And We're Back

So, as you can tell from my last blog entry that I have been MIA for over a month. Taking winter break to a new level I guess. I have been busy however, developing some new pieces, working on prints for a print exchange, filling up a sketchbook for a gallery tour, and filling out paper work to be a substitute teacher this semester now that I am only teaching in the mornings. Hopefully subbing will lead to a full time job once again since I up and left my old one in Fairfax, VA. C'mon suburbs of Des Moines, show some love! So, I used to teach my elementary students different cut paper techniques and I should mention that they taught me some cool ones as well. I also showed them how to make cut paper butterfly molas that required layering paper that would be cut smaller and smaller each time revealing some of the underlying color. At the time I did a little bit of research and there are a lot of artists that do this in a number of ways, with different colors and patterns. One artist stacked paper and cut away at it to look like a topographical map. Another, one of my faves, Jen Stark uses stacks of paper that she cuts into. I guess this is my homage to what some of these artists do. I would like to take mine even further, making sure to completely make it my own and just using these artists as inspiration. I used rectangles and circles cut from cardboard cereal, cracker and tissue boxes to reveal some of the color and mostly texture. I would also like to keep symmetry and repetition in numbers in these peices. In this piece I used the number 3, three circles, three rectangles. Most people don't know this about me but when I was a kid I had these little ticks, like a lot of kids do. I used to clear my throat and make little sounds in 3's, take 10 steps and count again in 10's. The number 10 is actually my favorite number to this very day, huh : ) This is how my first one came out but I think for my next piece I would like to take a saw to the bigger stacks and cut sections out or cut them in half to reveal the inside. I thought about weaving strips on top of strips too. I believe I will expand on my original wallflower idea through cardboard layers as well. Ok, well it's bye for now and I promise to not go missing for another month : ) Toodles