IF YOU WISH TO BE ENTERED IN THE GIVE A WAY FOR THIS CARD JUST COMMENT ON THIS POST BY WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 5, 2008. I WILL USE AN INTERNET RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR TO PICK THE WINNER BASED ON THE TOTAL NUMBER OF COMMENTS.
If you don't have a blog please sign your comment with an email address so I can email you if you win - anonymous comments provide me with no information!
Please, only one comment per person. I will pay the postage myself, the winner will get the card mailed to them with no strings attached.... and my thanks for appreciating my art!
****If this is something that people seem to enjoy I will try to do this frequently*****
cocoon aceo
Originally uploaded by popcornfeet
I've worked with this image before because it tugs at me. Calls to me... It's special to me... It's simple and sad and nurturing at the same time. It's about caring for myself. It's about taking care of my mind, my sanity and my body... It's how I survive when all I have left is the shell.
I was drawing like this in the summer of '97, months before I was diagnosed but I was symptomatic. At that time I was more concerned with quickly getting feelings down on paper and I don't think I had started using colored pencils yet; I believe when I did this one I was still only using markers. They were fast to work with, had blazing, sometimes shocking, color and they suited everything I needed at the time.
I've done this card before with the theme of overwhelmed. About when it's all - everything and everyone - it's all just too much. How at some point you can't take a thing more - a good thing, a bad thing...anything.... not one thing more. And you know all that works to make it better is collapsing in on yourself. Curling up. Not hearing or seeing anything else until you are ready...
Every once in a while I redo this card because it has meaning to me and I always get emails from people who tell me it has meaning to them as well. Even people who aren't bidding. Sometimes people just write to say I gave words to their feelings... I think thats an important thing so I try and use this image on different cards. The other thing is when ever I list it people who didn't win the auction ask me to relist a card with the same image. I can't replicate cards because no two are ever the same but I can use a main image again.
When I was doing this card for someone an odd thing happened. It stopped being the card Overwhelmed and became the card Cocoon. With this card I put gauze over the image... Some with the traditional gauze look and some just shreds of gauze. When I stopped to look at it ...the meaning had changed. What was once a figure collapsing in on itself in protection was now a figure spinning a protective cocoon... being proactive. Taking care of herself... Waiting out the storm in warm safe place of her own making.
For me there was something very different about this card. It showed a stronger figure. A person who didn't just have to wait for the storm to pass while curled up and hope for the best...but a person who could self-soothe. A person who could make her own safe place. A person who was on her way to 'better' even as she waited.
When I realized what I had in this card it was an empowering moment that I can't explain.
The card was done on a base of mat board cut into ACEO format. Through the main image you can see the base papers and I think that that gives even more of a feeling of vulnerability... The figure is not only curled into a fetal position but you can almost see through her...or partly...like she's fading away. Even so she is protecting herself against the onslaught of life
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5 comments:
I actually was led to your site via flickr. You left a very nice comment on my page (thank you very much) and that prompted me to check out your photostream. And, Omigod! You are so talented. Your work is lovely, both conceptually and technically. Am so happy to have bumped into you. Am reading your profile with interest. Your insight into your own psyche is amazing too.
This ACEO just seems to speak to me too. I am so glad i found it. It is exactly how i felt watching my best friend in her final moments. I lost her in June and this card is that feeling! I love looking at your art. It's wonderful and somehow healing. Thank you.
I have followed your work for a while with admiration and sometimes awe.
You have such a gift of touching people in so many different ways and places, with the same image and words you speak to people in so many voices.
Besides the image, the narrative of how "Overcome" morphed into "Cocoon" is so beautiful.
(Iowa Sunshine, I am touched, too, by what you wrote.)
You are the catalyst for so much and so many, and yet you suffer. You are a reminder of life's cruelty, its mysteries and its miracles.
This sounds like so much blah blah blah but I mean it from my heart.
-- your admirer, Lori (who had trouble figuring out how to post, sigh)
i first saw this on flickr and it is just fabulous - thanks so much for sharing your story behind the work. nayski (rstien@charter.net)
It's too late for winning it.. but not too late for subscribing to your feeds :) Your art is touching!! Wonderful -
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