World War I Poppies - Finished!

Here it is, my own mixed collage interpretation of the World War I poppies:

Image and design copyright RPS

Here is a detail of the letter:

Image and design copyright RPS

The letter is actually a note on a postcard (copied onto fabric) that came with one of those wonderful scrapbooks that I found earlier this year.  There is no doubt that they came from a local family.  The postcard is a double length one:

The sender was apparently training at Camp Sherman in Chillicothe, Ohio.  The card is postmarked August 22, 1918 to a resident of Quaker City, Ohio.  Judging from the message, it was before the devastating influenza outbreak that occurred that year.  I wonder if the sender made it through the epidemic, and if he ever made it overseas.  The message reads:
        "Hello Rodney - How is the pike job coming?  We had some try out on Liberty trucks like they            take through there last Friday.  We will be driving trucks in France within a month from today if          we get over all OK.  We have a dandy pair of driving gloves & we get a Norfolk overcoat at the          port of embarkation wherever that will be we don't know.  But we can get a few shots of good              French wine, ha ha.

Latest Adventures, Having Fun

Can anyone blame me for not wanting to sit in front of my computer when I've had a week like this?  First, this is the week of the annual Route 40 Yard Sales.  I took a day off from work on Wednesday, rain dampened the four days of the event, but I found a couple of astounding late 1800s scrapbooks.  Here is a sample of the treasures in them:

I am a casual collector of paper ephemera, I never thought that I would find anything like these.  They have a bit of everything, calling cards (social media, 1800s style), advertising cards, newspaper clippings, and embossed and printed cut outs that were sold just for scrapbooks.  The newspaper clippings are mostly social news columns for rural communities near where I live.  Notice the date in the above image, but I don't know who MSL was, I have not found a full name with those initials yet.  One of the scrapbooks goes to World War I, with clippings about local residents in the war effort. 

In between everything else, it is tomato planting time again:

Finally, I tried something new this year and went to a produce auction to get a stash of locally grown. strawberries to freeze for the year ahead:

I have usually been able get strawberries from local Amish farmers selling from the roadside, but I have not been in the right place at the right time this year.  They must all be taking their produce to the auction, so I will be buying there from now on.  I simply cannot eat grocery store strawberries anymore, they are picked when underripe to survive shipping, and strawberries do not continue to ripen once they are picked - sour and tart tasting.  The local berries are right on ripe, so sweet and delicious.  I am looking forward to strawberry cake, strawberry milkshakes, strawberry shortcake, strawberry bread...

Art Journaling

I mentioned in my last post that I am enrolled in a three session class on art journaling.  So, just what is meant by art journaling?  As I am discovering from the class and from a small mountain of library books on the subject, it could be taken several ways.  Usually, an art journal is a personal journal that is illustrated with drawing and painting.  It could also be a journal about the art that you make, or a journal about the art museums and galleries that you visit, and I’m sure there are few other possible definitions.

                                               

I’ve attempted to keep journals of sorts for some years now, and I thought that this class would introduce me to a new skill.  As it turns out, I have already been art journaling to some degree.  My journal of life events is augmented with my own photographs, and sometimes drawings.  I have another journal of art quilt ideas and notes on the progress of my quilts.

Image copyright RPS.  Please do not copy or repost

Above is a journal page documenting the first fabric box I made for a guild challenge.  There are scraps of the hand dyed fabric I used, and one of the viewer's choice ballots that were cast for my box.  No, I did not win viewer's choice, but a few people noticed it!

Yet another journal is a record of the quilts I am making from the lessons in The Art Quilt Workbook by Jane Davila and * and A Fiber Artist’s Guide to Color and Design by Heather Thomas.  As I am still learning the ins and outs of sewing and art quilting, this journal is a way for me to record my mistakes and the things that I get right.  It is not easy to remember everything when you’re learning a new skill.

Image copyright RPS.  Please do not copy or repost

I also have the fabric book that I made from Fabric Embellishing: The Basics and Beyond by Chandler, Kettle, Thomas and Vleck.  Not only is this a sampler of techniques, I also added mentions here and there of events in my life as I made each page.

Image copyright RPS.  Please do not copy or repost

I guess I am ahead of the game a bit with this class, but I have already picked up more ideas to try, and I am really looking forward to the time with other creative people.

Scrapbooks and Ephemera, Conclusion

Hopefully, I have enlightened my readers about two fascinating collectors, Theodore Langstroth and Joseph Cornell.  I have good reasons for spending so much time on them in this textile art blog.  First, the odd subject-specific scrapbooks and dossiers are perfect illustrations of how one can find creative inspiration just about anywhere.  If you are looking for ideas, consider things that you love and look at what you have chosen to surround yourself with at home.  Make a list of people, living or not, whom you would find interesting to meet.  What countries fascinate you, what regions of your own country interest you?  What is your town known for?  What has been forgotten about it that people might want to know?  What mundane objects in your life deserve more attention?

Memories of past road trips, before interstates.  There is an art quilt idea here...

I know that not everyone is a collector of stuff.  Many of us want to get rid of stuff.  This leads to another reason why I profiled Langstroth and Cornell.  I'm beginning to believe that a good bit of what we throw in the trash, someone might be in need or want of elsewhere.  I am constantly amazed at the prices some people pay for things at the junk auction that I would have tossed out.  Yes, a lot of trash is just trash, but I wonder how much money gets thrown away each week in the way of objects that others would pay to have.  Not only am I thinking of the cultural heritage that is being thrown out, but potential aesthetic creation.  As I have described before, I use re-purposed vintage textiles in my dyeing and fabric collages.  I'm working on some craft workshop ideas where I work that will re-purpose select trash items, so this whole theme is on my mind quite a bit.  I could go on and on with this, but I should work on securing some compact discs that no longer play.

Scrapbooks and Ephemera, Part Three

Information on Cornell from: Joseph Cornell/Marcel Duchamp… In Resonance, Menil Foundation, Houston, TX, 1998.

Joseph Cornell (1903-1972), having no formal art training, could be considered an outsider artist.  He produced three dimensional mixed media collages that were encased in wooden boxes (usually glass fronted).  During his active years as an artist, he found success in the Dada and Surrealism movements beginning in the 1930s, and collaborated with Marcel Duchamp, among other elite art world associations.  I’ll admit to being strongly influenced not only by Cornell’s collage/assemblage artwork, but also by his vast collections of ephemera.  Check out some of his artwork here and here, and read on.

Cornell amassed quantities of images, printed matter and personal notes on numerous subjects of interest to him: 19^th century advertising, ballet dancers, movie stars, literature, music, etc.  He referred to his subject collections as "dossiers."  Some of this material ended up in his collages, much of it did not, languishing in his home until being preserved as the Joseph Cornell Study Center at the National Museum of American Art (Washington DC).

One of my own Cornell-inspired dossiers

These personal collections assembled by Cornell were generated out of his own interests, probably not with any intent of them becoming a research source.  Cornell kept his ephemera collections relatively organized, but they were not pasted into scrapbooks, as the material was intended for use in collages.  In a way, the excess material and the finished collages themselves were scrapbooks in a different physical form. 

I started amassing my own files of notes, clippings and images before I ever knew of Cornell, but after discovering his collecting methods, I of course kept going.  I keep a limit on things, as I want to have a presentable living area!  Some of the things for which I have my own “dossiers” include: vintage sewing machine advertising, rare horse breeds, Euclid Beach Park, Route 66, and yes, even Joseph Cornell.

Next Tuesday, I’ll connect the dots on how Langstroth and Cornell relate to being more creative.  My next post on Thursday will return to the purple collage.

Scrapbooks and Ephemera, Part Two

Ephemera n.  1. Anything short-lived or transitory.  2. Such things collectively: a writer of ephemera.  3. Items, as pamphlets, notices and tickets, originally intended to be of use for only a short time, especially when preserved as collectibles.  (Random House Webster’s College Dictionary,  1991)

I want to bring to light a little about Theodore Langstroth in regards to scrapbooks.  Langstroth assembled his scrapbooks in 1975-1978, after retiring from a career as a dye chemist, spending the bulk of his adult life in Cincinnati, Ohio.  He must have collected material for his scrapbooks long before his retirement, and also must have had great connections in order to secure the paper and images in his stash.  Read more about him here, the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County has most of his scrapbooks.  Some images from his scrapbooks may be seen here.

A few of Langstroth’s scrapbooks reside elsewhere, I had the good fortune to catalog a few of his scrapbooks for a former employer.  While researching his life back then, I discovered the insightful observation that Langstroth saved whatever needed saving.  He latched onto subjects that no one else thought were significant.  Now, these collections are treasure troves of information.  He collected not only subjects such as color lithography, art on stamps, Price and Bonnelli's Greater New York Minstrels Showboat, the Boss Washing Machine Company and the use of flags on envelopes in the Civil War; he also collected items on individual people: Hiram Powers (sculptor), Blondin, the hero of Niagara Falls, artist Fannie Manser and Joseph Boggs Beale.  Not exactly household names anymore…

Information on Langstroth from John Fleischman, “The Labyrinthine World of the Scrapbook King,” Smithsonian Magazine, Feb. 1992.

Next time, I’ll introduce you to Joseph Cornell before I tie all of this together.

Scrapbooks, Part One

If you’ve been a frequent reader here, you’ve likely noticed my fascination with bits and pieces – scraps.  Not just scraps of fabric, but scraps gleaned from research projects, bits from the lives of others (my auction addiction) and so on.                        

               

I have a great appreciation for antique scrapbooks from the late 1800s and early 1900s, having had the opportunity to view some stellar examples in a couple of libraries where I used to work.  I have not really jumped into the contemporary scrapbooking trend, though I do have a couple of sketchbooks in which I keep clippings from assorted sources for creative inspiration.  Assembling a scrapbook of this nature is a great way to have a steady source of ideas in one place.  The creative-type scrapbook is also a way to condense piles of magazines.  Pull out the articles you want, (making sure to note the title and date), get rid of the rest.  Don’t be afraid to add anything else that inspires you: advertising graphics, literary or music quotes, names of artists to study, whatever strikes your fancy!

Earlier this year, I acquired a box lot of paper ephemera that was definitely the remains of a disassembled late 1800s scrapbook.  At that time, “chromolithography, die cutting and embossing unleashed a flood of cheap, brightly colored scrap [commercially printed paper],” made specifically for the scrapbooking hobby then.  (John Fleischman, “The Labyrinthine World of the Scrapbook King,” Smithsonian Magazine, Feb. 1992.)

Personally, I think that the 1800s printed scrap papers are much better in quality and innovation than the scrapbook papers churned out today.  That said, most of the 1800s scrapbooks that I have come across at the antiques shops and markets are just page after page of litho pictures, nothing else.  Rare is the one that has a clear theme and/or includes text of any sort. 

I picked up these small volumes at an outdoor market this year. 

They consist entirely of newspaper and magazine articles on a single subject.  The dealer had a large boxful of them.  I selected volumes titled Color, Wool, Textiles, Vegetables and Fruit.  Sadly, most of the articles lack a source and date, but from the few dates that I found in them, the books were assembled between 1920 and 1957.  They are a fascinating insight into the midcentury decades, and I love the idea of keeping personal groups of related articles.

These little scrapbooks raise many unanswerable questions though.  Did the individual who made them intend for them to say something about that person after they passed on, or were they solely intended for their maker’s lifetime?

Later on, I will profile two tremendous collectors of ephemera: Joseph Cornell and Theodore Langstroth.