Merry Christmas from Mary and The Boys

Merry Christmas from Mary and The Boys

Cut & paste paper collage, 2017

 

She's Making a List...

 Christmas is coming.  Making lovely things, looking at lovely things, lovely plans with lovely friends and lovely family...it's all good.  Hope you are happy with yours and them.

Studio Portraits

 A couple years ago I came across a box of vintage, hand-colored studio portraits.  Men, women, families, girls in confirmation dresses, all lovely.  I've had a lot of fun with them, and the box is still half full!

Some of the portraits I collaged and collected into a large accordion book called "Mask:"

A few others, two very attractive ladies and two sturdy gentlemen, I turned into quirky collage portraits.  Here they are:

Collabo-baby

 For many years my lovely friend Sabine Remy (Dusseldorf, Germany) and I have collaborated on a series of collage pieces.  One starts and then sends to the other to complete. No theme, no rules, no timetable, just whatever and whenever.  We have fun, and here are our three most recent efforts:

Collab #122 (Dream Girl, 2022) by Sabine Remy & Lynn Skordal

Collab #123 2023 (She) by Lynn Skordal & Sabine Remy

Collab #124 (2023) by Sabine Remy & Lynn Skordal (1945 Home Kinks)

Myth & Magic

 The Book as Art V. Myth & Magic is the 11th edition of an art show celebrating artist's books, which is on view at the Decatur Branch of the DeKalb County Public Library in Decatur, GA.  The organizers state:

Humans possess a fundamental attraction to stories and storytelling.  Folktales, fairy tales, and myths are foundational narratives that bridge the secular and the spiritual and merge the factual with the fantastical.  Art can challenge and disturb, restore peace and calm, uplift and inspire.  Myths and magic transport us and bind us together in the world of imagination.

Fifty artist's books will be on display in the Fourth Floor Gallery of the Library from September 7 through October 30.  I am very pleased to have one of  my accordion-style books about Greek mythology (Eternally Damned, 2017) included in this exhibition, and you can find out more about this wonderful exhibit here. 

Everything You Think Is Solid Can Disappear in a Heartbeat

 Working on some 12x12 collages for submission to a local exhibition.  Here's the first (have a little angst with your late summer...) (yes, I use ellipses a lot, I'm old...) (bite me, younger generation...):

Everything You Think Is Solid Can Disappear in a Heartbeat

2023, 12x12

(old studio portrait photographs, newspaper & book scraps, thread, watercolor pencil)

Artist's Books Wander Off

 It's summer and you can tell covid is over because there are lots of exhibitions in lots of places.  Here's where some of my pieces are spending the summer:

The University of South Dakota is exhibiting Bound and Unbound VII, an exhibition of altered books juried by that wonderful book artist, Brian Dettmer.  It runs from August 21, 2023 through January 3, 2004, and I am proud to have two books in this always fantastic exhibition.

A Little Bird Told Me

7.5"h x 4.5"w x .75"d, ten panels (2018)

Accordion-style altered book created from a mass-market

poetry book, tea bags, watercolor paper, inkjet images of vintage

snapshots, and book & magazine scraps.

I Love the Little Fishies

7.25"h x 4.75"w x 1", eight panels (2018)

Accordion-style altered book created in collaboration with Sabine Remy

of Dusseldorf, Germany, from a vintage German pocketbook, thread,

and magazine & book scraps.

Down at the beautiful Collins Library of the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma is the annual members' exhibition of Puget Sound Book Artists.  There is much talent in PSBA and the exhibition, as always, is a treat.  The theme for this exhibition was "Collaboration" and my piece is the cleverly-titled altered book called "A Book About Collaboration." (Sorry.)

A Book About Collaboration

Altered book, 10.75"h x 7.5"w x .5"d, 18 pgs (2023)

Vintage hard-cover book, newspaper/magazine/book scraps,

tissue paper, decorative paper, thread, pigmented gold wax, spray paint.

Out East in Rochester, NY, the Rochester Public Library will be offering its 12th annual "Art of the Book" show.  The exhibition will run from September 18, 2023, through January 6, 2024, and will feature artists' books, altered books, and paper sculpture.  My little altered book "Gustav Builds a Tower" will be included in what will be a very interesting show.

Gustav Builds a Tower

Altered book, 6.75"h x 4.75"w x 1.25"d, 68 pgs, (2019)

Vintage Italian paperback  book, Lokta paper, tissue paper, vintage snapshots,

gold pigmented wax, scarlet thread, book & magazine scraps.

Spotlight on BIMA

Bainbridge Island Museum of Art is opening its first-ever juried group exhibition -- BIMA Spotlight.  This is a salon-style show with works from a variety of Pacific Northwest artists filling the museum's two gallery floors, including paintings, prints, photography, sculpture, ceramic, glass and mixed media.  The exhibit runs June 30 - September 10, 2023, and I'm very happy to have my cyanotype fabric piece called honeysweetiebabygirl included in the show.  Please visit!!

honeysweetiebabygirl

Embellished cyanotype fabric panels

22"h x 25"w

 

 

More WIP: Collaboration

 Some additional pages from the altered book I'm working on:

WIP -- Collaboration

PSBA (Puget Sound Book Artists) has announced its call for an upcoming members exhibition with the theme "collaboration."  Usually I don't create specifically for an exhibition, but some ideas about collaboration are percolating around in my head, so this week I began altering a vintage book to fit that theme. It will be about different ways of collaborating...between husband and wife, with co-workers, maybe between different species, maybe famous nefarious collaborators, we'll see. 

Here's the first page spread:

WIP, Collaboration book

double page spread, 10.5"w x 14.5"w

I'm Playing with Positives and Negatives

 This one's cool...

She understood with terrible clarity what was being asked of her. But there was nothing to be done.

Clarity, 2023

cut & paste collage, 4x6"

 

This Is the Story

This Is the Story, 2023 8x10.5

(old handwritten postcard, magazine, book & newspaper scraps)

 

Bunnies In Process

 There is a logical reason why I am gluing eyes on bunnies at 10:30 pm on a Wednesday night.  And I could tell it to you.  Yeah, but no.

(And yes, I did make their cunning little capes and hats, too.  They're magical bunnies.)

Exchange Project

 Members of the NW Collage Society are participating in an exchange project with several high school classes, in which we will all create fold-up postcard/collages and exchange them.  We, the Society folks, are all about 142 years old, and the high school students are, well, a bit younger.  Should be fun!  Here are my two pieces:

Trifold Postcard Collage Project, 2023

10.5"x6", folds to 3.5"x6" for mailing 

Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns...Over and Out

 Okey dokey. We're all tired of guns and I'm tired of making art about guns, and nothing ever seems to make a difference, so hey, enough for now.  Thanks for playing, campers.

In Which I Plant Tulips in the Head of the Founder of the Open Carry Movement In Order to Pacify His Second Amendment Brain, 2015

Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns

It's Who We Are, 2015

cut & paste paper collage

In the first 23 days of this new year, America had 39 mass shootings (4+ killed, not including the shooter).  It's who we are, it's what we do.

 

Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns

Gun Doily, 2023

embroidery on vintage doily

More than 195,000 Americans have died by firearm suicide since 2010.  A huge part of America's suicide problem is a gun problem.  According to the Giffords website, guns are used in only a small fraction of attempted suicides, but because they are so efficiently lethal, they are responsible for a majority of American suicide deaths.  (Giffords is a nonprofit advocacy group run by former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who in 2011 was shot in the head by a gunman who killed 6 people and injured 12 others.)

Suicide attempts are often impulsive acts.  If we can reduce the availability of firearms during moments of crisis, we can reduce suicide rates and save lives.  The NRA says people who want to commit suicide will simply "find another way."   Ignore their lies.  The evidence shows that the vast majority of people who survive suicide attempts do NOT later die from suicide. They DON'T find another way to commit suicide, they find their way out of a crisis and move forward.  When guns are easily available, they don't even get that chance. 

 

Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns

Harbingers, 2018

cut & paste paper collage, part of a series of little collages

made from book pages and reading primers for "Zine in a Box" 

Since the Columbine school shootings in 1999, parents, school officials and politicians have struggled with how to protect and prepare schools against gun violence, and most schools now have regularly-scheduled active shooter drills.  Many of these programs rehearse simple lockdown procedures, but the "hardening schools" approach involves teaching kids "skills" -- how to jump out of classroom windows, barricade doors, fight back by throwing things like erasers and books at an attacker.  Sometimes the drills have added elements to make it seem more like a real attack, such as no advance notice or indication that it is only a drill, the sounds of gunfire coming from the school hallways, screams, fake blood, etc. This approach is coming under increasing attack because of the emotional trauma many kids are experiencing as a result of the realism in these kinds of drills, and a significant number of people even question the value of drills at all.  Some states like mine (Washington) are passing legislation to make it clear that realistic simulations of gun violence is not the best approach.

Whatever the approach, the situation is summed up nicely in a tweet from a teacher named Bill Ferriter (@plugusin), at 3:59 AM, on 25 May 2022:

During every school shooter drill for the past 20 years, I've promised my students that I would do whatever it takes to try and keep them safe if we were ever in that horrible position together.

It is America's greatest shame that those words ever need to come out of my mouth.

Thanks for your service, Bill. 

 

Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns

 There are only THREE countries in the world that believe their people have some kind of inherent right to own firearms -- Mexico, Guatemala, and the United States of America (Max Fisher and Josh Keller, writing in the NYT).  You want a gun, you get a gun.  It doesn't matter if you are a good man, a bad man, a crazy man, a misogynist, a racist, a fascist, a right-wing conspiracy nut, an abuser, someone who hears voices telling him to kill, someone who's irate that his girlfriend wants a divorce, someone who just got fired, someone who wants to end their crushing depression, someone who likes to get high on meth...etc. etc. etc.  As long as that is how we do it, then nobody in this country is safe.

Lord Lucan and the Amish Girls, 2012

cut & paste paper collage

 

Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns

 "For any American who is worried about this country, who feels our core values are slipping away, who believes something has to be done to change the direction of our nation before all is lost -- the NRA is your refuge  It is your place to stand and fight with Americans just like you, for all that is good and right."  Wayne La Pierre, NRA CEO.

For some of us, Wayne, the NRA is really not the symbol of all that is good and right in America.

Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns

Schmid Tool and WEE1 Tactical, manufacturers that specialize in the AR-15 assault style rifle, so popular in American mass shootings, are now offering the JR-15, a "youth training rifle" designed to look, feel and operate just like Mom and Dad's gun.

Gun violence became the leading cause of death for young children and teenagers in the US in 2020, "outscoring" car accidents for the first time.  I don't think the JR-15 is gonna help the situation.

God's Country, 2023

Cut & paste paper collage (vintage women's magazines, newspaper). 10x10"

Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns

Every month, approximately 70 women in the US are shot and killed by an intimate partner (Everytownresearch.org).  And every day, guns are used to threaten, coerce, control, wound, and kill American women: a woman is five times more likely to be murdered if her abuser has access to a gun (Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions).

A Death in Soho

("Some souls were heavy and hard to carry but hers weighed nothing more than fluttering wings and a whisper.")

cut & paste paper collage, 2014

Guns Guns Guns Guns Guns

Will America...

cut & paste paper collage, 2018

So here's a sad fact:  there have been so many school shootings, I honestly don't remember which one prompted me to make this piece.

 

Guns Guns Guns Guns

 "To stop a bad guy with a gun, it takes a good guy with a gun," says NRA's Wayne LaPierre, one week after the Newtown, CT school murders.

I dunno, Wayne, didn't really work like that in Uvalde, TX, where pretty much the entire police force just stood outside holding their guns for a LONG TIME, and saved no one.

Charlie's Angels

cut & paste paper collage, 20013

Guns Guns Guns

 "The problem isn't guns, it's EVIL" roared Senator Ted Cruz as he comforted the NRA (and his gun-owning donors) at their annual meeting not long after the 2022 Uvalde school shooting in which 19 children and 2 teachers were shot dead. Well, yeah, sure, I guess so.

 Pet Bird

Cut & paste paper collage, 2012