Illumination

I think this is pretty much complete. You can see Little Betty Jane is battling a serpent which is under her bed. She has a lance. This is not a very good image. I just scanned it. (I have since uploaded a better image. )

I added a passage from the King James Bible's version from Genesis. This passage is talking about the snake that approaches and eventually tricks Eve into eating the forbidden fruit.

There are currently two separate exhibitions with Books of Hours taken apart - for restoration. Each page is on view. At the Morgan Library they have Catherine of Cleve's Book of Hours and at the Met, they have Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry.

These are both wonderful shows and well worth an afternoon or two of looking. I would recommend bringing a magnifying glass if you can. They have them for use at the Met, but they are often all taken.

First Session of the Her in Hero project

This is me showing the powerpoint presentation.

I have been working for months along with Leslie Madigan on a project called "The HER in HERo." It's a celebration of women role models. It's based around my change of costume cards. I made a Hero set - mostly contemporary women who I personally look up to. These are women in the public sphere. I have a webpage that shows the cards.

We had our first class yesterday - Friday, March 5th. It went very well. I will need to refine a few things to make it better, but the girls seemed to enjoy it. They made great "Me" cards and really enjoyed playing with the set of cards I made (I gave them reproductions to play with - the originals are too delicate and they are my 'work.')

I have some photos. Here you see their "Me" cards.

Here is Leslie working with the girls at circle time. This is when the girls played with the cards. Leslie has them in her hands.

All things Medieval

I am in love with all things Medieval. I love to go the Met and draw. I just wander around the Medieval art section. The things I find. They seem so contemporary to me. Look at this Lion - the first drawing. I found it on a metal piece - I think it was an aquamanile (something used to wash hands at the dinner table).

I love dragons.

And the birds were on a clasp of some kind. They are really strutting their stuff.

I didn't sleep well last night. This is a chronic problem. When this happens I am very down the next day and my brain is foggy. But, I did manage to get to the studio in the afternoon and I worked on my illuminated image of Little Betty Jane battling the snake creature.

A while ago, I bought myself a lamp with a magnifying glass. I thought about this for a long time. I tried to avoid the temptation because I feared that my work would only get smaller. People are always saying I should work bigger - not smaller! Well, you'll see.....

The image above is of the image on an illuminated page. The image is 3 x 4 inches. And, the detail image is just of LBJ. It's real size is 7/8 of an inch. She will have flowered pj's.

You can see all of this is still incomplete. I was having a lot of fun putting stripes on the snake creature. I could do that forever!

Slow Progress

The work is very slow going. And, the details are quite small. You may not be able to see most of them.

New Obsession

I went to the Morgan Library on Thursday with a friend. They have the pages of The Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves on display because they needed to take it apart for conservation. It's really wonderful to see these works. You can see the entire set on their website. It is great.

I have long thought about working in this format and if you think about the veil cards and the artist trading cards. That have a bit of the same feel. You can see I began one. It is 7 x 5 inches. I wanted a tiled floor. And, the flowers in the border. There is a bird - dragon creature in the border too. I am going to add words in a calligraphic style. The "L" of Little Betty Jane will be illuminated. All this done is painted paper collage - of course. I just put the letters on this in photoshop to see how they look. These are at the very beginning. Lots to do and lots of things to work out.

New Work

As you know, I have been playing around with found source collages. I recently went to the "Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage" which I absolutely flipped over. I received a couple of catalogs in the mail: Restoration Hardware and Land's End.


I really like the Restoration Hardware catalogbecause all the pages show domestic interiors - although very opulent and arrogantly arty. There is even a page where they made an easel into a support for a flat screen TV. (Ugh!) Collaging into these catalogs seems natural and made me think about the Victorian albums. (I wonder what those women would think if they saw their work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art?) The idea of "woman's work" and the place between art and craft - that these works traditionally occupied - is something I relate to. I feel that I wander around that space too. My work being small and about paper dolls.

Here are a few pages: