"Alive and Active" (Draft 2)

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"Words become alive and active when they take root in the heart." As the piece evolves, I am beginning to see exactly what I want to emphasize in relation to the quote. There will be one more draft tomorrow and then the final on Sunday.  

On another note,  tonight is the Opening Reception for "Fully Alive" at The Open Doors Gallery at Hill Country Bible Church of Austin.  The public is invited.  Details can be found at the following website (http://pactofaustin.com/)  Hope to see you there!

I hope you can see that a grid like format gives a lot of structure to a piece. It gives many shapes to work with. (Remember that all paintings / pieces are made up of shapes.) It is a good idea when beginning the first layer to have some kind of format in mind. And it's okay if it changes along the way, but to simply place papers anywhere with no format or layout in mind is to invite disaster. 

So yesterday, I had laid down metal leaf in an informal grid like format by cutting up the metal leaf into irregular squares and rectangles and making sure to keep slivers of the black exposed. I had also added a bit of text on some of the silver pieces...allowing the edges of the silver to be revealed and in a very irregular way.....in other words, don't get out a ruler and measure. 

Today, I added more text on the remaining silver pieces and then added plain rice paper over most of the text, but leaving some of the edges and text exposed. It is all about deciding what to reveal and conceal and to what degree. 

I then added some mono printed rice papers and deliberately covered up some of the black in the background but leaving some of the previous edge of the plain rice paper showing. I also made a conscious decision to keep the mono printed rice papers around the periphery as though it is framing the central portion. The middle top piece has no mono print to visually interpret the quote by suggesting that somewhere in the piece there is an entrance into the center.

Today I plan to add more plain rice paper and further emphasize the strong black erratic lines that you see today. I may also choose to cover up a portion of the mono printed rice papers to make more irregular shapes. The last thing I did today before photographing the piece was to spray the entire thing with spray acrylic coating which brings out the patina of the old text pages and makes the plain rice paper translucent. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.