Two Blogs Become One

Happy Friday everyone!  Here's the latest piece, which has just been listed here in my Etsy shop.  I posted it the other day in its unfinished state over on my other blog Missouri Bend Paper Works, and realized as I was about to do so, that the day had dawned when the two separate blogs would become one.  I'd been thinking of it for some time in a roundabout way, but I figured the right time would announce itself, which it did quite clearly.  As I mentioned there, I started that blog in January 2010 as a daily posting of found text poems which I created with cut words and phrases from old books in my studio.  It was a way to have a daily practice and it allowed me to jump into the online world in anticipation of opening my Etsy shop, which I did the following month. It was much later that I started this blog that centered more on my other artwork, studio practice, inspiration and frustrations.  After the one year anniversary, the found text poems on the other blog became weekly postings, rather than daily....as you can imagine, that was a lot to keep up with...and slowly they transitioned from being words and phrases of a poem laid out and photographed on a painted up desk to works available for sale in my shop.  With this piece, it seemed pretty clear to me, that there is no longer any difference between that work and my regular art making practice.  The line, slowly fading, has now disappeared, so I'll no longer post on that blog, but will continue to create found text pieces, hopefully weekly, and will show them here.  I've invited any followers from Missouri Bend Paper Works that aren't already readers of this blog to join us here.

All that being said, this little piece had its beginning with the idea to make the poem on an origami folded text page house that I'd seen in a book.  I thought the instructions looked like something I could follow and I was excited about making a three dimensional house form...I imagined making them by the hundreds...that is, until I tried to make just one.  I know that I suffer from certain disabilities because I don't really have a great three-dimensional space thinking cap in my studio....I'm very, very 2-d oriented. Let me just say, I did really well, cutting the 21 text pages into 2 1/2" x 4" rectangles.  I even got them folded as instructed.....but once that little house was ready to turn itself into something in space...well, it was nothing but frustration...I couldn't envision quite how those instructions were supposed to be followed, much less hold the thing together as this bit tucked into that space, etc. etc. I gave up in frustration, realizing that my village of tiny paper houses would never get off the drawing board...oh, if only it had just been on the drawing board!!  After I walked away and had a few sips of tea, I came back and picked up some of those folded bits and ended up making a 2-d little altarpiece, doing a little tucking of folded pages into slots here and there...I was delighted when I realized I could just fold those outer leaves a bit and the thing would indeed function in a three-dimensional world!  The text announced itself  little by little, as these poems often seem to come together, and once it was pasted on the center panel, I painted out everything else with white.  A few rubber stamps and the beeswax to enrich the surfaces and my little 2D/3D structure lives!  

I've spent a fair amount of time outside this week, pulling an amazing number of weeds...mostly daisies.  My friend gave me some daisies from her garden a couple of years ago, when we first moved in and needed things to fill the beds...she did warn me though, making sure I knew what I was getting into...but, innocence is bliss.  Naturally, I've got daisies coming out my ears, forming carpets in the mulch where the walking path is supposed to be, not to mention taking over every inch of space and crowding out all the other delightful plants.  She did warn me, I remind myself, as I yank yet another monstrous daisy out.  It's still pretty cool here, it seems to me, and every other day seems to be too windy to be outside...we'll be in the thick of summer before spring even has a chance to get off the ground!!  Who's complaining, at least the sun is shining and the snow is fading from memory.

Hope you have a great weekend.  I have to finish up my new website and hope to have a live link for you at the beginning of the week.  By the way, if you are an artist in need of a website, I highly recommend Other People's Pixels  as a site to work with.  They have a great number of customizable templates and it's all geared toward making it possible for artists, even non-tech savvy ones like me, to have a website that they can manage themselves.  If you can do a blog, you can build a website through them....I'm a living example!  Very user-friendly!!!  

See you Monday...hope you have a great weekend everyone!