Richard Stankiewicz: Abstract Expressionist

I thought it would be fun to highlight a well-known sculptor/assemblage artist every now and then. On today's agenda: Richard Stankiewicz.

Born in 1922 in Philadelphia, Richard later moved to Detroit to enlist in the Navy. There he began painting and sculpting, and soon after, he studied in Paris and New York. He joined a gallery and began to exhibit his work, mainly scrap metal sculptures. Richard kept at this until his death in 1983 and today many of his pieces can be seen in museums and sculpture centers.

This piece is called Kabuki Dancer; an assemblage piece made of iron and steel.

You can find this one at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Lovely!

Assemblage Horse

So my son and I are members at the Children's Museum here in Chicago and they have this great assemblage piece on display right now! It's a great piece and wanted to take pictures of it to share with everyone...

Tons of found objects sculpted into a giant horse.

You could stare at it for hours!

The Work of Our Members: Week 4

The time has come to update this blog with the lovely crafts of our crafters here on the Collage Team from Etsy!!

Here we go!!


Here is a super cute original collage by sliceofdelight.etsy.com. I love how this mama is holding her baby in a basket and the saying states, "It ain't easy...". Being a mama to a sweet little boy myself, I can understand what she is going through! :)


She has attached a magnet to the back to allow you to decorate your fridge or to use this lovely as a bookmark!

This is an original collage made from recycled newspapers by CutNGlue.etsy.com. This collage is called "Skyline Drive" mounted on wood and measures approximately 9 x 6 inches. My husband, son and I just moved the Chicago and this piece reminds me of the hustle and bustle of big city living. Great!!

P.S. I am so sorry my dears that I have not posted in so very long. My husband and I are starting a business and it seems to have taken up much too much of our time. I will be posting more often now as we are in a great place during this transition....

The Work of Our Members: Week 3

An update from our wonderful and talented group of collage artists...
Looks like everyone has been very busy!! Keep the creative juices flowing! :)

This is a bright and colorful collage of mixed media from gutsche.etsy.com. It is titled "Imagine" and very well titled I must add. It is thought-provoking and does make you imagine and escape into a world of beauty. One thing that I really like about it are the different textures and layers. What does everyone else think? Nice work!

This is a glicee three print set of original mixed media collage and paintings. It makes me think of interior design. Stephanie, are you an interior designer? I love the freshness and crispness these prints convey. They would make a lovely addition to any 'green' family because it also makes me think of plants, fruits and vegetables. Just an idea....

Beautiful! Thanks Stephanie!

The Work of Our Members: Week 2

From ArtShed.etsy.com we have a darling linocut printed five piece stationary set. Card features a black raven with red and paper bag colored background; includes handmade, recycled envelopes. A very bright, colorful and sweet little set!

Another colorful addition to our weekly featured member post is this "Nature Keepsake Notebook" from iskray.etsy.com. She has made a wonderfully crafted book with bright and cheery envelopes to keep your treasured papers. Very nice!!

Here's what some of us are up to lately...

I think it would be fun to list a few pieces our members have made! I will list on a bi-weekly basis and randomly (while giving everyone a turn) items in shops. It will be fun to see what our fellow members are up to and what kind of techniques we each use!

This is "Decorative Stems" from sarahjarrett.etsy.com. It was made of found cut papers to make a cute, whimsical yet contemporary collage. I think the pieces are so well placed; I also think it's really neat to see that tiny pieces of paper come together to make a larger picture. What do you think? Very fun and sweet!!



Here we have a sweet little mommy and baby giraffe collage from marygolightly.etsy.com. The giraffe scene is created with gingham paper over canvas. This would make such a great addition to a baby or child's room...or something like this would make a nice scrapbook page!

Twitter Account

Hey Everyone! Just to let you know we are now using a twitter account!
It was Catherine's idea at funkyfindzonline.etsy.com.
Thanks Catherine!

www.twitter.com/CollageEtsyTeam

Found Object Assemblage

It's so interesting how many types of collage there are and very fun to see the many different types of assemblage pieces people can come up with. You almost have to be a little crazy to be an assemblage artist. I have seen so many different pieces that you look at it and think, "What the heck was going through their head when they made that? But it is pretty awesome".

I took my son to the Children's Museum here in Chicago and saw this great assemblage piece of found objects that was shaped into a life size horse. It had so many great antique and vintage items intertwined all inside it. Next time I go, I will have to take a picture and share it with you, it was absolutely amazing!

Here are some great assemblage pieces made of found objects...




Becki Smith's "Trump" at www.beckismith.com


Barbara Irwin's "Descending Man" at www.foundobjectart.com

p.s. sorry I have been gone so long, moving to a different state takes up a lot of your time!

Collage Freebies

I found a website, www.squidoo.com/artistfreebies, that has a bunch of free and fun graphics to use for your collages. Free is good!

More on New Ideas

Here is an addition to the News Ideas post. Sara at ModernLunacy.etsy.com created an OOAK mixed-media collage using acrylic paints, gesso, adhesives, polymer medium transfer and adhesive/paper transfer. How very fun and wonderfully creative!

Our New Techniques

Some of the Collage Etsy Team members have been trying new techniques over the past month and here are the results!



















This is a Gypsy collage that Beth completed at thequeenofcups. You can also find it on her blog at thequeenofcupsrunnethover.blogspot.com.
How Beautiful!!
Below is a collage I have been working on these past couple of weeks. It has a sleepy eyed doll 'stuck' under different types of old and new paper. More pictures are posted at my shop, casualcloud. It was great fun to make and my 19 month old son can't stop staring at it. I hope he doesn't get nightmares!!
If anyone has anything else to add, let me know and I will post it!!

New Techniques/Ideas

So we just got this team, and I am really happy about it! I hope that we can flourish here and on our etsy sites. We can help each other critique our assemblages, talk about the new techniques we have learned and just chat about whatever! I am going to write here for awhile until more people start joining and then maybe a few of us can do it together.
This post I am going to talk about what I think I might do, in the art world, next and hopefully everyone can add about their latest project. I have this thing with old dolls, not quite sure why, but I do. Anyway, I think I am going to purchase one and use parts of it in my next collage. I would love to see what else everyone is doing or thinking about doing. Then if you end up completing your idea, share it with us.
First, tell us your idea, and when/if you complete it, share it here! I think it would be fun and neat to see thoughts before it is created, then the aftermath of your artistic hamster wheel. I will leave this post up for a couple of weeks to give everyone time to complete their project.

collate, a paper collaboration

i think there is something about collage artists that just love paper, particularly OLD paper. i think it's just the idea that so many different people have viewed it from so many different generations. or is it just the idea that this old piece of paper that i am holding has been around longer than i have been alive?? not quite sure, but either way, old paper rules!
there is this blog that i follow, that is actually probably my favorite, sweetjessie.com (her etsy shop, sweetjessie), and she decided that she wanted to try and get a bunch of people to participate in a paper collaboration. she wrote on her blog to see if anyone was interested and, of course, many people were! she had over 50 people sign up to do it!
she had each participant send in at least 50 sheets of random pieces of paper that they liked. you could send in old pieces, new pieces, basically anything. she would then get these papers together and put them in a little book, bind them and send them back to you, with paper from other participants. so i signed up and sent my paper in and just got it back a few days ago. no two page is alike! take a look...

collage team!

there is a need for a collage team on etsy! let's see if we can start one and get the ball rolling. we can share our work, give each other advice and tips. we can also swap our assemblage pieces, vote on the best pieces and win cool things!