My Muse Sings

Sometimes I like to wear my favorite gold Fiskars on a long gold chain around my neck. Not just for the undeniable swagger. I want my tool of choice within reach. Wearing my scissors on a chain acts as a signal to my muse- I am ready! Come on by! And for me, the more often the muse comes by- the better. I love creating! Plus I love a great idea! Whether I am sewing quilts, making stop motion animations, or constructing life-sized paper doll clothes; proxy to my scissors is paramount.

I am a life-long multi disciplined artist, but these days my emphasis is paper collage. I love to cut and paste, cut and paste, all the live long day. My favorite technique, which came to me in a dream, is to use something off of every page in a single magazine to create a cohesive work of art. I call these my "magazine makeovers". Page by page, I snip out the colors, shapes, lines and textures to create an artwork that is ONLY finished once every page has contributed something. Presto! Conceptual collage! As a devotee of fashion magazines, I honor these totems of style by destroying and rebuilding them. Their shiny, colorfully saturated pages practically beg me to reconstruct them into art! Plus upcycling certainly beats sending them to the landfill. Page by page they are reworked into my musings. The process itself is a study in finite resources. A meditation on the power of transformation and alchemy. A challenge in expanding my own way of thinking. An exploration of my imagination! An act of defiance to mainstream notions of beauty! A re-writing of the visual story. A homage to all that is.

In the last year I have expanded my "magazine makeover" process. I started making extra large collages by using something off of every page of an entire years magazine subscription. For my first embarkment into the full-year-worth-of-pages collage, I went with the iconic Vogue magazine. 12 gleaming issues, filled with countless ads and swoon worthy fashion editorials. This piece quickly became my largest collage to date- a 5 x 6 foot collage using 1928 pages of the entire 2020 Vogue subscription. Made to commorate Kamala Harris's triumphant election, she proved to be the ultimate muse for this piece. Stoic and regal in a her crown and cape, I placed her in a luminous spring field, framed by snowy mountainous peaks. The collage itself has a painterly feeling; I enjoyed blending colors using thousands of snippets of magazine pages. I was proud to honor our first female Vice President elect via my art and I feel my piece captured the magnitude of that historical moment.

My collages are layered with endless narrative; personal , political, spiritual stories all told with the snip snap of my scissors. Nothing brings me greater joy than making my art and sharing it with the world. My hope is that I inspire others to explore new ideas, unleash their creativity, and invite their own muse in!

Allowing my muse to sing brings me a sense of purpose. Executing that as seamlessly as possible makes the process a true pleasure. For that I am thankful for my exemplary Fiskar's scissors. The pleasant tactile feeling and weight in my hand, the satisfying click clack snip snap noise they make, the way they hang beautifully- if not a tad dangerously- off my chain necklace. Not to mention their endless and dutiful service to me and my muse! My artwork would not be what it is, and frankly- I would not be who I am, without my beloved, favorite gold Fiskar's.