Something outa Nothing

Magazine ads and photographs go through a rigorous vetting process in order to make the cut. They are scrutinized, compared, and with today’s technology, tweaked and enhanced. The photos that make it are there because professionals in this extremely competitive cutthroat industry of publication have found them to have the highest quality. Someone has had their finest work put into print. We admire them once. Twice if they are lucky. But my Fiskar scissors and I make these photos timeless. By carefully cutting out those images using the silhouettes and outlines, I now have the byproducts of a design. These intricate and unique shapes create art that tells a story, reveals a passion, or simply ties images brought together by color, and by subject. I puzzle them together to create my favorite pattern… Random. A collage of shapes overlaid and sit together to create a wallpaper of design. But not just to look at. To use. To serve. A utility. A beautiful utility. And thus is the suffering of a Practical Artist. Not just enough to be beautiful. The importance is also in its usage. And within that is recognizing that even the simplest of items we use every day can become a beautiful works of art. To be looked at over and over as Art should be. To be intertwined by purpose. A beautiful utility. My passion for this design arrived organically. Strolling the isles of my local AMVETS thrift store I happened upon… Yes I happened upon lol a small wooden briefcase. I didn’t know such a thing existed. I opened it and there were several compartments and sliding pieces that covered compartments.The wood was used in a way that certain pushes of something, a slat, a piece will twist like a Tetris game to lock things in place. Cut into the wood were little indentations for your finger to move the compartment covers. It was so clever and CLEAN! The outside had scratches and dings but the inside was pristine. The locking mechanisms on the outside were a slightly aged but in great shape nonetheless. So I took my $3 wooden briefcase with the idea of it being for my almost 7-year-old son. But he wouldn’t understand that the restore wouldn’t be a briefcase. So I wanted to make him like it. I went to the local Party store looking for a particular theme. His favorite at the time… Power Rangers! As you probably know it was several generations that had power rangers. I can hear the theme music Even now! I bought several packs of the napkins for your awesome popular Power Ranger party and got to work. Since they all have the same design I laid them all out flat then I cut out the shape of the Power Ranger. On the open napkin there were three different power rangers. I cut each individually on its profile. I got my Modge Podge decoupage and a sponge brush pack of 12 from the 99 Cents store and got to work. I painted a nice coat of the decoupage and let it dry a little. And then with another coat, while it was wet I randomly laid out the three different size Power Rangers to cover the briefcase. I took some the largest Power Rangers and created a sequence with about five in a row on the top. To me it looked like he was moving for running. I put extra decoupage on the corners that I thought would get dinged and around the handle area where I imagined it would be open hundreds of times. Every inch was different. The random assembly created an amazing design! My son carried that briefcase like he was going to work! I was so proud! And it didn’t cost very much. In fact it was pretty damn cheap! But I thought about how hard it was to work with the napkins. They were so thin of course and the glue would make them almost transparent. It was a real pain in the butt. But the process was so cool and effortless I wanted more. I thought about what else might there be lots of pictures available cheaply and also in a form I could use. So I was back to the thrift store. No one has cheaper books than them. And lo and behold I found a book on Egypt. A big beautiful book for two dollars. Oh another with even more beautiful pictures…Roses!! You got it, two dollars! I could not wait to get home to do surgery on these books. I already had giant framed pictures, again from the thrift store, with pictures that meant nothing to me personally. I knew then those pictures would be replaced by collages of Egypt now beautifully framed. And another of those said Thrift Store pictures would be replaced by a visit and vibrant collage of roses. The roses were magnificent cut out in their profile in different stages of development from Bud’s to open flowers and of course every color of the rainbow. But On a sidenote I had a lot of angst about cutting up a book. I love books and respect books and the thought of cutting them up made me feel funny. Up until I saw the picture with such interesting outlines and profiles. I knew I had done the right thing. For those two dollars those pictures would end up on the dusty bookcase and maybe never looked at again like the magazine ad. But again the learning process is the pages of a book or thick and there sometimes a little harder to do anything but flat. Then one night on the job flipping through a magazine it came to me. Here are the best of the best in pictures that can be offered. I thought about how many pictures were rejected before the one perfect picture was found. In the ad world I’m sure there’s plenty. But even for an article with pictures included. Would that not also have to be the finest? Of course! So now I found an endless source of photos. But what to do with them? So of course I returned to the thrift store to find a flat oval metal tray. It had a little weight to it but of course ugly as hell. But as you can see from the photo she is gorgeous now! The beauty of this process is that any person can do it. Any person who can cut with scissors can do this. And even people who can’t cut with scissors hopefully has someone who loves them enough to cut for them. But perhaps they can be part of the most important step. The process of placing the pictures in a way that the design is their own. The pictures alone don’t tell a story. It’s when they’re all put together on an item that they tell their own story. And everyone has a story and a passion for something. And there’s a very good chance that there is a magazine for that. Each magazine contains a wealth of free pictures! And guess what they already know the thing. People are throwing away treasures! Don’t let them! Whether it’s cooking, knitting, gardening, roses, traveling, spas, biking, flying, or anything in between there is a way to inexpensively use the work that person put so much into. And there’s so many items that have scars to cover, probably not unlike ourselves. And there’s so many items that are still very useful that are discarded for said scars. We can save every little treasure box, every nice tray we can no longer display, every fat frame around the mirror From being ordinaryand mundane and meaningless to ourselves. That’s the title Something outa Nothing. Almost every person of every age and walk of life can do this project beautifully and make every day items become every day masterpieces!