Ocean Window

I started collaging while on vacation at the ocean … with no wifi :O There was a collection of National Geographic magazines that visitors were encouraged to take with them. I spent hours and hours “harvesting” the magazines for content, patterns and color tones. The house we were staying was on a bluff with an AMAZING view of the ocean so for this first project, I tried to represent the view from our two story high front window.

Grow Joy

This piece was inspired by a beautiful picture of green tomatoes on the vine. I built the top tomato around this fantastic image of pure joy on the face of the red-headed avenged designer (name forgotten) as she seems to burst through the layered ocean scene I built. The lower tomorrow was built around the great image of the fingers pinching a surreal blob of water as if squeezing the earth. I created a gray pavement and mettle textures to represent how the growth of joy can thrive in any even the most inhospitable environment.

Bite Club

This piece started with the picture of the cotton candy. I knew that I wanted to focus on this, but it wasn’t until I found the image of mouth and the strong man, the rest started to evolve. I loved making his arms extend right into the cotton candy and the strawberry ice-cream bar (a childhood favorite) – he’s like ARGGG!!! I’ve included so many of my favorite sweets including the melting S’more. The girl behind the cotton candy was a perfect representation of the hate / love relationship so many of us feel around sweets and the self-judgement that can come up from our diet culture.

Mom’s Daisy Lemon Cake

As a shy, sometimes anxious kid, my 4th grade teacher encouraged me to take part in a children’s theater program. While she hoped that I’d be able to come out of my only-child shaped shell, I just felt more isolated amongst the clique of theater tweens. Every rehearsal was a strain and I was grateful when the final performance was over. Just one more social anxiety hurdle – the wrap party.

I arrived with a beautiful cake in hand, something I’d never seen my mother make before. The lemon cake was adorned with daisies – it was like holding spring in my hands.

The house was filled with kids who wouldn’t recognize me as they never paid any attention to this kid from another school. The mother of the house guided me to the dining room where I proudly placed the cake carefully amongst the sea of store bought treats.

I remember how sadness turned to anger as the kids came and kids went yet no one took a piece of my mother’s efforts. Being a kid in years prior to cell phones there was no quick call to bail out. Instead I sliced into the cake and with every bite I let my imagination take me far away from the “otherness.” I represent this memory with the surreal staircase in the cake slice. The girl holding the balloons rising up the staircase represents the escapism that came from the sweet lemon taste helped to squelch sadness. Just looking at this piece now reminds me of the warm feeling of every wish for me that was baked into that cake and each Daisy I picked off was a mother’s kiss.

Bejeweled Easter

I made this for mom’s Easter present. I loved building the background. Most of which you don’t see obviously, but the parts that pop out are perfect – like the eggs have been placed on grass and flowers.

And Then She Flew

I created this for my friend’s birthday. She’d asked some time ago for a rainbow related piece, so when I found this amazing cake, I knew that this would be the anchor of the piece. I had the bird basic form (very limited) and decided to build plombage from various colors and textures and positioned it as if it had burst out of the cake. To represent her early years in sobriety, I built images to represent the ability to see new aspects of like once obscured. I think the eyeball is a bit creepy, but the rainbow in it just seemed too perfect not to used, so I tried cutting it apart to help emphasize it. In the bottom right I added a little Tiffany’s box for my birthday wish.

Me Collage

Fractured

Joy

Locket

Tree of Hundred Patterns

After completing a mind-candy paint by number, I was inspired to use the color variations through hundreds and hundreds of leaves cut from magazine patterns.

A Bag of the Ocean – To Go

My mom got me some pop art books to harvest images from. I found a black and white image of a paper bag and was inspired to create …