Virginia A. Spiegel

Well, there’s a lot going on in the world of garbage today, including a visit from a trash collector in that mecca of garbage, NYC. Check it all out at The Garbage Day Project.

Today’s bonus photo is what my neighborhood looked like before the subdivision went in. We don’t have smog, just humidity haze.

Coming later today: Preview and more details of tomorrow’s Fiberart For A Cause Collage Mania. My friend, Karen Stiehl Osborn, is donating some of her collages to the event to benefit the American Cancer Society.

I’ve decided to post a photo taken on my daily walk once a week on my blog. This is a turk’s cap lily - a native growing in my “wild” patch. What a gift!

I’m working on the collages I posted about Saturday and I am going to have plenty for the International Exhibition and Exchange. So just a head’s up that I will have 4 or 5 collages available here on Wednesday. They will be available for a direct credit card donation to the American Cancer Society through Fiberart For A Cause’s donation page.

I completed two more 18″ x24″ collages today. Detail from the fourth collage is above and from the fifth collage below.

I think these five base collages should give me a good start for the exchange collages.

I am liking gel medium very much although the finished look is very different from wax or using SOBO glue just on the back of the papers. I like the working back and forth between the paint and the gel medium. It is a lot like how I like to work with fabric — build it up, tear it down, and then build it back up again.

Hey, it’s Friday and time for something a little different. I signed up yesterday for Dale Copeland’s Tenth Annual International Collage Exhibition and Exchange and choose Collage Techniques: A Guide for Artists and Illustrators by Gerald Brommer for my bedtime reading last night.

So, collage it is today. If some of the materials look familiar to you, it’s because I used the samples I made for an article on tissue paper printing for Cloth Paper Scissors (Issue 11) magazine.

I consider these to be first layers — painted and screenprinted tissue and rice paper, Golden Fluid Acrylics, Lyra water soluble wax crayons on 18″ x 24″ watercolor paper. I was low on my favorite SOBO glue, so I used gel medium. I’m not sure I like the look of gel medium, but it was a great way to start work on my exchange collages.

This artwork, Or, is winging its way to its new owner, BJ Parady. It is a collage built up in layers of tissue, rice and found paper, with beeswax on a canvas support. The rice and tissue paper are painted and screenprinted with acrylic paint. The beeswax is used first as an adhesive for the layers and then brushed on and melted off until layers of creamy translucency are formed.

You can see more artwork in the Journey series here.