A couple months back I was invited to be a
guest artist on Creative Therapy. Thanks Karen! I was asked to choose a prompt or catalyst for creating a piece. I chose
"who is your favorite relative" instantly. My grandmother is my hero, as you may know... if not, you might like to read
this. Her 89th birthday was coming up, so I made this collage as her gift. I even got to deliver it in person... that was back in February! She hung it where she can see it when she awakens each morning... a reminder of a life well lived and of a chapter so long ago, when her body was young and strong and small, chubby hands were constantly wrapped around her neck or pulling on her skirts. This is my favorite photo in the entire world! My young grandmother is surrounded by her clothesline and her children... radiant and relaxed. The reality was: she and my grandfather were building their home while living on the work site, she was teaching nursery school, and had a 4 year old and one year old... phew! Yet, look at that smile!When I worked on this, it was hard not to think of the passage of time... of moments frozen... of the innocence and vulnerability of young mothering. The 1940's may seem like a foreign age compared to the present, but if I could step into this picture, I bet I would find similar struggles and joys in my grandmother's daily life to ours today. Clothes lines symbolize so much to me and this one has the added reminder of my girlhood summers with this same lovely woman hanging our laundry out... as I swung on the porch swing nearby. Sometimes I helped, but honestly I mostly watched and absorbed her methods and movements... and we'd
talk... and
talk. I'd give anything to swing on that bench today, but I feel so lucky that I still have her to
talk to. In fact, this last week I've taken to calling her every day... just to check in. Aging is never easy, you know... but my grandmother's middle name is
Hope. For real!
I knew I had to incorporate that into her collage. I loved stamping it onto a mini cloth (diaper, perhaps...) and hanging it on the line. Shouldn't we all hang our
HOPE out on a line? (You can read more about the details of the collage techniques I used over at
Creative Therapy , where I just became the 113th catalyst.) And I invite
you to create something for and/or inspired by
your favorite relative. It will be time well spent, I promise. Did that special person jump into your mind when I said that... who might it be?
Happy Monday! What an amazing amount of love and enthusiasm last week's give-away has created! Overwhelmed is an understatement. I'm soaking it all in. We just returned from a whirlwind trip to New Hampshire and Boston for a fun weekend filled with extended family. I love coming home! 780 miles! I don't know what we would have done with out our antiquated Heather Forest story tapes. They're available on CD, too... we're just old school sometimes! Highly recommended for travel with small ones (find them here
and here
). I'm recuperating with my laundry piles and to-do lists... and your lovely comments have sweetened the task. So have the baby leaves on our forced crab apple branches, that welcomed us when we returned.
Coming home to rain inspired me to carve this stamp on my "to make" list. So instead of posting right away today... I carved. Very grounding for me, as you know. A few more umbrellas might need to be made for April, because it's so fun creating collages with raindrops made from security envelopes... and a few digital drops tossed in.
p.s. Blogger is having some odd problems with formatting photos today... please bare with the strange layout and cut off images. You can see all photos in their entirety on my flickr page.
I've been making collages with my stamps and security envelopes for a few months. They've been simple, small and abstract. I decided to do something a little different. I gathered a couple of envelopes, some doily scraps, and a box from Yogi teas. Have you seen the inside of the Yogi tea boxes? Gorgeous. Inspiring. I had a piece of cardboard from the back of a frame to use as my surface, and I let this piece evolve. Layer by layer with found papers, ink, and paint... it grew. I think it's still growing. I'm not sure if I will leave it be, or not.
I was definitely influenced by my desire for the arrival of spring and the snow covered meadow out my back door. At first I added (white) grass beneath the security envelope tree, but then an entire garden wanted to bloom. The blossoms are bits from the tea box, painted with a fine brush. I left one undone so that you could see what it looked like. The doilies made perfect clumps of ivory flowers... or maybe they are the last traces of snow, I'm not sure.
This is a gift for a dear friend. She's someone who's received my collages and art over the years and I always feel I can experiment with her presents. She's gracious and excited about anything handmade. Now isn't that a sweet gift to the artist?! We all should have a friend like that, or at least try to be that kind of friend!
