Mosaic Dream Waves appears two years after my first public art exhibit, Maps of Loss: Rivers, Ruins, and Grief. On display until July 31 at Runnymede Library, Mosaic Dream Waves has a lighter approach than my previous display. Turning from melancholy to playfulness, the artwork pictured here invites you to visit an inner landscape where waves perform on stage, a mystical ornament shines, a yogini flies on a crazy quilt, and a dancing bird woman keeps company with a raven and a horse on wheels.
Waves on Stage, Catherine Raine, 2011Roll Me to the Moon, Catherine Raine, 2011Disco Pirate Zombie, Catherine Raine, 2010Flying Bookfish, Catherine Raine, 2012. (I learned how to make this altered book at a free workshop at S. Walter Stewart Library).Shine, Catherine Raine, 2012 (This piece was inspired by a guided visualization).Matryoshka Doll on a Stagecoach Ride, Catherine Raine, 2012Yogic Flying on a Crazy Quilt, Catherine Raine, 2012Desolate Yet Undaunted, Catherine Raine, 2012Dancing Bird Woman, Catherine Raine, 2012Abstract Wiseman, Catherine Raine, 2012I love how the staff gathered books about collage and altered books, adding them to the exhibit.
As part of the opening reception on July 13th, I offered a free collage workshop that took place in the program room across the hall from the gallery. My mother, Carlyle Raine, kindly offered to help with the workshop, and the beautiful art that emerged captivated us with its originality, energy, and flair.
Collage by Sehrish Mazumder, 2013Collage by Sehrish Mazumder, 2013Collage by Md. Mahdin Mazumder, 2013Collage by Md. Mahdin Mazumder, 2013Collage by Fariha Fyrooz, 2013Collage by Fariha Fyrooz, 2013“The World Hangs by a Thread” by Ellen Jaffe, 2013
Thank you, Runnymede Library, for fostering community art, learning, and creativity under the eaves of your poetic attic!
When making a Corn Goddess collage, please secure a supply of thread, handmade papers, and stickers. Once completed, she is ready to celebrate the summer solstice with you.
This paper doll emerged from the scraps of a previous project. Many of the various elements just seemed to want to be together!
Purple Paper Doll, Catherine Raine, 2013
The metallic paper background is fun to photograph because it changes colour depending on the location of the light source. From shiny to mysterious in two images!
My friends Dan and Tracy love books, gardens, music, fine food, and wine. This collage is for them!
Dan and Tracy’s Collage, Catherine Raine, 2013
The boar with the headdress symbolizes Dan’s connection to Kansas City, Missouri. In that city, a statue of a boar lives on 47th Street, and he brings luck to people who rub his brass nose and drop a coin in a box.
Dan and Tracy’s Collage, Catherine Raine, 2013
It was my good fortune to make soap sculptures and listen to the Chronicles of Narnia with Dan in the 1970’s when we attended the same elementary school in Liberty, Missouri. As teenagers, we played in the symphonic band, wrote for the high school newspaper, and took French together. Dan and I kept in touch by mail, and in 2008 I got to visit him and his partner Tracy in Oregon.
Dan and Tracy’s Collage, Catherine Raine, 2013
Happy Birthday, Dan! May you and Tracy share a joyful day!
Before I took Drawing 1 at the Toronto School of Art in 2012, I thought I was hopeless at drawing. Even though I had been making collage and textile art for six years, I didn’t feel entitled to call myself a “real” artist because I lacked basic drawing skills.
“Love, Eric” collage by Catherine Raine, 2012 (for the memorial project “Eleven Letters from Eric.“)
With very little formal training in art, I wanted to address the gaps in my knowledge that held me back from stretching into three dimensions. It was also time to overcome the limiting “I can’t draw!” belief.
On the first day of my TSA evening class, our instructor, Paul Turner, boldly asserted that anyone who could hold a pencil could learn how to draw. I thought to myself, “I hope I don’t prove him wrong!”
As an adult educator myself, I know how important it is convince students to move beyond negative assessments of their abilities. Comparing my skills from the first week to the final week of drawing instruction, I can happily report that the only thing I proved wrong was my self-doubt.
To thank Paul and encourage anyone who wants to learn a new skill, I offer this illustrated blog post as evidence that if I could learn to draw at the age of 43, then others most certainly can too!
In the first two weeks, our class focused on the humble yet crucial box in one-point and two-point perspective, in addition to the equally essential ellipse. Paul encouraged us to “get comfortable with non-parallels” such as a box resting at a different angle from the table it’s sitting upon. However, I was remarkably and deeply uncomfortable with non-parallels.
In fact, I was actively alarmed when Paul stacked six books on top of each other and suddenly shifted all of their spines into different angles. How could I possibly draw that pile? I was barely adept at boxes floating in space, and my ellipses looked like squashed peaches in the mud.
Imagine my discomfiture when a variety of boxes on tables greeted us in week three. I had a drawing board, paper, and a skewer in my hand to gage proportions but little clue how to use it. (There was a reason why I scored low on spatial-relation skills on standardized tests in junior high).
Paul had demonstrated the skewer technique, and he even drew me a picture of a thumb holding a skewer next to a box, but I still felt hopelessly out of my depth. To my horror, I was actually close to tears!
Week three drawing, proportion exercise
Though measuring proportions was difficult, our instructor exhorted us not to give up. A quick comparison of the drawings above and below bears testimony to the fact that this skill became much easier for me.
Week seven still-life exercise
In week four, I loved the opportunity to “respond to the total form with one line” and build a “relationship of trust with (my) eye, hand, and mind” (Paul Turner). The total form was a male model who changed poses frequently, and the rapid shifts pushed us to draw from “head to toe, boom, one line!”
Jazz Coat HangerBauhaus ManDefianceTightrope Walker, Catherine Raine 2013Starting Block Stance
The looseness and freedom of this gesture exercise lifted my spirits after the previous week’s disappointment with myself. Many of my sketches seem to express this joy.
In week five, we considered “how objects behave in space.” I liked the challenge of truly looking at a lantern, a bottle of dish detergent, and a lampshade to determine proportion, shape, and line. I also greatly appreciated Paul’s advice to be in the moment while engaged in drawing: “Don’t focus on where you think you should be (skill-wise) or what your drawing should look like. Be here now!”
The following week, I learned to pay more attention to the spaces between objects. Our task was to “go after” the shapes created in the gaps between items such as a chair, a goblet, or a sled propped up together on a table. We used white charcoal on colored paper to depict the negative space, allowing the objects to take form from the absence of charcoal.
Negative space exercise
It was the objects’ turn to live in the gaps and let so-called empty space take center stage for a change. Why should positive, filled-up space get all the attention when so many fascinating patterns are waiting to be noticed in the liminal places, the edges of objects, and the sea of animated air between them? I loved the radical shift in visual and conceptual perspective that the lesson in negative space inspired.
Mid-term negative space and contour assignment
During week seven’s still-life exercise with two objects, I became very aware of the lovely negative-space shape made by the inside of my grandmother’s silver teapot’s handle, something I might not have noticed prior to the class. As I gazed at the teapot and a green vase from TSA’s closet of diverse objects, Paul suggested, “Let the shape lead you to the line.”
Week seven still-life exercise
On the eighth class, we had a new model, and Paul instructed us to “build a height and width for the form and then plant a shoulder.” I liked the use of the verb “to plant” in a drawing context because it implied bold, purposeful action, a deliberate sowing of a seed from a burlap bag, a strong line from which something new can grow.
It Isn’t to Be Polite, Catherine Raine 2013
Planting the first shoulder of the form is an act of bravery, a commitment that changes a blank scroll of paper into a potential drawing. The first line transforms an idea into artistic reality, the abstract to the concrete, and fear-paralysis (“Will the line be perfect?”) into definitive action.
Value was week nine’s topic, and I struggled to get my head around the terminology and grapple with the sphere resting in front of me on a draped table. At one point, I sighed, “Vanquished by a styrofoam ball!”
Week nine value exercise
I was disappointed in my value drawing even though I managed to improve it somewhat. However, I did like this artistic and psychologically-applicable advice from Paul: “Deal with the dark side of the form first and then work your way into the light.”
In week ten (our last week), we had the opportunity to do sustained drawings of another model and integrate what we’d learned about proportion, shape, gesture, negative space, and line. I also learned some new phrases to describe the long line of the body from shoulder to hip: “the line of action, the bow of the torso, and the C-curve.” I enjoyed thinking in terms of active lines. These lines are alive, humming with tension like an archery bow and curved like fruit in a bowl.
Even though I had trouble visualizing the planes of the body and understanding what Paul meant when he said, “Let the interior shapes guide you the exterior,” by the end of the evening I had two sketches I particularly liked.
Reflecting on my experience as a novice student of drawing, I am very grateful for such a stimulating class that taught me to have faith in my learning potential. I especially appreciate the invitation to look at objects, space, form, and light in fresh ways. What a gift to an artist and a writer!
Contour exercise, week fourSubway contour sketch, week four
Thank you, Paul, for taking me on a journey from perceived hopelessness to confidence in a developing skill!
I was lucky to attend Emily Tinkler’s free Altered Books workshop at S. Walter Stewart Library, where more than a dozen participants eagerly listened to Emily describe how to fold, cut, and poke pages with an awl to turn an old book with a sewn binding into a work of art.
Flying Bookfish by Catherine Raine, 2012
I had been given an out-of-date computer book to use for the workshop, and I soon went to work folding the pages to create an accordion shape. I was inspired by the examples that Emily had brought to show us, especially the one in which wire and ribbon rioted through the pages of a former book.
Flying Bookfish by Catherine Raine, 2012
After the session, I took my unfinished piece home, where it sat on a table mutely calling out for something to spring from the folds of paper. Meanwhile, I continued sewing clumps of paper together with saffron and fern green thread.
Flying Bookfish by Catherine Raine, 2012
A trip to the sticker aisle in an art store supplied me with the missing element. Fish! When I saw the fish collection, they seemed to want to be flying out of a book.
Flying Bookfish by Catherine Raine, 2012Flying Bookfish by Catherine Raine, 2012Flying Bookfish by Catherine Raine, 2012Flying Bookfish by Catherine Raine, 2012
I glued double-images of the fish stickers together, and then I cut twelve skewers into varying sizes before affixing the energetic yet dignified creatures to them. As as penultimate touch, I tied short lengths of the saffron and green thread around each skewer. Finally, I added stickers to the decorated inside covers of the book. And that’s the story of Flying Bookfish!
I made this collage for a friend who has been fighting a life-threatening illness. When I asked her what colors, images, and themes she might like, she wrote, “I have been enjoying vivid colors lately, and anything that evokes the ocean. We spent two weeks in Hawaii before my surgery, and images of the water and life within helped carry me through . . . . Themes of time, stretched and compressed feel relevant.”
The raven is curious about the eclipse but not overly concerned. He stands his ground without fear.
Desolate Yet All Undaunted, Catherine Raine, 2012
I’m sending this raven piece to an art magazine that is calling for submissions on the theme of Edgar Allen Poe. (The title comes from Poe’s 1845 poem, “The Raven”). Wish me and the raven luck!
Petunia is a souvenir of my recent vacation to Nova Scotia, for I finished her embellishments while relaxing in a hotel. To make a cloth creature like Petunia, you’ll need a sock, a rubber band, a sash, some beads, miniature crochet flowers, and thread.
Petunia may seem rude when she sticks out her blue tongue, but she’s more playful than disrespectful.
I have a friend who likes frogs, so I thought she might enjoy a collage that featured her favorite amphibians gussied up with doilies. The frogs pulled off the look with dignity.
And to round out the post, here are some bookmarks I collaged recently!
My grandmother Mary Raine (1911-2008), a practical woman from a small Missouri town, would have classed the practice of guided visualization as “a little different.” Nevertheless, Grandma was present in the meditation room of an Ontario spa last spring when a mindfulness coach asked me to close my eyes and descend deep into the earth, deep within deep, down to the cave of the grandmothers.
Shine, Catherine Raine, 2012
Drawn by the firelight and the chance to see Grandma Raine again, I went into the cave. Grandma gave me a heavy object wrapped in a gray cloth. Resting inside the cloth was a stained glass ornament that once dangled from a curtain rod above her apartment’s east window. When it caught the bright Missouri sunlight, it released streams of green, lavender, red, and blue. I used to love looking at those ribbons of light, and when my niece Emma saw them as a baby, she loved them too.
I took the gift reverently and gave thanks for its rainbow message, the loving command to let myself shine. It called for translucence and generation, allowing light to both pass through me and radiate from within. It called from a cave as deep as the grandmother’s mythical one, but just as real and powerful.
The gift was a verb. Shine. Be the stained glass. Transform clear light into personal pigment. Manifest the light into words, art, kindnesses, movement, and love. Don’t be opaque. Be clearly colorful, openly bright, unabashedly shiny, embody the light.
The visionary gift and its invocation have arrived at the perfect time to fight grief shadows that shroud, inhibit, and dim. Grandmother Raine’s heirloom bathes mind, body, and soul in its light and invites the living to surrender to radiance. It bids us to shine, shine, shine, and shine.
Life Within, Catherine Raine, 2012
