The ladies are touring again

I'm working on three The Grand Tour collages that take our intrepid travelers to the sky, sea and jungle. Definitely, not the requisite Grand Tour itinerary. It's been about six months since I did a piece in the series. As time goes by, the collages are getting larger, which presents a new set of challenges in terms of composition. I'm playing with scale on these, juxtaposing smaller and larger images to create the illusion of depth.

The jungle collage, now on the work table, has greenery composed of a vintage poster, an antique hand-colored botanical print, and a wallpaper sample with an antique map about the world's forests as the background. The "sky" is a feathery/leafy sheet of marbled paper printed in Australia that was a gift to me. I've been wed to that sky from the moment I pulled it out of the bin, but now that the collage has been photographed and I can view it on the computer, well, I'm not so sure it's the right sky.

I was already thinking about cropping the bottom of the collage to put more focus on the three travelers, and seeing the photo confirmed it. This means losing a lot of that beautiful map, along with the marbled paper. I was convinced that the marbled paper would fill the entire background, and was getting antsy, so I glued it to the mat board. Permanently. Gulp. I did the same with the map, gluing it over the marbled paper.

We'll see where this ends up. Meanwhile, I've learned the value of patience and will simply tack things down before making a final decision. That way, invaluable papers - such as that Guyot map - won't go to waste. Well, back to the studio ...

Shape shifting

A few months ago, I posted a photo of canvases that I had covered with papers as first layers for future collages. One of them became April and another one - papered with a fantastic map by Guyot - now is this escapist collage. I've been itching to make this piece for a while. I spotted the engraving of the balloon in an issue of Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly last summer and added it to my "collage ideas" bin. I knew I'd use it to aid Victorian women trying to outrun the strictures of the time.

The idea of corsets as ballast came next and I began clipping them from advertisements in 19th century women's magazines - looking for a variety of sizes and brands from Dr. Warner's Electric Corsets (yes, they were wired) to Armorside and Glove-Fitting. I'm not sure if the women atop the balloon are approving or disapproving - I'm leaving that up to viewers to figure out.

12" x 12" on stretched canvas, with acrylic and watercolor paints, colored pencil and ink. Ready to hang. $75 + $10 shipping & handling

The Grand Tour: The Ladies Go Postal, and Start a New Decorating Craze.

© The Grand Tour: The Ladies Go Postal and Start a New
Decorating Craze.Mixed-media collage by Sara Pearce.
Antique hand-colored fashion plate (Dec. 1884 Peterson's Magazine)
and map (Guyot's Physical Geography, Scribner, 1872),  vintage
 European postage stamps, ink, pencil, watercolor, acrylic sealer. Professionally framed, 11” x 14,” with conservation glass (for UV protection). SOLD

One rule for The Grand Tour series is to keep as much of the painting intact as possible, since each of the engravings I use were hand-painted. It's my nod to the anonymous women who did the work. There is so much painted on this December 1884 illustration from Peterson's Magazine that I almost decided not to use it.

Then, I landed on the idea of using vintage European postage stamps as window panes to create a stained-glass effect, and replacing the rug with an antique European map.

Looking at the collage now on the screen, it hit me that I could have made life easier by gluing the stamps atop the window panes rather than cutting out each pane out while trying to preserve the thin mullions between them.

Yeah, another learning experience. 9.5" x 7.5" on archival mat board.

The Grand Tour 9

One thing I find appealing about using antique engravings that were printed on lightweight paper is the show through from the other side when they are glued down. In this case, the text on the page behind this illustration from Godey's Lady's Book peeks through as does a slight shadow behind her from the fashion illustration on the other page.

Her Walking-Dress is layered with maps from “Guyot's Physical Geography” (Scribner, 1872), “Harper's School Geography” (Harper & Brothers, 1882) and a 1957 U.S. Geological Survey of Idaho; as well as a sliver of a mosaic illustration from an art book. Off to the sides are vintage postage stamps and a vintage label from an Italian tarot card deck I picked up at a small print shop in Florence in 1989. Mixed-media, 3.75” x 5.75” on archival mat board. {Sold}