The Tale of a New Style...

For all of those who know me well, you know I have expectations. Some might call them a little high, but I think they are pretty standard. There are certain expectations for how things should work and run that I really truly don't think are too demanding. But, obviously throughout my life I have seen that some people are completely incapable of meeting such standards.

I was hit with one such exampled this weekend. The first week I arrived in Lacoste, I was asked to put on an arts and crafts workshop for local children (foolish if you ask me seeing as I don't speak French, but that's beside the point). In a professional and timely manner, I developed and wrote a proposal fully equipped with a description of materials needed that was so comprehensive it even included the soap the children would need to clean their hands. I was prepared. Simple as that.

Now, I had been told all along that someone else would take care of the purchasing of the supplies seeing as my only mode of transportation in Provence is my own two feet (and considering one of toes has been numb and swollen for about two weeks now, I wouldn't be getting very far). So, I expected it would be taken care of. WRONG. An hour before my "Illustrative Printmaking for Kids" workshop was to begin, I was informed that none of my supplies had been purchased because the previous day had been the French equivalent of Labor Day and everything was closed. I'm not a resident of France and even I knew the stores would be closed. Whatever.

I was handed a plastic tub full of junk and asked to make something of it. Well, luckily I had taken my meds that morning so no psychotic rage ensued. Instead, I went to work like an industrious little worker bee with my friend Sarah, and we developed a plan. We would make masquerade masks with the younger children and collages with the pre-teens. All we had for collage materials were books from the library that were deemed "trash" and a few magazines plucked from someone's coffee table.

As I was tearing the yellowed pages from a book and gluing them down to prepare an example before the children arrived, I started to see something developing. I liked the way the lines overlapped and intertwined. The color of the paper was so vibrant and was reminiscent of some experimenting I have been doing with tea-stains. I kept gluing and gluing and gluing. Once the page was completely covered in worn, torn, and tattered pages, a new idea was born. I slid the sheet into my bag and waited for later so that I could draw on my new surface.

Once the workshop (which actually ended up working out just fine) was over, I stole away to my tiny hobbitt room and drew into the wee hours of the morning as I watched the Madonna episode of Glee over and over again. The end result is the above image, which is very visceral and cool. I am pretty pleased with it and it is the beginning of more experiments to come.

So, my friends, that is today's tale of how I found artistic inspiration....