This spread was created to accomodate the back side of Judy’s response to the “Self Portrait” prompt. When she turned hers in, the back side had these beautiful, faux journaling markings on it. I didn’t want to completely cover them up because they were so wonderful.
Instead, I chose to create a contrast to the monochromatic paper by using this bright, turquoise blue paper on the left side, which has a rich texture on it’s own.
Then Judy used some peices of a gelli-printed paper of mine, along with aqua foil to create the minimalist collage.
The right side here, is a collage of various things that were left on the table after assembling the rest of the book. The paper with the gold calligraphy was from a band around some decorative papers. It was too beautiful to just throw away, so I chose it to start this page. Then I found the pieces of deli paper with turquoise paint, and the journaling words. I added the turquoise and bronze papers. I wanted a bright focal point, so I punched the three (one for each artist of the book) bright red spirals from origami paper. It was Judy’s suggestion to add the small strips of red to complete the collage. Everything was glued down with matte medium. All of this came together in a matter of minutes!
The words in the quote are:
“Of course there must be lots of magic”
– Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
After looking at the two pages, side by side, I created an art paper with faux calligraphy in black red and gold on white. I cut this into strips to use along the left edge of the left side. Then I added the paint to the left side. I chose the red to match the paper on the left, and the gold to echo the calligraphy. The abstract painting is to represent a dragon which eats symbols and translates them to create the world (symbolized by Judy’s collage.)
These are my favorite pages. I love them because there was no real “labor” involved. Everything just came together very intuitively and fluidly. They were a joy to create and looking at them now, brings back that same joy!
Left: Tandika Star and Judy Wood Right: Tandika Star and Judy Wood