Monday, February 10, 2014

Combinations: Exploration #24




It's about time I did another exploration from the book, How To Be An Explorer Of The World: Portable Art Life Museum by Keri Smith. I'm close to halfway through the book now. I know I haven't been blogging as much since the New Year and it's because I prefer to write outside and this crazy winter has kept me in hibernation mode. But, I'm back on board, I say!


Exploration #24


COMBINATIONS


Combine groups of objects for visual or emotional contrast. You might try natural vs. human-made, contrasting colors, alive vs. decaying, light vs. dark.


Once again, I wasn't instantly inspired by this assignment. I thought about the objects I would use for days and then finally today I realized that my button collection would work nicely.

The first thing I did was to divide the buttons into groups based on similar colors and styles.


My button collection.


1. The first group of buttons are the brown ones with the swirly cream colors in them. 

2. Group two are the golden color buttons. 

3. The third group are the tan/brown group.

4. Group four are the non-plastic buttons. Two are wood and two are metal. 

5. Group five are the black/grey group.

6. The largest group are the greenish/grey group. This I found to be odd because I don't really have clothes this color nor a penchant for military clothing.

7. I have two little buttons covered in fabric that make group seven, the smallest group.  

8. Pink/red/purple comprises group eight.

9. Group nine are the white/cream buttons.

10. And finally we have group ten, the blue/teal buttons.


So many buttons.


Okay. So I grouped the buttons by color. Big deal. This did not seem like a very artistic endeavor. How could I elicit emotional contrast? I thought about it and the only thing that I wanted to do was make an outdoor scene (I must really have a bad case of Spring fever). 


Tree in the night during Spring.


I hope you can tell what is meant to be the tree. The big gold button is the moon and the small white buttons are stars. I used the colored buttons to create a horizon of sorts and also because I think they look like Spring flowers. I don't know if this strikes up emotion in the hearts of any of my readers, but it makes me long for the warmer days to come. I mean, just look at the below photo of my beloved Finely River. Frozen solid.




A frozen Finely River scene.

I ended up enjoying this exploration. Every time I do a project from this book I am reminded how much my creativity is stifled the older I get. I think it's important to create things. I feel like we get to a point in our adulthood where we think everything must serve a purpose or be of exceptional artistic quality...but really, a tree made from buttons is enough.  It holds a lot of value and importance if it brings you joy. 


I'll leave you guys with a totally random photo of our neighbor's dog, Lucky. He was playing in the snow in our front lawn today and I had to take a snap. 


Lucky playing in the snow.


~ Love & Light ~







2 comments:

  1. I love your button tree. What is the surface that you're working on?

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  2. Laurel, it is actually just a place mat from Target. :) Thank you for reading my blog! Cheers!

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