Not a moment too soon … 1st annual Christmas poster

© Sugar Plum Tree

I so wish that in July, someone would dump snow into my studio and pipe in continuous holiday music. That way, I might get on schedule with my holiday greeting cards, tags, etc. But, no, here it is Dec, 6, and what am I doing? Designing a new card, and, "wait," she thought, "why not turn it into a holiday poster, too."

So, I have. Both the card and poster debut this weekend at the Showcase of Art at the Woman's Art Club of Cincinnati, which opens this morning at - gulp - 10!

For the design I used one of my favorite Christmas images in which tiny children dance around a ginormous Christmas tree laden with all kinds of goods from the practical (soap, coffee, furniture) to the whimsical (candy cones, fish, toys).

The tree is adapted from an engraving a black-and-white engraving in the January 1882 issue of St. Nicholas, a popular American children’s magazine published by Scribner’s. The pastries are from “The Trade’s Cake Book,” by T. Percy Lewis (MacLaren & Sons Ltd, London, 1912). I altered their colors substantially to make them more fanciful.

The 11" x 17" poster is titled "Sugar Plum Tree," and is a limited edition of 25 signed copies. It's printed with archival ink on Legion Paper's Somerset Enhanced Velvet 100% cotton rag paper. It may be the first of an annual series of Christmas posters. And, who knows, maybe next year's will be designed earlier.

A piece of cake? Hardly.

 

 

Sooooo, I've been working on a commission the past few weeks. Well, actually, longer than that. Much longer than that.

It grew out of a collage made for the Art of Food Exhibit in March. Someone wanted to know if they could buy a print of the piece - "Her Friends Felt That Roberta Was Overzealous About Protecting Her Recipes - which was sold.

The collage featured a vintage image of a knight wielding an oversized knife and fork, with various cakes and cookies. Vellum covered a large image of a cake that was the background. Well, I couldn't make a print because this was one of two collages from the show that I forget to scan. I offered to make a new one, and that's when the trouble began.

I was sure I knew where the knight was from. So, I hunted down and bought copies of the two vintage books I thought it was in. Wrong. Now, why didn't I write down where it was from as I usually do???

I scoured up more knights, including the amazing one above from an 1837 costume book. It was her favorite. There was paper leftover from the original collage, including the text at the bottom and another piece of the vellum with words on it.

So, I began. The client and I went back and forth on the images, with minor changes along the way. She visited the studio last weekend and the bottom right collage was her final choice.

Easy, right? Not a chance. The vellum didn't adhere as cleanly as on the original piece. She LOVES that cake, because the recipe she guards is a flourless chocolate cake. So, I spent a few hours yesterday trying to remove the vellum. Need I tell you that that didn't work?

Now, I am going to cut out the knight, text, cake, etc. and start again with a new background image. Luckily, I have more of the marbled endpaper - which came from a chocolate cookbook, and one last piece of that vellum. This time, I know how to adhere it.

But will she will like the new background. Stay tuned ...

 

Counting the days

The calendars are coming! I've been hard at work designing four different calendars for 2013. This time around, they'll be done before the first week of December. Way before.

The two above will be joined by an Out On a Limb calendar featuring new collages in that bird series, and a general Paper With a Past calendar with a mix of imagery.

Like the 2012 calendar, they will be a handy 5.5" x 8.5" and will be packaged in a clear box. But this time around, they'll be wire-bound and on heavier stock.

I plan to offer an advance order price of $12, after which the price will be $15. More as it happens ...

This could explain why Peter was a pumpkin eater

Claudette Conducts an Unscientific Study of
Whether Pumpkin Turns Men On (2012)
Vintage illustration and text; recycled paint sample, wrapping paper &
cookbook; ink and watercolor. 5" x 5" on archival mat board.
Price: $75 (matted),  $90 (matted & framed) 

Pumpkin turns men on. Really. In fall of 2010, the Small and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago conducted a study of which aromas act as natural aphrodisiacs and discovered that pumpkin turned men on more than any other smell. Pumpkin pie is my all-time favorite dessert, so, of course, I remembered the study, and had to create a collage with it in mind.

The title isn't too subtle, but the reference to sex in the collage itself is; it's buried in the text, which was torn from a French dictionary. Somehow, French seemed a sexier language than English.

Ah, the lure of the s'more

Flora's Exercise Routine Increased ExponentiallyAfter She Became Addicted to S'mores (2012)mixed-media collage: antique engravings (Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly,1888); vintage illustration; recycled paint sample, cookbooks and book;ink; watercolor. 5" x 5" on archival mat board.Price: $75 (matted only), $90 (framed)

This was, well, not easy - despite the background pieces coming together handily. When I found the paint sample, I remembered the s'mores instructions in my stash, as well as a photo.

Since the background is busy, the idea was to put one figure on it. After cutting out a half dozen or so and just not feeling it, I came across a series of engravings in Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly illustrating a feature on "The Physical Education of Girls." I snipped out a sequence and started placing them around. They needed some grounding, which was where the roasting fork came in. Her belt was colored yellow to draw more attention to her.

Then, something bad happened. There were small balloons of shading at her feet. I liked them ... at first. Then, decided they were distracting. So, I began peeling them off, which worked well for the three images on the right but not the two on the left. Paper peeled off. After attempts to paint it failed, I hit on the idea of covering the areas and that's where the small squares of chocolate came in.

New at Friday's open studios: collages, cards, tags and the debut of archival prints of my work

Julian Had Popped the Question But All Anna Could Think About
Was Her Order of Bacon (2012)
mixed-media collage: vintage illustrations (McCall's magazine,1937;
 Art of Food & Drink, Dover, 1974), recycled cookbook and paint sample,
 ink, watercolor. 5"x5" on archival mat board.
Price: $75 (matted), $90 (framed).

Friday night's Open Studios at Brazee Street Studios - 6-9 p.m. - offers the first look at all the new collages in the Food Colors series.

Also new in the studio: a special Father's Day card, a slew of collage tags - just finished 25 or so - and for the first time: prints! These are high-quality reproductions of collages, printed with archival inks on 100% cotton rag paper. The selection is small but will be expanding, and for now, they're available at the studio only.

Reminder: I'm on the first floor now- right across from the Brazee Street entrance and the gallery. where a delightful show is opening: Glass Woods.

Back in the kitchen ...

Janine Wasn't Fooling Anybody With That Cocoa Cup (2012)
mixed-media collage: antique scrap, vintage illustration,
recycled paint sample, recycled wine label, marker, ink,
watercolor. 5"x5" on archival mat board.
Price: $75 (matted to fit a standard 8"x10" frame), $90 (framed). 

I'm taking a break from the Paper, Scissors, Rock series - which will have 4-5 more pieces in it - by returning to Food Colors, a series created for the annual The Art of Food exhibition at The Carnegie. I got carried away and whipped up six more collages, which you'll be seeing over the next few days.

For this one, I was so happy to be able to use a wine label carefully peeled from a bottle months ago. Unfortunately, most of its beautiful red, glossy leaves - the thing so attractive about it - are hidden now. It was moved every which way but it was impossible to get in more of the leaves and the type - and I really wanted the words.

The paint sample is actually two separate ones combined to take the viewer from coffee and chocolate to claret and bordeaux. Now that we've gotten to wine, well, although I didn't want Janine to appear to be a total lush, I couldn't resist tinting her lips and fingertips purple.  

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.

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.