"Room to Breathe"

 A little break from the custom collage blog (more tomorrow on that) to announce a new piece. I titled this one "Room to Breathe". I had this idea pop in my mind of doing a collage that was almost entirely white with just pieces of images popping through, so you would really have to look closely at the image. So many of my collages are very dark intense colors, so I like that this is a departure from that.

I got the idea while I was driving down a hill and it was a beautiful day and there were trees arching over the street. I looked up through the windshield and saw the sky overhead and because the hill was somewhat steep, it kind of felt like I was falling. The idea of the all white collage just popped into my head. I wrote it down and tucked it away until I finally got a chance to sit down and hash it out. Like all of my collages, it started with a vague idea and I just kept adding to it until it seemed complete. I'm undecided if I will add more to it with ink stencils or if I will leave it as it is once it's printed.

20 minutes late

So I posted my Monday blog on Sunday and I'm twenty minutes late for my Wednesday blog. What can I say? I had work to do and lists to make. But now here I am, still trying to figure out how best to capitalize on my stupid downtime. I hate downtime. I hate super busy time, too, but I would much rather have that than sitting here trying to figure out what next. Pouring over tons of marketing websites, trying to figure out how best to promote on the cheap. I'm spending more and more time on Twitter and I'm really starting to like it. Being connected to other artist/photographers/people with like interests is really fun.

I'm following Etsy on Twitter and have decided to create an Etsy account to sell some of my new collages. The audience here in MN really seems to enjoy the location collages, but I'm always curious if there's an audience out there for my other work as well. 

So I'm going to give that a go. I also might bring back some of my old work, like my handmade greetings cards. The work that got me started. I spent quite a while digging through old Zip disks (yes they still work!) and CDs trying to find the files so I can create more than what I already have if I want to, but as of yet I haven't been too successful. I'll keep digging, but for right now I might just focus on making new work. Making new work similar to the old work might even produce better results! I'm kind of excited. I really enjoy making handmade things.

One last plug....don't forget about Arts at the Oval coming up in a couple of weeks! 2 days after my birthday, in fact.

Until next time!

Try, try again

I just finished the applications for the Telluride Festival of the Arts and the Vail Arts Festival. After the rejection from Ann Arbor I am very hesitant to be spending money on jury fees to shows that I have very little chance of getting in to, but if I don't try, I'll never know. It's exciting to think about doing something new somewhere different, but on the flip side the idea of that makes the rejections that much harder.

I ordered more of the concentration word game images so I'm hoping to add to the series of new collages that I posted about a week ago. I have decided they will be a limited edition of 50 and will sell for $50 each. I will have them for sale at the first art fair of the season, Arts at the Oval, coming up at the end of March. Visit my website for details!