Storytelling with Collage

Enso, collage by Donna Watson, hand painted Japanese washi papers

NOTE:  UPCOMING WORKSHOPS:  

    

     July 9-10:  2 Day workshop:  Wabi Sabi and the Spirit of Collage in Mendocino CA at the Mendocino Art Center.  For more information go to:

www.mendocinoartcenter.org/Summer16/Watson.html 

     July 25-27:  3 Day workshop:  Personal Expression:  A Design Approach to Mixed Media at the Peninsula School of Art in Fish Creek, Wisconsin.  For more information go to:
www.peninsulaschoolofart.org/adult-workshops.html 

     August 8-9:  2 day workshop:  Wabi Sabi and the Spirit of Collage in Phoenix Arizona at the Art Unraveled venue.  For more information go to:  www.artunraveled.com 

BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT:  I have had the honor of an invitation to be included in the book:  (The collage above ENSO is the collage included in the book.)

STORYTELLING WITH COLLAGE 

by Roxanne Evans Stout

Techniques for Layering COLOR & TEXTURE

Every collage has a story to tell.  Tell your story in paper, fabric, and ephemera collected from your world.  This book written by Roxanne will demonstrate and inspire all of us to capture our thoughts, memories and daydreams.  She showcases tools and supplies needed to express your memories.

The book is filled with collage challenges and suggestions.  It is also filled with a number of other collage artists, their thoughts and collages, as well as Roxanne's own work.  In other words there are lots of images to look at and get inspired.  For more information about Roxanne and her book go to her blog here.  

These are some of my collage papers and inspirations for my collages.  Old Japanese books.... old letters from the Kyoto flea markets.

Create beauty.

Value Imperfection.

Live deeply.

Wabi Sabi Hare

Collage by Donna Watson

Wabi Sabi is the Japanese aesthetic of finding beauty in imperfection,  incompleteness and impermanence.  It is a beauty of things modest and humble.  It is a beauty of things rustic, simple, organic, worn, weathered... things affected by the passage of time.  It is also about the cycle of life and our connection to nature.  It is an appreciation of nature and all life.  This is how I view the rabbit.  A quiet, still, silent, gentle, harmless (unless you have a vegetable garden) creature.

THE HARE WITH THE AMBER EYES is written by Edmund De Waal, a world famous ceramist working in Porcelain.  He inherited a collection of 264 tiny netsuke.  He wanted to know and understand who had collected them and how they had survived World War II.  The book is a moving 

memoir and detective story as he discovers the history of the netsuke and his family over 5 generations.  The writing is artful, detailed, exquisite... beautifully written memoir... and deeply moving.  He writes not just about the netsuke, but about the art and culture in each generation.

Here is the famous netsuke, THE HARE WITH THE AMBER EYES

Netsuke are miniature sculptures first created in 17th century Japan to serve a practical purpose.

Robes, like kimono, had no pockets.  Men who wore them needed a place to store their belongings like money, medicine, or pipes.  They used a container (sagemono) hung by cords from the robe's sashes (obi).  This box (inro) was held shut by ojime, small carved objects or animals.  The fastener that secured the chord at the top of the sash was a carved, button like toggle called netsuke.

Over time, Netsuke evolved from being utilitarian into objects of great artistic merit and superb craftmanship, highly respected and collected.

It is the quieter side of life that inspires me, with the feelings that come with my connection to the natural world.  My love of rabbits is part of my connection to nature.

This is a rabbit temple in the heart of Kyoto.  I was very happy to find it.

Artist Unknown

Artist W. Tucker,  RABBIT GIRL,  website:  www.wtucker-art.com

As you see above, artists today depict rabbits and hares in many mediums and forms.  

photo image by Donna Watson

The above image includes one of my ceramic rabbits, and 2 mail art envelopes I created.

photo image by Donna Watson

photo image by Donna Watson

Mono no aware refers to a feeling of life's fragility, and relates to seeing beauty in this fragile, impermanent nature, and even grasping that without permanence, genuine beauty can not exist.

The Art of Walking

"Memory Found"  collage, 8"x8", by Donna Watson   SOLD

WANDERLUST by Rebecca Solnit

Walking is embodied presence in motion, presence at once with ourselves and with the world, inner and outer -- an active presence of body and mind...  from Brain Pickings by Maria Popova.

Rebecca Solnit speaks to this beautifully:

     "Walking, ideally is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord.  Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them.  It leaves us free to think without being wholly lost in our thoughts."  Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust

This is a path near my home... it leads to the beach below my home on the cliff.

photo by Donna Watson

The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts.  Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

This is a continuation of the path near my home.  Photo by Donna Watson

WALKING by Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau believed that 'sauntering" with no real destination in mind, was the best way to walk.

He wrote that the idea of sauntering should be approached with a mindset of presence rather than productivity.   "What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?"  Thoreau

Here we are taking a walk with our 6 month old puppy, Kirin.

"Most of the time walking is merely practical, the unconsidered locomotive means between two sites.  To make walking into an investigation, a ritual, a meditation, is a special subset of walking....  Here this history begins to become part of the history of the imagination and the culture, of what kind of pleasure, freedom, and meaning are pursued at different times by different kinds of walks and walkers."  Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust

One of the paths over water, in a temple in Kyoto Japan

photo by Donna Watson

A street for walking through an older traditional part of Kyoto

photo by Donna Watson

"Walking itself is the intentional act closest to the unwilled rhythms of the body, to breathing and the beating of the heart.  It strikes a delicate balance between working and idling, being and doing.  It is a bodily labor that produces nothing but thoughts, experiences, arrivals."  Rebecca Solnit

Path by Maria Popova

Check out Brain Pickings by Maria Popova.  She publishes a weekly synopsis of books... musings... on wide ranging topics including love, grace, human spirit, art, literature, society, cultures, creativity, and on and on... she fills her musings with plenty of links and quotes...  she writes with authority as she links one book to another book, or idea or thought.  You can sign up to receive her newsletter via email.... or at Flipboard...  which I also highly recommend.   www.brainpickings.org

Surviving on Hope

Title: Edge of Light, older painting chosen here for its title.

For several days now, the news and images coming out of Japan have been devastating and heartbreaking. I would like to dedicate my blog post to the people of Japan, and to all peoples all over the world, as they struggle to recover their home, family and community. I recently read a review of a book written by David Brooks titled THE SOCIAL ANIMAL: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement. In essence, it is a book about the human need for connection, friendship, and love. We yearn for "community"; we have the urge too "merge". What drives us, ultimately, is the need to be understood by others. I think this is especially true for artists. Though we work by ourselves in our studios, we still need 'community' and for others to understand what we are trying to communicate with our art works.

Novie Trump, ceramic artist, is participating in THE NEST PROJECT: WHAT DOES HOME MEAN TO YOU? at the Torpedo Factory in Virginia. NEST is a juried exhibition which examines the nest as a symbol for home and refuge, both literally and conceptually. Besides the juried exhibition there are installations, and a community built nest. You can find out much more information about The Nest Project and the Torpedo Factory here. Novie's website is found here.

Sharon Beals is a photographer who has a new book (above) coming out soon titled NESTS: Fifty Nests and the Birds that built them. The book is available for pre-order at Amazon.com and here is her wonderful website with more images and more information. The next two images are from her book.

Entering it
you enter yourself,
the world connects
and closes like a ring.
-- Octavio Paz, poet

Sharing the signs
of early spring,
singing the songs
of the artists' works
and poets' words here.
Soar with inner wings.
-- Neva Gagliano, artist and poet, blog here.

Bird eggs are a beautiful metaphor for the cycle of life, renewal and hope. Mary Ann Burk, a ceramic artist and potter, makes eggs that look like they came out of the earth. She places her eggs on driftwood and branches or ceramic pedestals. Her work is at the Barnswallow gallery and you can find her wonderful blog here. Her art pieces are above and the 2 images below.

I said to my soul, be still, and wait.. the faith and the hope and the love and all the waiting... the darkness shall be the light and the stillness the dancing.
--- t.s. eliot

Lesley Bricknell is a fine arts textile artist and photographer. Lesley is attracted to fragile and transient surfaces that she intentionally ages, stains, and spoils. She loves worn or discarded garments, with histories which she "reclaims". She looks for the purity in the impermanence and fragility of objects and life. She has her beautiful images at her website here and at her blog here. The next 3 images belong to Lesley.

"...When they ask to see your gods
your book of prayers
show them lines
drawn delicately with veins
on the underside of a bird's wing..."
-- J. L. Stanley

Outside the sun shines
birds sing
and I am not having to make
snap decisions about what
to stuff into a suitcase
or how I might get
6 cats (and the rest) to safety.
-- India Flint, textile artist, blog here.

Those of us who are safe and warm, we are the fortunate ones.

Searching for Heritage

...Each venture
Is a new beginning...
...what there is to conquer
By strength and submission,
has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times,
by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate--but there is no competition
There is only the fight to
recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again....
--- T. S. Eliot

For some time now, I have been searching, reading, and exploring my Japanese heritage.
I went to Kyoto, Japan last October with that search in mind. A trip to Japan had been a life long dream and I felt such a strong connection to the culture and aesthetics that I am planning another trip there next year. I feel as if my search has only just begun.

Here are bits of Japanese papers, old letters, receipts, and worn and rusty objects that I found at the temple flea markets in Kyoto. I hope that some day they will find themselves in some of my collage paintings. Below is a collage by Paul Horiuchi.

Paul Horiuchi has been dubbed a "Master of Collage". He was born in 1906 in Japan, and died in Seattle in 1999. He created graceful juxtapositions of texture and color, using paint, ink and paper. He pieced together torn pieces of calligraphy and textured papers, visualizing strong aesthetics of his Japanese culture.

Horiuchi drew on his heritage, creating works that abstractly evoked the forms and textures of nature. His work exudes quiet energy and calm. Horiuchi once said that his collages were "attempts to produce areas of peace and serenity...". His meditative collages are strongly connected to reality. In the surprising collage titled "Rock Garden" (below) Horiuchi abandoned his more well-known very flat abstractions to provide a sense of space and place.

You can find the book on Paul Horiuchi's life, works, and collages at Amazon.com. There is a current exhibition of Horiuchi's collages in Seattle, WA through May 8th, 2010 at ArtResource,
625 First Avenue, Suite 200, or www.SeattleArtResource.com.


"As soon as I think of Japan, my mind feels beauty, my heart feels purity, and my life feels humility." -- Sri Chinmoy, Japan: Soul-Beauty's Heart-Garden

Sayonara! Kyoto Dreaming

Title: Chado (tea ceremony), acrylic, rice papers, 2008

some of my bonsai collection

Pour yourself like a fountain.

Flow into the knowledge that

what you are seeking

Finishes at the start, and with ending,

begins.--- Rainer Maria Rilke

Without my journey,
And without the spring,
I would have missed this dawn.
-----Shiki

"We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It's just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there. Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn't have expected." ----Ben Okri

Actually, I absconded with this quote from Robyn at Artpropelled. She has a wonderful blog which you can find here.
This quote is a perfect way to express my dream of traveling to Japan. I have had this dream for many years. I remember back in 1999-2000, when my son was in high school, I talked him into taking Japanese as a second language. My plan was that he would become my guide and interpreter when we traveled to Japan. Well, he graduated in 2000 and we never traveled to Japan. Every year I would talk about going to Japan. Every year. Well, finally that year has come. It is the year of the Ox. I have never been excited about being an Ox...the steadfast, patient, hard working, plodding up that hill Ox... boring. But this year, I am glad to be the Ox and I decided it is time to go to Japan. I am half Japanese and have always been attracted to Asian things. My gardens, home decor, clothing, jewelry are all Asian. But the main reason I want to go is for my aesthetics-- my art. I want to connect to my heritage in a deeper way. I have been searching for something in my work and I truly believe I may find the missing link in the temples, the stones, the carved and weathered wood in Japan. And Kyoto has many temples, shrines and gardens... and flea markets which will satisfy my love for collecting and shopping. Who could ask for a more beautiful place to fulfill my dream. I leave in a few days and will be home in two weeks. Sayonara for now....