Lori Krein: Healthy Art Program…Creating my BURST collage

The inspiration for creating my sun collage was multi-faceted. The sun gives us life, but it can also easily take life away. Too much pollution in our atmosphere, which might block out the sun, and we’re done. Too much sunshine, we burn up. Just the right amount, and we thrive.
It seemed to make sense.

The materials I was give by The Art Inspector, which included eco-friendly paints, papers, glue, and wood, were perplexing to me at first, but after working with them for awhile, an idea began to emerge.

The papers, as given to me, were not useful…but, given my history of collage, which began 12 years ago when I spent one entire summer making paper in my backyard, I realized I could manipulate the paper by using it to make new paper, which I knew would be more textured, colorful, and aesthetically appealing. I combined the papers she gave me with scraps I had been collecting in my studio, and spent a weekend making paper. (Luckily, the sun was shining which helped in the drying process! So I used the sun, to make my sun!)

Here’s a photo of the scraps I used to make some of the paper. I sorted my scraps into color families…white, yellow, orange, red, blue, green.

 

 

 

I tore the scraps into small pieces, soaked them in water, then put them in a blender along with sawdust, dried leaves, and dried flowers.  Next, I blended them up, and poured the pulp into a tub.

 

 

 

 

 

Then I scooped out the pulp using a square deckle or embroidery hoop with screening in it. After blotting out the excess water, I put the deckle in the sun to dry.

 

 

 

 

 

Peeling the paper off the screen was the most fun part of the process!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I ended up with a pile of beautiful hand-made papers. I tore them into semi-circles, then glued them onto the wood panels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After adding some string to make the sunburst, my piece was done!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The process really fun and gratifying, and I love my finished piece. Thanks for taking a look and reading about my process! -Lori