Thursday, August 04, 2011

A real Tiny Town, mail art and more

 When we visited New York City in July, we went down to the area where the city began as New Amsterdam. There was a wonderful bronze sculpture of the area set into a tiny park by the Staten Island ferry dock. This was it, the tip of the island of Manhattan, a small village, little houses, farmland.
 Looking at this village, and then up at the buildings around me, was such a strange experience. This Tiny Town represented in the sculpture became this tall, densely populated island. Wow! I mean, really, Wow!
 I was sorting through old photos, pre-digital days, when I came across several packs of photos from my old art foundation teaching years. I'd used them to remind me of what the students had produced. This photo cracked me up. It's from March 03. Since the students are wearing masks, they are unidentifiable (except one guy's face wasn't covered so I put a paper dot on it.) I wonder where they are, these now grown up people? They were for the most part 18 years old at the time of the photo.
 More of my Minimal 1 + 9B graphite series #246
 Again, I used a large sheet of water color paper, made lines with the 9B graphite stick and then worked with water on top of the line.
 I wanted a simpler look than in the previous series and I think I achieved that.
The circles were cut from the 1965 McCall's magazine and again, I was pleased at the way I was able to integrate them into the composition.

3 comments:

Margie said...

Always something different from you. Always enjoy.

phonelady said...

what a nice post .

Anonymous said...

I love that tiny sculpture. I will have to look for it the next time I'm in NYC.

Nice to meet you- other Mim :)

How did I get into this?

I was asked when I started doing Mailart. Good question. Like many artists, I was making and mailing art without even knowing it had a name ...