Mountain Ash Leaves

The warm colors of mountain ash leaves look beautiful placed on an antique Japanese book cover. I get a calm, quiet feeling from this, as though I’ve just opened some child’s scrapbook, where he or she has collected and pressed fallen leaves.

All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you for your understanding and kindness.

An afternoon in Anacortes . . .

Crabbing season began about 10 days ago -- always exciting!

Crabpots are stacked up, spiffed up, ready to be loaded onto fishing boats. Not the mass quantities and dramatic vistas we had in Oregon, but I take what I can get and am thankful.

Piles of fishing nets always provide good photo opportunities. "Want to buy them? They won't fit in my net shed." Sure. Five hundred pounds of fish nets. You haul.

It's hard to miss the bright red Arrow Launch/Marine Services boats in the harbor. And they look even better up close.

We walk down one of the docks where I photograph the aft section of a fishing boat from Kodiak, Alaska -- love the texture on this one.

When the weather is good, this is what we do -- get out and explore, wander around, and feel so lucky we can do this together.

All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you for your understanding and kindness.

On this date . . .

Back on this date in 2010, eight years ago, we were driving around the industrial parts of Salem, Oregon, where I found some great walls and cool vegetation in front of them.

The warm, monochromatic look was appealing on this early winter's day.

All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you for your understanding and kindness.

State of the studio . . .

Fine Art America contacted me, wanting a photo of my studio for a feature they were putting together. Yikes! Do I clean it up? Do I "stage" it? Nah. I just took the photo of the art counter as it was, but I admit to putting that red paper up front, a gel print I'd recently made, because it was bright and eye-catching.

When I shot this, I was working on making a couple of artist books, which you can see there on the counter -- one red, one blue.

I've never made books like these, so at this point I'm just experimenting, and it's all taking a lot of time. I'm optimistic that I'll get faster and better as I practice. But the process is fun (frustrating, but fun) and it gets me off my butt, away from the computer.

Gotta thank Chris for making it all happen for me.

All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you for your understanding and kindness.

Work in progress . . .

As I'm making all the individual pages for my three Japanese ledger-style artist books, I'm also making little collages, using small scraps of paper that get pushed aside. Each of these mini-collages contains maybe 3-5 bits of paper. And then, whenever/wherever appropriate, I glue them onto the book pages.

I know this is tough to visualize, but each page of the book contains what I think of as a big collage, consisting of inked, stamped, painted, torn papers. They're kind of like scrapbook pages. The books are always in a state of flux as I add more things, rip away papers, etc. No page (double-sided!) will ever be really done until I begin putting all three books together.

I'll show some of the pages in a forthcoming post, which might help you visualize my concept.

Whatever the results (and I truly think they're going to be wonderful), I am enjoying the entire process. To call it "fun" isn't quite accurate. I read the other day an unattributed quote: "Art is fun in retrospect."

Right now I'm sort of in a zone, picking, choosing, arranging, making decisions. I stick with it for a couple hours and then have to take a break.

So no, it's not "giddy" fun, not like being in the front seat of the rollercoaster, but rather a quiet, satisfying sense of making something. You know?
----------
I'm also on Instagram if you'd like to see more of my work there. Well, even if you don't want to see more of my work, I'm there anyway!
----------
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you for your understanding and kindness.