Death Becomes Her

Not “Death Becomes Her” as in the shitty 90s’ movie, “Death Becomes Her” as in the title/theme of my first ever art journal/altered book!  I have long avoided doing something like this and until I finally accepted an invitation to be a part of a round robin art journal situation I didn’t realize why I had been avoiding it. The truth is that although I have been putting my work out there more in the last year, selling something on Etsy or talking about it on my blog keeps a safe layer of detachment to buffer any possible criticism or rejection and that makes it safe. I mean, I don’t know that something in my Etsy shop isn’t selling because people hate it so it is easy for my ego to assume that Etsy is such a huge market that it is difficult to get the exposure you need to make a ton of sales. When you are putting your work into someone’s art journal there is a lot more riding on it. I don’t want to do something that someone hates! I would feel horrible!!!!

That being said, I have pulled up my big girl panties and am putting on my brave face to participate in the round robin I was recently invited to do. Part of the reason I decided to do it is because the women involved in this project are pretty special people. Now, this project is intended to have a darker theme and because of that a level of privacy/secrecy has been requested so I will not be sharing the names of these wonderful ladies and I will not be sharing any of the art they put in my journal but I will say that they are all amazingly funny, real people and I am delighted to be getting to know them through this process (ladies, you know who you are and you rock).

My first task in this project was learning to bind my own journal. FYI there are some really great video tutorials on YouTube for this and after watching several that explained several different methods I figured out what would work best for me. My biggest issue was that because my book cover will take a while to finish I really wanted to bind my journal in a way that would allow for adding the cover after. I ended cutting a strip of file folder and covering it with pretty paper to use as a spine so that it can be glued into my cover once the journal has been returned to me. I have no idea what this stitch is called but I like it because it allows the book to lay flat no matter where it is opened.

The first page that I did in the journal was the title/sign-in page.   For this I decided to do a really textural piece with a little door in it that opens to the sign in. I created the textured outer piece separately and then glued it over the sign-in sheet so that the door opens to it. For the sign in I used a wash of watercolor to give the paper a little aged look and in the lower corner I drew a heart and used watercolor pencils to paint it; the blood was done in acrylic paint.

I did a two page spread in my journal honoring my great-great-grandmother. I have been thinking about her story a lot while working on this piece and I have to say that it is no wonder I turned out to be a little “creepy”. I don’t really feel that I am creepy but there has been a household vote and my son and Big Orange have decided that I am so I guess I must be.

My first name comes from two women in my family, my great-great-grandmother Katie Morris, who was a known “seer” (or so the family legend goes), and my great-great-grandmother Katie Beavis Bradley Bailey (maiden name, first husband’s name, and second husband’s name in case you were wondering). This is the woman my pages are about. Knowing that I was named after these two women made me have a special interest in them as a child but knowing that one of them was a small town psychic and the other was murdered at 37 made me obsess about them.

The short version of Katie Bailey is this: Her marriage to my great-great-grandfather, Louis Bradley, ended in the early 1900’s and she remarried to a man named Charles Bailey. Her second husband turned out to be a wife-beating drunk and she left him several times during the course of their three-year marriage. In 1907 Katie decided to leave him for good and go back to her first husband. She was renting a room in a house in S.E. Portland while she took care of all the arrangements to make this happen and when Charles Bailey found out that she was going back to Louis he snapped.

On the afternoon of September 5^th, 1907, Charles Bailey went to my great, great grandmother’s house and shot her in the head, shot and killed her 12-year-old daughter Rhoda, and then killed himself. The saddest part of this story is that Katie did not die from her injuries that day. She lived in a coma for another three years before passing and because they didn’t know what to do with people in that condition back then, she lived her final years in the Oregon State Insane Asylum (the name was later changed to the Oregon State Hospital, this is where One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was filmed ).

The photos on this page are of Katie and the Oregon State Insane Asylum circa 1907.  The text around the revolver is actual snippets from the articles written in The Morning Oregonian in the days after the tragedy.  I did have a little mistake on this page that I am kind of bummed about but am trying to ignore. I ran out of the tissue paper I use to print the ghostly text and photos on so I tried using tracing paper and this didn’t work very well. It was fine until I attacked it with Mod Podge and then everything rapidly went to hell. Because you can’t really read that section of text I will just type it here:

And here she withered for the next three years, awaiting death’s embrace.

Thus ends the sad, sad tale of a woman who was shown no grace.     

Here are a few detail shots of the pages:

I am very excited to get this packaged up and shipped to the first amazing artist who will be working my journal so I am off to search for a box it will fit in. I might post about this once more after I finish the cover so I can show you but I will not be sharing the rest of the art in my journal when I get it back as it is for my eyes only.

Tell Me What You Want (What You Really, Really Want)

After the whole bug debacle a few weeks ago I promised myself that I would do a drawing of a fly in graphite pencil. This was to be my redemption drawing; proof to myself that yes, I can draw a housefly. Because I can never leave well enough alone this project somehow turned into a drawing of two flies mating, which then turned into a small series of different species of bugs mating.

I was really fried up about this so I found and printed several reference photos which I then pinned to my bulletin board. I got my paper-cutter out and cut down some of my fancy drawing paper (a.k.a. really expensive paper), and then classes started. I have a nice little stack of paper on my desk with the previously mentioned humping bug images hanging and that is as far as I got. My husband and son have now started referring to the pictures as my “creepy bug born” and both would like to know just what in the hell I am up to. I think I will leave them guessing for a while.

Truth be told, I am thinking this is going to be a pretty slow art month for me. I have two classes this session and this work load usually ends up being about all that I can take on. That doesn’t mean that I am not making art in my head thought!

Making art in my head is actually part of my creative process. Some artists do hundreds of sketches, some fly by the seat of their pants; my process usually looks a lot like me going through the motions of my daily life. I think and stew, sometimes for months, sometimes for days. Before I ever put my hands on so much as a pencil I have completed and art piece from start to finish 100 times in my head. Of course, once I physically begin I get to the messy business of loose sketches and gathering materials, but it always starts in my head.

Speaking of projects living in my head! The reason I am posting today is to tell you all a little about the podcast I am producing and to ask for a little help. I mentioned this briefly last week but thought I would let you all know my plans for the show and get some show ideas from you.

I am a podcast addict. I listen to about fifteen on a regular basis and have around 10-15 additional podcasts that I fill empty moments between new episodes on my favorites with. I listen to it all… history podcasts, science podcasts, comedy, live storytelling, science-fiction… you name it.

In my ever continuing quest for entertainment that drowns out my husband’s snoring at night while I wind down for bed I have listened to a lot of art podcasts. I realize that talking about visual arts for a listening audience is a bit challenging but seriously, there has got to be a more interesting way to do this! Most of the art podcasts I have run across are either hosted by the dreaded art snob, sound like a show someone’s grandma hosts on Sunday afternoon public radio, or are just flat-out boring as hell.

Well, I intend to fix that! My friend Alicia and I talk to each other at least twice a day, sometimes more. We are a bit codependent like that. What on earth can we possibly talk about that much? In addition to complaining about our husbands/ mothers/ fathers/ siblings/ random dorks who piss us off, contemplating the joys and trails of motherhood, or performing the occasional phobia check, we talk about art. I am never bored when I talk to Alicia about art. In fact, we are rather entertained by each other and although we both suffer from that odd condition which makes us thing we are funnier than most others find us to be, we laugh. A lot!

So that is our podcast in a nutshell. OK, not really. We are going to do a mixed media arts podcast, once a week for a half an hour we will talk about mixed media art. Our shows will focus on one topic per episode and we will have projects/demos which will be posted on the podcast’s blog for all to see. Most importantly we are not pretentious douches who feel the need to convince other artist we are better than them. We do not believe that you have to go to art school and receive a fine arts degree to create real art. We are not so elderly that we have forgotten how to have a good time or that creating should be a good time, and I don’t think either of us is boring. We will be ourselves, two arty girls having fun doing what we love to do. There will be some pretty creative swearing, silly stories, general goofiness, and it will be fun!

Now, as I said last week, this is still in the planning phase but we would like to begin recording in March and we want to have as many show ideas stacked up as we can. This my dear readers and friends, is where you come in! What do you want to learn about/hear about? It can be a product, a specific kind of art… whatever, as long as it falls under the giant umbrella of mixed media art. Are there any guests you would like to hear from? Let us know so we can provide an excellently entertaining podcast for you!