A Crankie Folk Singer

Yesterday was a good day.  A group of six artists spent the day at the Lillian Street studio working on a variety of projects.  Elaine Fuller continued to paint the walls vibrant colors.  Beth Rogers and Chris Fondi built some storage units and worked on Beth's trestle table.  Joyce Compton made origami shopping bags from newspaper and pitched in on various projects when help was needed.  I built a quick drawing table.  It has mismatched legs, two of which are made from a tree branch.  Elaine will be adding touches of color to this one but most of it will remain wood. 

Ellen Gozian (the crankie folk singer) made her first visit to Lillian.  She wanted me to build a crankie box.  A crankie is a gizmo that displays a story scroll to illustrate a folksong.  It took a bit of design work but here is the crankie that I built for her.

                                            
Ellen brought an illustrated the scroll made with a paper collage technique.  The scroll attaches to dowel rods and the top lifts off to allow for changing scrolls.  We also built the crankie so that it can be back lit or front lit.  With back lighting the applied paper cutouts will appear as silhouettes.   With front lighting the colored papers will show.  When the crankie was complete Ellen gave us a performance.

It was the first showtime at the Lillian Street studio!  A good time was had by all.  I'm looking forward to attending one of her shows to see the crankie in a public performance.

Portraits of Women Artists

I've been working on improving all aspects of my photography.  To learn more about photo manipulation I decided to do a series of portraits of some of my friends.  I am working on learning about the range of what I can do with photo manipulation and on gaining control of the techniques.

Joyce Compton needle felting.

Chris Fondi doing a basket weaving technique with yarn.

Elaine Fuller enjoying a brew at the neighborhood pub.

Lynne Feinburg photographing herself with one of her amazing cold cast bronze sculptures.

  

Beth Rogers communing with her muse.

Me having fun with photo manipulation.

Art Doll Challenge - work in progress

Chris Fondi, Joyce Compton and I have given each other some challenges to work on for our joint show.  Joyce gave each of us a muslin doll to turn into an art doll.  It has absurd proportions, stupid joints, and a T shape pose.  I decided to take a fun approach.  I painted it dark blue and cover it with buttons. The face is a cover button that I made.  The hair is ball fringe.  (Ball fringe was on sale at Construction Junction.  I binged at $.75 a yard.)

I like the whimsicality of the doll and am thinking about having him juggle the cover buttons at his feet.  A button clown of absurd proportions!

Submissions to Magazines

Cloth Paper Scissors magazine recently had a reader challenge for creative uses of buttons.  I sent in a few photos and will find out if they are interested sometime in the next couple months.

Joyce Compton, Chris Fondi and I also sent a submission in response to an Art Doll Quarterly challenge for paper dolls.  My paper dolls were made from paper dollars and playing cards. These challenges were fun and it feels good to have put some work out into the world.