A Thing A Day: February 5 - 13

I am so excited to share these!  Please check out my Thing A Day page here.

*I should say that the beautiful image of the woman above is a collaged found image.  All of the cards created are a combination of found images and drawn images.

A Playing Card Book - An update

I've been experimenting with my playing card books, with some success and some interesting accidents. I posted the beginnings of my first experiment about a month ago. I found that by painting the cards first and then gluing on images, the cards curled up and refused to lay flat. To attempt to remedy that, I placed my iron on top of the pile of cards and left them overnight, which was not my brightest idea. I checked them in the morning and found a soggy mess as the iron had leaked all over the cards. I had to tear cards apart, leaving ripped paper behind. Annoying, but also a very cool effect (seen in image to left). I've decided to let it be, and am pleased with the messiness of it. The point of making these books was to experiment and just make something, not to do something perfect. So I'm thrilled at the happy accident of it all but not so pleased that the pages still curl too much despite being weighed down overnight. My next step has been thinking about the images and beginning to add some writing (seen in image to right). I've noticed some themes of freedom and self-identity showing up in this little book.

I also started making a new book, after deciding that I wanted to process some recent losses in my family. I've glued on the images and began altering them with paint. I plan to go back and write in the stories. Because of the difficult nature of this project, it seems to be taking longer than anticipated. But the other purpose of this experiment was to do a little personal art therapy, and use art to process some of my thoughts/feelings/experiences. So I will just let it happen when its ready to come out.

A Playing Card Book - In progress

My training is in art therapy, and the truth is I've been needing a bit of that myself lately. I've been searching online for ideas and have been pretty inspired to use my many random school supplies and oodles of magazine cutouts and MAKE something with them to help process all this stuff rolling around in my head. I'm really interested in creating little books, something contained that will bring some of my experiences together in a cohesive format. I have tons of little envelopes and baggies and I love the idea of using date and number stamps to represent literal or imaginary dates, and to number things, which reminds me of my weekly quest to make productivity, and the sheer amount of information I process on an hourly basis. The stamps, envelopes and baggies bring order to my chaos.

I've been particularly interested in using playing cards in my art because I spend a lot of time playing cards with my clients. Interestingly, pre-adolescent boys love to play War. It is a game that takes no skill whatsoever, and I watch them struggle literally with the hand they've been dealt, wanting so desperately to beat me. And we have good conversations about what it feels like to win, how important it is to be in control, to predict the outcome, and soon they get lost in the monotony of the game, playing psychic guessing tricks and finding ways to keep the game going forever. The compulsion becomes safe as they master it.

I've thought too about the number of tough conversations I've had over hands of Rummy, with eyes carefully focused on putting together a series of cards and hoping for just the right one to pop up. I usually lose, because I am thinking about which questions to ask about a father, a sibling, a behavior, a feeling. My family plays cards at every get together, and its usually a rowdy affair with lots of laughter and goofiness. I am acutely aware of the difference between those carefree games with my family and the intensity of these games with my clients. For me, there are stories in playing cards. I felt I could use the same structure for myself to create some art and possibly process some of my experience.

I have several decks of incomplete cards, so I pulled out the Ace through 10 of spades, and started painting the backs white. My intent was to decorate the backs, punch holes in them and link them into a book. The white paint didn't cover well and I found that the face of the card was not as important as the idea and shape of it, so then I began to pull out images cut out of magazines from my ongoing magazine project (to cut down on my mega-magazine collection, I'm pulling out articles and pictures and recycling the rest).

I love how this is turning out because I feel a story coming together. Once the basic images are glued onto the cards, I will begin to layer with other words, images, textures. I have some statements that I've done image transfers of that will layer over images ("And that was what now she often felt the need of - to think; well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone."). I enjoy the process of identifying images and bringing them together to create a narrative. I will share it once it is complete.

**This art is just for me, and my process, so I use magazine images just to get the process flowing. Utilizing magazine images is a researched art therapy technique and is a great way to find imagery that speaks in a way you can not. Some artists would disagree with this and prefer to make everything themselves, or cite this as copyright infringement. So to be clear, this is a process. The images are not my own, but the expression is.