My Suburban Life: The Book

I am thrilled to announce that my new book, My Suburban Life: A Year in Words and Pictures, is now available for sale at the Blurb online bookstore! The book includes edited text from the entire year of blog posts chronicling my collage-a-week project, including the final Reflections essay, as well as professionally photographed, high quality images of all fifty-two collages. Sketches, drawings, and images of my process are also shared. The book is printed on gorgeous premium paper with a lustre finish that highlights the rich colors and textures of the artwork. It has a hardcover and dust jacket, presented in a large 13″ x 11″ landscape format, perfect for your coffee table!

Many thanks to my father-in-law, Deak Wooten, who designed the beautiful page layouts and took me through the process of converting a blog into a book. Thanks Papa!

Interested? Please click here to preview the book and purchase your copy!

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Exhibition at The Arts Center in Orange, VA

Many thanks to everyone who was able to make it out to The Arts Center in Orange for the exhibition of My Suburban Life: A Year in Collage. It was so gratifying to see all fifty-two collages hanging together in this lovely space. The Arts Center has been wonderful to work with and I am very grateful for the support of Laura Thompson, the Gallery Director, who invited me to exhibit here. The show was curated by my dear friends and mentors, Pam Black and Theo van Groll, from the UVa School of Architecture. Their vision for the exhibition installation was in perfect keeping with the spirit of the project: a slow linear unfolding over time, with gentle sight-line shifts that reflect the changing of seasons or the delineations that arose naturally through color and theme. The panels were not hung flush to the wall like traditional paintings. Instead, they were set out from the wall to emphasize the tactile, three-dimensional nature of the collages.

It was important to me to include some text in this exhibition and share the stories behind each collage. The practice of writing each week became such a large part of the project and its process, so I was determined to present the text in way that would highlight the relationship between words and pictures. I experimented with different ways to present the text without interrupting the visual flow of the images on the wall. I decided to create small 5 x 7 cards for each collage. A text excerpt from the accompanying essay for each collage was printed on one side, and a small detail image from the collage was printed on the other. The cards were separated into six groups that corresponded to the linear groupings of the collages on the wall, and were bound with a simple ring in the corner. Gallery visitors were welcomed to read through the cards at their leisure, or carry them around the gallery to read as they viewed the works. I also included an introductory wall-mounted text describing the goals of the project at its inception, and a quote that captured the spirit of My Suburban Life.

Photo by John Strader

Here are some more photos of the Opening Reception on April 4th. Many thanks to John Strader for documenting the event and generously sharing his photos!

The artist points to a collage that depicts her family on an autumn hike.  Photo by John Strader

The artist and her son.  Photo by John Strader

Opening Reception at the Arts Center in Orange.  Photo by John Strader

Photo by John Strader

Photo by John Strader

Photo by John Strader

Exhibition News!

Many thanks to The Arts Center in Orange for inviting me to exhibit my yearlong collage project, My Suburban Life. The exhibition will include all 52 collages plus selected text from the accompanying essays that reveal my process, inquiry, and inspiration.

My Suburban Life: A Year in Collage by Laura Edwards Wooten

Curated by Pam Black & Theo van Groll
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 4 from 5-7pm
Exhibit Dates: April 4 – 30, 2013
In the Morin Gallery at The Arts Center In Orange
129 East Main Street, Orange, VA, Hours: 10-5, Mon-Sat
www.artscenterinorange.com

Cover work: The Snowy Walk (Detail), 2012, mixed media collage, 12 x 12 inches

Laura Wooten presents her yearlong project of creating a collage every week for the year of 2012. As an artist living in the Virginia suburbs, Wooten seeks to both confront and integrate her multiple identities of artist, wife, mother, and suburbanite. Breaking from her previous body of work, depicting imaginary landscapes, Wooten finds inspiration in the details of her everyday life. Juggling a busy schedule of art, work and family, the steady practice of making small drawings becomes the foundation for the collages. A commitment to weekly creativity brings a new momentum and spirit of discovery to her work, resulting in a heightened sense of curiosity, gratitude, and the ability to find the extraordinary in the ordinary. This project explores what is achievable in tiny increments over time, by committing to small consistent actions and an attitude of openness to what is here now in the present.

Week 52: Endings and Beginnings

I have reached the end of this journey, and my 52nd collage is complete. For this final work in the series, I decided to pull together some of my favorite imagery from throughout the year, and create an essential distillation of My Suburban Life. This is my place and the things that I treasure. There is the map of the neighborhood, and images of the surrounding landscape where we live. I included the dogwoods, the rose bushes, and the pear tree in the front yard where the mockingbirds sing. The wild geese fly overhead, while seedlings sprout in the garden. There are themes of growth and flight, both appropriate metaphors for the work of the past year. My husband and son walk close by while I lean over my drawing board, secure in my place in the world, my love of creating, and my commitment to my work. This is a very different feeling from when I began the project, with that strange ambivalence and unease of living in the ‘burbs. Now things are different. I have not only made peace with my suburbia, I have made it my own. My identity as an artist is not defined by where I live, but how I live a creative life.

The Lego Spaceship was featured in the very first collage, and makes a final appearance here as well. This was from a small drawing that I made back in January 2012, when I first began the project, and had saved to use in a future work. Ever since my son Max flew his Lego Spaceship into my studio last January, it became a symbol of Art meeting Life. The spaceship hovers above the earth in the realm of the imagination, while simultaneously being a tangible domestic object, embedded in the material world. This magical child-like ability to bridge the gap between imagination and reality became my inspiration. My previous body of work had conspicuously avoided the realities of everyday life, preferring the escapism of imaginary lands. One year ago I asked new questions: Can I come down from my Ivory Tower and welcome the Lego Spaceship into my creative domain? Can I take the stuff of everyday life and transform it into art? Can I move freely between those two realms, with an openness and receptivity to both my own imagination and the intricate details of My Suburban Life? These questions led me to a place of greater awareness and compassion towards myself and my world, while continuing to challenge me to strive towards my best, most authentic work.

Endings and Beginnings, acrylic collage, 12 x 12 inches

Detail, Endings and Beginnings

Detail, Endings and Beginnings

Detail, Endings and Beginnings

Detail, Endings and Beginnings

Detail, Endings and Beginnings

Detail, Endings and Beginnings

Weeks 50 & 51: Christmas Tree

Sled ornament from my childhood.

Every year I look forward to unpacking the Christmas ornaments and decorating the tree. My family likes to pick out a large fir that goes from floor to ceiling and festively commands the room. As I place each ornament on the tree, it whispers a story to me. Some ornaments are thirty something years old and come from my childhood, while others are even older and belonged to my parents. The newer ones remind me of our newlywed years, or when my son was a baby. Each one represents a time and place that is conjured up again every Christmas. The tree becomes a shimmering display of memories that dangle amidst the evergreen boughs and twinkle lights.

Christmas Tree, acrylic collage, 12 x 24 inches

I enjoy the Christmas tree so much that I decided to dedicate two collage panels to this subject, displayed vertically one on top of the other. The ornaments in the collages were drawn from observation of our actual ornaments. A few were refurbished or re-created in the drawings to honor those favorites that were lost or broken. Most are from my childhood. There is a little white elephant who once lived inside a clear globe. One year the glass broke, while the elephant survived. Here I placed him back inside his protective bubble. There is a tiny snowman, a mouse on a red chair, a bird house, a cuckoo clock, and sparkly silver birds. There are red wooden sleds with the childhood nicknames of my sister and I carefully painted in white lettering, with a holiday greeting and the year 1980. I was nine, and Vicki was eleven. There is a gnome hiding amongst evergreens in a glass mushroom, a flat wooden soldier, and a beautiful Japanese Girl with a satiny red dress and silky tassels.

Detail, Christmas Tree

My childhood favorite was a plastic Humpty Dumpty, dapperly dressed and sitting on a brick wall, grinning gaily, his hands in the air. While he might seem somewhat incongruous amongst the more traditionally themed Christmas ornaments, for me, it was Humpty who best expressed the joy of the season.

My mother had a special silver globe with a ballet dancer inside, and faceted mirrors that reflected the ruffles of the tiny tutu.

Detail, Christmas Tree

Sadly, this treasured ornament was lost in a move, and I’m still not sure what happened to it. In the collage, I was able to bring it back. Another lost ornament was my husband’s childhood favorite, a stout little Viking man with a shield and sword. We don’t know what fate befell him. He too makes a come-back in the collage. Since he was lost before my husband and I met, I never saw the Viking, so my drawing is based entirely on Ken’s descriptions and my own imaginative conjecture.

Detail, Christmas Tree

When we were first married, a dear family friend gave us a beautiful set of painted glass ornaments that included characters from The Nutcracker and other Christmas stories. These became very special to us. We had gone to see The Nutcracker performed by the San Francisco Ballet on Christmas Eve of 1999, the day before my husband proposed to me. I remember that experience each time I hang Clara, the Nutcracker, and the Mouse King on the tree. Another favorite from this same ornament set is a kindly Santa Claus wearing an elegant red cape and holding an evergreen garland. He’s one of the larger ornaments and always gets a prominent place on the front of the tree.

I asked my nine-year old son to pick out his favorite ornament so I could include it in the collage. He chose the bendable beaded candy canes which are fun and flexible, easy to hang, and impossible to break. A wonderful choice! He can enjoy these for many years to come.

The practice of drawing the ornaments was very painstaking. I fell deep into the process of observing every detail, noticing both the perfection and the flaws, the sparkly sheen and the dulling of age. Some are quite fragile, or near falling apart. Some will break one day in the future. Creating the collage was a way for me to preserve the ornaments and the halo of memory that surrounds each one. At the same time, there is something about loving them fully and completely through the process of drawing that will allow me to let go when the time comes.

Christmas Tree (top panel), acrylic collage 12 x 12 in

Christmas Tree (bottom panel), acrylic collage, 12 x 12 in

Detail, Christmas Tree

Detail, Christmas Tree

Detail, Christmas Tree

Detail, Christmas Tree

Detail, Christmas Tree

Detail, Christmas Tree

Detail, Christmas Tree

Week 49: Balloon Ride

I surprised my husband with a hot air balloon ride for his 40th Birthday. The wind was perfect that day. While we rose out of a field in the middle of town amongst strip malls and subdivisions, we floated across the highway to the Northwest, and soon found ourselves hovering above woods, farmland, and the Rivanna River, with the Blue Ridge Mountains anchoring the Western horizon. The colorful autumn leaves had fallen, but the winter landscape had a magic all its own. The bare deciduous branches appeared white and lacy from above, transparent screens that revealed layers of fields and forest floor. The dense stands of evergreens framed the open spaces of pasture, and the river carved its way through the landscape, reflecting a clear blue sky.

The balloon ride felt like a big adventure when we first took off, but once air-born, the adrenalin subsided and there was simply peace, quiet, beauty, and the love between two people. The whoosh of the gas flame was the only sound. The world appeared as a miniature train garden, every piece arranged just so. I loved the winter palette of ochres, blue-grays, and deep greens, displayed in so many different textures. When I began working on the collage, I was enthralled with the task of drawing the tiny details I observed in the landscape, while at the same time trying to capture the whole experience of floating above the panorama. I combined small drawings of trees and farms with broader painted areas of river and landscape. Drawing and painting, line and color, detail and whole, all come together here with wonder and joy.

Balloon Ride, acrylic collage, 12 x 12 in.

Detail, Balloon Ride

Detail, Balloon Ride

Detail, Balloon Ride

Detail, Balloon Ride

Detail, Balloon Ride

Week 48: Flu Season

It’s Flu Season and the bugs finally caught up to my husband and I last week. (Yes, next year I will get my flu shot.) We spent five days groaning together on the sofa with body aches, stuffy noses and hacking coughs. Despite the discomfort of being sick, we did enjoy the extra time together. We watched so many movies we had trouble recalling what we had seen in our DayQuil-induced delirium. This was not exactly a fun week, but I admit it was nice having an excuse to stop frantically rushing around with holiday preparations. As I laid on the sofa under my favorite blanket, achy and miserable, watching the twinkle lights on the mantle and the fire flickering in the fireplace, my pains subsided just enough so that I could appreciate the beautiful silence and peace of just being allowed to rest. It’s too bad I have to get sick to justify such moments to myself.

For the collage, I imagined the flu virus floating around in the air above our heads as my husband and I snuggled down into our bed with our aches and pains and remedies at our sides. As I was drawing the bugs, they became more and more ornamental, suggesting a perverse version of the holiday verse, “while visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.” I had a good chuckle over that connection, which was probably an effective strategy in combatting the illness. After all, laughter is the best medicine.

Flu Season, acrylic collage, 12 x 12

Detail, Flu Season

Detail, Flu Season

Detail, Flu Season

Detail, Flu Season

Week 45: Homework

Max concentrates on his Math homework.

Max started fourth grade this Fall. A regular part of our nightly ritual is sitting down at the kitchen table together to check over his homework, which hopefully has been completed before dinner. I love listening to him explain his thinking, or thoughtfully articulate a question. I remember the satisfying sensation of simple math, the security of knowing that this type of question has an answer that is either correct or incorrect. No gray areas, no lingering doubts, just the pleasure of watching the solution come to light.

A dramatic discovery is made.

And then there are other types of questions that require words and lengthy explanations. It is fun to participate in this spirit of open curiosity: What causes thunder and lightning? What is a hurricane? Where does rain come from? One evening I pointed out the beautiful moon, and was surprised to hear Max reply, “Mom, that is a waxing crescent.” He went on to explain the relationships between the sun, the earth, and the moon. Recently we studied the Geographical Regions of Virginia, the Weather, and how to write a mathematical equation from a “Number Story” or word problem. With each revelation, I remember when I was nine, and the world was new.

For this collage, I took a new approach, combining my drawings with Max’s drawings. I used fragments from his actual homework papers, including his writing, pictures, and the teacher’s grading notations in red pen. The collage became a nostalgic homage to childhood and school days in the Fall: We learn about the weather as the wind blows and leaves swirl in the front yard. The wild geese fly overhead. A football spirals through the air. The weathervane spins. A sailboat waits to take us away on a life-long adventure in learning, with the sun and the wind and the rain as our companions.

Homework, acrylic collage, 12 x 12

Detail, Homework

Detail, Homework

Detail, Homework

Detail, Homework

Detail, Homework

Week 43: Walk in the Woods

Detail, Walk in the Woods

Autumn in Virginia is a glorious time to walk in the woods. Walnut Creek Park is our favorite place to go hiking. Just south of town, and less than a half hour’s drive from our house, it is a nearby place that feels a world away. There is a beautiful lake for canoeing or fishing, and miles of wooded trails for hiking or mountain biking. My husband and I started going there together soon after we met. We would always bring our two Labradors, Toby and Maya, who loved running the trails as much as we did. Now 14 years later, we come with our Labradoodle, Holly, and our young son, Max. Life has changed a lot in this time, but Walnut Creek remains the same special place.

We also enjoy bringing visiting family and friends to Walnut Creek. My father-in-law, Papa Deak, and his partner, Papa Paul, were here visiting from California, and it was a perfect “Autumn in Virginia” kind of day to share with them.  The colors were just past their peak, but plenty of reds, oranges and golds still clung to the treetops, and a soft layer of dry leaves covered the paths. The air was cool, the sun was warm, and each step forward brought a gentle crunch through fallen leaves. There is a stillness to the woods that quiets the chatter of my mind, making room for a more essential understanding that emerges in its place: as we move through the colorful canopies of changing light, we are no longer separate from nature, or from each other, but merely different incarnations of one life, one love. Holly romps through the leaves, my boy laughs, I hear the click of Papa’s camera, a bird sings, three generations walk together, all different but the same.

Red Foliage Textures

For the Autumn collages, I began experimenting with different ways to create textures and patterns to represent the colorful foliage. I first tried this a few weeks ago in the Sunday Drive collage. Using charcoal and colored India inks, I filled up sheets of paper with leaf patterns that were then used to cut out shapes of tree canopies and individual leaves. I tried out different color combinations, as well as small and large scale patterns to develop a sense of distance and space. Once I had a good variety of pattern sheets to choose from, I was able to assemble the tree imagery in combination with the other small drawings and painted motifs. In this week’s work, I included a small illustration of my family ahead on the trail, my boy in a familiar gesture with his Dad, Holly following close behind.

We had a wonderful visit with Papa Deak and Papa Paul. They have always expressed an interest in my artwork, and continually offer their support and encouragement as I move along my creative path. They have also taken the time to read every single post of my blog and respond to each in the comments section. I am so appreciative of this! It was a lot of fun to show them the collages in person for the first time, after sharing them on the computer screen all year. I feel very blessed to have such loving and supportive people in my family. Thank you Papa Deak and Papa Paul!

Walk in the Woods, acrylic collage, 12 x 12

Detail, Walk in the Woods

Detail, Walk in the Woods

Detail, Walk in the Woods

Detail, Walk in the Woods

Week 42: Out-of-Town Visitors

We recently had some out-of-town visitors in the neighborhood. They mostly kept to themselves, but the over-turned garbage cans and toppled bird feeders betrayed their presence. I personally have not been a witness to their pre-dawn activities, although the dense woods behind my house may have been playing host. The Neighborhood Association emailed us all some common sense instructions: “Remove food sources and the bears will leave the area.” Some residents worriedly inquired, “Do bears attack people?” and “Should they be trapped and removed?” One morning, my dog picked up a half-eaten piece of pizza that had tumbled from an over-turned garbage can, a food source apparently rejected by our discerning guests. They must have been disappointed by all the Dominoes boxes and convenience foods. Maybe bears don’t really like the suburbs. We think they have moved on.

Out-of-town Visitors, acrylic collage, 12 x 12

Detail, Out-of-Town Visitors

Detail, Out-of-Town Visitors

Detail, Out-of-Town Visitors

Detail, Out-of-Town Visitors