What a glorious day, albeit a chilly one, creating an art piece for Art Conspiracy! I had been collecting bits and pieces of paper and old magazines for a future piece that I had never gotten around to producing. I brought all those pieces and some glue to the warehouse today to cover the space of an 18 x 18 inch piece of plywood. It has been awhile since I've completed an art piece. Lately, it has felt like I have all the words I need, but I don't know how to put them into a sentence or a paragraph. Today was a culmination of my own artistic intentions and musings. I was finally able to express exactly what I wanted to express. It took nearly 6 hours of cutting and pasting and varnishing in a warehouse, but the finished product was well worth it. The camaraderie of working next to my fellow artists elevated the experience immensely.
Paper, as of late, has become an important art material to me. It gives me an opportunity to be a bit of a magpie and collect bits that interest me, the chance to save things for a rainy day. Recycling wrappers and packaging, each with their own artistic sensibilities, is pleasant to me conceptually. The idea of turning trash to treasure has always been intriguing, especially when I can use the bits artistically.
I decided to create a mandala using kirigami (where paper is cut into) as my focal point and build magazine cutouts around it. The mandala was intended as a spiritual object to signify not only my own attitudes towards creating it, but also to coincide with the non-profit organization Resolana. Resolana is a Dallas-based organization that provides rehabilitative programs for incarcerated women. My hope is that the mandala will both symbolize and inspire rehabilitation.
http://www.artconspiracy.org
http://www.resolana.info
As a note, I was filmed and photographed during this process. If some of it surfaces, I apologize in advance, I'm a bit camera-shy.
Ok, enough explanation, on to the next paper project!
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