Books Unbound II

I just dropped off my pieces today for the show "Books Unbound II" by members of the Binders Guild book arts group here in Milwaukee. The show will be up November 9-30, 2014 at the Marian Gallery in Caroline Hall at Mount Mary University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There will be an opening reception on Friday, November 14, 2014 from 6-8 p.m. (See also my previous blog post.) There will be quite a variety of handmade books and other book-related art. We each had to do a 12x12" canvas around the theme of story-telling so I used a quote from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice for my collage.
 
We also each did an abecedarium or alphabet book. Mine is an accordion book "A to Z Tangles" with 2" square pages, each featuring a different handdrawn tangle pattern. The back of each page has the designer's name listed for each pattern. I had a lot of fun drawing these, but some letters it was difficult to choose just one pattern!

 We also each did a piece inspired by the theme "Cabinet of Curiosities." For mine I added to an assemblage piece "Inexplicable Syncopation" that I had done in 2007 for a show at the Bay View Book Arts Gallery, because I had never felt that the piece was quite completed (and I still don't but I had a deadline).

You can see these and my other books on Flickr here.

One Out of Three Ain't Bad

Finally got over to the Uihlein Peters Gallery today to pick up my art and see which one of my three submissions actually made it into the show Good Things...Small Packages. (I missed the opening because I was out of town last weekend.)

Fair Tomorrow (above) was the lucky contestant! I made it in Michael deMeng's Matchbook Reliquary workshop at Raevn's Nest Art Retreat last October. In fact, it's one of my few assemblage projects that actually got finished on the day instead of languishing for months.

The other two pieces I had submitted were Neglected Memories (below, which DID languish for months after I started it in Michael's Morpheus Box class in Oct.) and Internal Affairs already discussed in a previous blog post. In fact, the main reason I pushed myself to submit to this show was because I needed a deadline to force myself to stop fiddling and finish Neglected Memories!

Artwork in search of a title

Anyone have any suggestions? Sometime before the end of the day today I have to decide on a title for this piece so I can fill in my paperwork to submit it for a show tomorrow. It's an 8x10" canvas with a dollhouse window inserted in the center and a spinner lodged between the canvas and back that rotates the images in the window, all vintage photos from my collection.

I suppose some artists actually know what their artwork is about when they make it, but I'm often left to mull over the meaning after the fact. This was originally going to be a window looking outside with perhaps a birdie in a tree and a person looking in, but it evolved into an exterior window looking in with a tangle of interlocked women and men, which made me think of elicit affairs and secrets glimpsed through the neighbors' window. So I'm weighing something like "Neighborhood Affairs" or "Internal Affairs" but I'm sure there's some other clever phrase that would fit better! If you can think of something more exciting, please let me know :D

(This was sort of a spin-off of an altered book layout I did last year called "The Crazy People Next Door" :o)