Out on A Limb: 5

Way back, that is in March, I posted the first of the Out On A Limb series. I mentioned - well, maybe whined a bit - that I didn't particularly like making the pieces. At that time, as you will see here, I was creating the birds and limbs from various bits of paper. I used vintage bird images to make stencils, then, cut the parts. Once the initial construction was finished, I did enjoy adding to it but getting there was tedious. To me, it's like cooking - I once was a chef and went to chef's school in Philly - in that the prep work isn't necessarily the fun part. I feel the same way about sewing, hate cutting out the pattern but love embellishing the final product!

Well, as time has passed, I've returned to the series. But it has evolved into something I now enjoy making much more. I just completed six pieces in which I decided to combine color images of birds with black-and-white ones. For this one, I used a vintage page from a 1930s Audubon bird coloring book - the same book from which I had made the stencils - as the background, pairing it with a color image of a cardinal from one of the beautiful American Singer song bird trade cards published in the early 20th century.

Each piece is on a 5" x 5" x 3/4" Ampersand claybord panel. Normally, I don't hawk products, but I just bought a slew of these in a variety of sizes and love working with them. Unlike the boxy, wrapped stretched canvas, there is no give-and-take on the surface, so the papers glue down flat, flat, flat! I varnished the sides, which are made of hardwood, and attached sawtooth hangers to the backs so that the pieces can be hung without framing. I just learned that the entire series will be on view in Redtree Gallery's "A Small Glimpse" show, which opens Nov. 11. {The cardinal is SOLD}

Autumn's Arrival Gave Venus the Perfect Excuse to Cover Up

I suppose that since my collages frequently are about women taking control that it was inevitable that I'd get to Botticelli's famous 15th century painting sooner or later. You might argue that it is happenstance that Venus has grabbed some of the leaves being blown about by the autumn winds as a cover up, but I prefer to think of it as intentional. The leaves were cut from antique postcards, vintage greeting cards and catalog covers.  4.75" x 4.75" on archival mat board. It is matted to fit a standard 8" x 10" frame.

Bird watching

I've been intrigued by the trade cards in the American Singer song bird series since first spotting them a few years ago. J. L. Ridgway's watercolor illustrations are elegant and the printing is, too. Ridgway -  whose first and middle names are John Livzey - often collaborated with his brother, Robert, an ornithologist. J.L. illustrated numerous books and his work can be found for fairly reasonable prices.

I have a handful of cards and, as you can see from the images, they are damaged, giving me an excuse to use them in collages. There are 16 cards in the series, which was published from 1898 through the 1920s by The Singer Manufacturing Company. Yes, Singer as in sewing machines. The back of the cards advertised the latest Singer products. I'd love to show those, but my cards were pasted into scrapbooks and when they were removed, well, the paper stuck to them, obscuring the ads.

There are lots of reprints of the cards out there - and Singer reprinted the series, too. The earliest versions have an oval Singer logo on the top left corner, are numbered on the top right, include Ridgway's signature near the bottom right and the copyright information along the bottom. Happily, all of mine are before 1919, so they are copyright free!

Ogden Was Bent On Mischief

Oops! I know I said that yesterday's post was the final Halloween one, but I forgot about Ogden. He's a Victorian engraving from The Chatterbox magazine and is one of the many illustrations of chubby-cheeked children from that era that creep me out.

I can't explain why. Even minus the mask, he disturbs me. So, what better image for a Halloween collage?

I added color to his cheeks and lips, and now that I'm looking at it on the computer screen, well, I may go back and add color to the mask. The text is from a holiday crafts book and the smidgen of orange is from a recycled book proof. 4.75" x 4.75" on archival mat board.

Matted to fit a standard 9" x 9" frame. $75 + $7 shipping & handling.

Hog heaven

This is the last of the Halloween collages. As with some of the others, I topped it with a piece of vintage, spider-web patterned, glassine paper to make it look like she's riding through the web. I wish I knew more about the toy. The image is recycled from a book publishers' fall catalog from years ago. I didn't think back then to check what book it might illustrate or whether there was more info before ripping the cover off the catalog. Sigh.

5" x 5" on archival mat board. Matted to fit a standard 9" x 9" frame. $75 + $7 shipping & handling.