Category Archives: Collage

Apr4

Journal Play

Posted on April 4, 2013 by 4 Rooms and the Moon

Now that I’ve finished the artist’s book project – I’ve been cleaning up my studio room, and playing with paint and some fire in my daily art journal (which is rarely daily!) I have a sheet of heavy paper that has strings running through it, and after I finished this profile sketch I decided to cut some holes in a strip of the paper, but the holes were too uniform so I lit a candle and held the hole over the flame for a second to burn the edges – I think it was just what I wanted to happen. Before I did the sketch I had pasted down a bunch of leftover “aged” paper from the book project. I love the brown color. That little face upper left was a paint blob that I had to draw in.

This was the same background, but I painted indigo blue watercolor over it. I used the cutout circles from the strip I burned. I don’t know what kind of paper it is, but I’ve had it forever and now I wish I had more of it, but I’ve no idea what its called. If anyone knows, please let me know. Its a natural color, heavy wt, but soft, and there are vertical and horizontal threads running through it. It burns pretty quickly too!

These pages are 8.5 x 6 inches. Handmade watercolor paper, about 200 lb. Made in India. Its very bumpy so it isn’t very good for drawing, but its very nice for watercolor and gouache. Paint puddles and runs creating interesting patterns. I used oil pastel, pencil and some brown and some blue watercolor for the sketches.

Mar26

Placing Out in America – The Orphan Trains — an Artist’s Book

Posted on March 26, 2013 by 4 Rooms and the Moon

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I have finally finished my book “Placing Out in America.” This is the front of the book. I used a little piece of rusted screen to create the window with the flag showing through it.

This was quite a project for me, and very different from my usual type of art. Mostly because I was not using any drawings or paintings of my own, but found objects, and old photos. I collect old photographs mainly based on the expression of the face. I have a lot of children, they tell such a story with their faces.

I tried to age all the paper used, including the found objects. I loved finding this little flag, and tea dyed it and cut off the stars to indicate the year 1854.

This is what I placed under the flag. An old piece of handmade quilt, completely in tatters. I thought it indicated the longing for comfort and for a home.

This is what is under the quilt, a notice of distribution, which seemed a cold term to me. “The distribution of the children …”

Here I used paste paper I ran through my printer to print a scanned photograph directly onto the paste paper. Also a piece from a gelatin print with rows of little houses, and a corrugated cardboard from a light bulb box to fashion a collaged house– found objects!

These pages look crooked, but they really aren’t.

I enjoyed manipulating the old photos making them come to the forefront by how I built the layers of collage beneath. The train is printed directly onto paste paper. I used a little gel transfer also – but for some reason none of them came out very well so I gave up. That’s a St Christopher medal hanging above the children standing in line.

I used silhouettes whenever I wanted to fill in with something on the page. The little tags with numbers represent the numbers the children were given so they could be identified to potential families.

If you haven’t heard of the Orphan Trains, it is a real part of American history. The trains ran from 1854 until 1929. The Children’s Aid Society was formed in 1853 to take some of the homeless children off the streets of New York City. Unfortunately there were more children than resources available and the idea of shipping these “unwanted” children to rural America and finding families for them was born. The trains began running in 1854.

The last page in the book is only a half width page – I liked how the pages on either side looked so I left it half page width.

The scrap of fabric under the little wallet is a piece of flour sack print. I liked how the wallet said “Don’t Forget.” All these small drawers of small things do eventually find a use!

Outside back of book. I used a copy of one of my own paintings and cut the figures out. I thought they looked like they belonged with the rest of the children.

Mar10

Messy Studio and Imaginary Flowers

Posted on March 10, 2013 by 4 Rooms and the Moon

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New page for the artists book “The Orphan Train”

My studio is a big mess while I work on this project artist book, The Orphan Trains. I’m going to share what a big mess I make when creating – I think because it really does bother me that I can’t maintain some kind of order when I’m creating! I wonder if I had a separate studio that wasn’t an extra bedroom down the hall from my bedroom, would I be less constricted about mess making. I think I probably would!

My work table under seige. The heavy iron/steel thing sitting on the red plaid paper is something I found at an estate sale – it weighs about ten pounds and makes a perfect paper weight to smooth paper or hold until glue sets! I’ve no idea what it was originally intended for, but I use it all the time for weighting down glued pages.

A close up of the paper I’ve been aging for this project. I’ve squirted lemon juice on regular text weight copier paper and baked it in the oven til it reaches the desired aged-ness.

The Dorothy Parker book has nothing to do with this project!

Now for something more fun than messy work tables! Make believe flowers!

I am ready for spring! Dreaming of planting my summer pots and creating my garden, I started to doodle some imaginary flowers that are unlikely to be found in any botanists catalog, or garden wish book. Once I finish the artist book project – I’ll begin to seriously do some gardening!

A strange little kitty – not saying ‘hello’ either – maybe a naughty kitty. I had to redo her eyes with a piece of paper pasted over the old ones. They just looked too naughty! ( journal pages)

Feb19

New project

Posted on February 19, 2013 by 4 Rooms and the Moon

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Putting together a new project! A handmade artist’s book called “Placing Out in America.” I’m using collage, gelatin monoprint, paste paper, old photographs, gel image transfers, and found objects – oil pastels, acrylic, watercolor.

This is about the seventy-five year history of the largest migration of minor children in the history of the world, and its popularly known as the Orphan Trains. The history is astounding in our modern age of child protection laws, privacy, and legal adoption. Children were placed out by the Children’s Aid Society of New York City, and The Foundling Asylum later called the Foundling Hospital of the Sisters of Charity in New York. There was no legal adoption; anyone who wanted to take a child into their home was interviewed and the child was signed over for a period of a 90 day trial, after 90-days if there were no complaints, the child became their legal property. Most children were placed hundreds or even thousands of miles away from their New York City homes into the farm country of rural America.

I am having trouble with the gel image transfers coming away cleanly. I’ve used this technique before with good results, but this time I am not getting such good results – however, I’ve decided to use them as it seems to work okay with this project.

Many of the children were immigrants and had survived the trip to America only to have their parents unable to care for them once they arrived. Poverty, destitution and death left many of the children orphaned. The Children’s Aid Society rounded up children from the streets of New York City from 1853 through 1929 and placed them out to the rural farmlands in America by train.

Feb3

Winter, Sky, Trees, Moss –

Posted on February 3, 2013 by 4 Rooms and the Moon

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“Winter, Sky, Trees, Moss” 7×5 inches 8 pages. Watercolor, collage, graphite, textile, paste paper.

In Portland, winter can be mostly gray, and doesn’t change much from day to day. It was supposed to be dry today with a predicted weak sun, but when I woke up this morning I could hear the rain on the street as cars went rolling down the road. So another gray day. But standing outside later, I saw such beauty in the drape of bare tree branches, and gray sky, and here and there the brightest little green tufts of moss, clinging to rocks, and the concrete stairs leading up to the street. I love those little tufts of tenacity; clinging patiently through the dry times, coming carefully back to brilliant color in the rain of winter.

Jan27

Paste Paper

Posted on January 27, 2013 by 4 Rooms and the Moon

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I’ve been making paste paper and tearing into book size pieces, and pasting other things on top if it.

Paste paper is a concoction of wheat paste, or cornstarch, and water and pigment. You can use acrylic paint for the pigment, or watercolor, or gouache, or even powdered poster paint pigment. I’ve been running it through the printer after its dry using scanned images over the paste background.

The red background of this paste was made using a vintage piece from an old erector set. You can see the little circles at the top of the photo from the edges of the metal piece. I used a scan photo and ran it through the printer a couple of times trying to get some handwriting to show from another scan. It doesn’t show clearly enough, so i have another idea for it.

These images are cut from drawing paper weight paste paper. They are just laying on top of a large sheet, I intend to use them later, just not sure how yet.

This scanned image is used over a piece of brown paste paper – its actually darker than this photo shows.

If you would like to try some paste paper its very simple. I used 1/4 cup of cornstarch and blended with 1/4 cup of water, add this mix to one cup of water and cook ’til you get a nice custardy mixture. Keep stirring so it doesn’t stick to the pan, and try to blend it so no lumps form. Take off the stove and add 1/2 cup cold water. It might look too runny, but it thickens as it cools. Put a few tablespoons of this mixture in small containers, I got mine from the $ store, and then add your color and stir up. The recipe says to dampen your paper – but I didn’t I just painted on the color using a brush, or my fingers, or a sponge applicator. The the fun began of making designs in the paste with various items. A comb, making straight or wavy lines. Rubber stamps, or handmade stamps cut from potatoes, or found objects such as leaves, or rocks, sticks or whatever you have around the house. The paste mixture should be thick enough to hold the impression that you make giving it a kind of 3-D look. You can save the paste covered in the fridge for a few days if you want to use that particular color again.

I’ve made it before to use as wrapping paper, but you have to use a lighter weight paper so it doesn’t crack when you fold it around a package. I used plain white kraft paper for this – once again, from the $ store. I’ve also used the back of regular leftover wrapping paper. I find that my colors sometimes come out more muddy than I wanted – I suspect I was too anxious to add more color without waiting for the bottom layer to dry a little.

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