Category: Collage

Altered Books, Art, Collage, Found Poems, Poetry

The Heretics

Shelly

The Heretics
The Heretics
collage and watersoluble crayons in altered book
9 3/8 x 11 3/4 inches

The Heretics (a found poem)
When discovered among themselves –
Grudgingly respected,
Arrogant upstarts who threatened
the message,
Engaged in conversation with
such dissident seekers
With deeper insights
derived from deeper mysteries –
For the first time
The heretics speak to us
in their own words.

I’m a little ambivalent about how this turned out, visually. I’d probably change some things if I could. It’s a start, though, and starting is always the hardest part.

I should also point out that I cropped and pasted the two pages together, so that there is no gutter or white space. I had to scan them separately, because the book is too large to fit on my scanner bed. Didn’t I say that the next book was going to be small enough to fit? I lied.

Art, Collage, Drawings, Journals

Asian Pear

Shelly

Asian Pear
Asian Pear (detail)

I (sort of) tried the pear crisp recipe, as promised. I used Bartlett and d’Anjou pears, and substituted sucanat for brown sugar and old-fashioned rolled oats for quick oats. It worked fine. The oats were a bit chewy, which is to be expected, but it was damn tasty. However, in the future, I think I’ll dust each layer of pears with flour, because the juice was pretty runny.

Pear Crisp
1/2 C rolled oats, uncooked
1/4 C packed brown sugar
2 Tbls flour
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 C cold butter
3 sliced pears
2 Tbls lemon juice

Preheat oven 375F
Combine first 6 ingredients in bowl, cutting butter with knives or a pastry cutter. Toss sliced pears with lemon juice. Layer pears in 9 inch pie pan and top with oatmeal mixture. Bake for 20 minutes.

Art, Collage, Drawings

Saint Mary of the Pears

Shelly

Bosc Pear
Bosc Pear (detail)

I used graphite on another page from the patent book, but this time, I primed it with a thin coat of gesso.

Every time I see a Bosc pear, it makes me think of the Gothic S curve. If you look at the figure of the Virgin, you’ll see that it’s just about impossible to stand in that position. Her hip is thrust out in the opposite direction from both her feet and shoulders. Bosc pears have much the same sort of, um, stance.

(Apologies for the moire. I tried descreening the scan, but the image of the Virgin and Child was taken from an auction catalog, and the print quality was pretty bad. You can easily see the dot pattern with the naked eye.)

Art, Collage, Journals, Paintings

Pear Crisp

Shelly

Bosc Pear
Bosc Pear (detail)

I like the way this one turned out. I glued down a page from an 1850s patent book, using acrylic medium, then topped it off with a layer of medium, to seal it. Otherwise, as soon as you add water to it, the paper peels and rolls up.

The under-layer of pigment was done in a really wet wash, with the upper layers being finger blended, without adding water.

The detail is about 50% larger than usual, which shows the texture pretty well. The swirly marks are from the underlying layer of acrylic medium. The sharp chisel marks around the dark edge of the pear are from an Xacto knife. Scratching into the paper not only mimics the reflected light, but it also creates a barrier, stopping the watercolor from flowing outside the area.

Tomorrow, I’m going to make pear crisp. Mmmm!

Art, Collage, Journals, Paintings

Golden Bosc Pear

Shelly

Bosc Pear
Golden Bosc Pear (detail)
collage with acrylic and Neocolors II on 90lb Stonehenge paper
9 1/4 x 11 5/8 inches

I did this one a little differently, by starting with an acrylic glaze as a background. The collage bit isn’t so much collage as just using an ad straight from a catalog. I grabbed an old Ethan Allen catalog, thinking it might have something in the right color palette to use as a background, but then I saw this dining room scene with a bowl of pears, and I couldn’t resist. I did do a little bit of stamping across the bottom, to tie the two pages together, but the book is a little too tall for my scanner, so it’s mostly cut off. If I weren’t so lazy, I’d scan both pages separately and stitch them together, but I am so lazy, so that ain’t gonna happen.