Inspired . . .

This is not polished and I'm not going to share the whole story in this post but wanted to show you some of the work I've been doing for an upcoming project. There are more pieces coming in this series but I may not post them all here.

In January of 2009, still barely learning about collage and how to blog about it, I wrote a post about one of the biggest inspirations I had for turning my life upside down to work on art full time. This was a very important crossroads in my life. I wrote about Mary Haldeman in the post There's Something About Mary. I had seen her work in the book Artist Trading Card Workshop by Bernie Berlin nearly 18 months before I wrote the post and had searched for more of her work on the internet. She is a semi-private lady and I could not find much out about her. Still, I kept returning to her work over and over. The color and subtlety of her images, among of long list of other things, appealed so deeply to me. When I first wrote about her I was new to collage and hampered by processes and materials. I couldn't make what my mind saw. Though I still struggle with that to some degree, after two years of collecting images and practicing processes I find myself closer to being able to illustrate what her work inspires in my mind's eye.

As fate would have it, after somewhat of a sabbatical, Mary, on her son's urging, googled herself (like we all do from time to time!) and discovered my blog post about her. She reached out and once again my journey was impacted by the generosity of a fellow artist and the serendipity of life. We began emailing each other and learning about each others' journeys and life stories. What an incredible experience to be able to talk with and get to know someone that inspired you so much and in some ways changed your life.

I want to save the rest of the story for an upcoming project. Mary continues to inspire me as a human and an artist and I am so grateful for fate's chance for us to travel part of our journeys together. Parts of the story have confirmed for me yet again that there is a plan for each of our lives and when we are open to it and embrace it, amazing things can happen. When I share the rest of the story I am sure you will be as inspired by Mary as I have been.

For now, you might want to visit her Picture Trail here. The pieces below use papers that Mary shared with me as well. Her papers, a signature part of her work, are luscious sumptuous works of color and texture that truly made all the difference in my exploration of working in her style. Mary is a cut and paste gal (like I am at heart) so it is especially exciting for me to try and work digitally to create my "forgeries" of her work - exploring digital work is important in my work at this point, however temporary it may or may not be. It reflects in these pieces my attempt to borrow Mary's style but make it my own.

Keeper


copyright by Marsha Jorgensen 11/10/10. All rights reserved.
Digital scene. Image credits: inspired by the work of Mary Haldeman and using some of her papers in the crown, body, and background mixed with my own textures, overlays, and images; black and white border from Crowabout Studio B.


Fate


copyright by Marsha Jorgensen 11/4/10. All rights reserved.
Digital scene. Image credits: inspired by the work of Mary Haldeman and using some of her papers in the body and background mixed with my own textures, overlays, and images; keyhole from cemerony.etsy.com; hand and black and white borders from Crowabout Studio B.

In other news - I've been a nurse the last week or so. One "child" is sick and one "child" had his wisdom teeth out. It has been a week of appointments, soup making, sheet changing, med bringing, drug store running, forehead feeling FUN around here. I say "child" but they are 17 and 18 and you'd think by now they could fend for themselves a bit. I swear they are worse now than they were when they were little. Boy child did have a particularly rough wisdom tooth extraction - all four impacted and horizontal and needing bone graphs. Today he woke up and his face is turning green from the bruising. They'll survive if I do!

Working on new collage sheets - something a little different should be ready in the next few days.