This book was started some time ago but I did not like the way it was progressing so I put it away to work on “in the future”. Well, the future came and here is the finished book. It is a fond memory of my mother. Each panel is shown enlarged so the text and illustrations are easier to see and read.
A Walk Around the World, Mixed Media Artist Book, 9″ x 21.5″
So here is the finished work. Thank you all for your comments on the last post of this as it was in progress. I decided on a horizontal format and it is currently hanging on a dowel which I have come to realize is a quick answer to hanging most artwork that is not framed. Other posts related to this piece are here: CCHP: Artwork in Progress and CCHP: Intro to the Cookie Cutter House Project & Beginning the Artwork Detailed images are below. There are a few details I feel I would like to talk about. On Detail 1 below, I want to bring attention to the house on the bottom row in the middle. My goal with this house was to try to get a very old world structure with a fountain out front. This may seem a bit of a stretch on a row house but many people take great pride in making their small row homes seem grand by mimicking old world style architectural features. I am not making fun of this, I find it very charming. This can also apply to the house in the upper right with the two large planters flanking the door and the several houses throughout the installation piece with the faux stone fronts. More traditional for row homes are bicycles out front as in the house in the upper left, fire escapes (see Detail 2, upper right) and small trees, climbing vines and lawn ornaments (flamingos). You get the idea. Though row homes, like town homes, are traditionally attached, that was where I took some artistic license with this. My hope is that the closeness and the quirky nature of each home speaks to the culture of row house living.
Early in the winter of 2018, I set out to make 60 small houses to fit in a particular box. I did not know what the end product would be like but I set a goal to finish them before April of this year and here they are. Now they are not “complete, complete” yet, it is still a work in progress, meaning, the houses still have to be strung together and I have not yet decided whether that will be a more vertical format or a more horizontal format. And this is a poor photograph to top it all off. (John if you are reading this, I will eventually get that camera!) In any case, I had decided originally that the piece would be called suburban sprawl but the more I worked on it, the more they reminded me of the urban row homes I lived in most of my life so felt that the use of the word suburban seemed wrong. I am still going to make a piece called suburban sprawl but it will be different from this. I plan to complete this piece very soon and will post the final project then. You can read the original post related to this entry here.
Walking around my neighborhood last summer, I regularly noticed many strangely flattened shapes along the road. Upon closer inspection, these shapes turned out to be toads that were run over by cars. One day, while standing in one spot, I counted four toads that had been run over within a small radius of where I stood.
When I describe my “neighborhood”, it is important to know that I do not live along a highway or even a regular street but an apartment complex. My apartment complex, and the surrounding four shopping centers and medical complex, were not here as little as ten years ago. Behind my apartments are a creek and greenway where it is typical to see many birds, groundhogs, deer, raccoons, and (very recently) an otter. Not very long ago, where I live was a very rural area that has turned into a massive suburban sprawl.
I found myself needing to record the demise of these creatures. Art is not always a comfortable, beautiful subject. It is also meant to shake people up a bit. Though I photographed many toads, I decided that less is more so I am presenting just two images in tribute to these fine creatures we have displaced.
Nikki Hansen was born in Elmer, NJ (when dinosaurs roamed the earth, or at least before the tiny local hospital splurged on air conditioning). She currently lives in Glassboro, NJ.
For me, “home” isn’t necessarily anchored in a single dwelling but is more the mental embodiment of comfort, beauty, joy, safety, memory, stimulation and entertainment that makes one feel fulfilled and in tune with one’s place in time and space. A personal universe, in a nutshell, that is never left behind or lost because it travels with you in your head and can be accessed at all times and all surroundings.
In another universe there are an infinite number of rooms to contain all the beautiful, wonderful, curious, fascinating objects, creatures and emotional stimuli that I find make life worth living but these few are a start.
When Nikki is not at home, she spends most of her non-working hours cruising the tri-state area (NJ, PA, and Delaware) playing & singing with various music groups including two fantastic bands– Just Roses and Smoke and Mirrors. She spent most of her working career as a props person for live theatre and firmly believe that books, music in particular, the Arts in general and beasties are what makes life worth living.
*A note about Nikki’s house. In error, I sent Nikki three house cut outs and she employed all three. Being a props person for the theater, this made perfect sense to me that she designed a set!
Diane was born in Philadelphia, PA and currently resides in North Carolina.
Home for me is a connection to my physical surroundings which not only encompasses visual stimuli but smells, sounds, etc. But since we are dealing with images for this project, I will talk about visual stimuli. My favorite story about how sensory stimuli live deep in our subconscious was when a student asked me what all those “funny cross things” were in my artwork. The student was not familiar with TV antennae. From riding the El (elevated train) on a daily basis with a rooftop view of the world, these shapes etched themselves deep in my subconscious and made regular appearances in my artwork along with street lights, hanging laundry, church steeples, fire escapes and row houses. Then my landscape changed. My new landscape is a strange mix of rural, suburban, and small towns. The air and the light in the sky are different. My new landscape has left its mark on me enough to say it is familiar enough to feel somewhat comfortable and will be added to the images my subconscious has stock piled. So my house that I completed shows the landscape I have known most of my life faded out in the background and replaced by the new.
Diane is the curator of the Cookie Cutter House Project, has enjoyed a long and varied career in the visual arts, and currently works on a vegetable farm in North Carolina. She plans to start printing again in the near future.
Jane B. Miluski was born in Philadelphia, PA and currently resides in Wallingford, PA
Home for me is a a big pot of soup and a fine fat cat. I live in the same house that my family moved into in July, 1937 when I was nine months old. I have been fortunate to teach plein air workshops throughout the world but I always look forward to coming home to a big pot of soup and a fine fat cat.
