With Nothing Left to do....

     The Little Skeleton began as an homage to Frida Kahlo, and Dia de Los Muertos. As a woman familiar with, and brilliant at expressing loneliness and pain,  Kahlo's life and work opened my eyes to an aspect of our culture that is hugely amiss. We are uncomfortable people who don't want to talk about bad things. I envy older cultures, more mature and brave in tradition.
     I created the Little Skeleton's image and a one line explanation, hoping to evoke discomfort, but also a fondness for the character that would conquer the discomfort.
     People began to inquire about him, and that encouraged me to tell his story...
     The Little Skeleton is abandoned by life, too quickly, and left in the wrong season at a theme park. Going through the motions, without an animate friend or guardian, he is not so much trumped by rides and games without operators, as forlornly playing until he just moves on. He plays every game and rides every ride, but it's not what it's supposed to be. Then he departs.  It's not meant to depict suicide, as the little skeleton is already dead, but I guess the imagery is a bit macabre. It seems to me he was just born that way, more a sad symbol of the loneliest thing: being a child with no play mates, in a space that's usually filled with color sound and company; everything with him is just a bit off.

      The story book is hand dyed, embellished, and screen printed with my original drawings. I made eight copies and have two left, available at   The Little Skeleton

a proposal

The Women's Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York, has a grant for book artists. The deadline was for Nov. 15 and I sent in my proposal. It included a written proposal, budget, and mock up for the intended book. Here's what I did from October to November.

Guess who's back:

This is the mock up, and includes illustrations of the pages in photoshop,

layout for the printed layers, and fabric swatches.

This Little Skeleton might just seem like more of the same, but it is something that I feel needs the chance to be produced on a larger scale. I would also love the opportunity to incorporate old books and linens, since this is the direction my other work is heading. There are just so many materials already at our disposal...and we treat that literally. We waste so much. I don't want to make a huge statement. I don't think sustainability has the novel luxury of statement making, anymore. Our new evolution is inherently regarding a resource as its life span and resting place. The artistic process can be beautifully adapted to making old things new-process in place of processing and discarding. We give so little thought to where everything and everyone goes at its end- from wastefulness to our morbid interpretations of memorials as headlines-I don't want to get too universal. (I hear myself making everything the same, too often). But, at the least, everything and everyone deserves the same consideration and respect, including the future that we have no tangible rights to.

I hear back by February 1st.

The Little Skeleton

The Little Skeleton began as an assigment based on Frida Kahlo's life and work. I was influenced by elements of her culture, life, and art. The pictures above are the beginning of what became a long, but quite fluid process. To the left, is a section of the scarf that was influenced by Frida Kahlo's life and work. The colors of the cloth are vibrant, and feminine. The image is dia de los muertos-esq, and ethereal in the vein of Kahlo's imagery. The fabric is hand-dyed silk charmeuse. There are two sides to the scarf, as seen in the picture above to the right. The front has the print on it, and the back is solid fuschia. The picture to the right is of the critique for this project, during which it was suggested that I use this character to develop a story. Stubbornly, I denied my affinity for writing. I wished I could be such an artist that never needed to say what she meant about what she did...


Eventually, telling the little skeleton's story became the obvious answer to a difficult question: How do I make my computer art final tangible? I wanted a narrative, and had almost forgotten that it was pretty much laid out for me. Having just been to deserted Coney Island in the dead of winter, I had a perfect setting, and the story just flowed into it. The above images are the preliminary ideas for the finished little skeleton. They are reverse applique, and applique, embellished, and hand bound covers. The following images were laid out in photoshop before becoming the tactile, finished, The Little Skeleton.





The following are images from a sort of thumb-nail sketch I executed before going into making The Little Skeleton. Luckily, I improved upon what became muddied colors and indistinct blocks of color in this project in the final product.


























Finally:

The character of the Little Skeleton is the concept of death in a child's mind, unaddressed. He is solemnly carefree, evasive, morbid, cautiously playful, and innocent of all of the aforementioned.

The pages of the book are made from natural fabric (all cotton: muslin, cheese cloth, waffle, canvas). They are hand-dyed and hand screen-printed with original illustrations and text. The pages are collaged together using applique techniques and a sewing machine, all bound with pigskin leather. The cover is reverse appliqued, and hand-embellished.