August, 2023
Time for #ThankfulThursday again, and a shout-out to another one of the artists that the COVID crisis brought in to my life. Thanks to @lucieduclos who, through the @winslowartcenter led the #paperpalscollageclub, inspiring and challenging us every month with examples and prompts. When you check out Lucie’s work (photo is my work, not hers), and I hope you do, you’ll see a really distinctive and memorable style that is instantly recognizable as hers, something I aspire to someday – I think.
January, 2022
Well, there weren’t any acual journeys this January, not of the road trip variety anyway, but there were lots of artistic journeys.
This picture is from a weekly assignment with the ongoing Paper Pals Collage Club with Lucie Duclos and the Winslow Art Center, a great way to practice composition every week and meet with like-minded people once a month. They have so many other great course to choose from, I’m really impressed. Earlier in the month I made a quick video flipping through my sketchbook of weekly 2021 assignments. This is a link to watch it on Vimeo
Then, there were workshops with Valerie Goodwin (Haiku Maps) and Erin Fletcher (The Shrigley bookbinding structure), as well as my Handmade Book Club and Coloricombo 2022 challenges, and a bunch of other little projects that moved forward as well.
I feel like I put in a lot of miles without leaving home at all.
November, 2021
I’m lucky to be part of several great online art groups, one of those pandemic silver linings, and this project is my attempt to kill three birds with one stone, so to speak. The book structure is the October 2021 project from @handmadebookclub with Ali Manning of @vintagepagedesigns. It’s called a Stiff Leaf structure, and I like it because it gives you the option of permanently or temporarily mounting pieces on individual pages, then assembling them into signatures with hinges of paper, tyvek, or in my case with adhesive linen bookbinding tape. The contents are my pages from September 2021’s #coloricombo color palette challenge with @estemacleod and @lorisiebert.studio – it gave me a way to store the pieces from that challenge in one decorative place. If I had to do it again, I would probably have used photo corners so I could remove the pieces from the pages at some point if I wanted to. The fun lettering on the frontspiece was from a monthly exercise with the #paperpalscollageclub with @lucieduclos.
Oh, and the paper for the covers is marbled by Jemma Lewis. Look for her videos on Instagram @jemmalewismarbling – they are so soothing, you can listen to great music and watch her lift paper from the magical marbling baths.