What I did...

... is upcycling coasters!

 

These were coasters with a sturdy cork background, covered with very ugly, traditional Spanish images

 

Think bulls and fighting, think flamenco, think Madrid, just the kind of stuff that some people still think tourist want to take home (imho not) 

 

 

but I saw possibilities and in my ongoing attempts to beautify my surrounding

I cut out some pages of my favorite magazines

and just glued them on the coasters, let them dry and

put some heavy books on them for some hours

 

I then brushed on a layer of matte laquer as a finish and now they are ready for drinks!

 

 

they have become very me, I think...

the circles, the beads, the black and white, the natural colours

 

 

so far crafting

 

On the more artistic field I am working on a new painting that has to do with rust! It is quite a challenge, again, but after a difficult start, I am beginning to believe it might work out...

 

Later, dear reader, later...

 

Regina

Thoughts on Cohesion

cohesion

 

CloseStyle: MLA APA Chicago

               

noun co·he·sion \kō-ˈhē-zhən\

: a condition in which people or things are closely united

 

 

Hello visitor on my blog,

 

Today I would like to share a little story about something that happened to me this week.

A situation where one sometimes thinks: this is no coincidence..!

A situation where there seems to be something that ties facts, experiences, even persons together at a given moment.

 

So what is the story?

 

Lately I have rediscovered the ISSUU app on my tablet. In a few spare moments before dinner was about to be ready, I read one of my favorite online magazines, Through Our Hands, which I highly recommend to all (textile) art lovers! In my opinion some of Europe's top fiber artists and their works are described and highlighted in this magazine, but I digress...

 

 One of ISSUU's features shows related magazines on the bottom of the screen and it was thus that I stumbled upon the Nashville Arts Magazine. The fact that I had an internal picture of Nashville since we visited this city in 2012, made me interested to look into this magazine (coincidence nr 1?)

 

I saw a terrific sculpture on one of the pages, that looked quite familiar to me and I remembered we had seen a similar near one of the MIT buildings in Cambridge Massachusets, back in 2011.

My followers may know that at that time we lived on a small island in the Caribbean and traveled throughout the US in our motorhome during two months in summer, four years in a row. And so it happened that after we left the states of New Hampshire and Maine it was time to visit the Boston area

We planned to stay there during a few days and I expected to have plenty of time to visit downtown later...

My husband is an engineer and always had a keen interest in MIT, so we decided to spend the first Boston area day on visiting MIT and Harvard (my wish). Now back to the magazines statue and the one I remembered...

 

 

This sculpture was made by the artist Jaume Plensa and is called the Alchemist. I googled for Jaume Plensa and found that he is Spanish (coincidence nr 2).

When I shot this picture it had only recently be placed on the MIT premises and the intention of the anonymus alumnus-owner was to have it there for a period of one year. Because of the many positive reactions about this being the perfect place for the sculpture, its chemistry formulas etc. the owner has now made the situation permanent.

 

Can you see why I had this feeling of cohesion and coincidence? Having made fibre art during a long time, reading in a related magazine and then be attracted to another because of the title of a city we visited, then seeing a sculpture we recognized from another travel and last but not least the sculptor happens to be Spanish...

 

and here I am, living in Spain!!

 

BTW: after we came back on the campground that day we had to leave the area because of the expected path of hurricane Irene, another story of cohesian for a future post...

 

 

Have a great Sunday and thanks for visiting, as always,

 

Regina

 

 

More pictures of sculptures and art by Jaume Plensa:

http://www.visitmusiccity.com/Visitors/thingstodo/jaumeplensa

and google, of course

 

ISSUU- Through Our Hands,  the magazine

https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/issuu-world-magazines.-free./id914453825?mt=8 

Back to collage

 

Remnants of Red

original collage,

 

magazine rippings on cardboard

 

appr. 6.5 x 9"

 

 

Hi!

 

Finally, I am back in the creative mood a little. Last Sunday I took out my papers and gluestick and made four collages!

 

This is the first one. I chose this title because the faces of the Chinese people seem to remind of a time when this huge country was very closed up to foreign influences. This collage is made from an auction magazine of Christies. We have a Christies real estate agent in our village and sometimes when I come along this business, I notice a new magazine in one of their outside boxes. The first time I went inside and asked if this could be taken home by me, I simply could not imagine that it was for free, with all this great art pictures inside...! Since that time I have gathered three and they hold a wealth of collage material. The red part is symbolizes the red communistic period. And the bottom part is just that: the bottom, not meaning anything more than that I liked the result and it seemed to form a stand on which the man and woman seem to be positioned.

That was it from me today, I hope you like my new start of collages!

 

Regina

Inspiration and invention

my small washi tape collection...half of it made by moi

As with our former residence, it seems that we have again chosen a place where it is difficult to buy art supplies. Some years ago this sometimes made me frustrated, but no more so! I have learnt that in fact everything is there (here), but not in the places one expects...I discovered that acrylic paint, brushes and related products, are being sold in a paintstore, yes, the one where you buy your housepaints! In fact so logical, but I have never seen this in Holland and/or the USA. Another advantage is that  this lack of 'everything' artsy has a huge benefit: you don't get overstimulated and I myself get inspired to look for different solutions. 

On the internet I found several sites where the most beautiful washitapes are pictured. Washitape and Spain do not know each other yet (I think...), so with some doublesided tape from our Chinese supermarket I now make my own. The possibilities are endless, so is my stack of magazines with colorful pictures... problem solved!

 in the tiles store...

As you may know our new home is a big renovation project that is currently asking for much decisionmaking:   what bathroom and kitchen do we want/need, what materials do we choose/can we afford...? The above picture I shot in a tiles store. Spain has a very famous reputation of producing tiles and the assortment is huge. I think we might choose a very simple, basic, terracotta for our complete upper floor. It is tempting to choose one of these small bordertiles, but I'm afraid I will get bored by them after not too long time. Great for inspiration, though!

and now the weather is getting warmer, it is time to take these lanterns out of the crates and enjoy them in our lovely garden, I love long summernights, when the sun has finally set and a slight breeze cools my sunburnt skin...

Summer, happy!

Have a great Sunday, thanks for visiting!

Regina

Cards

 

 

and more precise: cards; that is what I have been making lately

 

I've felt the urge to communicate in person again with people, rather than posting on Facebook. It makes perfect sense, since we now live in country where the mailsystem is reliable and it does not take ages for a letter or card to reach its destiny, to start writing again to the people I care about. Not always letters, but cards, that totally is my thing. So I found the supplies here in Spain and in combination with paper from my stash of magazines and old posters, I let the inspiration kick in and now I have a good supply of beautiful cards, imho...!

 

Furthermore I am working on a project consisting of nine collages all around one theme. They are in the final stage of creation, so once the work is done, I will show it here.

 

That was it for today. Not much, but better than nothing...

 

As always: thanks so much for visiting!

 

Regina

Grand Case

Many delicious hours were spent here...

so my sweet memories of this lovely fisherman's village on the

French side of St. Martin led to this collage

...

 

 

 

Grand Case

 

paper (recycled tourist brochure, magazines)

appr. 7 x 11"

 

Happy to be playing again...

Regina

 

 

 

 



It is spring!

and though I currently live in a tropical climate

I remember very well the very special feeling these first rays of sun

can give after a long and cold winter...

It inspired me to make this collage:

Spring Delight

recycled magazine on cardstock,

5 x 7"

Have a 'springy' Wednesday!

Regina

Collage (continued)

Almost finished with the X-mas preparation;

I remembered that there are a few collages laying around that I have not showed till today. These are the last ones of our journey this summer from Billings to Buffalo, here's the first one:

Greater Toronto
original collage, 4 x 4"
recycled tourist brochure

New collages: River series

Funny how art can start!

In order to keep things managable in the house, I was screening my beloved magazines: which one to keep, which one to get rid of, you know the situation, don't you?

I have been collecting magazines for years on an end, browsing them every now and then and always feeling kind of 'rich' while doing so. Rich as a source for future inspiration. My most favorite zines are Cote Sud (which is French) and Happinez (Dutch). This 'treasure' traveled with me from the Netherlands to the Caribbean and I realize it would be crazy to bring them back again, no, not now , but in the not too far future. Books: ok, but magazines?

Back to the collages: I ripped out the articles and pictures that cannot yet be missed and in the series below I was mesmerized by the intense blue colour of lapis lazuli. On this island we are surrounded by the most beautiful turquoise waters, but this lazuli in an article on the Nile river, is a good runner up for me, I love it! The combination with the warm terracotta colour of buildings and sunset has it all for me.

Will you follow me along the river Nile?

Bleu Lazule

River series 1

original collage 5 x 7"

recycled magazines

River view
River series 2
original collage 5 x 7"
recycled magazines

Day's End
River series 3
original collage 5 x 7"
recycled magazines

Felouka
River series 4
original collage 5 x 7"
recycled magazines

With this new collage series I hope to be back in the creative groove. My working table is clean, materials organized, my mind brimming with ideas!

Leave a comment please if you want to let me know what you think about this new work, I look forward to hear from you,

A great Tuesday for all of you!

Regina

Celebration

in between the dots, spirals and circles

collage 5 x 7"

magazine cut-outs on watercolour paper

From the archives

Hi!

After yesterday's pretty ugly SXM Unpolished picture, I am glad that it is time again for more beautiful stuff. I have been posting in the unpolished catagory during four weeks now and only introduced it the very first time, but yesterday I realized (afterwards..) that maybe I only chase away accidental passers-by on my blog by showing all this ugliness that's is alas all day reality for lots of people... Maybe it is better to write a little sentence that's pointing out my intention of this unpolished sxm photos.

The weekend was lovely with some goodies for me: it was Art Lovers weekend (yes we do have artists here, but mainly on the French part of the island). Once a year the artists of this organisation open their studio to the public and this Saturday I visited the lovely venue of Norma and Corinne Trimborn, two sisters that paint and who originally are from Germany. I enjoyed their art and as a bonus had the chance to refresh my German!

On Sunday the local Rotary organized a fleamarket for the very first time and as I am always the first one to tell how I miss that here, you can be sure this was my day! I 'scored' some books on Canada and Alaska, some novels and my biggest catch was an Eileen Fisher dress, brown tricot, almost new, not my size really but it has potential ;-), which means that I will remodel it and then will have a very fashionable new tunica that goes fantastic with my new pants. I love remodeling clothes, call it recycling or whatever, but for someone that can hardly find new fashionable plus quality clothes here this is like finding a treasure, you see?!

detail

now from the archives a little collage I did last year and have not shown until now: I only rediscovered it last week in the big book I wrote about last week

Bird

mixed media 5"x7"

Surprise

we discovered some new, future bananas in our garden!

this picture is from last Sunday, taken from above on the veranda

and this is how it looked yesterday, picture shot from below. It's amazing how quickly they developed in only 7 days

***

On another note, here is my last collage from the recent series. I enjoyed making them very much, also learned quite a bit! My next series will be about the states we visited in the US last summer. I took home lots of brochures, tickets and pictures of course, now what better way than to finally use them in a collage?! The plan is to make them in a travel-chronological order, so the first one should have New Mexico as a theme, stay tuned ...

(clickable)

Serisie
Mixed media
5"x7"

This week's collages (2)

Ik Heb Eb

5"x7"

This title needs some clarification I think. 'Ik heb eb' means asmuch as: 'I have low tide'. It is the sea's answer to the question: how are you? I found this little poem of Franck Eerhart in an old Dutch magazine. It is a kind of dialogue between the sea and a visitor and I like its simplicity:

ik zie de zee/I see the sea

de zee ziet mij/the sea sees me

dag zee hoe gaat het?/ hi sea, how are you?

ik eb, zegt de zee/I ebb, says the sea

wat heb je? zeg ik/what do you have? I say

ik heb eb/I have eb

doet dat zeer?/does it hurt?

nee, zegt de zee/no, the sea says

een zee heeft geen zeer/seas don't have pain.

Frank Eerhart

Both collages are made in the technique of my previous post, paper collage, gesso, acrylics and stamping with stamps made by me.

Buckle
5"x7"

This week's collages (1)

Four collages after glueing down the papers

(click)

the bottom right one

La Vie en Rose
5"x7"
mixed media

Wild Alliance

It is all collage with me at the moment... I'm happily playing around in my studio, trying to find my style (and in doubt whether I will ever find it)

These pictures are from a collage I rediscovered in one of the big, heavy books that I use to store my collages. I was putting the latest results in, when I found this one among others that are either finished or still wait for that final touch ;-)

About a year ago, I think, I made collages inspired by Martha Marshall's blog .

I used a big patternsheet of an old sewing magazine as a base, painted big areas in all kind of colours with acrylic paint and pasted pictures and text pieces at random. Then, using a window (frame) marked 5" x 7" rectangles that I liked and cut these out: you get a lot of collages from one pattern sheet I can tell!!

I showed some of them in this and this post, below is another one:

detail

Wild Alliance
mixed media, 5" x 7"

P.s: I love how everything falls into place, it seems, when making collages!
Only one week ago I was sailing the Heineken Regatta, across wild seas between the islands of Anguilla and St. Maarten/St.Martin and now, one year after making it, I find back this collage and can only agree with the picture and the text: wild alliance

Le soleil joue

first results

same technique as my Saturday post,

skipping some pictures and

then:

'magic' happened,
finding this picture suddenly made the collage look like an old stucco wall.
Somewhere in a sunny, faraway place, might be Tuscany, could also be the Provence,
imagination assisted by the text:

Le Soleil Joue
mixed media

Results (continued)

Caribbean Man

collage, 6.5" x 4.5"

magazine cut-outs

on watercolour paper

Results

Caribbean Girl

collage, 6.5" x 4.5"
magazine cut-outs

on watercolour paper

Hi!

As you see the collage looks quite different from what I anticipated yesterday. Thinking about how I could achieve in paper a similar veiled result like the one in my last post, I jumped to the conclusion that this way of working is not right; it would have taken to much trouble to imitate it in paper and you can even wonder if this is desirable.

Digital collaging has different possibilities than the 'real stuff' as someone once called paper collage to me, both are artforms that deserve their own character and recognition. Now I really have experienced what I already had read and heard ;-) Btw: I looked up the correct meaning of the word: smitten and I feel pretty ashamed, because I found out that this particular word may have sounded quite bragging to you. And being the beginner that I am, I hope you will understand that I did not mean it this way, sorry for that! What I did mean was that I liked and was enthusiast about the effect of that digital collage. And not being a native speaker it can happen that I think a word is correct while it isn't at all, that's the finetuning I miss...

On with the collage: I made four of them this week. These four are quite simple, just tearing and cutting the magazine pictures in colours that I liked, the subjects are different but the colour scheme is more or less similar. Caribbean Girl is the first one of this week's series. Like the yellowish digital collages of last week, it makes even me feel happy (and I am not exactly missing sunlight!).

Thanks for visiting, more collage work tomorrow,

Regina

Zen weekend

Last week my computer crashed, which is the cause I have not been posting as often as I intended. Fortunately a friend could save my files, including the many, many pictures and collages, I was so grateful of that!

Yesterday my studio was full of boxes, cables and all kind of hardware, both old and new, so I could not work. My new computer is up and running, but more software has to be installed by my DH. I am so lucky that he understands how important this is for me, he is doing his utmost.

Have to work, but could not. Art in the Park is in three weeks!

No other solution than my beloved hammock and books and magazines. The picture above is from my favorite Dutch magazine Happinez, that publishes besides interesting articles the most beautiful photographs. Furthermore there was a book on Taoism on the reading menu and brochures on the Tzu Chi organisation, which as you may know is Bhuddist based. This organisation helps wherever a disaster has occurred.

Strange, it all seemed to come together yesterday, after having heard all the horrible news from Haiti. Me going for fresh bread to one of the Chinese supermarkets yesterday morning, finding info on Tzu Chi, having plenty of time to read it the same day. After our holidays in Holland I am having some difficulty to get the creative juices flowing again, as it is always when I have been away some time from my home. Letting all this wisdom sink in, this Bhudda and Tao wisdom I mean ,was all that I accomplished this weekend. But I am sure there is nothing wrong with a Zen weekend every now and then!

Inspired by: bogolan

Since years, all the way from Europe where I bought it on one of the European Quilt Festivals, I have been in love with this fabric. Yes, indeed, in love! Fabric lovers like me will certainly know what I mean by that: not wanting to ever cut it apart, just cherishing it in your treasure chest and having a look at it every now and then and feeling instantly rich. You see? I'm soo easy to please :)

So yesterday I was putting away fabric remnants of my latest quilt and I saw it again.

It is a kind of fabric sampler, measuring about 2.5 m in length and 0.3 m in width, showing lots of patterns and motives. And to add to this happiness, also yesterday I was browsing through some magazines (tons of them, another treasure in the 'chest') and happened to read an article about Bogolan, or mudcloth that is being made in Mali since ages. You understand I had to come into action, with all these creative juices flowing...

fabric sampler

it contains much of what I love: contrast, repetition, neutrals, graphic patterns , and fabric!

Though regular readers of my blog may know my use of bold colours in my quilts and collages, that does not mean that I do not like black, white and neutral colors, in fact I love them also.

So I'm afraid I am a colour omnifore and thus change my colorscheme every now and then.

Inspired by the article I made these collages,

tore the pictures, rearranged them and pimped them with a little bit of acrylic bronze paint.

( images are clickable)

Look at those hands, aren't they beautiful?

Should you be interested in bogolan and how it is made, there is a wealth of information on the internet. Some sites I liked are this one, and this and finally this one.
Enjoy!