Oh Venice, you did it again...UPDATED 4/4/15

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATES:

Third trip to Italy - this time I visited Rome, Cinqueterre, Mantua and Venice...and this time was the first time with my darling husband.

I was inspired EVERYWHERE, and wandering the streets [canals] and alleys of Venice always leads me to something that inspires me. Everything outside and inside. I have more ideas than hours in the day.

On our last day, we were off in a different direction when i came upon a gallery that took my breath away.

Too bad they were already closed, I might have tried to purchase everything. Yes, I took photos through the window. Naughty me. Look at Dusciana Bravura's amazing sculptures online. But...the wall of little square mosaics captured my attention.

Check these out! Of course, they are made from GLASS...I don't know if theyre grouted or fused or what... but they are meticulously made from glass tiles, mirrors, millifiore cane, maybe cermics?






I know how to create glass mosaics, but I work in paper. This display gave me an idea that I could incorporate [borrow...steal...?] into my work with junk mail and found objects.

So with proper PROPS to Dusciana Bravura... here's my venture into creating small pieces: on canvas - using/ upcycling a smattering of stuff I had on hand - in my many drawers of junk mail, Christmas cards, ceramic tiles, beads, crystals and jewels from my Grandmother and Mom's collection [they were jewelers in the 50's] mirrors, rhinestones, electronic parts, hardware [tacks, bolts, etc.]. souvenirs, wood, clock parts, napkin rings, glitter, glass beads, bobbins, plastic toys and more:

 Now I'm obsessed with making more! So far, I've made 16. They are 6x6", on thick canvas. They're painted all around with lace trim on the side... very shiny and no two are alike. They have a very high gloss coating. Here are some detail pics:

 

I have a few more ideas up my sleeve from that trip... 

For you non-creative types... LOOK AROUND YOU and you'll find a world of inspiration!

I'm calling this collection of little canvases "Miroir aux Alouettes"

Each piece has mirrors - round, tiny squares or larger ones. All of them include gold leafing and reflective materials. The term refers to traps used to catch larks. They had tiny mirrors on them, to attract the birds that like "shiny things!" All of the canvases are coated several times with a glossy medium; some have glitter, some are irridescent, some contain glass beads or other shiny lacquers. 

24 as of 4/7/2015

Please click HERE to view the collection on my site!

10 years in the making - HARAJUKU Girls Kawaii! Style...

Something like...oh, ten years ago Gwen Stefani's song Harajuku Girls came out. I liked the song, the album, and thought the styles the Harajuku girls developed was so much fun! I never forgot it.

Here's a pic of Gwen with a few of the girls... and here's a LINK to the song on YouTube.

 I had a dream about a year ago... in it, I was creating these ridiculous necklaces featuring plastic babies, that were flocked. I searched high and low for the right size babies, bought 'em, painted 'em, flocked 'em. They're still in my studio waiting for a place to go.

I rediscovered Harajuku girls again... and there are a LOT of different styles. I like the Kawaii style that includes a lot of toys, baby colors, and ornaments. Here are some samples of what's happening in 2014:


Cute, right? I love the sparkles, the Hello Kitty look, the bright colored hair... so I decided to create a portrait of some Harajuku girls using upcycled items. I collected a lot of used things from thrift stores... barrettes, yarn, buttons, toys, jewelry, glittery things... and then started drawing, painting and cutting paper.

I made some changes along the way - in color scheme and a few other things...my motto is "The Impulse is the Action!" I put some red and white rays in the back to simulate the Japanese flag... everything else is from my imagination and inspiration.

first sketch

The paper I used is in my studio...a collection Holiday cards, packaging, postcards, business cards, menus, calendars, training manuals, trade magazine covers, catalogs, business cards, tags, etc. I save everything. All the paper used in the background is Christmas cards, or paper with metallic. Every single piece is cut by hand and glued on to the painting -I created- on canvas.
I cover all of the painting with paper... and the only paint at the end is used on the eyes.

Paper part done!

After I finished the paper mosaic, I added a little blush [yeah, real makeup] to the "girls" to tint the paper! I sealed the composition with a non-toxic gloss lacquer. Ah...but I wasn't done yet.

I assembled all those thrift store toys, jewels, etc. to add to the portrait. I know - the girls are flat, and the toys are dimensional. I HAD TO follow through with my vision. I attached, using glue, thread and fishing line... a variety of "stuff."
I even took some of those babies, painted on some pajamas, flocked them with irridescent glitter and coated them... drilled holes into them and made them into a necklace!

plastic babies in their glitter onsies

I cut slits into the canvas to attach hair clips, a crown and earrings. There are jewels, a doll, a pony, hello kitty eraser, a baby pull toy, more weird plastic babies, teddy bears, buttons, and other jewelry.
I was going to use lavender yarn for hair, but it didn't lay right.
At the very end, I touched up the eyes, adding just a bit of paint. The finished piece is 30x40" unframed, but edges are finished. You can see it "in person" in Miami in December at the Spectrum Art Fair. For information on how to get tickets to the oepning, send an email.

Yeah, it took 10 years for a song to make it to my easel, and to finally get some babies on a necklace!
Thanks for reading!

My Appropriation Story...Biography and then some.

Old habits are hard to break, and even harder when YOU'RE old.

I am guilty of appropriation. But I vow... not in the future.
But how did I get here?

Here's the back story...

I could blame it on my revered High School Art Teacher, Mr. Levine. I loved him [not romantically]. He taught me a lot, but also some bad habits... including the DEADLY opaque projector technique.

High School - Photo by Robert Schimmel, double exposure.

I spent most of my spare time in High School in the Art room. Actually, spent some Chemistry, Geometry and Physics time in there, too. I was often fetched by a fellow student and dragged to class. My Math teacher, Babe Steen would just stand the hallway and yell - SCHIMMEL!!!! I only went to science classes [reluctantly] because Mr. Green was so cute. I would rather be in the art room than anywhere. But let us go back further...

When I was a very little girl, I was painfully shy. I started playing piano when I was 4. By ear. I have perfect pitch, and after my older brother's piano teacher left, I would walk over to the piano and play his lessons. My Mom was in the kitchen and thought Bob was practicing. When she realized it was me, she signed me up for lessons and immediately started thinking "child prodigy" and Julliard and the Ed Sullivan Show. Terror!

shy little girl in Reading, PA

I also started drawing when I was little.
I would stay in my room and draw. For hours. I always drew people. Or clothes [on people] or shoes [on people]. I can draw. I learned on my own. Did not get much help later on except a few classes I took on my own. What an easy kid for my parents to raise. Piano lessons, practice [ick] and quiet hours alone drawing or reading.

My favorite books were [and still are] about people. I read every biography book in my school. Mostly about Native Americans.
I still read biographies.

Left to my own devices [literally], I'll watch documentaries about PEOPLE.We went to the JCC in Reading, PA and I took lots of art classes. Ceramics was my favorite. I still have EVERYTHING I ever made, even if it's cracked or broken.

In 6th grade, I made a puppet. I put him a plaid kilt, and a Tam O'Shanter... I remember arguing with my teacher who insisted I had to decide whether he was Irish or Scots. What a bitch...how would I know the difference at 11? Now, on reflection...I'm thinking Scottish, I could swear it's the Black Watch tartan. I still have that puppet, too...molting away somewhere in a box. And now I know the difference.

In junior high, I really started thinking more about art and got great grades in drawing, and got an award for a portrait I did of my typing teacher [yeah... I'm THAT old]. Mr. Hobart really forced us to think outside the box... slapping metal rulers on the table and shouting "WAKE UP PEOPLE, it's the Pepsi Generation!"

I was not the "best" artist in school, that was Nancy Kintisch. And there were others. We were not in competition. The cameraderie in art rooms in high school was positive. But, encouragement on the home front was non-existent.

In the years between high-school and today... I bounced around colleges [4] and was an on-again off-again art major. I have to say, I learned very little in art class. One teacher I had for live drawing absolutely HATED me and ignored me all semester. At another college, one professor said "You know what you're doing, I can't teach you anything, just come back at the end of the semester with 12 paintings and I'll give you an A."
I was in a hard-edge acrylic non-representational phase for a while. But mostly, PEOPLE...always people. My degree is actually in Psychology [that's a long story about Eidetic Imagery experiments - on ME] ...but I did finish classes to get a BFA later.
Maybe I wasn't paying attention, or maybe it wasn't covered, but I never really learned how to BE an artist, how to make a living as a fine artist, how to get into galleries, or musuems, and I still don't know what a fellowship or residency is.
I'm not a joiner, and I need to learn things quickly. If I can't pick it up, I don't get it.
Well.. I got kicked out of graduate school since I could not pick a concentration. But, it was fun taking Textile design, and Surface design, and Metal work and Jewelry and Fiber Arts... even though I knew painting people was my thing.
And maybe fashion design...or shoe design...see, I'm still doing it!

So naturally, I went into retail. What a joke. But then came Display. Although I designed all sorts of things - from handbags to T-shirts to jewelry, my career in Display, Window Trimmer, Visual Merchandiser kept me alive. And fed the creative side of me. And painting on the side. Always painting.

Fast forward to the naughts. Frustrated in a corporate career, divorced, single parent... I decide to go get back into Art. After playing around with mosaics, I am finally SURE of what I want to do, a style, a technique I developed. Turning junk mail into tiles, and creating mosaics with them. Mosaics of PEOPLE. New husband, my angel, said quit your job and be an artist.

My first Mosaic experiment...a self-portrait

So, with an anthem to rock, we built a studio and never looked back.

Okay - it's gonna be people. What people? I scour through magazines and pull out photos. I paste them on my studio walls. I draw from them, I simplify, but... I am using photos from magazines for my subjects. Look, I never lied about it - it's just he way I worked. My whole vision was to USE those very objects - women's faces - and create something new.

My latest work is my last appropriation. The photo on the left is from W magazine, and is by Patrick Demarchelier. I loved this girl's face and the composition. So, I drew from it. I made enough changes that I believe it is "transformative," and the new piece has new elements I added...having started out thinking Tudor age then switched to a Renaissance feel. There she is on the right - in my messy studio. Either way, I am guilty of appropriation and that's that.

But now, I've decided to stop doing that. I have a lot of commission work going on through the next several months, but starting in the spring, I vow to create my own images and work from those.

In the spirit of letting go, I'm holding a clearance sale now through Christmas to clear out the studio and my head.

Looking forward to a new year and new direction. Cheers!

Sandhi

The custom portrait process...and "inside the studio" insights.

It's his birthday, he's in his 70's. He is getting married. 

He started coloring his hair a little...

His family wants to give him something special.

A Portrait. From me!

I get these photos through email, and put together a quick sketch to capture the best of both of them.  I picked the photo of "her" from above [her eyes were the biggest] "him" from the top photo, and his hair color from the one on the right.

Quick Sketch in Paint on Canvas

After drawing and painting, I begin the process of cutting up hundreds and hundreds of pieces of paper. What started out as a simple mosaic process has become an incredibly detailed method...I've been doing this for so long, it's just second nature and difficult to explain!

There is a set of old bedroom furniture in the studio [it was mine when I was a kid] - all junk mail, old calendars, postcards, menus, fly cards, card stock, greeting cards and other ephemera go into those drawers. 

Before I start a new project, I spend a few hours going through that stuff - cutting it and sorting into colors...those piles go into other drawers.

Back to the easel, I sort the colors I've chosen to use by shade and lay them out on a large table. I work one color at a time, cutting and pasting [glueing] each piece one at a time, cutting again and again to fit. Sometimes, they're nothing but a sliver... I might need tweezers to hold the tiny piece, I might need an exacto to trim... The process takes hundreds of hours... during this time, I am looking at the subject's photos...constantly going back and forth, tweeking whatever I need to "get it right."

Thank goodness for NPR and Pandora and PBS online... I can listen to stories, music, comedy and might learn something while I am working or discover a new artist whose music grabs my attention.

Sometimes one of the dogs wanders into the studio. Usually Farfel, who wants me to hold her, but that ain't happening. But she will sit on my hot pink chair and whine... I wish I had a baby bjorn for dachshunds.

In the morning hours, after I have my tea, I often work in whatever I was sleeping in the night before. T-shirt, Yoga pants...Hopefully, no one will come to the door. I work odd hours, all day, with breaks to check my email and see what my friends are doing on Facebook... or talk to friends or family... always wandering back in and picking up where I left off. I am back in the studio at night - often WAY into the wee hours. When I am in the mood...the "zone" I don't know where the time goes. 

The studio is carpeted and I am always trailing it around - embellishing the house with slivers of paper that have stuck to my toes or my socks... and at some point, vacuuming is necessary. Byproduct of my work.

After all the paper is applied, I go back and repaint the eyes, teeth, whatever makes sense. Whatever colors you see - that's the color of the paper. After 24 hours, I apply a sealer and UV coating. Edges of the canvas are painted...usually black.

Here's a small pic of the happy couple [a little glare on the right side] before it got shipped away to enhance another home.

By the way, I don't make my art for me... I make it for YOU!

Thanks for reading!

S

"LUNA" a Pareidolic Portrait [what's Pareidolia?]

This is "Luna," a new mixed media portrait.

 Materials are: Junk Mail, Acrylic Paint, Glitter, Textured Glazes.

Pareidolia is the experience of “seeing” something in a stimulus or an object that’s simply vague and random. An example is the Shroud of Turin. Remember when you were a child lying on your back in the grass, watching the clouds go by and you saw a bunny or a castle in the sky, or the man [or woman] in the moon? Or the Madonna on a piece of toast, or a cluster of cactus? Maybe you've even heard messages when records are played in reverse [number nine? number nine?].

Carl Sagan believed that the ability to recognize faces from a distance or in poor visibility was an important survival technique. While this instinct enables humans to instantly judge whether an oncoming person is a friend or foe, Sagan noted that it could result in some misinterpretation of random images or patterns of light and shade as being faces.
Leonardo da Vinci wrote about pareidolia as an artistic device. "If you look at any walls spotted with various stains or with a mixture of different kinds of stones, if you are about to invent some scene you will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys, and various groups of hills."

So often, people compare my work to those photo mosaics they've seen at Disneyland or in magazines... an image made up of thousands of photographs created in a computer.

Photo Mosaic at Disney

In fact, many people believe I use some sort of computer program to create my work. I'd like to say that no... I actually DRAW...PAINT...CUT...GLUE... using nothing more hi-tech than pencil, brush, scissors and sometimes and exacto knife.

So, I decided to tackle one of the most common Pareidolic images, the man in the moon... but I love women's faces better...

It's only a Paper Moon

I began by creating a monochromatic background and crescent moon in large squares - if you look closely, you'll see movie tickets [Knight & Day how apropo], greeting cards, advertisements, invitations, fly cards, postcards and photographs. Yes, I have a room full of paper. I save everything. I recycle everything. It took HOURS to cut and sort by tone all of those pieces! I reversed the progression on the moon.  It's only a Paper Moon!

Then the painting of Luna took shape... I kept to a somewhat monochromatic color scheme, only adding a bit of pink paper to the lips and greige shades for the hair.

Luna before the asteroids...

A Crater!

I was pretty happy when I got there, but never leaving well enough alone, I grabbed palette knives, brushes, glitter, gravel, textured gels and my own fingers to create peaks, valleys, craters and rocky textures.
This changed the perfectly flat "collage" into a textured moonscape. Now my woman in the moon looked like she was ON the moon!

This portrait, one of many in my collection of paper mosaic portraits is 30x40" on 1" museum wrapped canvas. Edges are painted black. Wired, ready to hang!

See more here: Schimmel Art Web Site

Try a Little Tenderness

For this portrait, I wanted to capture the vulnerability of a woman in love, the sweetness and femininity. Doesn't my subject look as if she were about to speak? 

Her hand, moving towards her lips...not sure what to say?

 She seems thoughtful and perhaps a bit sad. 

What she needs is assurance and some tender loving care. 

With props to Otis Redding:

Oh, she may be weary
Young girls they do get weary
Wearing that same old shaggy dress, 

But when she gets weary,
Try a little tenderness
You know she's waiting
Just anticipating
For things that she'll never, never, never, never possess,
But while she's there waiting, without them,
Try a little tenderness
It's not just sentimental, no,
She has her grief and care,
But the soft words, they are spoken so gentle,
It makes it easier, easier to bear
You won't regret it,
Some girls they don't forget it
Love is their only happiness,
But it's all so easy
All you gotta do is try, try a little tenderness
All you gotta do is, man, hold her where you want her
Squeeze her, don't tease her, never leave her
Get to her, try, try,
Just try a little tenderness
You got to know how to love her, man, you'll be surprised, man,
You've got to squeeze her, don't tease her, never leave her
You've got to hold her and rub her softly,
Try a little tenderness and watch her groove,
You've gotta to know what to do, man,
Take this advice...

 
Try a Little Tenderness

 

I used white paper with lavender and purple designs for the majority of the face, irridescent tissues for highlight, and my usual - junk mail paper source - for the rest.  

I hate to pick out frames. I always pick out the wrong ones, so I found a creative framer who can come up with interesting combinations of color and texture.

I trust my friend Mary

who put this unusual composition in a silver wood frame, and then in a seafoam textured frame.

It's amazing.

Here's my "gallery on the go" at an art festival in Virginia last year.

"My Resting Place" - Mayn Rue Plats

I am an artist and I work alone in my studio. During most of the day and late into the night, I follow my instincts, I use whatever talent I have, and have more ideas than I can follow through with. My hands don't work as fast as my mind. A fleeting moment, a flash of inspiration often gets left behind due to other demands. Sometimes I write them down, or make a quick sketch. But, when something takes hold of me and won't let go, I have to fling myself down that rabbit hole.

And so it was one night, working away, listening to music, when a haunting melody, a song I'd heard many time before, gripped my heart. I listened over and over again. I am still humming it.

The first time I heard the song, I knew it was in Yiddish, and the minor key and the lyrics in English made me believe it was about the Holocaust. As the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, [Mom Dad] my response was immediate. But no, "Mayn Rue Plats" is a poem set to music, relating the sad story of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

Recent horrific factory deaths - fires, building collapses in Bangladesh and harsh working conditions around the world spurred me to create a piece of art that would reflect the horror of these tragedies - a response in mixed media. The price of profit... the lives of women...

The version I was listening to is by June Tabor, a British folk singer who I have followed and enjoyed since 1976 when I purchased "Silly Sisters" an album with another amazing folk singer, Maddy Prior. I had to follow my gut reaction.

The song is on Tabor's album Aqaba [one of my favorites]. Although the poem was written prior to the tragedy, it is very closely associated with the fire, which spurned changes in labor laws, state and federal government safety laws and unions.  

This is the poem written in by "Sweatshop" poet Morris Rosenfeld [1862-1923]:

Mayn Rue Platz
Don’t look for me where myrtles are green.
You will not find me there, my beloved.
Where lives wither at the machines,
There is my resting place.

Don’t look for me where birds sing.
You will not find me there, my beloved.
I am a slave where chains ring,
There is my resting place.

Don’t look for me where fountains spray.
You will not find me there, my beloved.
Where tears flow and teeth gnash,
There is my resting place.

And if you love me with true love,
So come to me, my good beloved,
And cheer my gloomy heart
And make sweet my resting place.


Most of the women who died in the fire were young Jewish and Italian immigrants - as young as 13. They were cutters and machine operators. The owners of the factory [located in New York City] locked the doors so the workers were not able to go into the stairwells to take breaks or to steal the products. When a fire broke out in a bin of scrap fabric, the women were not able to escape through locked doors - and many leapt out of windows or died in collapsing stairwells, flung themselves down the elevator shaft or were consumed in the fire, sitting at their sewing machines. Read more here, here and here. Warning, there are gruesome photographs on these sites.

The result of my trip down this sad, sad rabbit hole? My piece, "My Resting Place" 

It is 24x24" mixed media on canvas. It contains images of 129 women - each photo charred and sample "swatches" of fabric, also burned. It contains "ghost" images of actual victims Franny Rosen,

and Josephine Cammarata below...

of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and one upside down,  a child

 

plummeting from the 9th floor. 

Other details include hand stitching, burned locks and keyholes, silk flowers, ribbon, chain,

measuring tape, pins and machine parts. The background includes excerpts of the original poem in Yiddish. The main portrait is of a young woman, created in my signature style of paper mosaic. Photos here were taken in bright sunlight so you might see shadows, and are not perfectly aligned. You'll also notice an easel in the front. Please DO NOT COPY without permission.

Please listen to the song while gazing at this piece [here is a Yiddish version]. And please let me know what you think. If you would like to see my work "in person" Please visit my site to see where it is shown. If you would like to purchase this piece, please contact me directly.

"Peor es Nada"

So - who are you - the product of your DNA or who society labels you as?

This is a new, original mosaic portrait I created in my "True, the Looking Glass" series.

In 1835, a schooner named “Peor es Nada” left one of the Channel Islands after gathering the the last of the surviving natives, the Nicoleño people. One woman was left behind. The accounts of the reason vary - perhaps her baby was not on board, or she went back to the village for a prized possession. Did she jump ship or just not make it in time? A storm arose, she had not returned and the ship sailed back to the coast of California.

Over the next 20 years, this Nicoleño woman lived alone on the island. She learned to make baskets from wild grasses, to fish, to hunt seal and otter and built a dwelling from old whale bones. She sewed herself a garment from cormorant feathers and seal sinew. She survived inclement weather, fought off wild dogs and alluded hunters and hostile visitors to the island.

Meanwhile, her people were sent the San Gabriel Mission in California, and she was all but forgotten.  Her people were absorbed into California and all aspects of their culture and language disappeared.

Eventually, Captain George Nidever landed on San Nicolas Island in 1853 and found the lost woman. She boarded his ship with her bone needles and a basket, wearing the feather garment [and not much else!]. She was taken to the mission in Santa Barbara.

Now, she was a ward of the Nidever family and the Mission. No one could understand her language, including Chumash Indians from other Channel Islands.

The lost woman was given a new identity - new clothes, a new name, a new religion - she was baptized Juana Maria [even though she did not understand what that meant] and something else - foods she was unfamiliar with. This new diet quickly made her ill and she died within seven weeks of her “rescue.” She was buried in an unmarked grave, used for "Indians."

The phrase “Peor es Nada” can be translated as “Better than Nothing” or “Worse than Nothing” - This portrait is my loose interpretation of this story of lost identity - the two faces of the woman - the ward of the glittering church with a fresh new identity - and the brave, wild native woman adorned in cormorant feathers. I’ll let you decide which interpretation of the phrase works best.

The medium used - recycled paper, paint, feathers, jewels and yarn. On canvas: 24x36” Due to the delicate nature of the medium, it must be framed behind glass. Please contact me for pricing.

If this story sounds familiar, a fictionalized version was captured in the book Island of the Blue Dolphins  and later into a film of the same name. If you have children, it is a wonderful, well-written story, albeit frightening for little ones.

The “truer” story of the woman can be found here.

"We're All Free" - A Portrait of Abraham Lincoln

Do you ever wonder where you get inspiration - ideas that compel you to create?
I'm new to Richmond, Va. When I arrived, the Spielberg people were all over downtown - the capital area filming a movie about Lincoln. Lincoln seemed to be everywhere - galleries propped paintings of the president out front, Lincoln stuff everywhere...Lincoln fever.
I chatted with my niece who told me she had a "thing" for the president - her husband thinks she has a crush on him...and then I looked at the mini poster hanging in my studio of Lincoln... and thought. Why not.

Silly me, I thought creating a portrait of the 16th President would help me "fit in" in my new surroundings.

I grabbed an image online, a canvas and started the process. A lot of people who see my work ask me HOW I do what I do, so I'm sharing through photos. I took pics at every step of the way in the process - from the seat in front of the easel.

<-----Here you can see the image and my starting point. I draw with pencil and then start filling in with paint. I don't always paint, unless I really need to see how shadows are going to play. The green was the original idea... it changed later.
And here, is the painting done. I didn't paint a background. ----->

<---Idea generation - let's put a "flag" design in the background. I started with red. Originally, I was going to fill the entire background with photos of random people.
Now, I drew a circle...a "halo" --->
around Lincoln's head and added white and blue stripes, following the curves of the red stripes - within the halo.  Cutting all those little pieces of paper was really hard.

<---I added a "stripe" of people above and below the white and blue stripes.
And here, I filled in the halo's --->
background with sky blue pieces. And, I started on the shirt, and the tie. The tie is made up of pieces from my Dentist's appointment reminder postcards. I'm telling you, I save everything paper.

<--- I was a little stumped here. I decided to make the entire background sky blue - to have the halo just floating behind.
I used a variety of grey shades ---> of paper to fill in Lincoln's face. Most of them have text, but some are just texture - there is a lot of time and effort made to sort all of the junk mail in grey into shades, making sure all the tones are right.

<--- I wasn't totally happy with the
blue. I wanted to make it more homogeneous. So, I added some random shapes of blue tissue to tie it together.
And then some random white  ----->
tissue on top of the blue pieces. It's hard to see in the photo.

<---I used greys for shadows in grey for the hair, beard and coat. It didn't make sense to make this composition even MORE complicated or busy, the black also mimics the original resource photograph. I cleaned up ---->
the paint, details and coated the entire thing with a water-based lacquer. And now, it's done and looks like this!

We're All Free

I was trying to get this done in time for President's Day, but things don't always go to plan...

as any artist will tell you. The reason I added all the little people - of all colors, ages, shapes and sizes within Lincoln's halo - is to represent the President's dedication to Emancipation. and his belief in freedom for all people.

We're All Free

24x24"

Footnotes:

• As always, my art work is all hand done, mosaic "tiles" are created by upcycling a variety of paper - from junk mail to calendars to postcards, etc. All materials used are water-based, acid-free and non-toxic. For more information, please visit my web site.
• While I was working on this piece, I kept humming a song from the musical "Hair"

 "Four score
I said four score and seven years ago
Oh sock it to 'em baby, you're sounding better all the time!
Our forefathers, I mean all our forefathers
Brought forth upon this here continent a new nation
Conceived, conceived like we all was
In liberty, and dedicated to the one I love
I mean dedicated to the proposition
That all men, honey, I tell you all men
Are created equal.

Happy birthday, Abie baby,
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday, Abie baby,
Happy birthday to you!"

You can listen here -[Happy Birthday, Abie Baby] [warning, some very explicit language]

I'd love to hear your thoughts!