Come Into the Quiet

New collages, acrylic on rice papers on wood supports.

"Come to my quietness. I shall cover you with it, like a white sheet that has blown all day in the sun, like a mountain lake filled with spring, it shall slip over you..." Diane di Prima

Come into the library.

Sit at the desk.

Look at the birdcage collection.

Look at the shells and fossils.

See more shelves of books.

Sit on the comfy sofa with the Alex Powers painting hanging above.

Sit on the window box and look at the zen gardens.

Sit in the chair next to Suki the cat.

Choose a good book.

Have a cup of green tea and some treats from Kyoto.

Touch the new ammonite collection

Art is a language, instrument of knowledge, instrument of communication. --- Jean Dubuffet

Collage Exchange

I have been working in my studio on a group of small collages for an upcoming collage exchange.
I like to use hand painted (acrylic) rice papers and textured papers with old book pages and old postage stamps. You can find out more information about this collage exchange at the end of this post.


There are a lot of good collage books:

1. COLLAGE: Lost and Found by Giuseppina Cirincione
2. COLLAGE ART by Jennifer L. Atkinson
3. COLLAGE TECHNIQUES by Gerald Brommer
4. COLLAGE FOR THE SOUL by Holly Harrison
5. COLLAGE SOURCEBOOK by Quarry Books
   

Dale Copeland, looking for rusty treasure at her 'secret' beach in New Zealand.

Dale Copeland, a collage and assemblage artist, lives in Puniho, New Zealand. She is a former math and physics teacher who eventually made the life change to full time artist. She has a fabulous website which showcases her collage and assemblage works for sale. Her website also includes many links to other collage artists, collage exhibitions and opportunities and can be found here.

Some of Dale's Assemblages

One of Dale's collages

Soon, Dale will organize her 12th International Collage Exhibition & Exchange, in New Zealand. Artists are invited to send her up to 13 small collages. There is an opportunity to sell a collage, exhibit a collage and exchange collages with other participating artists. The deadline is March 20th, and you can find out more information here.

Visual Poetry

Japanese book cover, weathered and worn

And it was at that age--
Poetry arrived in search of me....
Pablo Neruda, Poetry

"Words begin as description. They are prismatic, vehicles of hidden, deeper shades of thought." Susan Brind Morrow, THE NAME OF THINGS
Ellen Meloy, artist-naturalist wrote such beautiful prose in her luminous mix of memoir and natural history, THE ANTHOLOGY OF TURQUOISE: Meditations on Landscape, Art and Spirit. As you read her words, visions of landscapes rich with light, shade, textures and colors spark your imagination.


"Art can be much more than eye candy. By appealing to the senses, one can evoke a deeper response--one that is memorable and lasting." Lisa L. Cyr, ART REVOLUTION

One such artist who seems to go deeper, to a more poetic place is Linda, from Quebec. Her imagery, like poetry, seems to peel away the layers to reveal a simpler, more elemental, yet more mysterious human connection. You can find her blog here, and more of her luminous imagery at Les Brumes flickr page here. (The above 3 images and the one below are from
her Flickr stream, with permission.)

...I don't know where it came from,
From winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not words,
nor silence...and it touched me. Pablo Neruda, Poetry

Another artist who speaks to me as non-verbal visual poetry is Lissa Hunter. You can find her book, LISSA HUNTER: Histories Real and Imagined by Abby Johnston at Amazon.com. You can find more of her beautiful poetic works here. (The following 3 images are from Lissa's website, with permission).

"Lissa makes visible the architecture of an internal universe, revealing the corners, the doorways, the attics where our histories accumulate." Abby Johnston

"...Effort to understand, to make understandable, not necessarily intellectually. How do you 'understand' a bird in flight?" Lissa Hunter

"I came to feel that an artist is doing most when he is projecting his own humaness and doing this with utmost intimacy, candor and precision." Elmer Bischof