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

New "Recycled" art painting

This painting has been torturing me for an eternity. It refuses to be conquered. I've been hacking away at it for longer than I care to remember. Today's foray into my tiny nemesis consisted of gluing failed fused plastic bags onto the canvas to see if I could destroy it once and for all and throw it in the garbage can without any guilt. My experiment with fusing plastic bags together didn't pan out that great, so I figured it would be perfect on this failed painting. I can become quite obsessive about some things--usually the more insignificant the better--and this painting is one of them.

New abstract painting

8" x 10" mixed media acrylic painting on masonite

The last few days have been a nightmare of gathering, sorting, organizing and calculating our receipts in preparation for our trip to the tax preparer. This is so not my favorite time of year. We don't just dump the receipts on her (we can hardly figure it out ourselves after a years' worth of gathering paperwork, so how could she make sense of it?) We have to make sure everything is all tidied up and put into the proper categories so she can put the numbers into the program that spits out our return. We pretty much know what our taxes will be, but she is kind of a sanity check to make sure we don't make any huge mistakes. With four rentals, it seems to get harder each year. Why is it we can put a man on the moon, but we can't find a way to simplify the tax code so millions of people don't have to go through this ordeal every year?

After all that (still unfinished business) I just had to get away from the computer and into the art room and muss up my hands with paint. This painting is an experiment in "recycled" art that's been laying around for a while. I put some eggshells into it just to see what would happen. I kind of wished I had more shells, but since I try to limit us to two at a time due to cholesterol (with Eggbeaters thrown in for good measure) and I'm not real great about planning ahead, this was all I had. However, I do have a bag of lint from the dryer waiting in the wings for my next brain storm LOL.

Recycled Art

Here's a neat idea from Etsy I've been wanting to try for a while. It's a tutorial about fusing plastic bags together for use in recycled artwork. I'm not interested in sewing them into carry-alls but rather using them as elements in paintings. Virginia Fleck uses plastic bags in her mandala artwork and it's stunning. I was glad to have the opportunity to see her work when I visited my brother and sister in Corpus Christi over the holidays.