Teeny, tiny art

One of my favorite books by Murakami has a line in it about creating: "The best musicians transpose consciousness into sound; painters do the same for color and shape." I like that image - transposing consciousness into color and shape.

The SAQA group that meets in Somers NY every month set ourselves a small (keyword: small) challenge for June. I handed out some 1.5" chipboard squares to collage on, called bazzill chips. I had a lot of fun in this tiny format. I've decided I've been playing a kind of "visual limbo" lately. How low can you go? My average size of work is in the 9" x 12" and 10" x 13" range. I've been making 8" squares and 6" squares in a new series. I make a lot of fiber postcards that are 4" x 6". I've done atcs. But boy, 1.5" is really small. I know there are a lot of artists out there working on the 1" squares, but 1.5" is maybe as small as I'd want to go.


I experimented with a couple of new materials and plan to use them in some larger pieces. The left side of the chip is wrapped in copper foil tape and the other three sides (and the back) are painted with pearlescent liquid acrylic, which has the consistency of ink, is slightly sheer and is highly metallic. And yes, I have beetles on the brain.

I need to make more of these...