Working in the Shop

Getting ready to do a show is both exciting and stressful.  The type of stress I feel is a good kind of stress, a kind of stress with purpose. It motivates me and inspires me.  All I want to do is create more good new stuff to show my customers and contemporaries, hence the excitement part of the process. When I do Glitterfest Fall, it's easy for me, being I love this time of the year, namely, Halloween! I so love creating little creepy goodies and cute ghoulish treasures, it's easy to tap into my macabre side. Spring is my challenging time of year.  I feel I have to get all bright and pretty and happy, (not that Halloween isn't happy, it is for me!) it's just a different color scheme and mindset for me, the Spring. I so enjoy this world of mixed media, I love the freedom it allows me artistically, the lack of boundaries excite and inspire me. Thank God, it's hard enough to work without using my oranges and blacks, accented with slime greens and purples! I can still use these colors, but in a different way, which is fun! I also thrill at the notion of working in different mediums, not the same old thing.

This year, I started making assemblage art using up all of those old cigar boxes that I have accumulated over the years. Nothing goes to waste in my workshop, no siree! this is a completely new concept for me, and I love it! Using various vintage photos, tools, bits and bobs along with pretty papers, old hand dyed book pages and some new elements, the sky's the limit! I really felt the creativity flow through my hands as I hammered and sawed, filed and sanded, painted and dyed, all to make some thing old look interesting and sometimes older or newer but still vintage. I realized there really is an art to this assemblage stuff. Anyone can take a bunch of junk and glue it in a box and call it art, anyone; but making it work and have balance and flow, composition and form and design, there's the trick! I will be premiering my New assemblage boxes at Glitterfest Spring on February 27th, come see me and my art along with many other amazing artists and their wares; so much talent and quality under one roof it'll knock your socks off! Hope to see ya there!