Day of the Dead Oct.9th - Nov. 14

A soldiers poem

A soldiers poem,
In July of 2005, near the end of his time in Afghanistan, Orrin Gorman McClellan wrote a bitter ode to military recruiters:

"take your pleasantries
your generalizations, good intentions,
sweet words, and half truths,
put them in a box.
drape a flag over it.
and bury it with the rest of the dead."

Orrin Gorman McClellan committed suicide this last May. The number of suicides are growing among our returning veterans, 37 out of 100 at last accounting- a huge %. We must not forget our veterans and the wars we are STILL fighting. I am sorry, his sorrow and hurt is evident from his poem.

More 50-50 paper bag collage images

woman - is a combo of bag image and cut out. I have been obsessed with silhouettes/profiles so I did a few of them.
Paperglyph I, is found paper cutting cast offs put together. I almost called this floorglyph because I had found the central image on the floor under my work table.
Dreaming, I have fun cutting out stars and found that great hat on a bag. I also had allot of that metallic green and as I said was obsessed with silhouettes/profiles- I think that I have gotten it out of my system... or not (I do have allot of solid color bags!)
Bear Essentials, I really wanted to play with text and just could not leave those colored circles alone... combo cutting and found image

50-50 paper bag collage images

Light Junky, was inspired by a colony of moths in AZ and some great bags from Japan. This was all cut out with a little background thrown in (after the beetle I felt comfortable with bugs and had to do another bug).
Banksy on Health Care, was inspired by some Banksy graffiti in the mission- all cut out.
B-Day II, was the second of the Bunny Wars images. All cut out with some great graphics from a department store shopping bag.
80's superhero library was a classic bag image build with found bag images and pieces of bag images.
Beetle, was my first paper cutout in the classic, papal picado sense, combined with found bag images and background fun
Kilroy was here I & II, I wanted to update Kilroy was here for the two wars we are presently fighting and explore my own cut outs and backgrounds.

Btw, all these images were created by Leigh Radtke and belong to Leigh Radtke. All were created using paper bags, and are collages of the cut and paste kind.

50-50 update

Well I now have 37 pieces created (I hope to get some pictures up soon) and I have been doing quite a number of "studies". For example I love Matisse's paper cut outs.

Henri Matisse, http://www.henri-matisse.net

so I decided to do my own paper bag version inspired by “The Clown"(Cover of Jazz) 1943 - wow what fun! Then I came across an old birthday card whose image I love and I decided to create one of my own out of Safeway Logos. Then I found a small globe on a Cala/Bell Market bag and realized that the Bunnies have declared war on us in WWB = World War B!!! I have also been creating my own papal picado or paper cutout patterns in preparation for my Altered Barbie piece and this years Day of the Dead installation. Now I am by no means as accomplished as this amazing artist cutter-

Carol Menninga, http://www.paper-cutouts.com

but she is something to aspire to! So far 50-50 has really pushed and pulled me in new directions and helped me to discover something new to be done with paper bags. During the last 50-50 stories emerged as I meditated on bag images and built new images with them. But this year I am an explorer, going where no baglander has gone before.

50-50 Day 24

It has been interesting- with all the solid color bags I have been cutting out more shapes instead of just building images from existing images or pieces of existing shapes so I am combining paper cut out with existing and built bag images. This actually gives me more freedom- or perhaps I just realized that I actually can draw/cut and I am now not relying on just finding the images or pieces of images that I need, but I am creating my own from scratch much more often than I did before. I am also experimenting with backgrounds, not so much white… not sure if this is a radical departure or not but it feels like it is!!!! Here is an example, I was listening to the Baseball game yesterday and looking out of the window, I saw the image of a tree, telephone wires with clouds and blue sky behind, and I liked that so I used paper cut out for the clouds(a blue bag with cut out clouds on white mat board instead of using TJ waves), a plant from a book store bag, cut out black strips from a Tokyo Banana bag, the inside of a TJ palm tree provided the fence pole, and wallah, I created my own version of tree /plant, wires, blue sky and clouds. I am starting to think of how to create more of what I want – rather then create what I see or intuit only (intuit example, cut off the head and claws of a lobster and it becomes a ray gun or the TJ waves = clouds). Another example, I was given a beautiful red and yellow bag with the red coming up from the bottom with a wavy transition line between red and yellow, wavy line intuit or see waves, so I created a viking ship, I cut and detailed my own ship(I created what I wanted), to ride these wild red waves and the wind is howling! .... fun!
What is really fun about 50-50 is that I am living in a constant state of creativity due to constantly working on all these pieces. So I am always looking for inspiration, today it is

Kilroy Was Here

... I am going to make my own bag version and try to update him for the 2 wars we are presently fighting. I will either find a loaf of bread or head to use and cut the hands or cut the whole thing, we shall see. I draw roughly what I want then fine tune by cutting.... some people use paint/pencil to add details, I cut!!!

50-50 art show @ Sanchez

Well well the 50 pieces of artwork in 50 days has once again started. Today is day 10. I am not as nervous or driven as the last time but I am determined to push it a little with my paper grocery bag collages. And as it so often happens the bags gave me a way in to do just that... I have gotten several one color, no design bags, a green, pink, blue, and a purple. Solid color bags do not offer any images to play off of, no arm, spoon handle, or bowl as a helmet, so I began cutting out my own images. Paper cutting means that if I want a car I cut out a car. And if I want a blue car that has yellow in the background of the windows, well I can do that by just putting a piece of yellow bag behind the cut out window. Wow, interesting. Also as I have said before, I have been experimenting with backgrounds, so, for example, dribbling and scribbling white out became thin curly strips of paper and in a couple of instances I have just added big squares of color (those darn solid color bags!), for no reason at all. This 50-50 show is a chance to experiment, to what the hell- go for it, to be brave, and let my collages go where they need to go... I hope to combine it all, the orig paper bag image inspirations, the paper cutting, solid color bags and new background appreciation to create something new... We shall see.

Art News

I worked diligently on the sketch book experimenting with backgrounds. I discovered that the backgrounds need to communicate with the collage on top and I decided to experiment with different media. I did find that I can usually translate the different media into paper bags so the sketchbook was a valuable exercise in discovering backgrounds other than white. I am not entirely happy with my sketchbook but I did write a poem about it called, Liquid Paper (see below).

Liquid Paper

I am an artist. I am an artist who needed a project. So I signed up with the Brooklyn Art Library’s Sketch Book Monthlies. The library sends you a 31/2 by 4 inch blank page journal. I am supposed to fill in the pages and send it back. I am a collage artist. I create paper grocery bag collages. I use the images off of the bags, I cut, I re-arrange, and I paste these images to create new ones, often on a white background. But for the sketchbook, I decided why not add a little color?

I tried paint.
The paper was too thin, it wrinkled, and I had to wait for it to dry.
Why not white out, it dries quickly, spreads evenly but well it is still white.
I tried colored pencil, not smooth enough.
I tried pastel, too smooth.
I scribbled, dribbled, and even added text.
I tried to think of these backgrounds as a clean slate.
But backgrounds and the collage on top have to connect, to communicate.
Kinda like, We The People of the United States
But look at the health care bill
Today the news is full of
Tea Parties
Reckless government spending
Obamacrats not democrats
Death threats to government officials
Tea Party patriots
Sheriffs with private militias
And technicals waiting for the end of days

And how is it that to support fairness is unconstitutional?
To support a little more equity is the road to socialism?

So I spent the day looking for white out,
Liquid paper correction fluid,
Fast drying,
With smooth even coverage

And do you know what?
White out comes in different colors

White out came out
And discovered that it was pastel pink, legal pad yellow, sky- high blue, everyman beige, money green and Caltrans orange

And all comes in the same 22ml size
Equity in a bottle

So I went back to my sketchbook,
I put my collages on
pinko pink, trickle up money green, and even everyman beige
All provided wonderful back grounds for my collages.
I now have the security of knowing that my blank pages will be covered.

That is when it hit me,
it just could not be plainer
White out is socialism in a bottle.

Back to Art

I have not been art active and have not posted so let me start by including a link for the Art House Co-op at the Brooklyn Art Library; Sketch Book Project Monthlies.

http://arthousecoop.com/projects/Sketchbookmonthliesmarch

Art House sends you a 3.5 X4 sketch book for you to play with and then send back to them when you are done.

"The Sketchbook Project Monthlies are similar to the big Sketchbook Projects but without all the pressure. Each month there is a theme voted on by the community and then you will have two months to work on your book. The books are smaller with less pages and allow for you to use this as an opportunity to try out new things, tighten up your skills, or just have fun. All the sketchbooks we get back will be included in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Art Library where anyone can come in and look through the pages of your sketchbook!"

The Sketch Book has been great as a tool to get me creating again. I am exploring the use of color in my backgrounds, it has been interesting. I tried paint, white out (I just found out that there are other white out colors, so wo wo, I really liked the white out but thought alas it is also white!) and after all the torn out and glued together pages I discovered bags as backgrounds... LOL. But if I can find colored white out, well well we shall see. I will post when I get an image that I like.