Resin-ating with history

I'm gonna have some fun with newsprint and resin paper. Have you ever tried this technique?

I plan to use it in the collage portraits I'm making for the Liberty Bank Building apartments. If you've seen my work, you know I often layer translucent images over patterned paper and other materials.

For this project, I get to incorporate newspaper clippings about the bank from that time. Not the originals -- I'm copying the images onto newsprint. 

I'll add fine art paper to the collages for color, mostly from my current hoard. (It's not "hoarding" per se if you use it eventually.) 

Later, I'll start piecing together "suits" for each founder. My paper stash gives me a lot of options here, but I may have to pass up some of my favorite patterns. These folks were founding a bank in the late 1960s, after all. I'll try to avoid anything too wild, but again... no promises.

Makers gonna make... at a slower pace

For the first time in maybe two years, I have only one project to work on: collage portraits for the Liberty Bank Building. 

I enjoyed people-ing at the "Locally Sourced" reception, and sharing my butterflies with everyone.

But my brain craves alone-time, preferably in the studio.

So I took a week or two not doing much of anything, as the experts suggest you do after a big project. It's been a welcome change not to finish something in a week, or schedule events that won't happen for months in the future. Still a few deadlines, but they're not within days of each other. 

It might take a few more months of this: my brain refuses to attempt more abstract things like goal-setting. So I intend to keep things low-key (ha!) for the summer, but I'm not making any promises.

Coming soon: "Locally Sourced"

If you've never been to the Pacific Northwest, this "Portlandia" sketch will give you a (slightly exaggerated) taste of the obsession over 'local origins.'

What -- and who -- qualifies as "local?" That's the Big Question behind our exhibit at the Columbia City Gallery.

All four contributing artists are women of color who've lived here for a long time: Carletta Carrington Wilson, Bernadette Merikle, Susan Ringstad Emery and me. I think of us all as local, as familiar as coffee in Seattle. But you know how people talk about coffee here: like it's some rare, exotic thing seen only once in a blue moon. 

Not surprising, then, that a coffee-related marketing blurb encapsulated that paradox, which I wanted to convey in my collages: "Rare & Exquisite."

Each of us artists has a different take on being local. Carletta's textile work speaks to migrations through time and space. Bernadette imagines her ancestors deciding the question of local origins. And Susan, who calls herself an urban Iñupiat, considers Native (and "native") Seattle icons. Come see for yourself: the opening reception for "Locally Sourced" is May 19th at 5pm PST. Hope to see you in a few hours!