New Artwork

I really love propaganda art. I know it was created for the purpose to manipulate or instill fear, but often it is really just great illustration. About a year ago our neighbors upstairs moved out of their apartment. Their son was born just a few months after our oldest daughter (who is now nearly two)and they decided as many do, that they would rather move somewhere where they could have a garden. Is it just me, or is this often a mistake? I mean, if they really wanted a quiet place with a garden wouldn't they (and all the others who did the same)already have one without a child? Having children is already stressful enough without trying to force yourself into a lifestyle you're not really interested in....

Anyway, when they moved they left a box of books in the stairwell. One of them was this big, coffee table book about propaganda art from World War II. Great stuff from both the allies and enemies. I used an image from it for the following collage.


Keep mum, she's not so dumb! Careless Talk Costs Lives. In other words, no battle plan talk in front of your German mistress!




Another thing I love are vintage photographs. In an earlier post, I presented some pictures of an old black and white photograph I had stitched with colored thread. Yesterday I completed a collage using the photograph.
I added a tongue
and cheek poem playing off of the nursery rhyme, Mary had a little lamb.




Mary longed to join the circus and wear a dress as
white as snow.









And everywhere that Mary went
the boys were sure to go.






The collage is two sided, with a lovely polynesian beauty pictured in a gilded frame on the back

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Taken by surprise.....

What I love most about creativity is how often it takes me by surprise. I have often gone through phases (or rather, bursts)where I made a lot of collages and then other times when I didn't make them at all. It's not something I can force and there are many other things I make or I write or take photographs so when I am not making collages I still am following creative pursuits. But something about collages, creating things from bits and pieces of paper that are arranged without plan or thought, that is especially satisfying. So often the inspiration takes me by surprise. Like the new work I have been doing for the past several weeks. Most have them have been made from books I have had for years but didn't really know why: An old collection of short stories translated into German, a book about Nabokov and folk singers in Russian. The German book I picked up years ago at a flea market here in Berlin, but only because I liked something about it. Generally I don't read literature translated into German, especially if the original was in English, but I still bought the book and kept it around for some reason. The same was true of the Russian books. I bought them when I was in Moscow and then somehow never got rid of them though I have long given up on the rigors of Russian grammar. I am not a person who has a hard time throwing things out. I have moved several times since I first got them and each time I gave away boxes of things, but somehow those books always stayed. Then, three weeks ago or so I took the German book off the bookshelf on a whim. After thumbing through it for a few minutes I suddenly had the impulse to get a razor blade and cut things out of it. I followed that whim and have been making collages from its pages ever since. Now it seems clear why I kept the books around all this time: Someday I was meant to make art with them.