TREES ARE POEMS Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, That we may record our emptiness. ~  Kahlil Gibran Sleep is impossible as the sound of trees crashing and limbs snapping haunts me. 2024. The year this historic ice storm leaves our city tattered and eerily silent (except for the sounds of nature crying). The dark of night hiding the damage. White noise and meditative sleep music for the first time failing to lull me. The answer? Do art. This collage grid is an homage to the trees, their beauty, greenery, and enduring strength. Their strong trunks towering; their graceful branching shading. For many, the ice but a trifle; for some a deathblow.  Ice weighing down their canopies. Stay strong. Resist. Exist. 

  Refocusing: Intentions   Our intention creates our reality. If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. ~ Wayne Dyer Countless times art and writing have been the therapies that saved me. In this case, asemic writing and collage allowed me to express the overwhelming disappointment of delayed medical intervention for which I have waited years. To have my hopes so dashed feels like a slap, a cosmic act of Mother Nature. Yet I can refocus and set my intentions. Those intentions, scrawled in gray ink, are the basis for this collage grid. Intentions are the gold, hidden deep in the earth of our hearts but mineable, rewarding, and life-changing. May this gold burst forth and envelope me in rays of hope. 

My Barbaric Yawp I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world. ~ Walt Whitman Anger can be released through a primal scream (a barbaric yawp, indeed) or a therapeutic session of delicate china plate smashing. Fortunately, it can also be released through art. Red and angry I am; red and angry is my art today. Anger swirls through me like a hurricane, a black rage envelops me. I am stuck inside the thick black ⚫️ in the lower left collage in this grid. There is almost an exit but not quite. I am trapped against a brick wall, slumped in defeat, and seething. A brighter world, barely visible from my confinement, taunts me. I know this is only a temporary prison, that bright spot exists. That bright spot exists. 

  Collage Kickstart Live Day 9: THE FINISHED COLLAGES!  The collages in this grid each measure 3” square. It was difficult to choose the papers which I loved enough to use in collages. This was all such a fun process, and I am overwhelmed by how much I learned in this workshop. I plan to continue creating collages in a variety of color palettes, including neutral as and all three primary colors.  E Pluribus Unum - Out of many, many collage papers, one collage grid was created! On this cold and icy winter day, these warm colors soothe. 

 Collage Kickstart Live Day 8: Image Transfers My Way Since the lesson involved transferring later-printed images and I don’t have a laser printer, I had to come up with my own method. I decided to just stamp images on tissue paper using my ink pads, since once glued down with matte medium, the tissue will disappear. We’ll see if I’m right about that when I actually make my collages. 

  Collage Kickstart Live Day 7: Fodder Forever Part 2 Ta  da! The warm color palette pieces (tons of them). I love how the close-up photos highlight the textures. The ghost prints are some of my favorites. Just looking at these photos warms me up on this icy winter day. I can hear sleet tickling the window panes.  Bubble papers, cling wrap, and tar gel oddities Just circles Love this paint off-load sheet Texture paste and metallic paint

  Collage Kickstart Live Day 7: FODDER FOREVER Part 1 I have created enough fodder to last my lifetime (and for the lucky person who buys them in the estate sale after I have departed my wonderful artistic life). I am only posting the cool color palette prints; I’ll post the warms in a follow-up. At first I couldn’t bring myself to spray lots of water over my pieces, but now I totally see the beauty in a watery ghost print. I had such fun with found objects, stencils, and my gel plate. Even the paint discharge deli papers are collage-worthy .