Speaking of collage! This is a relic from my Grandma Draves’ house that I grew up with in the 70s involving a paper bucket and old cars cut out and glued from magazines at that time. I’m not sure if it was one of my cousins who did this, or my grandma herself because she was into all kinds of little projects like that. It’s a really cool art piece on its own and I really wish I knew its backstory. I currently use it to store my concertina in because I cannot believe how perfect a size it is for that(!) The freaky friday part is, someone else in my family had the hankering for collage as well - I just don’t know who.

I’ve been spending a lot of time painting white paint in prep for new pieces but that really isn’t Studio Closeup material, so today’s closeup is a collage from one of my sketchbooks dated 2012. The black and white portion of the collage is from a 1940’s Coronet magazine not sure where I sourced the color part. It does not yet have a title. They had a lot of black and white upright still photos in Coronet magazines, so I thought I’d use those stills and try to make full page collages. Back in the days of art school times (Milwaukee, early 1990’s), I was able to collect a lot of those 1940's, 1950's Coronet magazines at a place called Renissance Bookstore downtown. Downstairs they had piles and piles and piles of old magazines. I think they were all .50C - $1.00 each, so I snatched up as many as I could afford because I don’t think that bookstore knew what kind of treasure it had down there. I also got a lot of 40’s - 50’s Woman’s Day magazines down there too. It was a really cool place, right across the street from the King And I Thai restaurant, stuffed to the gills with old books.

Everyone will be happy to know Toby (small parrot) was most excellent while recording today’s Carolaoke tune. He had to have a couple gentle reminders here and there to keep all his screams and outbursts inside his tiny orange pants while I recorded, but I didn’t need to close the door at all this time(!) He’s also been demonstrating that he’s starting to get the word “no” when I say it. I’ve noticed he doesn’t “like” to be scolded and is really sensitive about it, so I’ve amped up the positive reinforcement when he’s doing something good instead.

Today’s Carolaoke song is my scratch track version of Dido’s , “Thank You”. Please enjoy and thank you so much for stopping by today!

The Museum Series covers many subjects, and I’ve been collecting a lot of slides, filmstrips and view master reels that will be used in various future pieces. Today’s Freaky Friday shows all of you just how crazy I am with how I’m trying to archive these materials. I also have a little plastic file system for “paper only components” to use for dioramas as well. Notice how everything is inside a plastic container inside a plastic bag like the crazy old bird that I'm becoming? That’s insurance that these artifacts will not be lost to any water mayhem, say, like, a flood for example. Also portable and labeled to keep things under control in case of an emergency.

It's back to the Museum Series for today’s closeup. This is something I’ve been working on for a while now. I’m finally feeling comfortable with where this piece is going and boy did that take a bit to bring it back from the terrible purgatory it was in. More painting required for sure. I thought photos of it in progress would be good for today. I've included some of the dioramas where you'll see paint drips all over the plastic covering. The image with the two living room chairs and hole in the middle will be for a slide, and the holes on the bottom right will be three more mini-dioramas of furniture selections from the 1970’s. Please enjoy and thanks for stopping by today!