Photoshop Collage

Here is a digital collage that I created for ART 119 - it was my first time using Photoshop to combine images.  I started with a line drawing - I traced a painting that I made last summer.  Then I added textures:  Photos of bark, MDF wood and the Painted Hills in eastern Oregon; scans of feathers and corduroy fabric.  Then I drew in some details using Photoshop.  This was really challenging for me but I like the way it turned out.

Recycled Steel Sculpture

The Dance, recycled steel

Lately I've been working almost exclusively with recycled materials.  I get great satisfaction out of taking someone else's "junk" and making something beautiful out of it.  Many of my materials come from the scrapyard or the second-hand store.  I find that when I'm at these places, I go into a zone where my mind starts imagining endless possibilities:  What part of a sculpture could this be?  What does this form suggest?  How could I combine this with something else?  What colors would work with this?  The Dance came out of a trip to the scrapyard.  I'd been studying the sculpture of David Smith and I'd been thinking about his abstract figures.  I wanted to make something smaller, more delicate, but with the same sense of "stacked" elements suggesting the human figure.  These little sculptures were really, really fun to make (yes, I like to play with fire . . . more about that later . . .).