Making Marks

Arranging pieces

Arrange whatever pieces come your way - Virginia Woolf

This quote reflects my perspective as a mixed media artist because much of what I do is collage or assemblage. In the image here, the pieces are dried hydrangea flowers left over from a project I made for That's Clever. The taping was in  April for the fall 2006 season. My lack of experience in front of the camera caused a great deal of angst as the date approached and during the filming. Consequently, I immediately shelved all of the items associated with the show. These flowers recently emerged from a nook in my studio. I took a deep breath, decided to arrange the pieces, and it wasn't so bad. In general, I wonder if we have any other choice but to arrange the pieces that fall into our laps.

Real and Imagined

I've been using trees and leaves in recent art work. The shapes and forms have been abstract and from my imagination, but recently I started looking at real trees. I compared my thoughts of how trees grow with what really happens: I'm pretty far off except for the ends of the branches of some trees. Many trees are very leafy way out to the ends of the limbs and the sky is blocked out to the very ends of the branches. Other trees have a lacy trim of leaves around the edges. I spent a good deal of time (as a passenger!) looking at these lacy trees during a recent drive. I wished I had a camera to capture them, but then I decided that trying to translate them into my art would be frustrating. I'll stick to my abstract trees and leaves: sometimes imagined is as good as real.

www.brendamarks.com

Here you can find more images of my work and what is for sale at Luaria Gallery.

Professional Photos

I'm taking several pieces of 3-D assemblage work to a professional photographer today because I just can't get good images of them. One challenge is that I'm not a very adept photographer, but the complicating factor is that these pieces have shiny elements. I haven't been able to get a photo without glare. One of the pieces is sold and I'm delivering it next week, so I really want a good photo while I have a chance. I've read in numerous places how important good photography is, but Luann Udell's post was the most recent and most compelling. I hope to post the results of the photo shoot soon!

Why Blog?

I've seen plenty of artists post blogs: some of them are great and some are rather, um, uninspired.  Of course I hope to fall into the previous category. The decision to start my own took a long time to make, and the outcome is obvious at this point. My primary purpose for blogging will be to post announcements and more information than I post on my website. I hope to chronicle some of my artistic and thinking processes as a way to add context to my visual work. Comments are welcome! Thanks for visiting.