Welcome to the BlogHop!

I was recently asked by Canadian artist  Veronica Funk 

 to participate in a blog hop and I was overjoyed to do so!

  Currently,   Veronica  is  working on a new exhibit for August titled " Sacred Space" which entails acrylic painting on canvas and features the landscape of her youth in Northern Canada. She's also finishing up a couple of articles for publication in the fall as well as working on an online workshop.  Several years ago, I participated with Veronica  and 4 other  talented artists in an altered art book round robin collaborative titled Innerworks.  Another fabulous artist in the InnerWorks project is  Supria Karmaker  who will also be participating in the blog hop  today July 25th. Hope you get a chance to look at her post!

1) What am I working on/writing?

 Currently, I'm working on a new collage for a book being written by an amazingly talented west coast artist.   I'm so excited about it- and hoping to take a few different twists outside my usual style in its creation.

 I just finished a commission for the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai  in New York City to honor the founding chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine.,  Sheldon Jacobson, MD,   Since his passing in June 2009, the Sheldon Jacobson Education and Research Center was created in his honor with a ribbon cutting ceremony held this May 2014.

 I had been asked to create a collage symbolizing his accomplishments and the essence of what he brought to the department.

 Besides being a tremendous privilege to be asked to do this, it was a personal gift to me to honor him in this way. I wanted this artwork to combine some of my favorite components of my prior work in  conveying who Dr. Jacobson was as a person, educator, leader, visionary and compassionate doctor.   These pictures  are  of  my artwork, titled,  Reflections.

2) How does my work/writing differ from others of its genre?
My work consists of a tapestry of symbolism, colors, shapes and a flow of thoughts that I try to weave together- often including segments of my photos, ephemera that has meaning to me, pieces of art that I may have worked on in prior collaborations with artists or art that others have liked. It's my own circle of art-a type of fluidity from one work to another- all encompassing parts of the world around me.

3) Why do I write/work what I do?
 I am driven by nature, how in awe I am of it, and how what I see always looks like a picture. Since a child, I would see shapes and images and designs in everyday reflections, windows, wall papers. I am always inspired to create some sort of connection between nature, my thoughts, words and how they are all tied together.

4) How does my writing/working process work?
I always feel art within me- wherever I go, in whatever I am doing.  My only limitation is the time to express it with the everyday responsibilities I have that priority over the canvas.

And now that you know a bit more about me, let me introduce you to  the talented artist,

                                 

                                                             Deb Eck. 

Below, you can see  one of  Deb's  beautifully created tapestried  art  journals  woven together  in rich olive green and golden tones  of  varied patterned materials  that she donated and I was lucky enough to win at  a Hurricane Sandy fund raiser last year  spearheaded by The Altered Page.

        

 As Deb indicates about herself-- "For many years, I have been fascinated with the discourses surrounding madness and the stories of women historically trapped inside the boundaries of those ideas. Recently I have been further engaged by a resonance I perceived between this discussion and the language  of Victorian design reform.  All of this interest  has been focused through the space of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "Yellow Wallpaper",   a work that concerns both the mad women and immoral design... I find there is no way to be outside the  pattern,  that to find a space I must struggle to inhabit the interstices between ornament and flourish.   My work is about finding what lies in this in-between, of living in the pattern and subverting its lines to make my own design.  I find myself drawn repeatedly to work that  requires repetition and the labor of my hands and always to the presence of text and pattern and to making work that inhabits the spaces of the studio and gallery." 

Hope you can visit Deb's blog and Supria's blog  TODAY  when they participate in the blog hop!

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