using up those old photos...

A couple more journal pages from this afternoon. I rearranged my studio over the last week and was tired of cleaning, so I sat down and made a couple more journal pages using photos I've been dragging around forever. These are 5.5" wide by 8" tall.

The first one is my mom on a horse she owned when she was 18 or 20, so this is from about 1940-42. In looking at it more closely, I see that she inadvertently caught a rein when she did up the throat latch. Way to tack up, mom. God knows what the horse thought or how she was able to steer and stop him with only one fully functioning rein. Maybe they just went in circles, like a boat with one oar. 

Background is several layers of gelli printing. Then I stamped the diamonds, gessoed some circles, a la Roben-Marie, added some black Neocolor II around them and smeared it a bit. Sprayed some Fired Brick ink thru sequin waste (and all over my left index finger), then added a couple strips of gelli print and some text from that large-print book I bought, but ended up having to read before I could cut it up.

The next one I took in Munich Germany in Sept 2005, during the 3.5 days I was there. I finally got sorta adjusted to the time just as I headed to the airport to fly back home. Crazy. I was there to exhibit at a huge international motorcycle show, but finagled one afternoon to wander around.

This guy was ahead of me on the sidewalk, on a street where every other shop sold black leather bustiers and studded dog collars (for people). Dominatrix Row. Very weird.

Gelli background, more circles (apparently channeling Roben-Marie today), more Neocolor II (this time in red to pick up the red on the street barricades in the image) and some bits of red gelli print. More text from another large-print book. They're the best for things larger than an ATC.

Anyway, two more photos down, about 9000 to go.

lovin art

***ACK! I see now that I DID post this. They say the memory is the first thing to go... Well, read on anyway, I talk about my Mom a bit.***

A journal page from a couple weeks ago that I forgot to post. There's that turquoise again, used in a stencil Rhonda brought with her on Easter Sunday. I was just reflecting that I've almost always had some sort of artistic thing going on in my life. Macrame, sewing, crochet, knitting, spinning, weaving, quilting, crazy quilting, dyeing. And now all this paper fun.

I can thank my mother for starting the art fire within me. She was a painter of some skill and I have many of her works around the house, including the somewhat odd painting of cats and sunflowers that I have hanging by my front door. Unfortunately it isn't signed or dated (unlike her) but I know it was done when she was in her 20s, so sometime in the 1940s. (there's that turq and orange again... it's EVERYWHERE!)

It's about 10x14, done on a canvas board. Our house always smelled of oil paint and linseed oil and turpentine cause she usually had a painting or two going. In her later years, she worked on commission in the little Ohio town she lived in, doing portraits of people's houses and pets and kids.

Thanks, Mom.

Gini

My mom's name was Virginia. She died on today's date in 1986, from cancer at the age of 63.

She ended life as Gini, but along the way she way Ginny for a while, as signed on this old photo holder.

This is the earliest photo I have of her, sitting in this ornate chair. I don't know whose chair, whose house, what occasion, just that it's her. That's true of many of the photos I have and makes me wish I had asked when I'd had the opportunity. Actually, it looks like a photographer's studio shot.









She hung out on the porch of this house cause I have this shot, plus two others of her with women I don't know.














She knew how to roller skate. She looks like a ragamuffin in this one with her jacket falling off one shoulder and her baggy old stockings. What a hassle those must have been.

And that goofy haircut. She had two older sisters and neither of them had such a severe hairstyle at that age.

This is her with her grandma whose name I'm not sure of. I don't even know if this is her dad's mom or her mom's mom.

I love the old lady's dress and apron. Looks like a high school or factory in the background. This was probably in Dayton OH.









She liked animals. She always had a cat or three lounging around the house. No idea where this pig picture was taken but it always make me smile. Nice bandanna hair knot thing she has going.





This is my favorite picture of her.

Her hair was never that long after I was born. She always wore it short and efficient, but she never went out of the house without that red lipstick. God forbid.







That's all, gotta go!