Surfacing

SURFACING

Stack of boxes in the bathroom

I'm coming to the surface after a hectic move. In June we decided it was time to do a major downsizing, quickly found a wonderful one-level home, prepared our home to sell after living there 24 years, and finally moved in early September. Whew!  Some major decisions were in order.


LETTING IT GO

Many things went to charity. Many things were sold in the estate sale to end all estate sales...household goods as well as art and art/craft supplies. It had to go.  Believe me, I could have stocked a small art store, because I'm an education junkie and bought supplies for many workshops and classes, and for experimenting with a wide variety of techniques along the way.

But in the end I decided to keep most of my acrylic paints and supplies, all my watercolor supplies, most of my drawing papers and tools, and let the rest go, including most of my fabrics, patterns, sewing notions, encaustic supplies, craft paints, books, artworks, and small canvases.

Drawer of brushes

I measured the footage of my one bookcase and determined that I could pack 10 small boxes of art books, and knowing which pieces of furniture would fit in my smaller studio I packed the supplies I knew I could shelve and let the rest go.

I don't regret one decision.

However, I haven't unpacked my studio yet so who knows what I might long for enough to buy again.

RE-PURPOSING the rooms in my home

Over the years I've created studio space wherever I've lived...
The corner of a desk
An armchair
The dining table
A tiny bedroom
A table in our bedroom
The rec room after the kids left home
A huge purpose built loft studio
And now my studio is in what was the master bedroom

Planning center

We aren't ones who use the bedroom for other than sleeping so when we bought this 3 bedroom home which has no studio space we decided to sleep in what was formerly the guest bedroom since it has a bathroom attached. My husband re-purposed the smallest bedroom for his den, and I got the master bedroom. It's plenty large, has a wall of windows on the south, a door to the outside, and the nicest studio bathroom ever! I haven't unpacked my art supplies because we're waiting for our contractor to free up some time so he can replace the carpet with cork flooring. That'll happen soon.

Stacks of paper, scanner, basket of cables, printer

I've been lying fallow since June. Perhaps some of you have experienced this...that during a time of intense change there's been no time to make art, nor any desire to do so. That's me. Once we gained access to this house all my creativity has gone into feathering my nest. It's still that way, though I'm getting antsy once again, making plans to pick up a paint brush and spread some paint around on canvas or paper. But I know that if I get it out I'll just have to pack it away again when the flooring guy arrives at the end of the month.

Intact maps waiting for a new purpose

So I'll spend the next 3 weeks getting ready to teach the next Collage Bootcamp  which is November 5 at the Village Gallery. I hope some of you who live in the Portland area will join us. Enroll at the gallery: 12505 NW Cornell Rd, Suite 14, Portland, OR 97229

Journals for BootCamp

Birds - Seagulls - Journal Pages

Here are more pages in my Black Journal, these combining some of my photos with other sources (the birds on a wire and the 3 vertical birds aren't my own photos).

I used 3M Spray 77 to glue the photos to the black gessoed pages. I like this glue a lot for some purposes, especially for journal pages, though I isn't as permanent as I like for stand-alone collages. 

My setup for using this spray glue includes a large flat plastic bin with a lid, a magazine and the spray can. I lay my paper face down in the bin, take off my glasses and put them under something so no drop of glue touches the plastic lens (it doesn't want to come off once stuck to the glasses), and give the back of the image a quick spray. Working quickly, I lift it out of the box, close the lid, and put it in place in my journal. 

Why all the care? It's a SPRAY and it likes to float around the room, landing on all surfaces and leaving a tacky mess behind. By quickly closing the lid I allow very little spray to escape the box; it harmlessly coats the inside of the bin. When the magazine page gets too sticky I turn the page and have a fresh, non-tacky surface to lay my work on.

Travel Planning for Artists

Painting at my first Paint-Out

(I took too much stuff)

     Whatever you do and wherever you go this summer the key phrase is Pack Light. Take only what you actually need; pack only what you will actually wear or use because there are all sorts of problems in store for those who overpack.
     The airlines are charging extra for each suitcase and the limitations on weight are being watched with an eagle eye. But even more importantly, taking too much stuff just in case you need it will weight you down in many ways. You are the one responsible for carrying your suitcase and if you don't find it easy to handle along with your hand luggage/laptop/purse you may be in for an unpleasant surprise when you're asked to haul everything up 2 or 3 sets of stairs, on and off trains, from one terminal to another, or from your car to your second story motel room.
     I took way too many small bags on our recent road trip... a small suitcase, my laptop, purse, camera case, and tote bag of art supplies, plus we had a couple of food bags. All that stuff created unnecessary misery for both of us even when we could back the car up to the motel door. I'll never do that again. If I can't get everything into one suitcase and one tote bag it isn't going. If I need something that I didn't pack I can buy it or get creative with what I have. And I've found that too many articles of clothing usually isn't the problem because I wear the same garments over and over ... it's all the rest of what I take, "just in case", especially art supplies.

     In this month's Daniel Smith newsletter you'll find a useful list of painting supplies for travel.

     Elizabeth St. Hilaire Nelson wrote several posts about packing her collage supplies in her RV, here, here, and here.

       John Lovett posted his Traveling Art Material List here, here, and here.

     There's a link in my sidebar to an article I once wrote about packing clothing for travel. This may help if choosing a travel wardrobe is an issue.

Making Decorative Tapes

There's been talk among the people taking Mary Ann Moss's Remains of the Day online class about Japanese Tapes, printed tapes that are sort of like masking tape but more transluscent. I don't have the tape bug that some journal artists do but adding strips and borders to my art as well as to my art journals has become somewhat of a signature so anything that will make the process easier certainly catches my interest.  But I don't want to spend more money on art supplies... remember me saying "Buy no art supplies; use what I have. Be creative". So...

Thanks to a reminder from Susie LaFond I got out my Xyron and an adhesive cartridge (supplies that I haven't touched in probably five years) and started experimenting. For my purposes I found that patterned tissue paper was the best choice. I ran 2 different black and white prints (and a piece of turquoise cotton fabric) through the Xyron which adds adhesive and a teflon-like paper to the back, making whatever you put through the machine into a peel & stick.  I used the checkerboard because the black and white tape will echo the black and white text and ink already in the book and add much needed continuity to the ROD travel journal that I'll use later in the spring when we head south and east on a road trip.

You can see how I used the homemade checkerboard tap on the first page of the travel journal (above), along with bits cut from an old AAA TourBook and map.

And here on page two I adhered a piece of my tape across the bottom to form a border, and added a tiny snippet on page three, bottom right.

This cost me nothing except a bit of time and I now have my very own "washi" tape in the pattern and color I want.

This photo shows jow I set up to cut one of the black and white tissues (with adhesive on the back).

I use an Omnigrid ruler left from my quilting days and an Olfa rotary cutter. I keep two Olfas, putting the new blad in one reserved for fabric and move the used one with a dulled blade to a rotary cutter reserved for paper. It's still sharp, just now sharp enough for fabric.