Lucky me! My good friend and brilliant artist, Deryn Mentock came to play with me all weekend in my studio. Oh my gosh, there was no limit to our fun. We were practicing ingenious techniques we learned from our awesome friend, DJ Pettitt, at Art and Soul in Dallas. My piece, "Veiled Lady," shown above is an example of DJ's inventive fused collage technique on canvas. It is an exciting and fun way to collage. If you get a chance to learn from DJ, I highly recommend it. Deryn and I experimented all weekend with various applications of the technique.
I used the time in the studio with Deryn to work on these covers for a book I started in DJ's class. The main image on the back cover is fused collage on muslin that is then fused again to canvas. (The image of the girl's face is recognizable as one of DJ Pettitt's images that she graciously offered for use to the workshop participants. Thanks, DJ.) Both of these covers are fused collage on canvas mounted on book board. By the way, do you know that you can get book board custom cut to your specifications through Volcano Arts for 6 cents a square foot? And Christine Cox who is the owner, is very quick with delivery. I vowed this weekend that I would never again cut book board myself. Those of you who have struggled through cutting it by hand know what I mean. So, now I need to create a spine and signatures to finish my book.
While Deryn was here, we spent part of our time decorating paper using my "glamorous brayered paper" technique. (When I get a chance, I'll post the directions for this technique here on my blog.)
The red piece of brayered paper is already mounted to book boards to make a book cover that I plan to use to make a canvas shrine. (You can barely see the crease lines where the spine board is in the scan above.) This shrine will be similar to the "Frida Book Shrine" you can view on my PictureTrail.
All in all, it was a very productive weekend. To see what Deryn created while she was here, just visit her blog to see her post "Creating in a REAL Studio." Because of Deryn's visit, I'm now motivated to catch up on some of my journal and calendar swaps. Thanks, Deryn. You are a prolific and gifted artist with a knack for turning out powerful art pieces . . . not to mention how fun and generous you are. I'm lucky to be your friend.
Beautiful work Sally! I especially love your veiled lady!! Sounds like you two had a blast!
Posted by: Lorraine | June 13, 2006 at 03:14 PM
Wow Sally...thank you! I had a wonderful time creating with you and I have to say..."Veiled Lady" is just stunning! I took a look at your Frida shrine as well. What a cool design! I'm going to try this as soon as I get a chance. Thanks again!
Posted by: Deryn Mentock | June 13, 2006 at 07:35 PM
It sounds like the two of you had a real blast together and got some wonderful artwork created! I wish that I lived closer so that I could share in the fun!! I still think that it would be awesome to plan an "artists getaway" next year with a group of friends! PJ's, popcorn, and paint...what more could a girl want!!
Posted by: Altered Antiquity | June 18, 2006 at 11:37 AM