Joy of Art Mixed Media Muse

Mixed Media Medley and Creative Techniques

I am a mixed media, fiber and collage artist and I use a variety of media and techniques to create my art. I not only use the usual paints and papers in my collage but I also combine a lot of non- traditional materials, found objects, recyclables, fabric and fibers in my finished pieces. I consider myself an out of the box artist and am always experimenting and exploring new ways of creating. I have use plastic grocery bag stretched over a frame as surface, painted collaged photos, bamboo wall paper, hand dyed tissue and anything else I might find interesting. I have altered children’s board book with photos of my trip to Paris, Auvers and Giverney. I used imagery altering to tell a story about my trip. I have taken beer coasters and transformed them into pieces of art.

I am always looking for new material to use in my collage: catalogs, brochures, advertising, poetry, or just words that I want to incorporate in my art to make a statement or provoke a feeling. I keep a clipart file of my own artwork to use in future collage and photo transfer the images onto fabric, velum and hand dyed tissue paper. I often incorporate flower petals, ferns, leaves and other things of nature that I find and dry. I have even used cotton balls, dryer lint, dress patterns, cardboard, bubble wrap, tulle, wall paper, fabric, hand made paper, beads, shells, stones and feathers in my collage work. I love to use recyclables because I think it is a wonderful way to take something that is ordinarily thrown away and transform it into art.

I use other techniques in my collage: stamping with hand made stamps, and rubbings with different textures, cutting tearing, folding, decomposing, aging, altered imagery, building, dying, painting, and bleaching.

My newest love is free motion embroidery to create textured surfaces, fabric manipulation and machine collaging. I also do hand beading and decorative stitching in my collage. I enjoy dying and painting my own tissue, paper towels and fabric, My constant inspiration are Quilting Arts and Cloth Paper Scissors as well as Celebrate Your Creative Self and other books for inspiration. I am constantly learning and inspired by other artists and their techniques.

I was very inspired by some of Raushenberg’s techniques and his use of recyclables. I also admire other artists who used collage in their work: Matisse and his paper cuttings of shapes, Picasso and his abstract cubist forms in collage and Bearden in his use of parts of magazine pictures in his work.

It continues to amaze me at how far the art form of collage has come from the first time that Picasso used a piece of oil cloth in his art to the incredible collage artists of today. As collage artists, we are creative and brave souls that are always pushing technique and media out of the box but that is what continues to make the art of collage fun exciting and always different. One of the things that I will say about both myself as well as other collagists is we trust our creative process.

My personal philosophy as collagists is to constantly explore, stretch, grow and when I have reached my comfort zone jump into the void because you never know what is just around the corner. Art is an adventure.

I teach my students the same thing in my mixed media programs. I will be offering a program in January 2013, where I will be teaching a variety of collage and mixed media techniques.

I can be reached at 910-528-7283 or you can contact me through email

Joyof_Art@msn.com

The Joy of Art Studio is located at 139 East Pennsylvania Ave. Southern Pines, N.C.

Contact me by my studio for a cup of coffee.

“Creativity Gives Wings to the Imagination.”

“I believe that every one is creative and that our Muse is just waiting

to be discovered and expressed.”