from scraps...

so many scraps, dried grasses, preserved "stuff" from the garden, notes, photos, all miniature reminders of grand times from the past... 

and the perfect day with a mood to match; allowing the imagination to ride high while thinking of special times still to come...

 and then the urge to put all this on paper, in haste, before the magic disappears...

the many scraps, the dried grasses, the preserved insects found in the garden, the torn old photos cracked and stained and the joy to collage them all together... that's what my day off produced!

unexpected beginnings...

It often happens, while I am photographing one of my works, to start "seeing" all sorts of worlds beyond the subject, forgetting the initial scope of the session and through the camera begin to explore a new "story"...
So, I keep shooting, changing the angle, bending, reaching, climbing on my two step, following this new way of experiencing my subject while thanking my good luck for discovering a new beginning at the end of a project.
... inspired while photographing the completed edition of a book structure I created for the BookArtObject collective.

from the heart...

"like a prayer": mixed media triptych, 10 x 10 / open 20 x 10; the latest in the Traveling Icons series

The traveling icon format has once again appeared in my creative space; two of my works from this series have recently been acquired and now belong to a private collector and to an art foundation. Their acquisition was a reminder of something I've learned long ago: when a work is a true expression of the artist's feelings/thoughts, it reaches the viewer in a direct way, evoking a reaction equally strong to the artist's intention.

When I look at work just completed and feel totally unaware of time spent creating it and of a concious analytical thought involved in its process, most of the times this work tends to enter the category of art expression I call: generated from the heart!

Traveling Icons is a body of work resulting from an ongoing internal dialogue I have with persons long gone but still present in my mind; it represents a segment of some very personal “conversations”. The triptych format is borrowed from the old religious traveling icons whose appearance, meaning and purpose has influenced me since childhood.

Bonefolder's Bind-O-Rama 2010

It happened on the first day of the new year and I am ecstatic: this morning I discovered that the books created in response to Bonefolder's BIND-O-RAMA 2010 call were published, with my interpretation included! To find out more on the project and the 21 bookbinders/artists' interpretation go to the article on line here. It was great reading the interviews comprising the content of Pamela Leutz's The Thread That Binds, being inspired by the individual stories and finally going through the thought process leading to my design and execution of binding the book's loose signatures. Bind-O-Rama 2010 will be included on the next issue of the Bonefolder, real soon!

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