy it for a few hours since it was in the first shop we entered. I’m glad I made the purchase; it’s sitting on my mantle now. (Sorry about the glare.)

Print by Kenji Ushiku

We also spent a great hour or so exploring Fort Worden and we came upon Battery Kinzie. Old buildings and military history aside, we were struck by all of the abstract paintings we found on the walls of the battery. Ostensibly the marks were to cover up graffiti, but I’m not so sure. The colours and marks seem so well chosen. It feels like artists were let loose with the paints and rollers. I can’t find anything on-line, but if you have any info., please leave a comment. Here are my found abstracts:

Fabulous or what? I think the colour combos might find their way into some work. I was a bit jazzed when I got home so I got busy with the paints, stamps, and monoprints I made to create a few abstract postcards last night. Here’s the giveaway part. If you would like an “Adrienne Mason original” (ha, ha!)—or would like to surprise someone with one—please leave a comment with info on how I can contact you and I’ll send one along (randomly chosen). And please feel free to spread the word.

 

The Peeps Project

In my post on mail art, I mentioned that many mail artists often start projects. They could be small, perhaps an “add and pass” piece of art that passes between a few people, or they could be very large like the one that Jack from Cascadia Artpost undertook in 2015. His “Peeps Project” has 27 participants from 7 countries. We were all correspondents of Jack’s and he asked us if we’d like to be involved. If we said Yes! we received something that looked like this in the mail.

Box full of “peeps” from Cascadia Artpost.

And inside were a lot of little characters, the “peeps.” Our challenge was to create scenarios for these miniature people and create pieces of art. (This is part of what they wrote to us: “Your mission in this project, should you choose to accept it, is to change the world and the very foundation of reality, at 1:87 scale or full scale, and record with photos individual peeps or groups of peeps in settings and scenarios of your choosing.”)

Some people really got into it, even creative a narrative story for their characters) but I stewed and stewed over mine and actually found it quite difficult (I also don’t have a great camera, which was an excuse I held onto for a long time), but I did finally get a handful together. I’ve posted a few examples below, but what’s even more astounding about this time-intensive project is that Jack and his friend Colin (from “Very Dodgy Mail”) made the book, a hand-bound hard-cover copy of a 142-page book (+ an insert), and send one to each of us. Dedication or what? Here’s what arrived a few weeks ago:

Thanks you two for pulling together this crazy project! It’s fun to see what everyone created. I’ve posted a few of the images from the book below.

The peeps at the Grand Canyon by Carol Stetser.

A not-so-great picture of my peeps.

But is it art? by Stewart Charlebois.

Peeps with a graffiti backdrop by Sally Wassink.

Peeps in a Luxembourg studio by Fraenz Frisch.

Uppercase Abstracts

Postcard for the Uppercase Collection from Windham Fabrics

I’m an avid reader—books and magazines are some of my best friends—but I’ve also had to move around a fair bit in the last year and a half, so I know that those things carry a lot of weight. So I’ve tried to streamline a bit (and now that I live two blocks away from a fabulous library, I can borrow more), but there are a few things I still will buy and keep. In the magazine world, there are Uppercase and Kolaj. More on Kolaj later, but I want to do a shout out to Uppercase today. If you are interested in art and creativity and design, then check this magazine out. I am in awe that it is pretty much a one-woman show, with Janine Vangool being publisher, editor, and designer. And I’m hugely proud that it is a Canadian magazine, produced in Calgary, Alberta.

The magazine comes out four times a year and each issue is based on a theme—book arts, postage stamps, typography, colour, and on and on. It’s beautifully produced and endlessly interesting. Janine creates a unique pattern to be used on the spine of each issue and these were recently made into fabrics (displayed in the postcard above; each issue has a couple of postcards tucked into it). The most recent issue had a catalogue showcasing the fabrics, and, well, I couldn’t resist doing a bit of abstract collage. Thanks for such a great magazine, Janine.

Uppercase Collection Collage 1

Uppercase Collection Collage 2

Uppercase Collection Collage 3

Uppercase, Issue 26

[Later. This was a very nice surprise that wound up in my inbox on May 11. Janine put my collage at the top of her Uppercase newsletter. Very fun. Thank you, Janine!]