Punk Fiction, Part One: Demon in My View

The efforts that you will see here under the heading Punk Fiction are works inspired by the on-line book making workshops led by Michael deMeng.  You can still take the workshops on-line by going here and signing up.  I will not be revealing too many of the techniques here in detail as I do not want to spoil Michael's great class for anyone who wants to take it.

The first part of Punk Fiction concentrates on the covers.  In the second part coming this spring, we will be altering the inside of the books.

The first book I chose to alter was a hardcover copy of Demon in My View, a vampire novel by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes.

I gathered some goodies to add to the cover including a little bird skull and jaw.  

Aves Apoxie Clay forms the base for the goodies to be added.  

 The cover then got painted with acrylic paints.  

For the back cover, I went with more acrylic paint and some Bible quotes.  

Arise, O Lord, disappoint him, cast him down;  deliver my soul from the wicked, which is thy sword.  

Concerning the works of men, by the word of thy lips I have kept me from the paths of the destroyer.  

Then I had one of those weird things that happen in assemblage.  While the bird jaw was a cool topper to the niche in the cover, it was fragile.  One night while working on another book for this class, the new one tip over and an appendage sticking out of that cover landed directly on the little jaws and shattered them.

OK.

So I went down into my stash of bones and found a cool little birds foot.  With some Apoxie clay and some more acrylic paint, I managed to affix the new appendage to the work.  

So the cover is done on Demon in My View.  I will be setting this one aside to alter the pages in part two of Punk Fiction.  

UPDATE:  March, 2014

After careful procrastination, I decided not to alter the inside of the book.  Instead, I sealed the outer edges with Apoxie Clay and then painted it with acrylic paints.  

An Astrolabe Alert

I was reading the book Persian Art & Architecture by Henri Stierlin with photographs by Henri and Anne Stierlin and Adrien Buchet (Thames & Hudson, 2012) when I came across a section on the astrolabe.

The astrolabe is a historic device to locate the sun, moon and stars.  What I liked about it was it is kind of steampunky with all the moving parts.

I searched the Internet for some examples of astrolabes and was even more keen to try this as a form after seeing the multiplicity of types the ancients had.

Then I found a piece called Poetical Modesty made by the fabulous Keith Lo Bue which is inspired by a Persian astrolabe.  You can read all about Keith's method at http://keithlobue.blogspot.com/2010/06/poetical-modesty-in-progress-stage-1.html.

So now it came time for me to try my hand at the astrolabe form.  I started the base off with a plastic peanut butter container lid.

So, after about eight hours of work on about $5 worth of parts, I had my astrolabe that I call Alert.  

Walker's Point Center for the Arts' Gift Shop

I was pleasantly surprised to find that after being invited to have some photos and mixed media frames in the Dia de Los Muertos at the Walker's Point Center for the Arts, I was invited again to submit some similar works for the brand new Gift Shop which was going to opening on Friday, December 6th, the night of the COPA show opening.

Mary Overman, the very kind Membership/Exhibitions Coordinator at the Center, has been guiding me through the process.  She selected a number of photos from my Flickr page and it was up to me to figure out which to frame.  Because the Oaxaca photos sold so fast, we decided to do another round from the trip.

The first three frames started as bare wood.  I decided that for the first one I would collage pages from a Spanish to English dictionary with classical sheet music.

After the collage was done, I painted the piece while being careful to select certain words and highlight them with paint.  

This image from a shop in Oaxaca was the image I wanted to use with this motif.  I found a music holder in my stash and added that, with its own sheet music, onto the front of the frame.  One of the highlighted words on the frame was "barbulla" which means clamor and that became the name of this piece.  

The second wood frame was adorned with three tin candle holders made in a Mexican style. 

This pieces is called "Skull."

The last wooden frame was destined to become the home of my favorite photo from the Oaxaca trip.  The first addition was a Dodge car key to the front which I wanted to use because of the classic star imprinted on the key.  

The additional of the crown of nails really opened up the work. I painted this one up with a rusty color in mind.  

The bottle cap was painted while I was in Oaxaca and I added it to the frame.  

The final attachment was a metal strap.  Below is the image that I love so much.  

The title of this piece is "Chomp."  It sold before the gift shop opened which is not only pretty cool but rather magical sounding, eh?

 The last frame was one that had just come home from the Fond du Lac Public Library exhibition called "It's a Dog's Life."  I added one element to it:  a dog tag with the words "El Fido" which also becomes the new name of this work.

I decided that one of these pieces was going to be painted in the alebrije style of the Zapotecan figure carvers.  As it turned out, the frame I selected has a series of dots imprinted into the structure that lends itself to the Mexican style.  However, an odd thing happened when I started.  I did one round of white dots and like it so much that I stopped right there.  

It must have worked because "Muerto," as this one is called sold before the gift shop opened as well. 

So, three of the pieces are still in the gift shop if you are interested.  I am going to be adding different pieces as time goes along so stop in at Walker's Point Center for the Arts to see all their exhibitions and don't forget to stop in the gift shop.