JAZZPAPERSCISSORS

Happy New Year, everybody! Vote SKATING PARTY in 2012!

2011-12-31T15:37:00.000-05:00

TRUNK SHOW!

2011-12-08T00:29:00.000-05:00

It's holiday gift-giving time AGAIN, and if you can't make your own, BUY HANDMADE! I've got plenty for you......an altered globe, a wreath of book page rosettes, papered bandboxes and switchplates, snow globes, dictionary flowers, handcut envelopes, handmade greeting cards.....

THURS DEC 15 at Lion in the Sun stationers on 7th Ave (4th St) in Park Slope, Brooklyn. From 7-9 pm. Something for everyone!

The centennial nears!

2011-11-16T23:28:00.000-05:00

The centennial of the invention, by Picasso, of collage as an art form, comes in 2012. Heed this call for entry from the Ontological Museum!

The New Cosmologies

2011-11-14T13:17:00.001-05:00

Thanks to my dear friend Dave Morris, I now have beautiful photographs of 12 cut paper collages I made using an old Taschen calendar of 16th century cosmologies. I have updated them! Please check out the slideshow here

The Mexico Diary

2011-11-10T22:32:00.001-05:00

I went to Mexico at the end of last winter and was just overwhelmed by its beauty. At some point my camera was washed away by a bigger than expected wave, so I decided to travel the old-fashioned way and use my memory. When I got home, I began making a visual diary of the trip, digging into my picture archive for illustrations. To my surprise, I found that I had not a single image of Mexico or anything Mexican in my collection, a fact of which I was ashamed. So I made this diary using illustrations that reminded me of people and things I saw, places I went. Many of the images are Spanish and come from art catalogs, especially the Virgins. The book is about complete now. First the cover. I have to admit that the candy wrapper is from a lollipop available everywhere in Mexico and supposedly designed by Salvador Dali before he became famous.

Now for a look inside.

Mexico City is unbelievably huge, even to a New Yorker. Upwards of 30 million people living in buildings no more than a few stories high in a valley encircled by huge mountains of mythic shapes. It takes TIME to fly over Mexico City.

We were staying with my friend's family high above Puerto Vallarta. I was amazed to see that the rich and poor live in immediate proximity; I'd not seen that in a city before. In New York, it only happens when a neighborhood is gentrifying and once that process is complete, the poor are gone from sight. Not so in Vallarta, and so it is possible to live in a tourist town and feel close to the kind and handsome people who live and work there. The sun bleaches everything; colors start out strong and become more achingly beautiful with every passing year of slaking sun and storm. Roosters rule the streets and are never quiet. Same for the dogs. The first night I kept thinking of that scene in Disney's 101 Dalmatians when the dogs send out an alarm across London. The tall, narrow door you see here is actually in Cuba.

For a Catholic country, you sure don't see much of Jesus in Mexico. The Virgin, however, is everywhere and splendid.

!Viva la diferencia!

Franco-American Versailles: Inside my latest altered book

2011-10-24T17:12:00.001-04:00

I like to think that this book began life in the gift shop at Versailles in the 1960s. That got me thinking about American tourists, various wars (World Wars ! & II, Vietnam, the French & American Revolutions), Freedom Fries, etc. An altered book was born; the wonderful cover is shown in an earlier post. I'm still working on it but there are about 25 pages in the book so far. I'll be offering it for sale at trunk shows this December. Please contact me if you're interested.

New Altered Book: VERSAILLES

2011-08-10T19:00:00.000-04:00

I love to alter travel books or the kind of books you pick up when traveling. Not that I've ever been to Versailles, nor do I remember where I got this book in the first place. But I had the idea to merge these street urchins from an old Anheuser-Busch ad, conveniently labeled Saint Louis, MO, and a vision of Franco-American excess was born.

What rock star wouldn't want to wear this frock coat with a Bobby Lee guitar strap? I ask you!

Did the French invent the lemonade? I'm pretty sure it was Americans added the maraschino cherry.

More to come.

Sold!

2011-07-27T12:01:00.000-04:00

Flutter has flown, sold by the Prophecies Gallery in Park Slope. Thanks to buyer and seller both!

Gone Too Soon

2011-07-08T16:42:00.000-04:00

Atlantic Bookshop in Brooklyn, formerly 12th St. Books, formerly Chelsea Books (Manhattan). Used and rare and closed. Source of so much collage material for me over many years. Condolences to the heartbroken manager who asked me to make a sign for the store's waning days.

I knew there was a third one

2011-07-02T00:09:00.000-04:00

For Aunt Joan and Uncle.

I love to come upon my artwork online

2011-07-01T23:53:00.000-04:00

I made, I think, three postcards in one evening for a mail art exhibition in Stockholm sometime last year. This evening I was googling my name (it must be done periodically) and there were two of them. Nice to see you again!

Support the art troops! 5 pieces in new Park Slope gallery thru Aug 18

2011-06-20T16:08:00.000-04:00

I was walking up President St. just above 5th Avenue a few weeks ago when what to my wondering eyes did appear but an apparent storefront Army bunker complete with stacked camouflaged sandbags and gun turret window. The New York Times had been intrigued too.

In a nutshell, the new Prophecies Gallery is the labor of love child of Lenny Goodstein, a Vietnam veteran turned antique dealer and now art dealer recently returned to his native Brooklyn after a dozen years in Puerto Rico. Lenny erected the bunker to bring attention to his inaugural show featuring artwork by American war veterans. In particular, I dug a menacing black helicopter overhead made out of a trashed office chair.

Lenny intends for his gallery to feature, and better still, to move, the work of Brooklyn artists. At his invitation I came back several days later with my portfolio and a recent shadow box construction. To my delight, he took FIVE collages, including my more-timely-than-ever 2007 cut paper collage, It's For You, pictured above, and the shadow box (alas no photo) featuring the front of a Sixties-era transistor radio mimicking a Sunoco gas pump. I set the gas price to WMCA for those of you aged sufficiently to know what I'm talking about..

Other pieces in the group show are two collaged image transfers posted elsewhere on this blog: Flutter, Bell (last season's holiday greeting), plus the gorgeous Home Invasion, also alas no photo (sudden camera death last week).

You'll just have to stop by and see, perhaps buy. Prices at Prophecies are rational and the artist's cut well above average. Support the art troops!

Prophecies Gallery is at 665 President St, just uphill from 5th Avenue. Check the vintage Coney Island sideshow canvases in the window........

Hand-Cut Envelopes at Lion in the Sun

2010-12-03T20:44:00.000-05:00

I was looking over a copy of the new Greencraft magazine and they had a piece about handmade envelopes that got my mind to thinkin'.... I got out the scissors and the bone folder and the gluestick and started cutting up old auction and font catalogs, travel guides, magazines... all the space-eating ephemera (there's an oxymoron) we collagists accummulate without cease. It is a pleasure to see so much old paper go to such good use. My dear friends&fans at Lion in the Sun stationers in Park Slope just bought 30 for their store; see their blogpost about it here. I'm about to make the rounds of city card shops – tell me if you know a place I should know about....

May 2011: Book-related cards are now for sale at the Community Bookstore on 7th Ave in the Slope.....

Palladio Matters

2010-11-04T23:18:00.000-04:00

I keep stray image transfers taped to my kitchen cabinets because each will have its day. I'm real, real late to the party that is Gordon Matta-Clark, may they have chainsaws in heaven. This photo of a house he cut in half recently ran as an illustration in The New Yorker. I lifted it with three strips of packing tape, then placed a homeless transfer of the architect and theorist Andrea Palladio beneath it. I could not have predicted, or thought to intend, the way two of the strips frame the iris of his eye. Nor that the words "through" and "the" made it onto the strips. Things happen fast, through the looking glass.

This is the second use I've made of this engraving of Palladio; see the game board, Trumped-Up, from a few months ago. It was in all the newspapers and magazines when the show was up at the Morgan Library. I didn't actually see the show, but I've gotten a lot of mileage out of it all the same. Seeing isn't EVERYthing.

Mileage From Maps

2010-09-29T22:45:00.000-04:00

I'm a little proud to say that I appear to have been miles ahead on this whole map craze, as a consequence of stumbling upon, and then becoming obsessive about, the imaginary maps of John Held, Jr. All the other maps in the current and apparently popular exhibit, YOU ARE HERE: Mapping the Psycho-Geography of New York, at Pratt Manhattan, all but mine were made in the last 5 years or so. Mine was made in 1980, back in the pegged pantleg era, when I got my hands on the Dover collection, The Wages Of Sin. The two best I made under Held's spell I gave to my sister, and they have been above her couch since the time before scanners, much less household scanners. I might have the drawing for one. If it's where I think it is, I'll post it soon.

I'm have to add that I'm further enormously proud to say that, because of the popularity of this exhibit, if you search "John Held" and "map" together, my map will come up on the page. This means the imaginary world to me....

One more thing. My relatively new but spiraling wonder of a friend Bathabile Mthombeni is launching a new website will feature the crafty iPhone movies with all the amazing people she knows and loves and is always meeting in New York. I appear to be her first celebrant! She made a pretty little film with/about me at the opening. Anyway, follow Bathabile! She brings light. Here's the film.

Janine in Hand Drawn Map Exhibit at Pratt

2010-08-07T16:04:00.000-04:00

I submitted a John Held-inspired map of Manhattan I drew circa 1980 to the Hand Drawn Map Association. It seemed the best use for something I couldn't throw away and was the first of the many imaginary maps I've made and continue to make. This one's in pen and ink and includes the locations of various friends' apartments, the twin towers of the new World Trade Center, and the Moonie headquarters on West 34th Street. I had a boyfriend around that time who was taken in by them.

Then today I get an email saying there's going to be an HDMA exhibit at Pratt Institute from September to November, and there's my name on the card. I KNEW there was a reason to keep that map.

"Trumped-Up" in Fluxhibition 4

2010-05-17T01:16:00.000-04:00

Proud to see my altered game board up on the Fluxhibition 4 site, with its theme of toys and games. The link includes a second link to the index of entries, should you want to take an e-stroll....

Trumped-Up

2010-04-02T21:13:00.000-04:00

A little background: I can't stand the man, Trump. I can't stand that he thinks for so much as a moment that he has or will ever have a place in the history of American architecture.

I found a discarded gameboard for Trump: The Game right where it belonged: in the recycling area of my apartment building. I'd been thinking about making something to submit to the next Fluxus Fluxhibition in Ft. Worth, focused on toys and games. When I saw this I thought about the full-page ad I'd just seen in the NYTimes promoting the new Palladio show at the Morgan Library. Mercifully, the gameboard didn't sport D. Trumps' porcine visage anywhere , so I made a transfer of Palladio's engraved portrait and placed him at center. I then circled him with portraits culled from old museum catalogs. I thought of them (loosely) as his patrons, muses, cronies, disciples, builders.

I left two "For Sale" signs untouched. Those are Trump's.

Eve

2010-02-28T00:15:00.000-05:00

A sister piece to Ariel, seen elsewhere on the blog. The background is a shard from a devotional image I found years ago. I think it was used as a stiffener in something that was sent to me. For about a year, I've had the transfer surround. Then came the snakes. Still, she wasn't finished. What was it Woody Allen said at the end of Annie Hall? We needed the eggs.

New Cosmology I

2010-01-29T00:05:00.000-05:00

My friend Jed gave me an old calendar with reproductions of various ancient cosmologies. I'm bringing them up to date. Working in color again.

No Fault Of The Angel

2010-01-20T18:02:00.001-05:00

This is the piece I donated to this Saturday's art sale to benefit the Haitian relief effort at the Tabla Rasa gallery in Sunset Park. This is a great opportunity for the sharp-eyed and big-hearted to buy art! Small pieces are $75; larger works go for $150. This image transfer collage is a small one, maybe 3 inches across in a square goldtone frame.

The faultless angel is layered over an old news photo of a caved-in street in one of those Pennsylvania coal towns with an underground fire. My mother's people were miners from Pardeesville, outside Hazelton, though not her father. My grandparents moved to Park Slope when the Great Depression was also young. He worked in the Navy Yard.

But I digress. Buy some art for a good cause this Saturday!

Art Auction for Haitian relief efforts at Tabla Rasa

2010-01-18T17:37:00.000-05:00

Tabla Rasa Gallery in Sunset Park, which has been so supportive of my work, will be hosting an art auction fundraiser for Haitian disaster relief this coming Saturday, Jan 23, a one-day event at
Tabla Rasa Gallery
224 48 Street
between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, in Sunset Park, Brooklyn
Saturday, January 23, 2010
1:00 pm - 4:30 pm

My piece, "No Fault of the Angel", is a small one and may be had for $75.00 in the form of a check written to one of the charities listed below. Anyone writing a check of $75.00 DIRECTLY to one of the designated charities* below can select an artwork 11" x 14" or smaller. Anyone donating $150.00 can select from these or a larger works. In this way, 100% of the donations will go to the charities. Any and all contributions are welcome.

Please take a part of your afternoon to enjoy the collection so generously donated, read about the artists and their artwork, browse our websites, support us after the auction, and spread the word about our art. Unlike most vendors, artists are only able to claim the cost of materials they use.

There will be contact information labeled on the back of each work, and we encourage donors to contact the artists directly.

We will be collecting checks made out directly to the following charities:
http://nyc.gov/html/fund/html/home/home.shtml
http://doctorswithoutborders.org/
http://crs.org/
http://www.oxfam.org/
******************************************
Tabla Rasa Gallery is free and open to the public.
The gallery is located two express subway stops from Manhattan:
"D" or "N" to the 36th Street Station plus one "R" stop to 45th Street.
Ample street parking is available.

"Three Ages of Arkansas" sells at A.I.R. Gallery auction!

2010-01-04T14:03:00.000-05:00

My clockface collage, pictured a few posts back, sold at the annual auction to support the A.I.R. Gallery in Dumbo, no mean feat in these times. I also managed to pick up a thrilling little watercolor on rice paper, "The Messenger", by Suyeon Na, pictured here.

Both our works sold for the minimum bid. Honestly, I was shocked to take home such an accomplished work for so little cash. Might I suggest to you all that now is a good time to buy art????? It is!!!! I'm going to open a Paypal account and sell everything at WPA prices – to feed the coffers and make room for the new. I've been working in color and cut paper again lately and waiting on the delivery of this new heat transfer tool that I believe will do everything I want it to.

Thanks to my new collector. I look forward to learning your name!

Time is of the Essence!

2009-12-07T13:52:00.001-05:00

Please sign the petition at http://tcktcktck.org and every other petition calling for responsible action to defeat global warming TODAY!

Three Ages of Arkansas

2009-12-06T23:46:00.000-05:00

Here's a camera-photo of the piece I donated to this year's auction at Dumbo's A.I.R. Gallery, part of their annual fundraising effort. It's an image transfer collage on a kitchen clock face i found in the basement trash area of my building. I turned the hole in the center into a black sun by putting a piece of black museum board on the reverse. The central image is from an ad for the state of Arkansas from a WWII-era Fortune magazine. The headline at the top reads "This year's crop depends on God and Government", a headline from the same mag.

Minimum bid is a mere $50; maybe you'll get lucky. Know anybody from/in Arkansas?

In the Queens Museum!

2009-11-16T22:07:00.000-05:00

I went out to the Queens Museum of Art to see my contribution to the unpaged project, "A Book About Death" on display. I could have made contributions to their lovely exhibit of 1939 and '64 World's Fair memorabilia too, but they didn't ask. Not a great photo, admittedly, but, believe me, it's a great feeling to see your work in a museum. That's my clockwork to the left of the sunglassed skull.

More about the project, including a good video: http://abookaboutdeath.blogspot.com/

Entry for "A Book About Death" at the Queens Museum of Art

2009-10-27T23:38:00.000-04:00

Just in time I learned of a call for artists by the Queens (NY) Museum of Art for a collaborative project marking the Day of the Dead. A requirement for the art was that the phrase "A Book About Death" appear in the work. It's in there.

Sulphur Thrall

2009-10-27T18:28:00.000-04:00

I spent $3 too much on a decayed Nature magazine ca.1920 just to get my hands on this photograph of a burned forest. The fire extinguisher was added first but the square cut jewel sun proved the key.

To Good Use

2009-10-14T23:33:00.000-04:00

My kitchen cabinets seem always covered with transfers I made and then didn't use. I got to sticking them on old playing cards.

Trunk Sale in Brooklyn: May 7th 2009

2009-04-18T02:02:00.000-04:00

I'm having a trunk sale at LION IN THE SUN stationers in Park Slope on Thursday evening, May 7th. This is the image I chose for the flyer. This is "Handtree". It's the companion to "Braintree", elsewhere on the site.

Come out for the show! Prices from $5 - $500. Something for everyone. Buy direct from artists!

Boom

2009-02-13T23:55:00.000-05:00

Atop an old railroad map, a scratched painting of a ruined building, some oil rigs, and a swooning girl in a tableaux vivant. It's the evening news.

Diamond Squeezers

2009-02-13T23:54:00.000-05:00

This took a long time to come together and I know who I'm going to send it too.

Beau Geste

2009-02-13T23:51:00.001-05:00

This fine figure of a fellow was found in an old auction catalog. The pony came from a pamphlet about quarter horses I've had for 40 years (really); whatever I placed in his hand came from an old lab equipment catalog but looks like a jester's rattle. My artist son likes this one.

New Work

2009-02-13T23:41:00.000-05:00

It's the night of Friday the 13th, the Eve of St. Valentine's Day. The moon is officially in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars. I've been in the kitchen with paper, tape, and a bucket of water, welcoming the Age of Aquarius. Here's this year's funny/strange valentine. It wasn't lost on me that pitchers and catchers reported today too.

Year of the Butterfly

2009-01-07T00:41:00.000-05:00

Is there a Year of the Butterfly? I feel on the verge of one. I declare it!

Take the Handmade Pledge!

2009-01-06T18:24:00.001-05:00

Start the new year right. Swear off cheap copies, mass-produced plastic trinkets, all manner of SWAG. Handmade is not always synonymous with expensive: beauty comes at many prices. Check out the wares at etsy.com for proof positive (Watch for the opening of the jazzpaperscissors store there this year).

Take the pledge to buy handmade; keep an artist solvent!

Aces

2008-12-30T21:44:00.001-05:00

These are the aces from a deck of cards I made as a Christmas gift. It won't be the last deck I make.

Relative Sizes

2008-12-30T21:36:00.000-05:00

Another recurring image in my work is this corset found in a clip art book. The dial belonged to my lawyer father; he carried it in his briefcase. It computes the distance and time it takes a vehicle to stop at given speeds.

Skater

2008-12-30T21:30:00.000-05:00

I love to mine old science catalogs for images. I love the way this device sits on the ice, with its coiled wires on either side. Anthropomorphizing, as we can't help but do, turns it into another skater, obviously a beginner.

Rabbit Pair

2008-12-30T21:27:00.000-05:00

There are some images I like to work with over and over again: certain clockfaces, moon views, this pair of rabbits. Here they are onstage.

Fencelines

2008-12-30T20:26:00.000-05:00

I've been working with copies of photos found among my dear Uncle Peter's things. I don't know who these people are. These two pictures, the way the fences aligned, told a story.

More from 2008

2008-12-30T18:27:00.001-05:00

This one came out well. My friend David sees a czarist last waltz inside the lantern. I know how he feels.

2008 Wrap-up

2008-12-30T18:18:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted in a few months, but I've been making new work the whole time. Let the year-end wrap-up begin...

"Cocksure" is on its way to a London kitchen; the much larger "Ariel" is still in my possession. I may keep her forever.

Fount

2008-09-30T00:27:00.000-04:00

What is it?

Mr. John Curry

2008-09-29T23:28:00.000-04:00

Here I added a b&w transparency to a magazine cut-out. It'll probably fade unevenly. I was working in haste!

Sea Escapes

2008-09-29T23:18:00.000-04:00

I've been making images fast and furious and falling behind in my scanning and posting. Allow me to play some catch-up ball. This trio, called "Sea Escapes," arose from my merger of Venetian Renaissance paintings with Dutch seascapes painted two and three centuries later. All images were found on the street in discarded catalogs from the National Gallery (UK) published in 1950.

Epping Moon

2008-07-08T14:41:00.000-04:00

This piece is one of three I have in the "Nobis Solo" show at Tabla Rasa Gallery in Sunset Park, Brooklyn through January 31, 2009.

What I love about this one, beyond the burgeoning moon, is the cowboy barely visible at center, back to us, hat off, looking back in the direction of the moon. I like to imagine the glow on his face. There's a shepherd in the moonlit clearing too, looking in the same direction. The cowboy becomes visible in just the same way things do when you are making your way in darkness; I must try to achieve this effect on purpose. There was a white mule (or a sheep that looked disturbingly like a mule) at the center of the Victorian era illustration that didn't work for me. I put a cowboy on her. She's used to that; she may even like it.

I've been to Epping Forest, by the way. I believe it is the last remaining hardwood forest in Ireland. The rest were all cut down by the British to build their navy, rebuild London after the fire, and fire up their ironworks. Epping was just too hard to get in and out of and not worth the effort. The starving Irish had gotten too weak to drag the wood out in preferred fashion and no Englishman was going to do an Irishman's work.

Architecture of Life

2008-07-08T14:32:00.000-04:00

New works on a recurring theme. All elements from old art catalogs and Dover clip art books. Bless the good people of Dover; long may they run.

Eden Crow

2008-07-08T14:18:00.000-04:00

I got some new collage materials courtesy of a friend who's just getting out of the collage racket in favor of putting more time into making a success of Atlantic Books, the rare and used bookstore coming to Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn on the Sahadi block. Once again, Manhattan's (12th Street Books) is Brooklyn's gain.

Some of the new works are too large for my home scanner screen. One is based on a transfer of the Declaration of Independence that I picked up (literally) from the back page of section one in the NYTimes on July 4th. I wish you could see it.

Eden Crow has a gold paper backing that worked surprisingly well. I was so happy to think of the title, which wasn't for a full ten minutes after I put the crow in place. You should have seen my diabol..ightful smile.

Rising Waters

2008-06-12T10:31:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I was asked whether the economic downturn was having an effect on the content of my art. I rarely impose a conscious goal on my work – I'm more of a diviner – but now that I look again, I have to acknowledge a new thread, that of rising waters. I don't know whether this change reflects my anxiety about the troubled economy or global climate change (likely both) but there it is.

I had an extremely productive night last Friday, over the course of which I made the several works seen here. Several involve mergers of Dutch seascapes and views of Venice from National Gallery (London, 1950) catalogs I found on the street a few months back. Found photographs are also making their way in.

I don't see any of these works are pessimistic, by the way. They're called "Sea Escapes," after all. I think that America's political future is suddenly bright; I'm a little giddy even, what with the presumptive Democratic nominee and yesterday's introduction of 35 Articles of Impeachment. There's a new poetry coming.

New Direction

2008-06-03T18:34:00.000-04:00

I've been working with found photographs for the first time. This one didn't scan very well – the moire effect at the top is unfortunate – but the original is very engaging. No name for this one yet. I have to stare at it a while longer.

Companion Piece

2008-06-03T18:23:00.000-04:00

I made a companion for the Braintree (see April 7 post). Herewith, Handtree.

Greater NY and LA

2008-06-03T15:49:00.000-04:00

I don't like LA much, you can tell. I love New York, risks and all.

States of Disaster

2008-06-03T15:44:00.001-04:00

I made this long before Katrina hit. The delicate way in which the napkin was handled put me in mind of the fine service at Antoine's restaurant in the French Quarter. I had no idea that one day it would look like a sopping wet cloth covering the city. Collage can be like that.

States of Mind

2008-05-30T21:50:00.000-04:00

I've looked at maps differently ever since I saw John Held's imaginary maps in an old Dover collection back in the 70s. I've made quite a few imaginary maps of my own. This collection is more frivolous, even mis-informed, than imaginary (i.e., Kansas, the Dry State). The maps come from a 70s-era Rand-McNally US atlas.

Here's Kansas and New Mexico, focus on the tinderbox at Los Alamos.

Gentle

2008-05-03T00:37:00.000-04:00

Placed on its side, the rib cage looked something like a giant open-mouthed sea shell emerging from still water, huge but somehow not threatening, unexpectedly reassuring really, with the land and sea flowing through the cavity without effort. I gave this one to a friend who needed to breathe easier.

Everywhere

2008-04-22T02:08:00.000-04:00

This is one of the first image transfers I made, from an old postcard of Prospect Park and a Life magazine snap of the actress Geraldine Fitzgerald. Or is it Geraldine Page? I always get them confused.

Whoever she is, she is everywhere.

Duel of Spades

2008-04-22T02:01:00.001-04:00

Her shield puts me in mind of that lizard with the collar that inflates when he's spoiling for a fight: the Tasmanian Devil? I hope so.

More Cards on the Table

2008-04-22T00:13:00.001-04:00

I can't stop making these votive playing cards. Starting to look toward other kinds of imagery, as with the Chief of Hearts.

Arch

2008-04-20T14:58:00.000-04:00

I was thinking about my friend Arch, who faces an uphill battle, when these two images came together late the night before last. It's small, about 4 x 5". I call it "Arch" of course.

Six of Hearts (Family)

2008-04-17T22:48:00.000-04:00

Last from the first frenzy of votive playing card-making. I love the way the hearts travel through this family on their sides, like a warm breeze.

The Saintly Four

2008-04-17T22:42:00.001-04:00

This was the happy accident that got me matching old paintings to numbered playing cards.

Club Cards

2008-04-17T22:37:00.000-04:00

Here are the Four of Clubs and the Five of Clubs (Musicians). The image for the Four is from a northern European school painting, but somehow it looks more northern Indian, don't you think? I haven't come up with a good name for this one; any suggestions?

Votive Cards

2008-04-17T22:32:00.000-04:00

Here are some cards that commingle religious and gambling imagery: Five of Golgotha and Diamond Magdalen.

More Playing Cards

2008-04-17T22:28:00.000-04:00

Diamond Bacchus trumps the Three of Cardinals? I call it a happy draw.

Votive Playing Cards

2008-04-17T22:05:00.000-04:00

More from the series of image transfers onto the faces of colonial era playing cards. I've been cutting up three old paperbound books of halftone reproductions of European school paintings and matching them up with the number cards. My friend Archie was much taken with the juxtaposition of religious and gambling imagery in what I'm calling my Votive Playing Cards; he and his partner have a wonderful collection of retablos, Meso-American devotional paintings on tin.

Let me know what you think. Here are the Ace of Hawks and the Three of Heads. More to come.

The Merest Color

2008-04-09T00:33:00.000-04:00

I don't ban color entirely. I love the merest blue-green of the sky in this one, "Cruise". Tick tock.

Hanging at Marquet Patisserie

2008-04-07T18:03:00.000-04:00

These two works ("In Camera" and "Shortwave Virgin") are currently displayed for sale at the wonderful lunchroom on East 12th Street in Manhattan, opposite Cinema Village and down from 12th Street Books, the used and rare bookseller that I love above all others.

All are image transfer collages created with clear Contact paper and/or other archival tape. All are mounted on acid-free 8 x 10 artboards behind archival glass. These are among the first works I made using this technique. Prices available on request.

Braintree

2008-04-07T16:56:00.000-04:00

"Braintree" is an image transfer I made with clear Contact paper using an old medical illustration and a tree by Leonardo from a tipped-in plate in a falling-apart book that belonged to my father. The original is 5 3/4" x 7 3/4" on a greige 8 x 10 artboard. I am currently researching the best way to reproduce it; please contact me via email if you're interested in a print.

Playing with Playing Cards

2008-04-07T15:34:00.000-04:00

In 1976, I bought a set of colonial era playing cards in museum store at Historic Williamsburg. They proved impossible to play with (there are no numbers in the corners) and went in a drawer. But the numbered cards are beautiful and lately, they have inspired a new series of image transfers.

Each card measures 3 5/8"W x 2 9/16"H unless otherwise noted.

This is the first one I made, "Heart of Diamonds".