My Miscellaneous Artwork
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Art Book---Collage and Drawing, 1995
This is an art book I created for a class at U of M taught by Ann Savageau, the same teacher who inspired some of my sculpture and transformation work. Ann had brought in a bunch of old books and told us to choose a cover and create our book inside. It folds out like an accordion, so one could actually view the whole thing like a continuous strip, rather than going page by page. I chose an old book on word-analysis, since I have always tried to speak proper English and have also learned a lot about the origins of words through my studies in French and Spanish, as well as all the Latin that comes up while studying the biological sciences. I also found another old book of wise words and quotes and chose some of my There are a lot of personal aspects in this book that the general on-looker would not understand without an explanation. For example, on pages 1-2, there are a bunch of stones drawn in graphite. In the lower right corner is a piece of glass that exists in real life that is special to me. When I was about 5 years old, my dad took me to a stained glass store and they had a bin of pieces of glass for I think a quarter a piece. They were just little blobs of glass like this. My favorite color has been green for as long as I can remember, so I got a piece of green glass. It wasn't until I got out in the light and tried to look through it that I noticed it had a crack-like imperfection, but nothing that appeared like it would cause it to break. I was a little disappointed, but have always kept this piece of glass to remind myself that just because something has an imperfection doesn't mean it isn't still beautiful and that not everything is perfect. That leads into the next photo of imperfection---me at about two years old urinating through the wicker chair on the porch. The photo below it is a scanned image of an earlier photo that I thought I remembered being in this book, but I made it 13 years ago and don't remember for sure (I removed the original image quite a few years ago to put in a photo album I think). The real leaves signify my love for nature. The image on pages 5-6 is supposed to be a self-portrait. Page 7 has a quote about seizing common opportunities and making them great, such as having my favorite meal at the time, tuna noodle casserole. It was all I wanted to eat for many years. Now I can't hardly stand it. I'm also a little eccentric when it comes to my forks. If I am eating at home, I will only eat with two styles of fork. My fork has to have a certain feel and weight to it---call me strange, but that's how I am. The one on the left is the type I grew up on (and I have two forks of this style that I am borrowing from my mom's set since they are unavailable now). The fork on the right is actually my preferred fork and is really like a spork rather than a fork. It is made by Dansk and is the style called Romance. Also unavailable. I was fortunate to get a set on E-bay for myself after getting used to my mom's set and wanting to have a complete set of my own. The next page shows different types of insects with a frog in the middle. The quote is about living and I am showing a part of a food chain here (the frog would eat the insects). On pages 9-10, a gargoyle is half-drawn, half from a magazine called Toscano, famous for its awesome gargoyle sculptures. I love gargoyles and have for many years. I think its funny when people think they are evil. I once had a roommate when I was in college. Most of the time, I was away at school and she was in my home by herself. When I came home, she would have a towel covering up the gargoyle I had by my kitchen sink! It scared her. I tried to explain that gargoyles were meant to ward off evil due to their scary appearance, but they are not considered to be evil themselves. Oh well. I still have plenty around my home. These pages also show a Coke bottle to represent my bottle collection, a clock because I collect clocks and they represent the passing of time and the reason I collect anything at all. In the corner on the right is a poem that the owner of one of the old books wrote about the past, present and future. Looking back, there's no way I would have dismantled those old books, as I collect things like that now. At least it was used for a good purpose though.
If anyone is interested in making an art book, one thing I would NOT recommend is the use of rubber cement to attach anything. As you can see, it has not held up very well over the last 13 years (I didn't scan and post this until July 2008). The yellowish color is showing through and things are peeling right off the pages.
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