The allure of the telegram

I was wandering around an antique shop housed in a former granary in Northwestern Michigan earlier this week and spotted these three unused holiday telegrams from 1950. They were 50 cents each, so I had to have them. They are such a vestige of the world BI (before internet).

I received just one telegram in my life but never forgot it. I was in 3rd grade and my beloved teacher, Mrs. Suplee, had been hospitalized most of the school year. I was beside myself with concern. So, I saved allowance money for months - as well as other money I earned - in order to send flowers to her hospital room.

Her response came via Western Union. First, there was a phone call; that was followed by the delivery of the paper telegram. It was exciting beyond words! To me, telegrams were the stuff of presidents, movie stars and other VIPs. Next time I am home, I am going to see if my dad still has that telegram stashed some place. I am betting he does.

Comfort food

I've been jumping back and forth on pieces for various exhibits, and finally returned to the food memory series. Not sure yet when the show will happen but I'm so deep into it that I figured I might was well continue the series. This piece evolved from the comfort found in coming home every night and knowing that dinner will be on the table. The scalloped red edges are from a cooking feature in a 1939 issue of McCall's magazine. The woman was snipped from the cover of a Christmas issue of Ladies Home Journal. She was making cookie press cookies with her daughter in the original illustration. I'm still working on toning down the background layer of dinner menus and on perfecting the steam coming from the enormous pot pie - an illustration from a 1930s children's book.

Nesting

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Eugenie's Friends Felt It Was Time for An Intervention, my first 3D/box collage. It's one of two pieces I've been working on for Encore, a one-night only exhibition Oct. 13 at Memorial Hall that's part of the first Constella Festival of Music and Fine Arts. The exhibit riffs on that evening's concert - "Classic Gems and Contemporary Miniatures" - by featuring miniature works of art.

Beyond the requirement that each work be no larger than 6" there was another one: each work also had to be displayed on a pedestal. The latter made me think twice about participating. A collage in a frame or on a stand seemed boring. Then, I hit on the idea of box collages, which would be more, well, sculptural. By the time I finished Eugenie, which is butterfly themed, I knew that the second box would be about birds.

It's a work in progress, but I'm sharing it, because I'm beside myself with excitement about a great find on a walk last week: a perfect, little bird's nest made of a fascinating array of materials from plastic to human hair to twigs. I cradled in my palms for 2.5 miles until the end of the walk, then, dashed to the studio with it. Voila. The nest fit into the box as if it were made for it. I allowed it to air dry for a few days, sprayed it with acrylic sealer, let that dry, then, painted on acrylic varnish to preserve it. That's it drying in the background. We'll see where the piece goes from here ...

Cincinnati Dreams Italy

The Grand Tour 13: "The Group Halted In Germany
But Emily's Heart  Leapt Ahead to Venice."©
 Mixed-media collage on antique book cover. 

As mentioned in a post a few days ago, you can see how area artists view Italy next month in "Cincinnati Dreams Italy," a special exhibition downtown. It's the brainchild of Kathy Holwadel. She was asked by the Taft to plan a series of Italian-themed events to complement "George Inness In Italy," the museum's big fall exhibition.

Well, to say she got carried away is an understatement. The expansive local artists' exhibit - up to three dozen artists and counting - is spread out in four historic buildings near the Taft and is just one part of the line-up. There also are tastings, a bocce tournament and a communal dinner. The Taft has posted this page on its website with some of the details and there are even more on the School Amici website (that's the local Italian language school owned by Kathy's husband, Michele) and regular updates on the school's Facebook page.

I'll be showing in Park Place at Lytle at 400 Pike St. - right next door to the Taft - along with Kay Hurley, Oliver Debikey, Michael Wilson, Karen Heyl, Mark Patsfall, the Thunder-Sky group and Kevin Muente. As at each site, it's a great mix of mediums from painting and sculpture to glass and photography. Dates are Oct. 8-9, 15-16, 22-23. Admission is free and 30% of the proceeds from art sales will go to the Taft.

The Grand Tour 18: Mama Encouraged the Girls toContinue Sightseeing While She Put Up Her Feet

It's probably no surprise that since I collect all kinds of paper, some of it is from my travels. We've made a number of trips to Italy and while I find it hard to depart with my own mementoes, I did end up using a few in this piece: the lira coin, the ticket from the naval museum in Venice (I still have another one) and the oversized postcards of Rome that I found in a shop (they came from a marvelous book of sepia-toned postcards that unfolds to be about 5 feet long).  7.5" x 9.5" on archival mat board

Tool time

I've been gathering and scanning copyright free images of hand tools for quite some time. Some of the originals have turned up in collages while I've been tinkering with the scans for a line of greeting cards. I've found the images in a number of sources but my favorite, by far, has been a scruffy copy of "Educational Wood Working For School and Home" by Joseph C. Park.

It was created, wrote Parks, because of "the increased popularity of manual training as a part of the curriculum of the public schools and the demand for a text-book that can be put into the hands of pupils so that they may be held responsible for important subject matter in connection with woodworking." He was affiliated with the State Normal and Training School of Oswego, N.Y. (see postcard below). The first edition was published by MacMillan in 1908.

The author received engravings from a variety of American tool and machine manufacturers, as well as information on their products to use in the book and some of the pages are more than suitable for framing on their own, such as the ones showing nail varieties. Each time I page through the book, I seem to discover an overlooked image - so, the scanning continues.

The Grand Tour 17: Matilda's Decision To Remain in ItalyAnswered The Question That Had Hung In The Air For Weeks

This was one of those nice surprises. I had cut out the women from a Peterson's magazine fashion plate to use in another collage but decided on a different grouping. Then, while searching for an image, I found this golden-infused Italian scene and a new collage was born instantly. That doesn't happen often, but when it does, well, it's pure fun.

I was itching to use the beautiful olive branch, which came from a recycled publishers catalog cover, and had a few ideas about the text when I found this snippet in one of my "word" files. Yes, I'm organized to the hilt when it comes to filing paper and have to resist the urge to subdivide it all even more.

This might be one of my favorites in the series for the "Cincinnati Dreams Italy" exhibition, because it reminds me so much of light-infused autumn afternoons in Tuscany and of the silvery olive trees that lined the walk to one of the first places we stayed in the hills just outside Florence. 8" x 8" on archival mat board. (SOLD)

The Grand Tour resumes ... in Italy

I took a break from The Grand Tour series for a couple of months but jumped back into it head first during the past week with five new collages about Italy. They're for the exhibit, Cincinnati Dreams Italy, which will be held Oct. 8-9, 15-16 and 22-23 in historic buildings near the Taft Museum of Art.

The show's the brainchild of Kathy Holwadel, who has a penchant for thinking up cool ideas and it's just one of the events she's cooked up as an offshoot of the Taft exhibit "George Inness In Italy," which opens Oct. 7. There are dozens of Cincinnati artists involved. I'll post details - hours, etc. - as soon as I can; meantime, read more about it on La Piazza, Kathy's blog.

This is No. 15 in The Grand Tour series. I've started adding subtitles; this one - which I admit to changing five times in the last 48 hours - is "The Grand Tour 15: Upon Closer Examination, Elizabeth Realized That Her Guidebook Had Failed Miserably In Its Description of David." It's a hand-colored, antique Peterson's Magazine fashion plate combined with images from vintage guidebooks, maps and brochures. 5.5" x 8.5" on archival mat board with India ink. {SOLD}

New! New! New! At Friday's open studio

As noted a few days ago, I've gone tag crazy again. This time, the batch includes a slew of Halloween tags, some with nifty vintage finds. Check them out, sip some wine, munch some cheese and look for some other new surprises in my studio during Brazee Street Studios' open studios 6-9 p.m. tomorrow (Friday Sept. 9). All the details are on the page just below the blog header above - just click on the shaded blue box.

In the studio? In my dreams!

This how I look when I'm hard at work in the studio. As if. I can't resist sharing the new post on the Paper With a Past blog about my latest great find: the grandiose, 2-volume "The Gibson Book" set published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1906. It contains work from 11 of his titles and is appropriately aged but mold free, bug free, not a torn page in sight and appears to be completely intact. You'll be seeing these in a collage series in the new year.

Gibson's "It Girl" of the early 20th century

I know it must seem like I exaggerate when I say I've had another heart-stopping moment, but that's how I feel when I come across a great find. In this case: two large, dirty red cloth-covered books that caught my eye on the bottom shelf of an antique shop in Columbus, Ohio. Actually, it was the still shiny, stamped gold leaf wreath with the words "The Gibson Book" that stopped me in my tracks.

I had seen the two-volume set just once, years ago while attending an event at Peterloon, the suburban Cincinnati estate owned by Gibson's daughter, Irene, and her husband John Emery. The oversized, coffee table books were published by Charles Scribners' Sons in 1906 and contain the contents of 11 Gibson titles, that is, hundreds of drawings that are by turn satirical and charming. Each page is 11" x 17," so they open into an impressive 34" wide - too large for any of our coffee tables and, unfortunately, for my scanner. Yeah, a new scanner is on the top of my wish list.

The works are meticulously drawn with a keen eye for facial expression that goes far beyond the iconic Gibson Girl whose image swept the nation and is hip to this day. Don't believe that? Well, Urban Outfitters recently touted Gibson Girl wallpaper - with the added touch of red lipstick here and there - and it sold out. The pattern was taken from "Design for Wall Paper," above, which was originally published by Life in 1902 and has the witty subtitle: "Suitable for a Bachelor Apartment." On the next page - below - is an aspiring beauty in 1903's "The Seed of Ambition" from Collier's Weekly.

Food for thought

I've been working on a series of collages for an upcoming exhibit at The Bonbonerie Cafe - no date yet - that are based on people's food memories. I thought I'd give a sneak preview of two of the pieces in progress. I plan to finish these and the remaining three this week, now that I've wrapped up 90 new collage tags - including a batch of Halloween ones you'll see soon.

I read, and re-read, pages and pages of memories that were collected during a series of dinners last winter and spring at a large, communal table in The Bonbonerie's former tea room. Each meal had a theme and during the dinners, people shared their stories of the role that food's played in their lives. I found myself attracted to far too many of the stories and overwhelmed as I began to gathering paper for them. So, I winnowed it down to five stories that resonated the most with me.

The collages shown here - which I haven't titled yet - are about a first-time lobster experience on a date in Miami and a grandfather who owned a cafe in Northern Kentucky and, for a time, sold sausages from his bicycle. I loved that image and was lucky enough to find a large-scale bicyclist in my stash, along with some beautiful sausages. The gummed price labels were a fab find tucked inside a box of cardboard price tags I bought two years ago on a trip to New Harmony, Ind. I was looking for a tag and had forgotten the labels were there. That's one of the things I love about what I do: constant surprises!

I'll let you know when the exhibit opens.