More recycled art

Recycled Collage with fused plastic bags

Our on-going rental problems have been keeping me from my favorite blogs lately, but I finally had some time to catch up on a few. Martha Marshall has an interesting post on her blog about working with Tyvek. I perk up when I see someone like Martha doing creative things with cast-offs, such as Tyvek envelopes. The concept of using recycled materials in art, as well as all aspects of life, is appealing to me, especially now that the world's economy and climate is teetering on collapse. I recycled some plastic bags by fusing them with an iron recently, which led to almost asphyxiating myself in the process and a much fussed over abstract painting. Not to be deterred, I used some more of the pieces in my sketchbook. I had tried to fuse some leftover wax paper (I use it under paper in my sketchbook to keep the pages from sticking together when I paint) in between the bags to give some color, but they didn't stick together properly. The elements I used in the above collage are the bottom pieces of the plastic bag and the wax paper. Somehow they did stick. I still have more pieces left to recycle, along with dryer lint, packing "peanuts" and tree bark. I'm not sure where this is leading--probably a circuitous trip to the dump ;D

Spent most of the day working on rental agreements, stopping by the downtown rental about leaking plumbing and trying to figure out how much/what color paint to get and whether to clean or replace the carpeting in the rental in Winter Park. How I wish we could get out of this rental purgatory, but it certainly isn't the right time now. We called two local carpet companies that have been around for as long as I can remember and were shocked to find out they were out of business.

We don't eat out very often, but we were talking to a woman in the neighborhood and she was telling us about all the established restaurants that have gone under. I think things are a lot worse than anybody is letting on. God, I hope Obama is smart enough to get us out of this (if we're smart enough to elect him.) It's hard to believe how close the polls are after almost eight years of ruinous "leadership." What will it take for our country to wake up???

On a more positive note, maybe what we need to do is print up our own funny money. Why should Ben Bernanke have all the laughs? I ran across a cool site thanks to Martha Marshall's wonderful blog. Check out this great site and play around for a while. I also like Martha's idea of taking pictures of some of the arrangements in a furniture store and Photoshopping (I'm guessing) her small paintings into the scene to see what they look like in a large format. Pretty clever.