collage cards

Before nearly every special occasion (holiday, birthday, anniversary) I get out my materials for making cards and work away. I have previously blogged about collage cards here and here.While I use print and drawing media in cardmaking, I tend to make collages most frequently. I do not cut paper, I carefull rip shapes from it and only use a steel edge ruler for helping to tear straignt edges, such as when I want a coloured background or in landscape images. While liquid glue and an old credit card are good for spreading, a glue stick is the most convenient.

The detritus in the picture above was caused from tearing egg shapes from patterned wrapping paper. I always save scraps of different papers if I can imagine them being repurposed at a later date, and this is a good example of that.

Often cards are related to artwork I am going to make or have already made. This 1988 St Patrick's Day card (made for my "new" boyfriend - now my husband!) refers to a dream I had in the early '80s and subsequent artwork, Ocean of Life. I had also studied the poetry of Wallace Stevens in 1986 and adored the poem Our Stars Come from Ireland, inspiring the imagery of the green stars in churning water.

This postcard from 1988 was also based on a dream: on my first visit to British Columbia; although I didn't see any whales on my ferry trip from Vancouver to Victoria, my mind really wanted to! I remember wanting a durable backing for the card to make it from BC to Toronto, so I made do with a piece of cardboard from a cereal box.

Other cards have also been inspired by travel. This card was inspired by my visit to Sicily in 1997 where I saw some Greek ruins at Segesta.

Quite often I simply make cards from what is in front of me. In this case I simply reproduced the image of my avocado houseplant. I used some patterned green wrapping paper that I had saved in my re-use paper file.

Likewise, this get well card, made for my daughter in 2008. simplified the fish tank in her bedroom.

I am often lazy with images too, simply using egg shapes for Easter (as above), shamrock shapes for St Patrick's Day, and hearts for Valentine's Day...

Often I reuse images in the same year, if I am obsessively working on a project. In 2015-2016 I was hard at work on The Skipping Project (I refer to it here, here, here, and here), a multi-media project that was to be my MA thesis project (for personal reasons the project was never finished). I used the child's feet skipping rope in a number of cards. The rope in this card was made from a collage tape I made (using double-sided tape) from chocolate wrapper foil.

I used the skipping image again for Paddy's Day, though I replaced the shoes with traditional dancing hornpipes and drew the rope in as shamrocks.

Home Project continues...

I've done some more work on the "Home" project. The "House with the Green Door" was the second house I lived in. My family moved there when I was two and we left when I was four but I still have quite a lot of memories from that place! As I mentioned last week, this house was across the road from St Martin's, the school that my older siblings went to. I specifically remember playing in the schoolyard one day, it must have been on the weekend, and I had to climb over a tree that had fallen in the storm the night before (perhaps it was hit by lightning?); I got a splinter in one of my fingers from the tree bark and ran home crying.

With the help of google streetview, I did sketches of all the places (including apartment buildings) but for now I will skip those sketches and jump ahead to my emigration to Ireland in 1988! My parents had already returned "home" five years previously, so were well ensconced. At that time I was still dithering about where I wanted to be, but I lived with my parents in the middle of Bray town on and off for about 2 years.

Then I moved back to Ireland at the end of 1993 with my partner (now my husband). We moved down to rural Kerry in early 1994 and the house we rented, beside a small humpback bridge in a small village, was a renovated traditional cottage. We lived there nearly a year and a half.

Loathe to leave the beautiful Kerry, we found a farmouse to rent near Portmagee. I couldn't sketch it from google streetview as it is not visible from the road! I found this photograph of myself and my husband in the field in front of our yellow farmhouse. The summer of 1995 was a glorious one, and I recall having regular swims in Portmagee Channel (the water and Valentia Island can be seen in the distance. We simply had to go for a walk in the field behind our house and we were upon our own private beachfront.

After my Dad died in September 1995, my husband and I were travelling frequently between Bray and Kerry. It was an exhausting drive in an old banger that could not accelerate to pass rural traffic. We moved back to Bray in the fall of 1996 to a house that was available just a few doors away from my Mum. Being part of the same terrace, this house mirrored my Mum's house, though it didn't have the renovations that my Dad had completed. We lived in this house for a good few years, until our daughter was born in 2002 and we moved to the edge of town - where we have been since!

Home Project!

A couple of months ago I had a dream in which a friend gifted me some prints. I thought the prints quite beautiful and interesting. Both prints seemed abstract, but on closer inspection I realised they weren't. In the first print, overlapping layers of translucent colour were actually house forms, where each house was a different colour. In the second print, I realised the Rorschach-type blob was actually the same as the first print, except instead of translucent colourful houses, each house was printed opaquely monotone, such that only the outline was identical to the first print. I decided I should do these prints and made a sketch.

In thinking about the new project, I also thought the houses should have personal meaning for me and decided that I would research all the places that I have lived. I have lived in 19 different houses during my life, in Ireland and in Canada, for both short periods (1 month) and long (18 years). With the help of Google maps/streetview I began the research sketches of my homes. The house I lived in for the firt 2 years of my life was in "Cabbagetown" (so named because it was a huge area for Irish immigrants) in Toronto. Despite only being a baby and small toddler in this house, I have a surprising number of memories associated with it. Most significantly is the colour of the door: red.

My family, still remaining in "Cabbagetown", moved to a different house. The house with the green door. My siblings went to the school across the road from this house and "Walter's" was the cornershop up the street. Riverdale Zoo was only a block away, as was a cemetery and a playground park. Again, even though I was very young and only lived there for two years, I have very strong, specific memories associated with this house. While my siblings were at school one day, my Mum was watching a "parade" of some sort on tv. Suddenly I realised she was upset and crying. I was three years old. John F Kennedy was shot.

We moved to The Beach (now called The Beaches) in the east end of Toronto in 1964. I grew up in this house, spending the next 18 years there. I moved out for good the year before my parents fulfilled their constant wish - to retire early and return to Ireland.

I still have two more homes to sketch out of the nineteen, but I wanted to have an idea about colour and translucency. Using tissue paper I sketched the houses and started cutting them out (I have always loved cut-outs!).

 After cutting out the houses, the project started to develop legs. I no longer thought of it as solely a print project, but could imagine other media as well.

Starting at the beginning:
The House with the Red Door, oilstick & graphite on wood, 23.5 cm x 15.5 cm.