Somerset Gallery Summer 2011

It's FINALLY time I can share!!!!

A couple years ago, over Mother's Day weekend, in our VERY chilly basement - with a concrete floor, unfinished walls and old hanging florescent lights - NOT up to WHERE WOMEN CREATE standards by any means - I was "playing" to create an assemblage to submit to Stampington, with their Somerset Studio Halloween challenge in mind. Well, that deadline had come and gone, but I knew that their Holiday and Celebrations issue was still open.

My inspiration was originally the Eagles song, Witchy Woman. Primarily the verse, "she drove herself to madness with a silver spoon"... That was my jumping off point. A silver spoon.

Then, I remembered I had an old, thrifted, wooden house....

*****

I've been asked a few times what it takes to be published.

Well, it's a bit art, a bit committment, much waiting, and a whole lotta luck.

My very first submittal was a "why not?"

You could have heard me a mile away, screaming from my mountain-home kitchen - I was doing dishes - when my I-phone music blasting from it's charger/stereo port was interrupted by an email "bing".

I went to check my phone and there it was. An email from Stampington informing me one of my submittals was selected to be in HOME Vol. 5 2010.

Just like a giddy little girl, I called everyone I knew. I had to share! The dishes could wait.

Then, later that afternoon, my phone "bing'd" again...

Another of my submittals was going to be in the same issue....OMG!!! I had submitted both, months prior, and now all of a sudden BOTH were selected!!! I was truly on cloud 9...

*****

Fast-forward a few...

My creation, HOUSE 13, has been selected for a one-page mini-article as an Artist's Spotlight, in Stampinton's Gallery magazine hitting newsstands on June 1 - page 118.

As a one page feature, a lot of the detail and my article was edited for space, so I thought it would be fun to blog the details of the assemblage and my original submittal.

Inspiration & Description

As a child, and even as an adult, I have had some nightmarish encounters in my deepest of sleep. Inspired by an old, house-shaped shadowbox found at a thrift store and armed with several pieces of collected scraps & cast-offs, I attempted to
re-create that terror-filled madness - within and without the walls of House 13.  

“A place where falling fast asleep in a starry, silent dream-land, turns into a descending pathway of a never-ending nightmare; filled with silent screams. Left to wander through the dark unknown; running for your life with no momentum. Hearing voices behind you, and enduring all things that haunt you in the darkness of House 13.”

How fitting, too, this assemblage was created over a couple of stormy nights in the chilly basement of our house using an assortment of mixed media – paper, rub-ons, paint, fabric, record, tree branch, jewelry bits, doll pieces, silver spoon, brass stencils, glass vials, wood, metal, game pieces, toys, miscellaneous hardware, and pure junk. Quite the departure from what I usually create from found objects, but perfect for displaying at Halloween.

I created this 3-dimensional piece to be viewed from all sides in three primary sections:

RECORD BASE - with the words “Echoed Voices” scratched into the record and the stamped muslin warning “Don’t fall asleep”

TREE – its starry branches whose leaves turn from white to black to signify dreams turning to nightmares and the ever-present “arms” of the big tree just outside your window

HOUSE - each room hauntingly distinct with references to the number 13, while others remain vacant waiting for the next over-night guest

This assemblage is truly one of my favorites to display at Halloween. I'm wanting to make it's polar opposite. One of dreams. All shades of white and cream...Now, I just need to find another HOUSE!