Cabinet of Curiosities

Art and images copywrite 2009 by Traci Donahue

January Cabinet

This was a fun theme. I had this shadowbox decoupaged in old Sear's catalog pages in the back of my workshop and only found it when I was looking for something else. Don't ya love it when that happens? I threw a light coat of gesso on it and than proceeded to search for stuff to fill it. I take a walk with the dog and cat every day and find some really cool stuff along the way. Most of these things have come to the house from different directions. The snails, wasp nest, moss and twig are directly from here. The Paulownia pods came from my MIL's tree. I found the agates in the gravel pile we had. The other rock I found, but I can't remember where. The little skulls were found in various places on the road and in the trees. The antler was part of a stash from Harlan's ex-FIL and was shot in 1947. And the dried paperwhite flower is from an arrangement by Cynthia.

Now I get to go looking for more stuff to collect!

Art and images copyright 2009 by Z'anne Bakke

Cabinet of Curiosities - Walks in the Watershed

Every day, Mari, my canine companion and I, take a walk. Though it's just minutes from downtown, Johnson Creek floods and leaves in its wake a lot of open space in my neighborhood. Just last week I found the 2 point deer antlers under a tree. And then I found a complete cat skeleton, also under a tree. Only my friend Tory B really understands my collection habit. These curiosities came from our daily wanderings, as well as a few second hand store forays. Though the detail is minimized, if you visited my front entry way you'd find birds nests, fresh water clam shells, feathers, seeds, odd things with no names. Perhaps I'm part crow. This one deserves a bigger canvas . . . perhaps some day.



Guess I'm a rule breaker . . . probably a reason I got kicked out of Girl Scouts. So here's a second Cabinet of Curiosities. This one's my husbands collection. Couldn't resist. I used the photoshop "Cutout" option to give this the texture that may be visible on your monitor. I'll let the images speak for themselves. If they could talk, we might be in trouble however!

Suzie

Art and images copyright 2009 by Suzie Wolfer

Amphibians

A quilt square pieced on a muslin foundation was mounted on a stretched canvas with matte
medium. A transparency printed from my sketch of frogs was attached using my old Camp Fire Girls honor beads. I nailed through the beads and into the stretcher frame. The beads do not appear in this picture because the computer scan was done before this last step so that the picture would lie flat on the scanner. The final product looks just a bit different.

Art and images copyright 2009 by Judi Stack

She Who Carries the World on Her Back

I loved working with the turtle and felt inspired with this challenge.

To start I found an image of a wise looking turtle, mounted it on very thin paper clay and embossed the shape into it. Then I painted a piece of bristol paper with watered down acrylic. Wish I had used hot press water color paper but live and learn. When that dried, I glued down the embossed turtle image then gilded over the top of everything. Once that dried I used pumice powder to remove much of the gilding then glazed with stamp pad ink and a little more acrylic wash. Then I scratched and sanded to give more texture. Last step was to lay down an image transfer of her head and touch up with very fine point black pen. The light catches her in many differnt moods that don't show up on a scan.

I like her!

Art and images copyright 2009 by Suzie Wolfer

Hidden

I call this creation, "Hidden". It is a chameleon hiding among the grasses and leaves. After pondering several other ideas to create for the December Reptile and Amphibians Challenge I decided to create a chameleon. The ability for a chameleon to change colors was my inspiration.

Since I love creating works using snippets and bits of items rescued from the trash can in my art room that became the medium of choice. The background consists of snippets fused on an 8"x8" paper, then the chameleon was created separately on a fabric scrap. Once I had the chameleon completed I pinned it to the background, stuffed a small amount of polyfill for dimension, stitched the chameleon to the background and finished the detail by trimming it with multi yarn on the top of the head. Grass and follage was created using feathers and a two-toned scrap of ribbon. Once all was complete the eye was added.

As you can see the chameleon's main color is a combo of blue and green but it is beginning to take on the colors - pink,orange,yellow,lavender,etc. - found in the background.

This was my first attempt to create a fused piece since my surgery. Thanks to my husband's assist with cutting large fabric pieces for me I was able to use my left hand to complete the chameleon. Boy, it feels good to be able to create again!

Art and images copyright 2009 by Marylin Huskamp

Amphibians and Reptiles

I could not decide which reptile or amphibian I wanted to use, so I used them all - snake, gecko, turtle and frog. Freehand sketch with watercolor on hot press D'Arches paper. Enjoy!

Art and images copyright 2009 by Jan Harris