Passionate about Repurposing

I have become very passionate about recycling and repurposing artwork - For quite a while now I have used recycled print material for collage cards using images from flyers, catalogs, old magazines etc to create the texture or color I want to create a new image.  Now, I have started to re-imagine some of the art I have at home.  To decorate cheaply, I have often bought pieces at Ross or TJ Maxx that have colors I am using. However, now that I am creating more of our art work, I find my self scavenging around the house for pieces I am tired of or not using and using them as a base for something new.   Here I used two 9" x 20" Tuscan scenes I had gotten for $4.99 apiece and collaged a Klimt inspired duet.  Using the Lynne Perella angels featured on her stamps, I enlarged the stamp images and printed them directly onto decorative papers and of course freely used vintage text, tissue and napkins along with paint and gel medium.  Fun way to get a new look, and to experiment with ideas without a big commitment to supplies or canvases.  In my art as metaphor for life thinking, we take what we have and see its value in a new way, layer on the experiences of our lives and make what once seemed useless or less worthy and see it as the foundation it is in the evolution of our selves.

Life expanding

This year has unfolded in so many beautiful ways.  Not only has my artistic expression exploded in untold directions, our family is growing to include a daughter-in-law.  I have posted a piece I made for our newly engaged son entitled Viva Los Novios to the right. The couple has asked me to create the invitations for their July 7th wedding, and I have featured the chosen design here.

We are thrilled to have Erika in our family and celebrate the peace, joy and fulfillment she has brought to Elias' life.  I will be making the 100+ invitations by hand so each has the textural, unique element we are all wanting - and I am thrilled to do it.  What better way to celebrate life than to joyously contribute to a day to celebrate love and life!!

My First Video

Just had the wonderful opportunity to work with dear friend, Carol Hart, on an instructional video.  Simply click on the link here if you wish to see what we did! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ul_bcLNK1s  My artwork has kept me very busy since my cast came off, inspiration is everywhere and there is always some card or gift to be made.  Made the above set of "wish" cards for my son's 33rd birthday. Using imagery of particular relevance to him, or colors he often uses in his art made for a unique and much appreciated way in which I could share with him my hopes for his birthday and his year.  More to come as I explore expanded methods in working with multiple media - but suffice to say I am having a wonderful time expressing myself in this profoundly varied style!

Passion Art

Finally made the leap and opened my Etsy shop ( www.etsy.com/people/janabvargas), listing a few of the collage cards I have been making of late.  Quite taken with using recycled print material, junk mail, magazines, etc to find interesting images, textures, and colors for use in collage, I started a series using postcard style cards with coordinating envelopes, creating a small piece of textured original art that can be used as a card or as artwork.  I have found that I incorporate into everything I make a bit of the message I carry: live fully, live passionately, be present in your present moment, be fully who you are.  Whether I express myself in writing, as with my book, or in art as I have this year - this is what resonates.  In this collection of stamps my friend Carol recently gave me was the quote, "art is a shadow of what a person is thinking", no wonder it comes through because this is what is held in my mind at all times.  As I work through this journey striving to be who I am and live completely and honestly I am blessed to be have the freedom and support it takes to live a creative and authentic life.  I am grateful everyday.

Creating again

My broken arm sidelined me for a while, but really allowed ideas to germinate and my passion to build only to spill over once I was able again.  In between a huge variety of summer visitors and activities, I have begun a series of "Collage Cards".  Pictured here is a collage of the Retirement card series I did for a colleague as I considered how she might spend her week in retirement.  This has led to a multitude of collage card ideas and an explosion of possibilities with this latest medium.  From sets in the fan folders to individual cards with coordinating envelopes, this latest expression allows me to dabble freely and frequently with simple thank you cards, to more involved individualized birthday sets.  These sets will be available through Etsy soon as I build an inventory and expand and explore various methods and materials.

Passion Interrupted

I had every intention of posting at least monthly, following my progression into more artful expression, but life is as ever filled with detours and the unexpected.  April was yet another month filled with artistic interpretation including a multi media book I wrote and created for my daughter using the metaphor of the life of a tree to explain my own life journey.  I dabbled with assemblage and worked on memory stones for my yard in Taos.  Then April 27th simply walking from one room to another in my socks on the wood floors (bad idea) I slipped and fell hard thoroughly breaking both bones of my right wrist.  Ouch!!! - but worse than the pain and inconvenience of a cast was the immediate halt to my artistic expression - it was like hitting a wall.  After the initial series of casts and manipulations of my damaged wrist (double Ouch!!!) I was able to at least decorate the cast with the help of a friend.  As I settled into a very quiet four week stretch, punctuated by two long planned trips, I came to see this as an opportunity to develop other parts of myself as my left hand grew a bit more adept and my right fingers tried to work in ways they had not before.  I am still in a cast, this one I decorated completely by myself - pictured here.  I found ways to work with the pain and started moving my twisted right hand in ways that allowed me to once again hold scissors, paint, write and work.  It is slow going and I am counting the seconds until the cast is off.  I have physical therapy ahead and a long time before I can do full yoga again, but I am curious to see how the development of new parts of me might express itself once I am more functional.  The physcial experience of having one part shut down is a great metaphor for how our lives continually shift and how we must navigate our way through losses and changes. Somehow, we just keep going as we constantly challenge ourselves to find more within and to tap undeveloped potential.  If we are open to it we may find the development of our less used parts leads to a more fully lived life.

Passionate Art

Well, my inward journey has taken me down an unforeseen path.  I have always been a craft person, and I am also a writer.  I constantly shift my attentions from one thing to another, as I am sure many of us do. Fortunately, for me and my household I am not one to leave projects undone or my home would be in chaos. I actually like things to be in order and love to see things to completion.  This new creative pathway exploded within me over the last month or so as I had embarked on an inward time of reflection, meditation, reading and soul-searching.  Out of the quiet came a blinding flash of creative energies unlike anything I had ever know.  I began to explore the very exiciting and limitless world of multi-media art.  What a perfect fit for me - I quilt and sew, I make jewelry, I write, I photograph, in short -I create, and I have been able to incorporate everything into this new medium for expression.  I hope to blog more regularly when the muse allows me away from creation and would love to post the ongoing exploration of this new form of expression.  For now I will share a couple of pictures.  Thanks for watching this part of my journey unfold!- I would usually say, "Onward!", but more apropos to the source of this creative explosion the expression is, "Inward!"