New Mixed Media Class!!!

Yesterday I started a new class - Mixed Media with John Hood at Allan Hancock College!  This is going to be a fabulous class and has already jump started my brain after the stagnant brain summer.  I went completely creatively empty over the summer and thought I had completely lost the urge to create.  Well, after coming home from the class last night I was absolutely vibrating with creative ideas.  He asked the class if any of us were "collectors".....I nearly laughed out loud.  For those who know me, yes, I am a collector of odd bits and pieces.  He said that right now he had about 6 animal bones - 6, really 6?  I have a rubbermaid tub filled with animal bones and skulls.  We are going to start with collage - finally a use for all the paper and stuff that I have collected.  Then onto altered books and then finally an assemblage!  I am so looking forward to this class and all the possibilities that it brings.  I want to do something that I have never done before and go way beyond my comfort zone.....

So this morning I started looking around the house and seeing some of the mixed media/assemblage pieces that I have done over the years and thought I would share them here.  You will remember the Piston People http://screamingdovestudios.blogspot.com/2012_11_01_archive.html, they were my latest assemblages but the photos below will show you some of my older work.

This one is called Trapped and is very telling of a period of  my life when I felt as tho my hands were bound, my mouth sealed and my life hanging over shards of glass.  The base for this is a drawer from a dresser that belongs to a friend of ours that committed suicide.  The drawer itself has significant meaning to me and the front of the drawer is encircled with wire and the front edge has barbed wire.

 This one is entitled Bound and was created about the same time as Trapped was.  Again the drawer from the dresser but this time with a small wooden chair in it with the subject disengaged from the entire body and the hands nailed to the chair and chain loops coming from the breast area.  The body was made from polymere clay.

 This may very well have been one of my very first pieces.  The body of the winged creature is part of a skull found in our field.  Polymere face with plastic eyelashes for wings.

 Using left over wood from a coffee table I created this also using the light switch from an old car and a seed pod from a plant I can't remember the name of .

 Also utilizing the wood from the discarded coffee table and spark plugs along with a metal #3.

 The pieces of wood from the coffee table were covered with acrylic paint skins (peeled up dried paint from my plastic pallette) and adhered to an elongated piece of wood.  The metal wings were from some yard art piece, the tube "neck" area is a cardboard tube with small nails in it and the "head" is a burned out light bulb - How many of us can identify with the burned out light bulb being a "head".  I know I can.