Take-off: circle meets the square

Out On a Limb: The Music of the Birds (2012)

mixed-media collage: antique trade card (American Song Bird Series, No. 16, Meadowlark,
Singer Sewing  Machine Co., 1898), sheet music (The Music of the Birds, Oliver Ditson, 1898) 

and endpapers (Dante's Inferno: New Edition, circa 1885), vintage illustration (Audubon 

birds coloring book, circa 1930s), recycled book proofs and exhibition catalogs, ink, watercolor,

fluid chalk, acrylic sealer, and acrylic varnish. 6” x 6” on a hardwood panel. Price: $85.

(SOLD) 

Out On a Limb: Recorded Sound (2012)

mixed-media collage: antique engraving (Chatterbox magazine, 1874), trade card

(American Song Bird Series, No. 13, Brown Thrasher, Singer Sewing Machine Co., 1898), 

and record sleeves (Brunswick Records, Columbia Grafonola); ink, watercolor, 

acrylic sealer, and acrylic varnish. 6” x 6” on hardwood panel.

Price: $85

The bottom collage shows the big departure in how music is being incorporated into the newest collages I'm making for the Fifth Sreet Gallery. In the top one, it's via sheet music, as it was in the collage posted last week. But I wanted to break away from that and also from the vertical compositions I had gotten stuck in.

Well, there was a pile of antique record sleeves, which had been removed from LPs in the basement that we were ditching. After toying with framing one of the birds inside the round hole that showed the record's label, the idea was rejected. How could I cover up those beautiful Singer chromolithographs?! "No. No. No. No. No."

Well, I didn't say "never." The minute this ornate sleeve was put over the Brown Thrasher, I knew I was going for it. It was so visually striking and so different from the other pieces.

I don't say this often, but I love, love, love this one - and the other one that you will see tomorrow. Oh. That doesn't mean I don't like the dueling meadowlarks ... it's just fun to veer in a different direction.