Art in a Lid

Art in a Lid

Here in Albuquerque, the National Hispanic Cultural Center hosts a "Happy Arte Hour" each month.   I thought that the Arte Hours would be too "chi chi" for me, so I had never attended -- until last month when Cynthia Cook was the featured artist -- the Arte Hours are usually connected with a current show at the NHCC and Cynthia's work was being featured along with 3 other artists in a collage show entitled Fantasia Fantastica.

When I heard that Cynthia was the featured artist for Happy Arte Hour, I finally broke down and decided to go.  And, as it turns out, the event is not at all chi chi -- it is quite informal and relaxed and attended by a lot of "makers."

If you haven't seen Cynthia's work, she usually works quite small -- often her assemblage/collage pieces are the size of an Altoid tin or smaller.  Cynthia doesn't maintain a web presence, but you can do a google search and find a few images of her work,

Round tins with about a 3" diameter were provided for our use for our art projects, but with my funky left thumb that only bends about 30% of what it should bend, I have a challenge working that small.  We were told that if we wanted to work larger, to bring a tin.  I had just been given a vintage green and red Christmas tin (fruitcake?) with a 6" diameter that I took with me to use.  Here's the backside of the tin lid:

We were given some general instructions and turned loose to find images for our project.  I had brought an image of a vintage vamp that I wanted to use, along with a seed pod from a trumpet vine and some distressed marbles that I had found while walking/gardening.  Now there's a strange combination of items . . .

While searching for images, a theme of "round" began to emerge -- I was choosing only images of round things or images containing round things.

So, here is what I ended up putting together:

My vintage vamp is pressing forward and and wading through a collection of  very large bizarre round objects.

I loaded up the trumpet vine seed pod with the distressed marbles,

and when I got home I drilled 3 holes in the rim and added some round beads on head pins going from the outside of the tin to the inside of the tin, covered the rim textured braid,

and used a fine line of champagne colored glitter glue to highlight the edges of some of the round things.

I experimented with a few additions to the piece, but decided it was finished,  and named the piece "SurROUNDed."

I tend to like to make things in a series, and I already have another tin lid waiting for me to create a companion piece.