I was invited to contribute seven of my vintage optician lens necklaces and seven collaborative collage prints and the original collaborative book to a group exhibit called Number 7 at Mercantile Home, in Easton, PA. It opens September 3 and runs through November 1. The other work in the show looks fantastic, particularly that of Wilhelm Staehle. I’ve admired his clever silhouette images which I’ve seen on various art/illustration blogs lately.

A crappy photo of a new collage. I try to find things other than my work to photograph for this daily photo thing, but I was a slacker during the day and didn’t take any photos. There was a nice sunset in the evening, but I was distracted by working on this and other collages so I forgot to take a photo of it until it was too late. I’m trying to get new things ready for Art for the Cash Poor this weekend!

D. and I saw the Cezanne and Beyond art exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I had been pretty unenthusiastic about seeing this particular show and really wasn’t going to bother but then I renewed our membership and the tickets were free, so why not? It was pretty nice I guess, and the comparative approach was interesting and well-done. But I just feel like I’m so over the whole 20th century European White Male Canon of Great Art thing. It’s just so…safe…I don’t know. It’s not that I dislike Cezanne et al., just that I feel like I’ve seen it all before.  It’s always the same 10-20 Big Names in this kind of show. I want to see something new, something obscure, something I haven’t seen before, something I don’t see in every damn museum of art I go to no matter which city it is in…It doesn’t inspire me anymore, and that’s what I want, to be inspired, to go to an exhibit and come away wanting to run home and make my own art.

This post and photo were inspired by my writer friend Catherine, who mentioned that she has lots of starts of stories but has trouble finishing anything. I replied “yeah, I know that problem. I have about 40 unfinished small paintings sitting around.” So I went home and counted, and it’s actually 52, not 40. I think I have a problem. Well, I do finish them, eventually, sooner or later!

I wonder if other collage artists tend to work this way. I find it very frustrating to work on just one piece at a time. The process of sorting through my big box of paper scraps seems to lend itself best to working on multiple pieces simultaneously. I’ll come across a scrap that isn’t right for one piece, but which just seems to belong to a different piece, or which sets off an idea for an entirely new piece. I think that’s also why I like working in books so much- you can flip back and forth between pages.  Maybe I just have artistic ADD. I can’t imagine spending months or years working on the same piece!

New digital collages for 2009. Prints are available in my Etsy shop!

Today my mom and I went through a giant pile of things I had left in their basement. Mostly old artwork- a lot from art school, but also some from high school and even elementary school. This is a woodcut that I know I made in Mr. Adams’ evening art class, so it must have been either 4th or 5th grade. It’s one of the nicer things I found- there was a lot of horrible crap. But I firmly believe that you sometimes need to work your way through some horrible crap to get to anything good. I kept some things, mostly things I can recycle into something new. I was surprised to find myself so very unsentimental about all my old artwork. We ended up with a giant pile for the dumpster, and it was strangely cathartic getting rid of stuff, although I did photograph almost everything. I’m considering posting some of it here, just for laughs. I also brought home a giant bag full of about 75lbs of sketchbooks and journals full of miscellaneous teen angst- those will be headed for the shredder soon! Thanks mom for all your help!