Holz Studio Sampling: paper

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Probably not what my mom had in mind...

...when she taught me to sew! I can't really pinpoint what motivated me to do this-maybe all those lovely papers I've been collecting and altering? All I know is that I kept waking up in the morning with the urge to sew these papers together, so....I lugged the sewing machine to the studio, wrestled with the tension knob, and started sewing! I love the pattern stitching makes- even without thread, but then there are of course a whole palette of colors of thread, and the lovely little threads that are like fringe along the edge. And bonus- I can immerse them in wax as well so they can play with my encaustic works!

Here’s an example of how one came about...

arranging and selecting the papers/shapes/textures...
(an old intaglio print that I painted on,
(see this post http://holzstudiosampling.blogspot.com/2015/10/altered-papers.html),
banana bark paper, a page from an old encyclopedia of Britannica about louis XVI...)

stitching some of the layers together...

considering the background...

keeping the threads out of the way from the blowtorch and wax...

auditioning it on its panel...

adding some more layers of texture and staining- and i think she's done....

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Re-discovering Collage

So I had had a bit of a clunker day in the studio, so the next day when I went back, I allowed myself to try something completely different instead of trying to finish pieces that I’ve started over year ago. A new book had come in when I was on vacation, and I was chomping at the bit to take a look at it. The Art of Expressive Collage: Techniques for Creating with Paper and Glue by Crystal Neubauer

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Expressive-Collage-Techniques/dp/1440335850

I have admired Crystal’s work for a long time for its subtle color palettes and always stellar compositions.

I have so many processes and techniques in the studio, I forget about some for a while…. and while I’ve been incorporating different papers and material into my recent encaustic work, its been a while since that was the main component. I forget how much fun it is to forage through my collection and start tearing, cutting, ripping and burning edges! One of her projects was to assemble a collage within five minutes, not really thinking logically about it, just pulling together what intuitively felt right. A lot of my work involves research for the imagery, the text, and the process, and while I love that, sometimes it can be restrictive. It felt very freeing just to pull together what I felt like. Even though these didn’t have a lot of forethought, I am looking at them now and thinking that they still relate. Anything that I collect that comes into the studio usually has some type of relationship with nature. Its like everything gets filtered through a natural history perspective. And so the title for this series will be nature ephemera, (ephemera being my new favorite word that refers to found paper bits). I let the color of a fossil inventory book from the 1800s determine the color palette of the piece, and then I built around that. I tore up an old bird book that led me to pulling out old screens of nests and making new ones of leaves and eggs. I spent an afternoon just poring over all the different types of bird eggs there are, and the patterns and sizes and colors that they come in. Very fun. I carefully considered the shape and arrangements of the pieces, and then I countered that with some very loose painting and writing. I finished it up by working drawing back into and highlighting the change in value in certain areas.

Here are some of the in process shots.

just muddying up the panel a bit....