I'm in the current issue!
The current issue of cardaddix just came out and I have a card featured!
It's the newsletter associated with ACEO MAGAZINE aceomagazine.com/. Subscriptions and individual issues can be purchased at the website.
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I saw these stones when I looked down.... they were a few inches from my feet on a beach in Cape May, NJ. I almost just squashed them into the sand by walking on them and would never noticed how beautiful they were... How soft looking, how polished.... how worthy of notice.
Maybe it's always like that. Me. Life. Maybe I always assume what I want off in the distance.... and thinking what I need must be over that next hill.... and I know what will make me relax and appreciate what I have is in that newly published self-help book.
But maybe life is always like the experience with these stones. Maybe I already have within my view and reach everything I need. Maybe what's over the next hill doesn't matter because the only thing you really have is the presant... and maybe what's in that next self-help book really is the same thing that was in the last self- help book, with a new cover.
Maybe there is something to be said for living fully in the moment.
This card was done on mat board cut into aceo format. There is a collage done with art papers under the main image and its all sealed with multiple layers of acrylic sealers. I like this card, its pretty and calming.
You may not like all your memories but they make the whole of you.
In each person you know there are things you might not like but that doesn't take away from the value of the person - and the person is the sum of his parts.
As each person person you know deserves a place in your life each of your memories is worthy.
I've struggled with this.
For many years I'd assumed there were things I'd rather forget. But I can't say I'm sorry who I am, who I've become... who looks out from behind my eyes. How can I pick and choose the memories, than? If I lose this one will someone else be looking out from behind green eyes? Or will it take two memories? Or not those two but two others?
Many years later I can see the value in not fighting the memories. Coming to terms with them...letting them rest.... in peace.
How much stuff do we carry forward in to new relationships ? As much as we truly want to end one before we get into another I think most people keep tugging everyone they ever knew along with them...
People call it baggage but I've seen how heavy it looks on some people - I think it's stone.
Something in this tree was sad and mournful.. That is was pale and twisted... reaching. And not quite balanced on the ground that it was planted in -Living over-shadowed by a darker, stronger tree... It seemed sad, almost resigned. Depressed and deep in a foggy haze. Almost human.
I've been doing a new series of photographs based on trees. It's about the normal things I see everyday... that when taken out of context - defined in a small photograph - become odd, different...somehow larger than... much different than they appear at first glance.
Trees are silent watchers around me all the time. As part of my day they are just blurs but when looked at closely I can see how much like people they are... how they've spent years growing towards warmth and light, twisting and arching to get what they need, sometimes becoming bent and misshapen in the process. I can see the nicks, bumps and scars that happened along the way...and the healing.
People grow the same way - seeking warmth and sun, growing around barriers...eventually showing their scars... some looking gnarled and stooped in the end. There is a beauty in the trees that speaks of survival and it echos the beauty of surviving a hard life. Of having made it through... Of having lived another day... Of beating the odds.
Surviving is a complicated thing that doesn't always come easy... and it's success is sometimes measured in scars.
The photos really dont do this card justice....This card was done in many steps. The base is mat board cut into aceo format (2 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches) covered with different art papers to make the background collage. They were attached, like all my collages with two different types of acrylic mediums. The main image was printed on clear vinyl to compliment the hazy image. You can even seem some of the background collage through the image but I kept the background muted as it suited the mood.
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When people look at you all they see is the outside - a shell - not you. Not your thoughts, not experiences, your gifts, your hopes...no dreams. If you look into a mirror and are unhappy with what you see, your looking for yourself in the wrong place.
It's your dreams that tell the whole story. The story of where you have been and where you are going... Of your deepest, most hidden thoughts and how beautiful you are underneath the scars. Dreams tell the stories of your fears and accomplishments and, for me, solutions too. If I don't know what to do sometimes I'll go to sleep... knowing when I wake I'll know what to do. Solutions come to me as little dream bubbles that float in on a mysterious tide and burst - Each one bringing a new possibility that I never conceived of while constrained with the boundries of wakefulness.
I've thought alot about sleeping...and than dreaming this week. I started this card because I was unable to sleep and it started with a text that I couldnt read - like dreams and problems. I added an uneaven piece of gold on top of that because it sparkles and promises.. but never quite covers the under layer of questions. And petals because they are pure and sweet and are the promise of life... The final layer was beads and things that shine - different yet similar from eachother...These are the dream bubbles, waiting to burst.
This card took a long time and had layers and layers of sealer between each different part. I never knew if I was done, until I looked at it and it said 'done' to me. The final top coat was a triple-thick clear coat of spray sealer that makes it look like everything is floating.
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This card uses one of the photographs I took in Cape May, NJ in 2006. It looked like an old rooming house to me - where there would be a central living room, separate bedrooms and community bathrooms. It reminded me of a place I stayed for a while when I was 19. Someone I knew moved to a (much seedier) rooming house. We would sit in his room at night in the summer - sweating because there was no air conditioning - listening to the people next door having an agruement over who washed the whites with the reds and turned the underwear pink, a sad dog barking constantly, the toilet next door flushing every few minutes, couples laughing when they walked down the hall and sometimes trying our door by accident - slurring "sorry".
He hated it. I loved it. I hated being alone. Especially hated being alone at night and the sounds of other lives around me at night was comforting. It made me feel like I was part of something and not so isolated. The sound of the toilet flushing set his teeth on edge - for me it just meant a person was nearby. It meant that other lives were happening just outside my door - maybe storybook happy ones.
The place in the card brought back all those thoughts to me. About the hot summer I was 19 and shared the lives of a bunch of strangers through some green peeling walls. The card is more something that tweaks my memory and how something can feel when your young and how that spark comes back in a flash through an image.
The base of the card is cream mat board. Over the matboard there is a creamy paper with flecked inclusions. The artwork was printed on a natural fairly heavy weight paper embedded petals. On top of the image is another tissue weight paper with what looks like fly away wisps and gold metallic threads.
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How much of life is in your perception of it?
This is a card made of a brand new photograph. This week-end I was out picking pumpkins for halloween. I like to carve them but not until Thanksgiving because I like having the bright faceless orange heads around as long as possible (which is probably a bit odd in itself). So I went to a pick-your-own farm.
There were a ton of kids running around like crazy...grabbing little ones and stumbling over huge ones. Yelling, "How 'bout this one?" And parents taking pictures of babies in strollers under piles of pumpkins - a very odd thing to see.
To me it seemed odd. Even though the vibe was happy and the weather was cool, the sky was unnaturally blue and the wind was crisp the whole scene had a weird vibe to me. I took the pictures and when I got home I played around with them and made them look like the scene looked from behind my eyes.
I did see beauty in the bright pumpkins against the dark, dead foliage cut down so the patrons could walk among the pumpkins but it was still dead and strewn looking to me. And the two lonely trees in the background seemed to be watching sadly. The sky is no longer unnaturally blue...but more the way it looked to me. It had the eerie glow that I felt even though I didn't see it.
Life is really in how you see it. I am pretty sure that no one else saw this field the way I saw it that day. Yet, I think there is beauty in what I saw... Spring is about rebirth and autumn is about the crumbling and dying of things... the peeling back and dissovling into dust of living things to make room for new things... And there is beauty in that too. Those things are part of the cycle of life and should be celebrated as well.
The base of the card is mat board cut into aceo format with a collage of many papers. The main image is printed on a thick bumpy natural paper with inclusions... I think it suited the image well. I printed this image several times on thinner more translucent papers but the strong thick paper was the one that said the most.
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I love making ACEO's. I love the unexpected things that happen when I make them... This card is a good example of how, even in this tiny format, great things can show up.
The image is a hallway at Drexel University I took in 2006. I've always liked the image a lot but it never came out 'right' when I tried to turn it into a card. I kept trying though... This ACEO card showed more than what I saw that day. It reminds me of how dark things can seem just a few feet away from a lamp or window and it got me thinking about how sometimes I stay in one place - or put off decisions - because I can't see clearly...
Like in this card, the glow from the lamps and window fade into darkness almost immediately. I could see myself standing in the light and not moving...even though the next lit area is just a few feet away.... because I was afraid of what was in the dark. When I look at the card, from this perspective, standing still seems silly but when your there and fearful sometimes going into the dark - even for a second - is paralyzing.
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