War and Art

Memorial Day. And this Memorial Day, more than any previous, has my attention as we count the numbers of dead and wounded in Iraq. A terrible waste of lives…and of money. Remember? It’s always been about money. But the money wasted will return to us eventually. It always does. The soldiers, never.

It has been said countless times before this that we should never send our young to fight the wars. They are our future. Send the old and the wise. Then see how long a war lasts.

On a different subject; the arts have struck again. I’m feeling creative. Why does that only happen sporadically and not on demand? Grrr! This episode of creativity started with our visit to Zack and Michelle’s house where we saw Zack’s artwork and studio. And while we sitting in their living room, I spotted a magazine that contained very hip advertising images; lots of them. (I have to find out the name of that magazine!) Then I saw a book that Laurae was registering for the internet book sales; Splash 5. That led me to a work by Victoria Greene. In this work, (image unavailable) the artist had used a ‘hot wax gun’ to create blank islands surrounded by dikes of wax. The islands were filled with water and then pure pigment was added and blended. After everything was dry, the wax was scraped off with a credit card, leaving a white space. Most cool! So now I’m looking for a source for the hot wax sticks and low temp glue gun, the ‘weapon of choice’.

A little investigating reveals that Victoria Greene’s technique was influenced by Maxine Masterfield. Now here’s an artist that I didn’t know about before today, but now that I’ve seen it, I love her work! Especially the mixed media and her works with metallics. OK, she is my new ‘favorite’ artist.

I can already see this technique being used on my Karlee project. Along with the pieces of acrylic mirror, of course.

Then I looked at the Dick Blick catalog. I shouldn’t have done that. There are far too many exciting possibilities in it. Especially in the Acrylic department. I saw some of the high temperature acrylics and thought I might be able to mix copper, gourds and high temp acrylics together. Can you safely bake a dried gourd for 30 minutes at 325°? We shall see...