Daily art report 3 -- word collage

One of my objectives in defining my daily map art so loosely was that I wanted to be able to experiment with different mediums, techniques and concepts.  If you're committed to a certain size and shape and kind of support every day you can't always explore a wild idea.  But this year I am empowered to do anything I want.

Years ago I made these two studies in a workshop led my my dear friend and wonderful artist Suzi Zimmerer.  She is a master of surfacing paper: using paint, stencils, and other print techniques she builds up complex patterns and then uses the paper for collage.  I made these papers using alphabet stencils, then cut out nonsense words and collaged them on top so the lettering is almost illegible.  I had always liked the effect and wanted to do more.

So I had the idea to cut words out of maps.  Leafing through one of the old road atlases that I'm cannibalizing for art, I stopped at Michigan and got the idea to focus on Bay City, where my father was born.  Inspiration: I would cut my top collage layer from Texas, which also has a Bay City, and juxtapose the two places.

 I liked the idea of letters blending into the background, but after I cut my script out of Texas and laid it on top of Michigan it blended in so well you couldn't begin to find it.  Note to self: in future, cut the layers from different atlases so you get different color and density effects.  But for now, I outlined the cutout letters with walnut ink before I pasted them down.

Verdict:  I love this concept and would like to try it again, even though it was time-consuming.  Not sure it worked as well with the maps as it did with the surfaced paper, but maybe I can combine both -- how about first surfacing a map with various paint and print effects, and using that as one of the layers?  I'll try that some day.

The excellent Christmas display

I know Christmas is over, but I wanted to show you the wonderful display that my dear friend and art pal Marti Plager had up for the holidays.  I've known Marti for 20 years or so and have been giving her and George Christmas ornaments almost that whole time.  This year Marti hung up a beautiful quilt of her own hand-dyed and -printed fabric, in a subtle green that made a perfect background for a whole lot of ornaments to be pinned up.

Many people have told me that they give some little place of honor to my ornaments, but I've never gotten such a great compliment as to have a whole wall full on display.  I am honored!

Found poetry 4

Daily art report 2 -- imaginary places

Two years ago when I did a daily drawing, I bought a couple of sketchbooks that I really liked.  Each time I went through a sketchbook I would buy a slightly larger one for the next volume, gradually forcing myself to draw larger and larger as the year went by; the largest one was 6 x 8".  So when I decided on the map project for this year I thought that some of my daily pieces would be sketches, and again I bought a slightly bigger book -- this one is 6 x 9.

I called this Book 1 and decided that it would hold any kind of sketches, either totally imaginary maps, accurate maps depicting (perhaps) my travels that day, or chimeras that combine real and imaginary components.

I'm starting slow, still finding my balance, so it's not surprising that I returned to comfortable  patterns that I did many times during my year of daily drawing.  Several of the sketches have shown imaginary lands and cities in different scales, much like those I drew two years ago.  I was happy to see that my Micron pens in many different colors have not dried up in the interim, even though I have rarely used them.

When I was an early teen I would spend many hours drawing maps of imaginary cities.  As I recall, they were pretty boring cities, set out in rigid grids.  I especially liked naming all the streets.  I'm not doing that in my current maps, although I confess to sometimes thinking about potential street names when I'm walking, and I'm partial to alphabetical patterns so travelers can tell immediately that Maple Street is only one block beyond where they are now on Locust.

Hmm -- maybe that's an idea for a future day's map.

I'll show you more of my sketchbook maps in the next post.

Daily art report 1

Three weeks into my new daily art project, it's time for a first report.  I have to say, I'm feeling kind of off-balance about this project.  I always expect that at the start of a year, no matter how the project is defined, but this year seems worse than usual.  My project is to do something with a map every day, but with no strictures on what that "something" might entail.

One of my great joys in doing daily art is watching the work accumulate -- the pile gets higher, the stitched areas get bigger, the sketchbook fills up, there's a new blog post every day or every week.   But because of the way I defined the project this year, that's not happening with the regularity I've grown to expect and like. 

In the first 24 days, I've worked on a 3-D assemblage, two different collages, a stitched piece and a large drawn map.  I've drawn in one sketchbook 10 times and in a second book once.  I've spent several days on the computer, getting Google maps for two different projects printed out to the proper scale and pasted together.

Every night I write down what I did in my master calendar, the only place where everything is recorded.  But the various things that I have made or worked on are scattered around in the studio or the office or the dining room table or the backseat of the car (because I had to take my Odyssey map to show off at book club).  That makes me feel a bit uncertain.

Also, so far I haven't made a single post to my Daily Art blog, where I usually document everything I do, because I haven't figured out how I want to treat work in progress.  I guess the best way is to wait till it's finished and then photograph it, whatever it is.  And meanwhile, I'd better develop a place to put the completed work, or at least a list of where I've stashed it, considering that pieces will be of different sizes, shapes and natures and won't fit comfortably into a single box.

I knew this project was going to stretch my comfort zone, but I didn't know I would feel this nervous about the bureaucratic part of the task.  I feel pretty good about the artistic part, so I suppose my best plan is to start taking pictures and showing you whatever I can about what I'm making and talk about what I've learned.  I'll do that in several posts coming up.

The blessings box

I went to a meeting at a downtown church, and was intrigued to find two glass-front boxes on the sidewalk in front.  One was the standard Little Library box, with some books in it, but the second was labeled "Blessings" and contained a couple of bars of soap and some packages of cheese crackers.  The neighborhood gathers a large number of homeless people, with various overnight and day shelters and soup kitchens, as well as freeway overpasses and secluded camps, so this seemed like a good way to dispense small useful things to those in need.

The next time I was in the neighborhood I brought a big bag of hotel soaps and shampoos that had been accumulating in my cupboards.  The box was empty and I was happy to restock it.  I was corresponding with my daily email pal and remarked that for those at the lowest end of the ladder, soap could be a luxury.  She wrote back, "but where will they use the soap?"

I decided I should be responding to more immediate needs, so the next time I was at the grocery store I bought eight jars of peanut butter.  That seemed like a good offering: nutritious, won't spoil, stand-alone if necessary.  I drove past the box a couple of days later and the PB was all gone, so apparently somebody wanted it.

I mentioned this to my son, who has way more knowledge of downtrodden people than I do.  He said food was always welcome, but maybe I should think about some other supplies that might be hard to get and warmly welcomed.  He suggested bandaids, painkillers, toothpaste and toothbrushes, tampons, hand sanitizer, wet wipes.  Also shoe sole inserts, because when you can't afford a new pair of shoes, the inserts make the old ones a bit less awful.  And, of course, sox, underwear, gloves, toboggan hats.

On our next grocery trip, while my husband browsed the produce, I browsed the pharmacy and found two bags full of things for the blessings box.

We've always given money to several agencies that help the homeless, but somehow I feel more personally connected now that I can put things into the box and see that they have been taken and used.  I'm going to try to keep that box stocked; maybe next time, a whole case of PB, and a lot of tube sox. 

Perhaps there's a blessings box in your town; if so, I recommend it for your charitable impulses.  Especially on very cold days.