Under the Ice

I’ve been sick, and as is usual for me in that circumstance, I haven’t been feeling inspired. But I made myself sit down to work, and at the end of an afternoon I tried something new: I layered pieces of different off-white papers pressed with leaves, threads, and speckles underneath a large piece of bright white paper laced with white thread. Over the off-white and under the bright, I placed a strip of origami paper laced with large purple flowers.

I like asking my partner, Jordan, to help me name my designs; he has a knack for it. He named this one “Under the Ice”, and it’s perfect! The name inspired me to keep working with the design, tinkering with the two bottom layers to really capture the essence of leaves caught under a film of ice. I’m really pleased with the results. Here are a few cards from the developing series:

Hawk & Whippoorwill

This summer I created 50 limited edition covers for the literary journal Hawk & Whippoorwill. H & W, "poems of man and nature", is a lovely little journal being resurrected by Pen & Anvil Press in Boston. There are still a few copies of my art-cover editions left, only $10 each. See this page for more information:

http://bostonpoetry.com/hw/currentnews.html

Dinner Party Invitations, 2008

Silver Sky Moutains, 2008

Brown and Blue Mountains, 2008

Red Samurai, 2008

Energy Fields Four, July 2008

All rights to all images posted on this blog are held by Bell Buoy Press.

Why I like to play with paper.

I can’t draw. Really, I’m remarkably bad at it. I tried painting in high school, and basically ended up smearing color around in vaguely interesting ways without regard to form or composition - I love color. But painting, without that drawing foundation, didn’t stick. I seem to have found my medium now, though: playing with paper lets me experiment with color, texture, pattern, and space in a way that’s incredibly satisfying and yields strong results.

Despite the swirling world of developing communication technologies, I feel paper in all contexts is inextricably tied to the richness of books, the power of the written word. On a different level, my pleasure in paper has much to do with the aesthetic beauty of a blank page. A piece of paper promises everything – anything – to me in a way that a blank canvas never did. And now that I’ve stopped trying to draw on it, the paper and I have much more interesting conversations.

I make collages, cards, stationery, invitations, coasters, and sometimes books. I also really love turning gift wrapping into an art form. A couple of old examples of my wrapping, from Christmas ’06, are included with this post. I am happy to take commissions for artwork or gift presentation, and to field inquiries of all kinds. Please feel free to contact me via a comment here; Bell Buoy’s email: bellbuoypress@gmail.com; or via my Etsy site: bellbuoypress.etsy.com.

A fair warning: Musings on dance and choreography will creep their way into this blog. Since I am also – and perhaps primarily – a performance artist, thoughts on my artistic process will definitely include input from that genre.