Skip to main content

New Beginings

Altered Book - Clorox wipe tie-dye cover
It is August in Florida and the rains seem to be spacing apart. Guess that means fall is approaching and with it a break from the heat and mugginess. A break from mosquitoes and excessive sweating. Every-morning I find myself cracking the backdoor in expectation of a cooling breeze, one that wont come for another month or two. It is in this anticipation that I have listened and finally decided to publish this blog. It is something I have sat-on for quite some time and avoided the plunge.




Nov. 2012



As I finish my first altered book I check the first few pages for a date and find that I began making entries on October 5th, 2012.  I could stretch it and keep meddling in it until the 5th of next month, but I wont, I need to move-on. If not for anything in particular except that I have quite a plethora of viable candidates waiting to take its place.  Watercolor sketchbooks with deeply textured pages, square books for those perfect mandalas that call my name, elongated ones that would allow for some writing next to the images, folded mini-books with their compact frame... this will take awhile so I will check back-in once the successor has been named.



July 2013
In the mean time I will leave you with the last entry into the altered book I have carried in purses and backpacks. The one I've carried to classes, workshops, and meetings. Its been to vacations, and holidays, weddings, and oh-so-many road trips. It was more than a little ignored this last summer while in Seattle for the Annual Art Therapy Conference where I explored my first mini folded book that took 13 days to complete (avidly making 1 entry every day or so).






Endings - Completed on 9/21/13 with NuPastels, Gambisol, and Prisma Color Pencils. This is a mixed media using a magazine image and brown paper, the piece was completed on the pages of an altered book that were pre-coated with craft acrylics (leaving them rough).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Capturing a Moment: Gelatin Printing

Lets just get right down to it, you've either tried it and loved it or you're currently wondering what I'm talking about. Gelatin prints that's what. A few years ago a student introduced me to the wonders of using homemade gelatin as a printing plate (sugar free kind). As it turns out it is a very versatile work surface that brings an element of intrigue and play into the work space. When my clients first hear I'll be bringing in gelatin, they seek out napkins and forks and eagerly away the obviously tasty snack. The sound of dreams shattering as I pull-out the gelatin plates is audible (if only short lived). Soon everyone is poking and wiggling the gelatin and wondering what we'll be doing with it. Play is an important aspect of what I do. So is creativity and genuine interest. These things are however harder to come-by in adults than their younger counterparts (who jump-into explorer mode instinctively).  Sometimes I have to coerce these attr...
1 comment
Read more

Stress Relief Recipe Book

Found some time this weekend to de-stress and what better way than delving into one of those “for later” piles. This particular pile consisted of a menagerie of brown paper bags (and the envelopes they were mailed-in). They were accompanied by notes, quotes, dyed papers, hand made paper, ribbons, and on and on, etc.   These bits of mail have been coming-in at wonderfully random intervals for maybe 2 months. Now it is time to bind the collection into the Stress Relief Recipe Book it was meant for. To the bag full of bits of mail I also added: ruler, pencil, x-acto blade (and scissors), ice-pic, elmers (and other glues), thick string, wax candle (used it to wax the string), thick-blunt needle, and cardboard. *for anyone trying this out for the first time - go ahead and make your life simpler by having the inserts all be the same measurements (or close to it). First there was extensive Pinterest and Google searches for DIY paper bag books, but those mostly consis...
3 comments
Read more

May 2014: Cuban Art Therapist (who would have thought it!)...

[I've had this entry on draft mode since the night I read the call for papers on the last AATA journal. In essence: How art therapists grapple with cultural/diversity/identity. ] To be quite honest, I am still naive (but getting better every day). I didn't think much about diversity or culture growing-up. I don't think most of us do.  Until it happened, I stepped out of the nurturing pockets I’d grown-up in. Quite possibly there had been some hints at it, but I was unable to recognize them for what they were. Everyone else was quite like my family...then again I did not expect to be isolated because of my career choices either. Singled-out on another front for not fitting the preexisting categories. Not a teacher of children. Not a "starving" artist. Not a psychologist nor a medical doctor (didn't marry one of those either). Yes. All that is my last name...that part too. No you can't just shove some of it as a middle name. I don’t have one...
2 comments
Read more