Tag: mixed media collage
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A Room of One’s Own
“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” (Virginia Woolf) Right? Well, not necessarily. My writing days are over, but when I did consider myself primarily a writer I did my best work when I didn’t have a room of my own. When, in fact, I…
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My End of Year Review
It seems wrong to list my 2023 successes when it seems like the world is going to hell in a handcart, but for me, as I suspect it is for many people, art – making art, consuming art, reading about art – provides an oasis of calm, a space to reflect, an escape from the…
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Selling Art on Etsy
I recently made my 100th sale on Etsy, which feels like a good time to reflect on my experiences as an Etsy seller and share some tips for anyone considering setting up their own shop. My first collage zine I made my first Etsy sale back in July 2021, when I revived an Etsy shop…
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Sourcing Ephemera
My random collection of what I can only describe as stuff is an important source of inspiration as well as the raw material for my work. It’s possible I will only ever use a fraction of it, but its presence is necessary. This urge to collect, to gather, to surround ourselves with objects that please…
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Making a Zine
Back in the early 2000s, when I was a stay-at-home mum with two young children, one of the things I most valued was the people I connected with on LiveJournal, which was a fabulous place to find your tribe, ruined when it was sold in 2007, and to a large extent now replaced with other…
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Joseph Cornell and the Boxes
I’m currently reading ‘Art making, Collections & Obsessions’ by Lynne Perrella, which is an absolute treat for any mixed media artist who can’t resist collecting All The Things. As Perrella says, ‘Once a collector, always a collector’. As a child I collected stamps and Wade Whimsies. As an adult, I collected books and records. There…
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Checking In
It’s been a while since I posted here – not through lack of interest, just simple lack of time. I meant to get so much done in 2023, but the year is running away with me. I do have a tendency to try to juggle multiple projects at the same time (maybe I worry that…
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The Appeal of Collage
Collage has played a significant part in just about every major art movement of the 20th century, notably Dadism, Futurism, Surrealism, and the 20th century Russian avant-garde. Relief, Vladimir Tatlin, 1913 Pablo Picasso is usually cited as ‘inventing’ collage in 1912 with Still Life with Chair Caning. In this work (below), a piece of oilcloth…
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Impostor Syndrome
Impostor syndrome is something I’ve been dealing with since the age of 10, when I was informed by another child in my class that I hadn’t actually passed the 11+ to go to grammar school. According to this child, the head teacher had just randomly stuck a pin in my name. In hindsight that sounds…
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Art for art’s sake
I chart my life in books. A book title can spark a million memories: I re-read Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” every year, and will always remember it as the first book I bought with my own (pocket) money when I was 9 years old. And I will never forget the day I discovered Sylvia…
Helen Kitson 