Her Black Self

 

I finished up two collages for the "At Her Age" juried show at A.I.R. Gallery in New York. The show explores womens concept of body image at different stages in life. My work incorporates text, paste paper. wire and vellum. Some research shows that Black women and Asian women have a more positive body image than Caucasian women who are more bound to societies rigid and often unattainable standards of beauty that are predominantly European.

Explorations in Collage

 

I continued working in the studio today exploring cut out shapes to use in the artwork for the A.I.R. show. I like how cut out shapes create both positive and negative spaces. The shadows play over the surface creating another dimension.

Paper Clips, Washers and Memories

 

Experimenting with collage. Love the square format after creating those 13 collages for the New Zealand Exchange. Way back in November I did a large collaborative work at a school in Rockville, MD and wanted to use paperclips and washers to assemble the hundreds of 4" x 4" protraits that the children made of their grandparents. The teachers were skepticalabout the weight of it, so we mounted them in a more traditional way. Ever since then I've wanted to create some assmblages using paper clips, washers and other small tools. It reminds me of my father and how he had all these tools in his basement workshop mounted neatly on a huge peg board behind his work tables.

Paint Explorations

 

Loving that thick acrylic paint and having the time to explore in the studio. I'm warming up by painting with acrylic and paste and drawing into the background textures with oil pastels on 7" x 7" squares.