The Gryphon's Feather Studio

a morgue of my own

I have my very own morgue. I actually have a few, filled to bursting.

Do you have a morgue?  If not, you should.  Every artist should have a morgue of their very own... 

No, not a collection of dead bodies, although the study of those served Leonardo da Vinci well; didn't they?

I am speaking of the sort of morgue many of us had to keep in various art classes- the sketchbooks we filled to bursting with reference images, postcards of paintings, quotes, bits of poetry, photographs we liked, photographs we made, scribbled sketches so we could recall some idea, something we saw, images clipped from magazines that drew in our eye because of the color palette, the aesthetic sense, the visual appeal, the intruiging idea... glorious visual fodder all jammed into a book. 

The name, morgue, for these in a sketchbook or binder form that art, theatre, stagecraft, design people... and others keep as a reference file came our way via newspapers who kept extensive files, and sometimes rooms, full of reference materials, they called morgues.

(the one on the left is a handmade journal - with braile paper, and corrugated cardboard covers.  It only has quotes and poetry inside and is full now. The center book is a graph paper lab book, and the right hand side is Michael's cheapest black hardbound sketchbook with some paint on the cover, and a good bit of gaffer's tape on the burst-open spine.)

I still keep these movable visual feasts, and I would guess that many of my peers do also.  Since I'm not turning them in for review for a grade these days, I am broader in what I include: clothing, shoes, jewelry, book reviews, & musical performers that have caught my attention, websites I want to visit, apps for which I need to check out reviews, products to try, art supplies to research, paint cards from the home store done around various color palettes, pictures of stuff I wanted to remember that I've taken with my iPhone, ideas for activites to do with the littles, vacation dreams, things to look up at the library...  You know, all that stuff you find and stuff into a manila file folder, that will never again see the light of day? 

For a few  years, I used books that were 6x9 or so, but I found the small size limiting sometimes.  I had to fold stuff up to get it in there, so I moved to back to the 9x12-ish size I used in school.  I kept far more notes, to do lists, grocery lists, phone numbers etc, in the smaller size ones- something I miss, and am trying to recreate digitally on my iPad.

I also browse magazines, pull articles I want to read, and staple them along one edge of a page, creating a sort of personalized, homemade magazine of my own. I like to go through the discard pile at the library, too.

If you are finding yourself in need of some visual input, but can't go anywhere to get it, having a book full of things you like to look at, things that struck your fancy, is a great way to have an artist date without leaving home, or while stuck, say, in a waiting room somewhere.  I have been finding my morgues invaluable of late. 

I pulled out my stack of things to go through - my torn out pages, my clippings, images, & magazines, and spent some enjoyable time sorting, tearing, pasting.  Some old toy and kids' clothing catalogs, dog-eared children's magazines, safety scissors, and a dollar store composition book, entertained Sunny for an unusually long time.

I like to drop one in my tote bag for those times I am hanging out in the doctor's office waiting room; I use that time to read those magazine articles I've stapled into my morgue, and to make notes on the clippings that interested me, so I can remember why I clipped them to begin with (which can be strangely obscure sometimes), or what I saw in the image/product/object that attracted my eye (color, shape, texture, line, emotion, imagination...).

I didn't choose the most interesting pictures of the inside pages to show you. Rather than post my morgue pages for you to read and browse, I really wanted instead to give you the idea to make, or return to keeping, a morgue of your own. 

 

 

 

responding, listening

I've been working on a new book design.  I wanted to have a covered spine, but use a sewn-over-supports sewing. I wanted the book to use something other than the traditional sewn-over-tapes binding you find often in a case-bound book.  And, I wanted it to have the flexibility of a paperback, but the sturdiness of a hardback. (more stiffness, but still flexible, and without the tearing and dog-eared corners paperbacks can get.) Oh, and maybe pockets on the insides of the front and back covers that won't come unglued or tear.

Yeah, I wanted it all. 

So, I've been spending way too much time lately in pediatric specialists offices with the smallest little. This has meant providing various forms of sedentary, inside-voices only, interesting entertainment.  Don't laugh.  Okay, laugh; I do. Luckily, the nurses and receptionists do, too.  These are, of course, pediatric offices and they are quite used to bored children. And, Sunny is so damned, well, sunny, and charming.  (clearly, not inherited from me.)

I have learned to pack a totebag with children's picture books, tiny pocket dolls, a blank sketchbook & markers (not for me), the Leapster Explorer, my iPad (mostly not for me) juice boxes, diet coke (for me!) & snacks.  When my wild child was engrossed in something not requiring me to assume a wide variety of dinosaur voices that fit their species' personalities, or sing a book opera-style in order to keep someone's attention (oh, btw, I cannot sing), my brain wandered to the aforementioned bookbinding puzzle.  And, in the midst of, "Sunny, you have had plenty of hand sanitizer as you have just  bathed yourself head-to-toe with it and are undoubtedly completely germ free." and "Oh, hey, maybe licking the glass on the fish tank where the past five hundred children have also rested their hands, palms flat & pressed their noses isn't such a good idea.", I remembered some supplies I had seen in my stash and I had a coherent thought.  Astonishing, no? 

I have this tendency, this bad book-binding habit, to do all the sewing to the book block and then procrastinate putting on the cover boards.  So, I had a book block handy for experimenting using my idea without needing to find the time to tear down paper and sew a book block.  I could paint and assemble in a few spare bits of time (having Sunny work the spray bottle as my "Spray-a-saurus", and do a little painting of her own helped extend that time), until I had what I needed.

So, here you have my latest prototype:

I found the perfect flexible cover idea, with pockets, and a way to easily use a sewing I love, by using canvas backed with something quite sturdy (what the sturdy something is won't be revealed as yet, because I am planning on working out a class around this idea. Yes, I am awful. )

I had painted the piece as one large sheet thinking I could create more than one prototype. While painting, I also removed some of the many layers of paint from several areas.  I did so thinking that I was creating space to add and work on some photos, add some text, do some drawing. 

While the book was drying under a stack of old atlases, I started on the next prototype. I sat with the leftover piece of canvas (18" x 19.5"), looking over the textures and colors in the painted layers, trying to decide which direction I wanted to fold the canvas for the cover. 

I was just randomly looking at the shapes in the paint and the way that the scraped away layers created forms and lines. Sometimes without trying, I find "things" in texture- you know, what I mean- faces in a knothole in a plank, or finding the shape of an elephant in the cracks on a ceiling.

First, I saw the eyes.  And then, the left side of the face, and her arms.  I made a deliberate choice not to second guess myself.  I picked up a soft charcoal pencil, figuring, I could always wipe away whatever I did. I responded to the shapes and lines in the clear areas, beginning with her face, and bit by bit, she arrived. I let those shapes and lines, the areas of dark and light, left by the remaining layers of paint determine what she looked like, working with those lines to reveal what was hiding there. I didn't have a plan, or an idea of where I was going until after her hair and skirt blew backwards across the left edge as she flew.  I thought when I laid her aside the first time, she would be a banshee.  But, no, after my next visit, I noticed she wasn't keening. Then, her arms had evolved as plump and warm, not bony, and her reach was giving, not menacing or grieving.   There was no rending of her gown, no tatters.  The night surrounding her, whomever she was going to be, seemed to speak of beginnings, of the births of mysteries, stars, or stories enclosed in globes of light. 

Last night, Joe pointed out to me that this is clearly my niece's face.  He is right.  The moment he said it, I could see her - her long dark hair and huge brown eyes, her nose and heart-shaped face. 

Being pressed for time is working on my side.  I have been walking by her resting on my worktable in the kitchen, as I go to wash the dishes, get Sunny a drink from the fridge, let out the dogs... I look at her, waiting for her to tell me what to do next.  Sometimes, I pick up the charcoal, a pastel, a pencil, a crayon, or the paint and work for a moment or two.  Other times, I just look, and continue on with what I need to get done, enjoying the wait for discovering the what-next.

I am enjoying the process of painting based on the shapes and texture, and not on a pre-conceived idea.  There isn't any pressure to match what is in my head, because I'm responding to what is existing there on the canvas.  I'm enjoying just listening.  I don't think I've painted this way in years. 

So, I'm taking a huge bit of a risk- but, here she is.  She's not finished. I'll let you know when she tells me who she is...  I have heard her whispering, but I can't quite tell what she is saying. I'm not worried.  Those whispers will get loud enough, and I'll know.