Three Balloons • 24” x 24” • This piece and the story behind it are included in my book, Finding Myself in Salvaged Layers. It incorporates various wallpapers and decorative papers. The balloons were made by using a circular cookie cutter as a form and pouring molten wax into it, then cooled carefully before lifting off the cookie cutter. Its inspiration was from a childhood memory of seeing balloons for the first time at the age of five and being enthralled by them. A clown handing out the balloons frightened my younger sister. It was the only vacation day my mother ever had. She and my Aunt drove fifty miles from our home to Lakeside Amusement Park in Roanoke. Memories percolate up from some deep pool place. Some good, some bad.
Nina’s Owl • 4” x 15” • Includes paper napkins, ribbon, magazine page cutouts, string, found objects.
Trees • This was my very first attempt at encaustic wax collage. I used dried, pressed leaves at the top. While cleaning ink off a brayer by rolling it repeatedly over a paper towel, it left marks that reminded me of trees and I used that paper towel below the dried leaves. A found trash piece that was a first proof of an etching on blank newsprint is below the towel and a magazine photo of a tree is at the bottom. The blue-black paper is part of a failed monotype.
Untitled • This is an example of when I begin to add color in a restricted palette to my pieces. On the right-hand side is a strip of red wallpaper.; a trash-find drawing cut into small sections is at the bottom and the left has a strip of shredded light blue paper—also a trash find in the art secretary’s office. Toward the middle, to top, is a negative of a south-western landscape used upside down in an abstract way that was found in the trash in the photography department.
Slowly Sifting Up from the Pool of Intent 1, 2 and 3 • This group came from dreams I was having while reading a spiritual book on the power of intention. I intended it to be a triptych and sold as one but priced each piece separately also. The two end pieces sold the next day after hanging it in the gallery but the center piece did not sell which was shocking as they were priced the same. The center piece took fifty times longer to accomplish as each dot was glued on to it. I have since decided to keep it for reference to a whole series of which I call my lasagna series. The two end pieces—1 and 3—have white pages from a telephone book on the bottom. We used then to clean off the oil etching ink from our brayers in printmaking class I liked the patterns they made and kept them and have incorporated them into many art pieces. Above the paper is all wax with incised patterns cut in and filled with a blue oil paint stick, then wiped the surface clean with canola oil. I used a sewing tool that makes ditty-dot-dot marks. Over the telephone pages I layered the wax up with a stencil of packing material and then caught the high points with the same blue oil paint stick. Then one coat of clear wax to seal. The centerpiece—2—was made of a lot of different kinds of wall papers. A local interior designer gives me wallpaper books and fabric sample books that are discontinued and destined to the landfill. It is treasure. I slice all the pages out of the books. There is an inch left in the heavy cardboard binders stapled with heavy industrial staples and it takes a LOT to get them all apart! But I cannot bear to waste it so I spend hours prizing it all apart with a chisel and pliers. There are ragged holes where the staples were and I use a punch to punch a clean hole then randomly punch the rest of the strip. I started at the bottom using a limited color palate of red black and white. I try hard to not use the entire pattern of the wallpaper as some artist somewhere designed the paper thus its art in my mind. I use them like [paints to paint a new picture. In the end I was happy but used the punched hole circles to carry the color around where I wanted it, unifying the piece. The same design that is on 1 and 3 is at the bottom of 2. Many happy hours went into this piece. I will do more of this style in future and hope to have it turned into fabrics and wallpaper.
Slowly Sifting Up from the Pool of Intent 1
Untitled 3 • This piece started out as a monotype that I was not happy with. I turned it into an encaustic wax collage using rubber-band hair elastics. The bottom is an encaustics technique called accretion in which wax is layered up on the surface. I used the flat side of a square oil paint brush.
Untitled 4 • Encaustic wax collage triptych • A monotype serves as the foundation.