Art journaling: soap gets in your eyes

THE LAND OF THE ODD

digital scrapbook layout

12ins x 12ins

It may be that I am missing out on some the most culturally important dramatic works of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries but try as I may, I find watching television soaps considerably less interesting than waiting for paint to dry and therefore, I can't follow them. However, I do recall that a few years ago, in an attempt to boost viewing figures, producers decided to wake-up residents of the sleepy, sudsy world that was Emmerdale Farm by crashing a plane into the village. Ever since that momentous event, Emmerdale would appear to have been in dramatic free-fall. My dad is devoted to the show and so I turned to him when I wanted to identify the characters featured in a photograph that I'd torn from a copy of The Mirror: for some inexplicable reason, it had screamed out "pointy hats and wings! Pointy hats and wings!". Anyway: on the right of the photograph is the lovely Laurel whom my dad adores. Her first appearance in Emmerdale was at Marlon and Tricia's engagement party, when she was dressed as a bumblebee. A few years later she married the local vicar (I am supposing, having first divested herself of the said bumblebee costume) who is named Ashley (pictured in the centre of the photograph). You may be interested to know that Laurel and Ashley arrived home for their wedding night to find Ashley’s estranged father Sandy in their marital bed. Laurel subsequently helped her husband to bond with his father: not, I assume, whilst all three of them were in the marital bed together. According to my dad, the lady on the left of the photo is another vicar's wife, who fancies Ashley. At least, I think it's the wife, not the other vicar, who fancies Ashley and I don't think either of the vicars wears a bumblebee costume but do please feel free to use this idea as a journaling prompt and link back to this page so that I can enjoy your creations.

My dad was explaining all this to me whilst suffering from a bad head cold and so I thought that perhaps he was getting the plot lines a little muddled-up. But a quick inspection of the Emmerdale web site revealed that my dad was actually in Emmerdale For Dummies mode. Here's a just short extract from Laurel's Wikipedia entry:

 On 23 January 2009, after talking to Jasmine about Shane and after voicing concern that she thought Jasmine was pregnant, Laurel learned from Jasmine how Shane had tried to rape her and that she had murdered him. Laurel told Jasmine that she must go to the police and confess as, if she explained how Shane had tried to rape her she might get let off as it may be been as self defence. Jasmine, however, explained that it was not in self defence and that she would go to the police in a few days. However she and Debbie decided to flee instead.

If Emmerdale is on the GCSE syllabus, then I take back everything I might have said about exams being dumbed down. This is FAR more complex than any of that Shakespeare and Marlow stuff that I studied for "A" level English. 

This week, I'm blogging this from Holland where I've come to visit my brother. You may well enquire why I've been wittering on about Emmerdale when I could be sharing all the lovely things that I'm experiencing here. It's sad, I know, but ever since I found the Emmerdale photograph, I've had that inexplicable urge to do the pointy hat and wings thing and I could not move on until the deed was done. Brace yourselves: I have so enjoyed this diverting little exercise that I'm considering embarking upon the Zettification of other great dramatic moments. A collection of Market Harborough Amateur Dramatic Society photographs, taken in the 1950s, beckons...

Art Journaling: One Little Word

ONE LITTLE WORD (edited)
Digital Art Journal page
12ins x 12ins

ONE LITTLE WORD (unedited)

As a person who doesn't cope well with hidden agendas, it's my natural inclination to say what's on my mind, get it out in the open and then move swiftly on. This doesn't always go down well with other people and dealing with the fall-out of my honesty is certainly one of my life's greatest challenges. Being assertive and adult during interpersonal communication works best when both parties behave as adults and how often does that actually happen?
In the company of fellow Digital Art Quirks forum members, I'm currently rambling along The Artist's Way: a self-help manual for those who feel in need of creative-rekindling. The book challenges us to re-examine our lives and the things that have led to us getting "stuck". When I found the "please all and you will please none" quote in Lynne-Marie Favreau's excellent Creative Word Art kit, it completely chimed with one of the issues I'm examining. The words I'd typed on the card originally read "I am sick of worrying about what people think or are going to think" but that made me feel like a pathetic victim, and so I thought hard about what I really want to say, right now, to all the people in my life who have tried to knock me down for being straight and honest. In the end, it came down to two little words and boy did it feel good to type them. There they sat in the middle of the page: tiny...tiny, but effective: poking their little tongues out at any unsuspecting viewer who might be charmed to take a closer look at the small print, potentially capable of upsetting a large percentage of the scrap-booking community. Following the Rude Tomato post on my other blog, wasn't I pushing my luck a bit? Had the "F" word ever been used on a scrap page before? Of course, I was fretting...I was worrying about what people would think, trying to please! I worried that I would be banned from the forums; banned from the CTs I work for and lovely Lynne-Marie Favreau would sue me for inappropriate use of her work. As for any submissions to Stamptington publications...
When a friend suggested that, for the sake of decorum, I should blur the offending word out, I experimented with scribbling over it, thus making, I think, a further point about self censorship, but the page is funnier and I believe, more effective with the word left visible and it makes me laugh and cheer out loud. In fact, I would go as far as saying that typing "fuck off" on a scrap page is one of the most exhilarating things I've done in a long time, which could indicate that I need to acquire a life, or possibly, that I'm teetering on the edge of getting mine back.
I would be interested to hear your views on the subject of creative self-censorship. The scrapping world is such a cosy, family-orientated place, but many of the things that I want to explore are not cosy at all. A number of scrappers tackle challenging subjects but how far can we really go? Does the community we're part allow us complete freedom of expression? Are all of us really saying what's really on our minds when we create our scrap book and journal pages, mindful that we'll be sharing the with the whole world and her dog?

Moving swiftly on: this week I have received a lovely little package from my beautiful, clever and talented friend LaWendula. At the moment, I can't transfer photographs to my Mac, so I have nicked LaWendula's images of the gorgeous goodies. Thank you, kind lady, even the stamps were beautiful!

Three Muses: Zlightly Zetti

A POLITE REQUEST
"Run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint"Jane Austin, "Love and Friendship"

Prompted by marvelous Marie over at the Three Muses challenge blog, I have, this morning, been engaging in of the gentle art of Zettiology. Indeed, so gentle is my Zettying, methinks it might not make the Zetti class. However, it is my first ever offering to contain wings, pointy hat and fairy wand and has kept me quietly amused for a several hours.
The lady, said to be a member of the Dundas family (what? You've never heard of them? where have you been?) was painted by Henry Pickering in 1754. In 1989, Christies of London described Ms. Dundas as an important British picture: "the property of a gentleman" and estimated her worth at between 10,000 and 12,000 pounds. Now, somewhere. she hangs on a wall, in the house of a rather well-off person who is completely oblivious to her "other life" as an aspiring Zetti model.

I have just discovered that his week's Theme Thursday challenge is WINGS
and Illustration Friday is Pattern, so, as Ms. Dundas is in an exhibitionist mood, we're going to fly over there.

DAQ challenge: Altered Mermaid

THE UNEXPECTED GUEST

digital collage 12ins x 12ins

This morning brought with it a most delightful surprise as I logged on to discover that following a comment left on his blog: Saint Verde Digest, Neville Trickett had linked to mine in his most recent post. If you don't already know Neville (he's been in my sidebar for some time now) do pop over to his place and take a wander through his archives of glorious visual delight and excellent good taste. He's as crucial to my morning wake-up as a good cup of coffee with a splash of gingerbread syrup.

Over at Digital Art Quirks, Donna has been shaking things up a bit and she has lassoed some of us (we are an unruly lot) into a Creative Team. My exact contribution is yet to be worked-out but there are some new challenges to be enjoyed and this latest image was in response to two: Altered Mermaid and Altered Surreal. In my usual way, I began with the first challenge subject and after taking a long time to think about it, wandered off into my own little world, by which time, the challenge had changed but what I was doing fitted it anyway. Thus "altered" has amounted to flooding a sitting room and inviting a rather grand 18th century lady to have a cup of tea. The lady was painted by John Astley (1724-1787) who, on a sea voyage between Dublin and England, married a wealthy widow, Lady Dukinheld-Daniell, and gave up painting.

Whilst on the subject of water, the other day, I found a box of beautifully-wrecked lantern slides and am now wondering what to do with them. Here's a scan of one of them, probably the most damaged, but I love all those blotches and streaks.

Clumber Street Shrine: almost there!

CLUMBER STREET SHRINE
first and third panels

digital scrapbook layouts (each panel 7ins x 11ins)

The first panel in the triptych has been the most difficult to get right. This is probably because of the ambiguity I'm trying to achieve, suggested to me by the original condition of the photograph that I have used, which invests the souvenir of a happy occasion with a sense of anger and destruction. The photograph was purchased in Nottingham, over twenty years ago, along with the second, clearly featuring the same woman, a few years later. The young man may have been her brother but I have chosen to identify him as her intended or new husband. Had this precious family photograph been defaced by a small child, too young to know better, or were the marks and holes made by an angry child...or an angry adult? The look of defiance on the woman's face, in the second photograph, together with my estimation of the time frame during which it was taken, led me to a story of loss connected to the First World War but perhaps there is more to this story than first meets the eye: what exactly happened to the handsome but rather weak-looking young man? Was he mourned as a hero or did he desert his family, his name only to be found, a few years later, entered alongside that of another lady, in the marriage register of a church in some distant city or town?
Next week, when I've finished reworking the middle panel, I'll post all three images together, side by side. Then I'd love to hear your interpretations of the story.

Clumber Street Shrine: more work in progress

CLUMBER STREET SHRINE right panel

digital image 7 ins x 11 ins

view larger image here

CLUMBER STREET SHRINE middle panel

digital image 7 ins x 11 ins

view larger image here

This is where I'm up to with the triptych that I'm working on. It is proving to be a most interesting challenge. Working on three images that will be viewed together to tell a story throws up many questions. For instance: how does the story travel across the three images? Is it linear or does it ricochet forward and backwards? What, if any, devices and/or motifs give the three a unity? Do they actually need a unity? Does each image present the story from the same vantage point, in the same scale or do I want to pull in and out of each image as a film maker might?
The scissors were far too small in the first version of the central panel. Wonderful serendipity has led me to find a pair of Victorian lace maker's scissors: perfect for this story, set in Nottingham and using lace as a story-telling device. The lace scissors are much finer and sharper than the ones in the above version of the central panel and this will refine their symbolism.

A Prayer For Our Tribe

A Prayer For Our Tribe

mixed media artwork

Four phials sealed with beeswax, topped with glass and pebbles

A coil of brown paper on which is written my Mitochondrial DNA sequence.
Four letters that unite and divide us.
A map of each of my mother's mother's, back to the first Eve.

Hawthorne briars: around one of which is coiled a piece of magnetic tape on which is recorded Music by Monteverdi and J.S. Bach. The other secures a fragment of text from inside a Tibetan Prayer Wheel.
We are creatures of spirit and love.

Pieces of rock from the hill behind my house (earth); pieces of coal (fire); water from the tap in my kitchen, and air.
The elements in which we all live and battle against.

A pinch of salt; dried Rosemary leaves (for remembrance) from my garden, a rusty screw
We are creatures of cultivation, invention and creation.

We are such stuff as dreams are made of and our little life is rounded by a sleep. (William Shakespeare)

A little Dream Catcher made from pieces of jewelry that I have owned since I was 15 and some that were my grand mother's. An Indian bracelet with little bells; semi-precious stones, Amber from Lithuania; Garnet from India, shells, crystals, wooden beads, metal leaves and heart; a shard of glass made in the old lighthouse-factory, that was across the road from the house I grew up in; a button from a dress that was my mother's or grandmother's; copper wire.

Now it hangs in LaWendula's studio.

All that we have touched, holds our spirit.
When we create things for each other, we pass our spirit on.

One Tribe, One Heart