3SIXTY5 #15: Taking Her Bow

Tonight's digital collage is another expression of my love for ballet, as well as image making. In addition to being part of my collage-a-day project, it is also my offering on Theme Thursday's "Black and Red" challenge. Thanks for looking!

3SIXTY5 #11: Garden Dreaming

Please accept my apologies for the awful image. The original is too big for my scanner, so I did what I could with the hand held digital camera. My son is going to help me set up a copy stand with a tripod (of which I have several, from the old days of taking portfolio shots with the 35mm camera) so I can avoid bulgy, distorted pictures like the this. Later I will replace this image with a better one.

I call this collage Garden Dreaming, because that's about all I'll be doing garden-wise this year! What's cool is that all the flowers in the piece (and even the swallowtail butterfly) were cut from photos I took of my own garden over the years. The view through the gothic window is the actual view through my bathroom window. I added the gothic window frame, which, alas, my bathroom does not have. The Botticelli angels have yet to appear in my garden, but I keep hoping.

Tonight I attended a performance of Pittsburgh Ballet Theater's Swan Lake, and got to see my ballet assemblage box with the other works in the exhibit. It's amazing the spectrum of ideas and interpretations that the artists came up with for transforming pointe shoes into works of art.

A Swan Lake for Joseph Cornell

My Facebook friends wanted to see a photo of the assemblage box I made for this weekend's Pittsburgh Ballet Theater fund raiser, but for some reason it wouldn't upload on FB. Here it is:

This photo was taken before the piece was put behind glass, thus there is no top on it yet. It measures approx. 13 x 16 x 5 inches. PBT provided each artist with a pair toe-shoes from which to creat their art, preferably with a Swan Lake theme. It was cool just to see real pointe shoes up close! The shoe in the lower portion of the box represents the Odile, the Black Swan. I wish I had taken detail shots of that area because you can't see anything in this photo. There are black feathers sprouting out of the shoe. The walls are lined with gold music on black paper.On one side is a tiny photo of an x-ray of a ballerina's foot on pointe, and on the opposite side is a picture of a swan skeleton (you can just see a bit of it, by the heel of the shoe.)

The upper part of the box is lined with music from the score of Swan Lake, and represents Odette, the White Swan as pictured by Tamara Toumanova. The "wings" are wire, gauze and white feathers. The small blue bit is a tiny photo of Joseph Cornell's box, "A Swan Lake for Tamara Toumanova: Homage to the Romantic Ballet," which he made in 1946. Thus I entitled my box to be a homage to Cornell himself.

3SIXTY5 #7, TEMPUS FUGIT

Today's work in my collage-a-day project is aptly named. Still reeling from an all-nighter on Sunday/Monday, here I am up late again. But tonight's work was well-seeded with ideas and insights (unlike my garden, which is packing its bags and getting ready to hitchhike to more attentive grounds. Art takes its toll.) I will briefly share one of those discoveries:  I can adjust the color balance of scans in my digital camera software. Eventually I'll do this sort of task  in Photoshop, but for now, simpler is better. Good night.

Holy smoke, I almost forgot! My ballet piece was juried into the exhibit for Pittsburgh Ballet's Swan Lake performances. Ah, sweet return on efforts! Since I was asked to submit a short bio (2-3 sentences--no kidding), I took the opportunity for some blatant self promotion, including the url for this blog, and for my Etsy store. Yes! Just like a premature baby, I am shocked and delighted to find that my Etsy store has opened in spite of me! Lots of work to get it up and running before the exhibit opens on Friday night. The question now is--how will those taxes get done? Will the IRS accept a collage in lieu of money owed? In my dreams...

Two Immortals: Cornell and Toumanova

I cheated a bit for today's 3SIXTY5 piece. My latest work was an assemblage box, and I offer this detail photo of the central motif in lieu of a collage. Because I stayed up, literally, all night to finish it. Arriving home today after delivering the piece to Pittsburgh Ballet Theater's studios for their 40th Anniversary fund-raising competition, I am no fit state to make a collage (or much of anything else.) The piece is a homage to that ineffably alluring constructor of imaginary worlds, Joseph Cornell.

There is a tiny image of one of his a ballet-inspired works, "Swan Lake for Tamara Toumanova," on the back wall of the box. The ballerina is, of course, Toumanova herself, her photo magically made into an instant souvenir via a download from the internet and sepia monochrome inkjet print. What next??

Ballet is an acquired taste, like so many ritualistic manifestations of a particular culture--masonic rites, opera, Noh theater, even (ugh!) bull fighting. I admit to being enthralled by the ballet, as was Cornell, and another of my heroes, Edward Gorey. So it was delightful to create a ballet-themed box, and I will be thrilled if it is selected for the exhibition. If not--hey, this is the first assemblage piece I've made in like 8 years!! So I am happy to have done it--assemblage boxes are very physical--and I will do more. But first, some SLEEEEP!!