Under Construction

I was searching through my papers the other night to see what would grab my attention and lead me to my next collage and I came across some wallpaper scraps from my mother's powder room. It's a lovely cream color with violet and indigo pansies sprinkled liberally all over with green leaves and tiny little speckles of blue. It has a watercolor painting look to it and it definitely says springtime. I love working with wallpaper in collages. It is made to hold water and meant to be glued so therefore it's extremely pliable. What could be more perfect?

Then I started casting around for other papers that would complement the wallpaper. I found a slightly darker yellowy-cream colored Thai grass paper and decided to use it for my background. I ran across some indigo scrap booking paper with a metallic gold design and also a lovely blue African handmade kingfisher rag paper that was a Christmas gift from my son's girlfriend.

I applied the background paper to a 6x6 canvas block and began to rip the other papers into long strips which I wove together. The weaving process and the spring like colors made me feel a little as though I were building a bird's nest and I started to look for other interesting items to weave into it. So I added very narrow strips from an old dictionary and some long pieces of gold metallic thread.

The weaving will next be adhered to the base and I'm tempted to paint a little bluebird to use as the focal point of this spring piece. Hopefully I'll have it finished soon.