Gotta Love Anthropologie!

Sometimes their prices are absurd, every now and then they can be just "too-too" - but their display pieces are always fantastic!  This one a huge (approx. 5x2') carved wooden panel.  I don't always buy when I'm at Anthropologie, but I always take pictures and drool over their displays!

Found Stacks Too!

Playing around again in those cigar boxes

labeled "Found Objects".

Street detritus, bottom of the junk drawer,
"Look what I found for you!"

Put it together, rearrange it,
rearrange it again - Found Stacks!

Gifts from the Sea

This is a small ceramic dish I keep on my desk at work. It is full of wonderful things from the beach here in Cambria. many I've found on my walks, and friends and co-workers have brought the others in for me. Shells, polished stones, bottle caps, pull tabs, bits of wire and old pottery, driftwood, even a rusted spark plug. It's the perfect pile of mixed media inspiration to keep me going during the work day until I can get back to the studio in the evenings!

Found Objects Stack Up

Having fun, digging through a cigar box
of bits and bobs, this and that.

Arranging, rearranging, placing "just so".

A little glue, a little wire - voila! Found stacks.

See - Sea Glass!

My friend Joen gave this marvelous thing to me for my birthday a few weeks ago. It's a frame with glass on both sides and she filled it with sea glass! She is an inveterate beachcomber and rarely comes home without her pockets full of sea glass and moonstones.

I found the perfect place for it in our kitchen window. The early morning light flows through and the glass sparkles and shines as though it had just been washed by an ocean wave.

Life on the Coast

Weathered wood

Rusty Metal

Lichen-encrusted Railing

A morning walk filled with found object art - but just a bit too big to put in an assemblage! Enjoy your weekend.

Tableau

Found Stacks and The Great War

The above tableau is by my desk in the workroom at the library. The top piece is by local artist Carol Jean Attoe, a ceramic plaque called The Great War. The bottom four are mine, a selection of my Found Stacks series (detailed here). I love the way they all look together and enjoy immensely having them by my desk during the work week.

detail from The Great War

The Taos News, Too

The Taos News, Too

I've always been intrigued by Sas Colby's The Taos News - a diary of sorts, that she created from found object street finds on her daily walks in Taos. She affixed them to the front page of several editions of The Taos News.

detail from Sas Colby's series "The Taos News"

When I was in Taos, I thought it would be fun to do my own small tribute to her marvelous series. One cold early morning I left the Mabel Dodge Luhan House around 6:15 and went off into the snow and ice to see what I could find. In the course of an hour's walk, I was able to fill a bag full of delight detritus - but found it was sometimes hard to pick things up with gloves on, so my fingers ended up very cold! Also found, that a few of the best things - including a wonderfully rusted bottle cap - were frozen in the dirt and wouldn't come out. I stopped at a cafe for a latte and to warm up, and what should also be there but the new edition of "The Taos News". It all came home with me and was finished yesterday.

deatil from my tribute to Sas - The Taos News, Too

Found Object Combo

"You want rust with that?" Why yes please, I do. Nothing like rust for us mixed media types. These are all bits and bobs I found on the street, under the studio table and in other strange places. I keep a cigar box in the studio that receives all these treasures and every once in awhile, I pull them all out, make stacks and attach them to drift lumber that I collect on the beach

Bottle caps, sea glass, shells, rusted jewelry findings, cheesecloth - anything and everything can and does end up in a Found Object Combo. Each one is a small vignette, and then 5 or 6 of them attached to the weathered piece of wood, become a story of sorts - that is different for every viewer