Claudia McGill posted: " During July-August 2023, I am participating in an online class at the Smithsonian taught by Marcie Wolf-Hubbard (of Tiny House fame). This time the subject is artist books - creating them with and as mixed media art. Recently it's sketchbooks that hav" Claudia McGill and Her Art World
During July-August 2023, I am participating in an online class at the Smithsonian taught by Marcie Wolf-Hubbard (of Tiny House fame). This time the subject is artist books - creating them with and as mixed media art.
Recently it's sketchbooks that have emerged as my artist book form. Now I am ready to return, even if just for a little while, to earlier styles. I will take you along as I work through this studio class.
I have made a number of artist books over the years, but nothing recently. Here are three from the past:
On July 26 we worked with photographs with the idea of using them in our altered books.
I found some images I had taken at various times and printed them out on photo paper. Others used commercially printed images developed from film, magazine pictures, or pictures printed out on regular paper. Marcie showed us a variety of ways to alter the images, whatever the surface, using a variety of materials - crayons, oil pastels, acrylic paints, inks and markers. She also distressed them using sandpaper or brushes and applied collage.
I think that over the years I have used these materials to change a photo for inclusion in a collage, but for some reason today I was more interested in altering the photo but allowing it to remain a stand-alone image that still represented its original subject.
So, I took some photo images from my archives pretty much at random and got to work. I used India ink, acrylic paints, acrylics inks, and acrylic markers. Here are the results - and I will show the original incarnation and then the new version.
Family Room. I am considering painting my fireplace, so I took photos of the room - that's what this picture is, a quick snap. And it became somewhere else in my altered image, way beyond a different fireplace color!
Shopping Center, Ardmore, PA. I don't know why I took this photo - but anyway, here it is,with a different look and the addition of a harried shopper pushing a baby in a stroller.
Two Houses. I took this photo through the car windshield, sitting in a parking lot while waiting for my husband to pick up our dinner.
Bank Building, Norristown, PA. This building was originally the Bank of Montgomery County, but I first knew it as the Norristown branch of the Philadelphia National Bank, my employer (though various mergers and name changes) for about 15 years. For several years I worked in small business lending and visited every one of our 66 (at the time) branches, this being one of them. I am not sure who owns it now - it's currently unoccupied. But - I still have quite a few memories of the customers and staff who worked here - and I think the building is beautiful.
What did I think of this new art path, the altering of photos into a recognizable but new version? Let me tell you, I LOVED it. I don't know why but it has never occurred to me to handle photos in this way. But, the combination of my own photos, with my own compositions and associations, and the addition of color and line remaking or changing emphasis in the images - well, it was nothing but fun. I will be doing this again.
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