Mating Dance

Collage on old postcard.
Prints and t-shirts on Society 6

I'm Back! (Kind Of)

After taking a very long (1.5 year) break from this blog, and shutting down my other blog, I've decided to revive this one. For now, I plan on posting the art-related content of You Fill Me With Inertia, my Tumblr. I use my Tumblr page to continue the photo a day idea from my other blog, along with old postcards, odd old ads and photos, interesting art, and other odds and ends.  I describe it as “absurdity, ephemera, and art”. This blog, for now, will be just the art, and none of the other stuff. Later, I may do a few longer posts, and resume posting about various technical details about artmaking as I have in the past.

So, the few of you who have followed me here can expect semi-regular updates, for now.

Here's where you can find me online:

Lightbender-My work, work of others, discussions of art and artmaking
You Fill Me With Inertia-My Tumblr: absurdity, ephemera, and art
FLickr- My work, arranged in albums
Facebook-My artist Facebook page.
Society 6-Purchase prints, t-shirts, etc. of my work here.

Inactive sites:
A Photo A Day-Mo longer active, but the blog is still up as an archive
Etsy-nothing there now, but I may try it again at some point.

Feeding Time

Feeding Time on Society 6

Yes! More Collages!

I can't believe it's been over three months since I've posted to this blog. Chalk it up to laziness and busyness. I wanted to post something other than collage, but most recent non-collage work still sits in frames in my studio. It's on my to-do list to unframe and shoot them before school resumes in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, I have some collages made over the past few months that I like. Here are a few of them.

Collages!

I swear, I was determined NOT to post more collages until I had posted something, anything else. My school had it's annual faculty exhibit (see the previous post), and I was going to post the work I made for that show. Unfortunately, I ran out of time, and didn't get to shoot them before the exhibit opened. The exhibit's been over for a wek now, and I still haven't gotten around to shooting them. Also, after taking a break, I've returned to making collages, and have some that I really like. So, here are some new collages. I'll post something else soon, I promise.

Faculty Exhibit

The annual faculty exhibit is opening soon at Moraine Valley Community College, where I teach. Here's the info:

MVCC Art Faculty Exhibition

DeCaprio Gallery, Building F

Moraine Valley Community College

August 13-September 12

Reception: Thursday, August 23, 2-4 p.m.

I was a little rushed to get my work in, and as a result, didn't have time to shoot photos of it. I'll be exhibiting two cyanotype/Van Dyke brown combination prints.  These were made from photos I shot of storefronts using my reversed-lens Kodak Brownie camera. I'll post photos next month, once the exhibit comes down.

Yes! More Collages!

It appears that this blog has become a showplace for my collage work. I do other work as well, but the other things I'm working on now are either part of a larger series that I don't want to share until more complete, or not resolved enough to show yet. All in good time.

This first collage was just completed last night. Right when I was finishing it, I realized it was sort of a self portrait. For all the collage I've shown here, I have to admit that I've been struggling with it a bit lately. Ideas aren't flowing, nothing seems to quite work. When that happens, I usually put it aside and work on something else, but I've grown to depend on the immediacy of collage as sort of a creative Draino, clearing my brain of all the gunk that gets stuck there.  After a particularly annoying couple of weeks spent simultaneously not working on collage and beating myself up about that, the mental Draino did it's job, and this was the result. I think it's me, moving around empty shapes in a futile attempt to make something interesting happen.

This one I finished this morning. Came together fairly quickly. I recently bought a stack of musty old 60's era Better Homes and Gardens and Life magazines at an estate sale, and after sealing them in a box with kitty liter for two weeks in a (partly successful) attempt to remove some of the mustiness, have just started looking at them. This is mostly images from those magazines, on wallpaper. By the way, I've also been scanning odd and cool ads from those magazines, which I'm posting (along with other things) on my Tumblr, You Fill Me With Inertia.

I made this one back in April. It drives my eyes nuts looking at it, but I like it. Made from a postcard and magazine clipping on wallpaper.

I really can't explain this one. Made about a week after the one above, I was looking through an old book and saw that illustration of a mushroom cloud, and had to do something with it. Definitely one of those 'don't think about it, just do it' pieces.