Category: Assemblages

This is a collage to honor the music of Dr. John (aka Mac Rebbenack). It’s art I created for the Homage to Music card deck exchange hosted by Red Dog Scott.

Dr. John is among my favorite musicians, since I first heard his music around 1970. On an early album, Gumbo, he described his sound as “a combination of Dixieland, Rock & Roll, and Funk.” Add a little Mardi Gras and gris-gris, and you’ll get the idea.

Not everyone understands his music; I do, and it inspires much of my art.

This collage was over a month in preparation. Here’s how I made it.

The first step: gesso and paint the canvas

I started with a stretched canvas that I’d primed with gesso, and then painted metallic gold (spray paint).

Then, I began layering Burnt Sienna, Cobalt Blue, French Ultramarine Blue, and finally a black that I mixed using French Ultramarine and Burnt Umber.

Because I use oil paints for their depth of color, each layer had to dry for at least ten days.

(In workshops, I use acrylics because the layers dry in minutes, not weeks.)

Then, I sanded it down for added texture

After the layers were dry, I began sanding them down for texture. Beneath the canvas, I place a wooden block just inside the stretcher bars, so the canvas was evenly supported.

I sanded down different amounts in different areas.

Then, I began the collage.

Next, I added mixed-media collage elements

My first layer was tissue paper, crumpled and “painted on” with Golden brand Soft Gel Medium.

Next, I “painted on” a piece of antique lace. Over that, I glued three strips of teal chenille yarn.

For small pieces, I use the Golden Medium as glue; for larger pieces, I use hot glue.

Then, I added feathers. Some were gathered at the beach, others were purchased.

Sealing the canvas was next

Next, I coated the entire canvas with more Golden Medium, and waited for it to dry until tacky. At that point, I began applying Gildenglitz. For the larger areas, I increased the adhesion with pieces of double-sided tape.

Embellishments and ephemera took it to the next level

Almost finished, I glued on a dollhouse Parcheesi board, a plastic lizard, and a heart milagros that I had sprayed gold and highlighted with Dr. Martin’s calligraphy ink, in copper.

And finally, gold leaf highlights

The final step—when everything else had fully dried—was to add highlights with Rub N Buf gold leaf, in antique gold.

When I teach related workshops, I encourage students to work with rich & deep colors, gold leaf or glitter, and found objects.

Sometimes, found objects — natural ones like leaves and feathers, or bit of metal found by the roadside and in parking lots — can take this kind of collage to the magpie level, too.  I love the whimsy of that.

This tribute to Dr. John remains one of my favorite collages.

Plaster gauze is ideal for embellishing your art shrines and assemblages. Add gold foil, gold leaf, glitter, beads, vintage jewelry, crystals, or other features, and your art can really stand out!

Plaster Gauze

To learn the basics of using plaster gauze (or plaster plus gauze… generally the same product), see:

• Shrines – Add Texture with Plaster and Gauze
• Applying Plaster Gauze to your Art Shrine

When using plaster-embedded gauze, you can create fabulous textural effects with common household and art objects.

Among my favorites are soft drink bottlecaps. Place one with the open side up, and drape the wet gauze over it. Press it around the shape, inside the cap, and leave enough gauze around the bottlecap to hold it in place on the shrine.

After it dries and you’ve painted the shrine, flat-bottomed glass beads and stones fit perfectly, one in each bottlecap. (My current package of those beads is labelled “Glass Decorative Gems.”  They’re inexpensive and available at arts and crafts stores, budget import shops, and—of course—at Amazon.com.)

Here’s how it looks when finished:

However, you can use other supports for the gauze.

One of my favorites is a Pringle’s potato chip can lid. This creates a circular area with a lip that is perfect for putting the focus on an inset image, such as a religious icon, or small embellishments such as a rusty lock, etc.

I used a Pringle’s lid for the shrine at the top of this page.

You can also drape the gauze over wooden shapes such as stars, moons, a Celtic cross, numbers, letters, and so on.  Check arts & crafts stores for inexpensive wooden cut-outs that will add interest to your shrine.

You might want an eerie effect, draping it over a doll’s face, similar to the “mummies” that were popular in art a few years ago.

There are an endless number of textured and dimensional objects to try under gauze. Check your toolbox, trash, or even your drawer of kitchen tools for ideas.

Remember two things:

• This gauze sticks to anything, including Altoid tins.
• And be sure to drape enough of it around the applied object so that it is held in place when the gauze dries.

Other Materials (like Pringle’s Lids)

Simple textures can be fun, but they can quickly bore the viewer. You may need to add additional materials and supports to create interest.

In this shrine, in addition to the Pringle’s lid support, I added a rusty lock (adhered with hot glue), a scrap of a vintage book page, plus several colors of acrylic paint, some of them metallic. And so on.

If you visit some antiques stores and flea markets, you’ll find wonderful items, often low-priced. The rusty lock and vintage papers I used here came from a flea market. Neither cost more than $5.

Here’s a close-up of the finished art, so you can see it better. (The original photo was from long ago, reduced for Internet limits back then, and I don’t have the larger version. So, this is a bit pixelated.)

The Asparagus Wand was created for Sukie’s “Fairy Wand Exchange,” in July 2001. I made four of them to add to the wands already being sent by my daughter – who’d adopted the name “Applefaerie” – and me.

The Asparagus Wand is shown below.

It started in Michael’s Arts & Crafts store, where my daughter and I were wandering the aisles looking for ideas.

When I saw the plastic asparagus, it struck me funny. It also made me think, “Hmm, what about a jewel-encrusted asparagus in the hand of an elegant faerie?”

Hmm…

It also reminded me of one of our favorite—but retired—Disney World attractions, Kitchen Kabaret, which used to be downstairs at EPCOT’s attraction, The Land.

(We still have moments of singing, “Veggie, veggie, fruit-fruit!” See the video lower in this post.)

So, when Applefaerie’s schedule prevented her from completing all six of her wands for the exchange, I had a good excuse to embellish the asparagus.

The completed wands are rather simple, with just a few beads emerging from between the petals on the stalk. Most petals are embellished.

Close-up: Beads and pearls in the asparagus petals

All of the beads are an iridescent peach color, with golden and greenish highlights. The pearls are freshwater, peach-colored pearls, as well as some white faux pearls.

Each wand is slightly different. However, each has a 20-gauge gold-toned wire at the top that holds a star bead, and one or two other beads in place with a curled wire top.

My vision included fresh asparagus stalks in the fields in spring, with their jewels just beginning to peek out between the petals.

By harvest, these wands would be heavy with opulent jewels, as if from the Tower of London exhibit.

However, during the lighter, just-starting-to-grow phase, these asparagus are perfect for the faeries to use as magick wands.

It was an amusing fantasy and an equally fun project. I love remembering it!

And, for those who fondly remember “Veggie, Veggie, Fruit, Fruit” in Epcot’s Kitchen Kabaret show, here’s the video: