In the Name of Art

Polyphemus and Groucho

The title? Each of these gridded spaces started to look vaguely like a face, but with only one eye, hence the Polyphemus. And then the zig-zag black pieces reminded me of Groucho Marx.....it could have been titled "One Eyed Groucho" I suppose.

This one is larger, 19x25, and mostly collage except for the pencil around the red circles and the gold glaze of acrylic on the ground. The composition is a bit fractured but it amuses me.

First Days of Fall

This and that today, art tomorrow. My bounty of hazelnuts is in and I harvested over 50 from one bush. The outside husks are sticky and my fingers felt as though I'd put in a morning with collage. The 2 bushes in my front yard are left over from 3 tiny sprigs the Arbor Day organization sent me when I joined. It's a mystery which bush is female/male. The females are supposed to have the nuts and the males have the catkins to fertilize the flowers. My bush with the catkins had the nuts. Go figure.

Oh yeah, then there's my first pair of socks, which will come in handy today (our high will be 57)! Just don't look too closely at them or you'll see the myriad flaws, it is just too easy to drop a stitch.

Kitties are wistful, they haven't been able to get outside with the rain so I keep getting these plaintive looks. They want me to change the season.

So instead, Gracie decided she'd be an artist and grace my studio table. In order to get anything done I have to toss her off the table.

Maple Man, String Mask

He's finished and a bit different. This is larger too, about 13x10.5, but in my case, larger is relative. I'm planning on working in this size for awhile because the size uniformity appeals to me and also because I want to group them together. The 6 smaller stitched portraits seen here in previous posts were all the same dimensions too.

Last Cats

Last of the set, at some point I may get around to color copying these, they've been riding around in my car for the last 3 days. 

I finished the thread collage of another MapleMan so he should be here shortly. Today I'm going to go to a larger format (always a challenge for me) but proceed in peices and parts. Wish me luck.

The Cat Came Back, Having Some Fun

Today I'm going to finish up the 2nd in the Mapleman saga. These artistamps are just for fun and the cats like them very much. Louise the dog isn't impressed. I thought about titling these "We Love You So" (remember the line from "Where the Wild Things Are"?).

 

Cat Post

Drawing some for the collage......and the first is a small collection of artistamps with my cat Cleo playing hide and seek among the scraps of paper. There are others, more tomorrow, I have been working, just not posting. Mona and Cleo have the same mysterious allure so I put them together. Mona is a bit of a cut-up though.

The Math and a Mystery

For whatever reason, my text will not print after the image. So here it is in a separate post before the image. I've been mia here at the blog but haven't stopped working, I forgot my camera and went up to the lake. I'm also attempting a different attitude with this blog since it has begun to dictate my work (gotta get something on the blog). So posts may have gaps as I finish up on the stringed work.

The equinox is here in full force, leaves have started falling and the color is peeking out of the green. I walk the dog enchanted by the sounds, sights and smells of late summer.

There's a talk at Akron U. about Bosch that I'm excited about at the end of the week and I'll let you know how it goes. He's one of my favorites and has that serious/loopy effect that I love in Dia de los Muertos.

Doing the Math in Red and Gold

Artistamps Fill the Page

With this last row I've filled a page and will be making color copies so I can glue them all over my mail. Well, the special mail. If you want some, send me some snail-mail!

The faces are from a 1909 year book, the hands from an art history book, a painting about Bacchus and Ariadne and then there's the inevitable tax receipts. I just love those receipts!

Maple Man, Money King

This has been cropped a bit because I was too lazy to get my camera out and already had the scanner out so in it went and not all of it shows. The maple leaves have come back into play here but I'm aiming for simplicity, the more complex these get, the more prone they are to diving off a cliff aesthetically speaking.