13 FRIDAS

Cover of "13 Fridas"












Two posts in one day!!! Unprecedented action on this beautiful fall afternoon in Oregon. I've had printer/scanner problems for quite some time. It's really OS problems, but it's kept me from scanning recent work. I took some photos of one of my favorite projects, which I call "13 Fridas". The idea for this project originated with an altered board book years ago. I had created a stack of hand-painted papers during an artful afternoon in the backyard with Quetzal, a member of my extended family (my son's half-brother), who was 9 years old at the time. He had been generous, to say the least, with what he squeezed out of the many tubes of acrylic paint I had brought outside for us to paint with. We had all this paint left over and I wasn't about to let it go to waste. I had a foam roller and a styrofoam tray and I began rolling away on cheap drawing paper. The roller locked in place at times instead of turning, and it caused the paint to skid across the paper, creating many interesting effects. Then I began randomly dotting the the loaded roller with metallic paint; this created a repeating pattern, which I liked a lot. So after one afternoon, I had 30 big sheets of beautiful paper.

I'd always wanted to try covering a board book instead of sanding then painting to create backgrounds, so the paper seemed like a good option. While covering the first book (using glue stick), I was jazzed to see that the painted paper ended up looking like abstract landscapes or created colorful worlds behind the Fridas. I'd always wanted a book with nothing but images of and/or by Frida Kahlo. As it turned out, this book had room for 13 such images, hence the name 13 Fridas. I had the book for quite some time and always thought I would get around to scanning it. I took it to a craft sale just as a showpiece to advertise a class I was teaching, and someone made me an offer I could not refuse, so I sold it. The next one I made was on commission and I kept futzing with it until the last minute and didn't scan that one either. The 3rd one is what you see here. These are photos, since my scanner is out of commission, but I think you can get the idea. You can find my handpainted papers here.