This Disordered Life Challenge

I love a challenge so when This Disordered Life aka notmassproduced posted a creation challenge how could I refuse?

All Roads Lead To...

digital collage using photos & prints

And this is what I started with...

...A master piece in it's own right!

Be sure to check out This Disordered Life for links to other artist who have taken up the challenge and see what they have created.

Love Story 1937 - 1980

Since I am using this blog as a place to record some of my work, I thought it might be nice to include this book I made as a project for my lithography course. Although, the images are okay they are not as good as they should be even though I did my etching plates twice. I only found out the following school year that there was a problem with the printer on which I made the films I used to etch my plates.

The subject of my book came from a stack of love letters my father wrote to my mother in the years 1937 to 1939, for theirs was a long-distance romance. Combined with pictures from my mother's photo albums, I created Roméo à Cyp as a tribute to their lives together. This August 23rd would have been their 70th Wedding Anniversary. Sadly, August 5th marks 30 years since my father, Roméo, passed away, and October 6th will mark 29 years since my mother, Cyprienne, passed.

This book was for them.

I made six copies, of which I kept three.

The title page, created by combining the cover my mother had created for the letters and the marks left by glue and paper on the back of one of her pictures.

A print created of one of the letters.

Various pictures of my father with a note he had written on the back of one. Basically he said the X on the gable indicated where his bedroom was.

My mother at her childhood home in Baie-St-Paul, Quebec.

A Valentine from 1938 which my father translated from English to French, the only language my mother would ever speak.

A small letter written inside in which he asks Cyprienne to write to him often as it will help make the days away from her so much easier.

A letter from my paternal grandfather to my maternal grandparents in which he assures them that my mother will be well financially and will lack for nothing.

The Bride - My mother and her family justaposed over two family trees she had created in her photo albums.

The Happy Couple

August 23, 1939

Since my parents passing, I have read most of the letters my father wrote as he courted my mother. I could only imagine her replies for he had not kept the letters she wrote. It is a very strange thing indeed to see your father in the role of courter and his letters certainly earned him the name he was given at birth, and which is synonomous with romance, Roméo.

Analyze This...

In the Deepening Creativity collage process it is practically impossible not to analyze every image you come across that grabs your attention even for a second. Although I admit I am short on magazine supplies, I realize that the books and magazines I am using using in this endeavour are within my grasp because their contents mean something to me...If they didn't, I would not keep them.

On day 18,298, I am still looking for peace and enlightenment. I really have to wonder if that search is ever complete. This is not one of my favourite collages but it does contain elements that have meaning for me.

Actually the sun rays have a dual meaning these days because I really wish the sun would burst through the clouds in New Brunswick and heat us up a bit, but I digress!

The spiritual thread continued on day 18,299, as my eye was drawn to pictures with churches in them, some with as many as 6 churches of various denominations huddled together, all with their own sheep flocking to the inner sanctums. Been there, done that!

Don't look for me in this image, for I am not there. I guess I am more nomadic by nature and hence I will continue roaming around looking for answers to endless questions.

Connections

This repost is part of the "Buried Treasures" project initiated by Seth at The Altered Page. I am relatively new at blogging and therefore did not have a lot to choose from. That being said this post seemed appropriate because I was musing on the wonders of blogging.

These past few days I have been reading the blog entries of many visual artists. It amazes me that we are from all over the globe, have completely different backgrounds, live completely different lives and yet our thoughts are so often similar. For instance, in a recent entry in Beyond Words, insanity was the topic of choice. Days earlier I found myself writing about sanity and insanity and how thinly veiled the latter was. Another topic was asemic writing, something I've done without realizing it had a name. In Identity I began writing a story about how our unique identity can be found in our fingerprints and our DNA. I was weaving this story through the ridges of my fingerprint but it eventually became asemic writing. It is a truly meditative process.

In the same vein, a few days ago I was reading Art Propelled where the weather was noted as an impedement to creating. The author is from South Africa where heat is the problem. Here in Canada winter has taken it's grip and -30 degree temperatures are paralyzing my creative mind. Opposites I know, but weather is weather.

I guess the point I'd like to make is that in some odd way the similarities really make me feel connected to something larger than I can imagine and I am finding that to be so beneficial. The most notable of the benefits for me is that being exposed to so much creativity is very stimulating. The images grab my attention, but it is the musings that captivate. I feel like I've come upon this great resource that is propelling me to create once again.

Which came first...the image or the words?

Father, it has been 19 days since my last confession...Ooops, I meant to say: Reader, it has been 19 days since my last blog entry.

Please forgive my confusion, but doing these collages has felt a lot like sharing my trespasses with the great beyond. And although as a creative outlet it has been wonderful, revisiting and thinking about the images I have been creating has me thinking I'm on the couch trying to figure out what makes me tic!

Goodness knows I am always analyzing and no aspect of my life gets by without continual review. I have a very large collection of books but with very limited subject matter; if I'm not reading about gardens or art, you can bet I'm reading the latest self-help tome. It's like I'm always trying to fix something. And frankly, the collage tutorial has the same kind of feel for me as reading Wisdom of the Elders. The Four Agreements, The Seat of the Soul, etc.(which is probably what attracted me to it). I was hoping it would provide the formula needed for me to grow and set me free to create instinctively.

Has this happened? Not so much...because I just can't stop THINKING! But that is not to say that I have not benefited from the free 5 part tutorial given by Shelley Kramer . As a matter of fact, I will keep on doing this activity on my own because I think perhaps with time I will learn that I don't have to control everything in my life...I could just let my inner creator create. Take the image below - a bunch of random pics. No preconceived plan, no great message...

...but wait! All those stairs, the long narrow hall, the great wall. Stonehenge, the leaning tower, David and a Cherub, all gathered together...What could it mean?