Add and Subtract

The track of memories has drawn me to this photo, taken by my father over 50 years ago. Me and my big sister, in matching outfits made by my mother's mom.

Easter bonnets. Easter flowers.

  

 Old photos often serve me as source for sketch book explorations. 

Recently I realized that even  my rudimentary Photoshop skills were enough to manipulate images on the computer.

experimenting with addition and subtraction

What to add, what to remove, to evoke change, loss, memory?

three layers of past tense images

Every idea is a branching path.

I picked this one to follow this spring.

Layered image, reversed for transfer printing

Printed and transferred onto vintage tea napkin, the image argued with earlier random dying. It ached for color. So I painted, collaged, and stitched.

After a month's rest, that seemed too chaotic. Perhaps I'm responding to the news. It seemed important to bring more unity, to echo pattern, to calm and center the piece.

12x12, mixed media, mounted on board

What do you think? Finished now?

BackWall Gallery, Lowell

The Loading Dock Gallery has expanded to a new space, the BackWall Gallery, beside the former entrance. Four times a year a new artist will be featured to represent the Gallery 24/7. I'm honored my work is up this quarter.

Ten years ago, I emptied my mom’s home. 

Among the piles, I found photo albums.

 

Some from my childhood. Many from my dad's youth. One from my mother's childhood. They breathed with the freshness of the dreams.

The images of people, once children, now gone, overlap with my own memories:

of being the little sister  and of raising my girl.

They say each time you unpack a memory, it alters.

Our present rhymes with our past.

We embroider. We forget.

But the outline remains.

Collage and stitched cards

 Who doesn't like a card in the mail?

Valentine's Day: my favorite holiday.

It comes after the deluge of December, the recovery and clean up of January. 

A quieter time, when you have permission to hand out extra hugs.

Culling out books from our shelves, I found a paperback from college that was falling apart. So I spread the pages on my studio table and went to town with the tag-ends of various paints: pink, fushia, purple, and white.

When these dried, I cut out hearts and started to work. Some scraps of text worked their way back in. More and more materials came off the shelves to play.

Eventually transparencies of old photographs and machine stitching were involved.

And last scraps of hand-dyed and -printed fabric:

Every card is unique, ready to be mailed or framed.

You'll find my hand-made, one-of-a-kind Valentines at the Loading Dock Gallery.

Or visit me on February 2, from noon-5pm. I'll be in studio 512, Western Avenue Studios.

Pick up your "Gifts from the Heart" card as you enter the building, get it stamped from participating artists, and  you'll have a chance to win a gift certificate, good with any WASA artist.

Exploration

It's done. Three panels. And now I think I'll make two more, little ones, to go on either outside edge.

 Recently I attended another  Golden Working Artist  workshop. Adria Arch is our representative, leading workshops about paints, mediums and techniques. The workshops of course promote Golden materials, but I appreciate the chance to experiment with guidance, not to mention free supplies.

 

The most recent workshop was on gelatin transfers. I'd been having so much trouble at home I went. Surprise: the big lesson of the day was just how finicky and unpredictable the technique is, dependent as it is on ink level, paper type, even the weather (very cold and dank that morning.) Yet, among all the failures, this piece:

Twice Two  Linda B. Dunn

Today the weather swings to the outrageously hot - nearly 100. (Calm, gradual weather shifts:  did I make these up or do I really remember them?) I'm working on the press release copy today: good work for an air-conditioned coffee shop. Then a college friend arrives, and in the afternoon I teach, then I pick up new sunglasses and my DVD from my photo shoot the other week. So poof another day flies by.

I need to figure out how to support this piece. My daughter, the set designer, says she can walk me through building a box for it. Can't be too hard, but, like any thing new, I'll appreciate some guidance on my maiden tour.

Beginning, Middle, End  Linda B. Dunn