A Day of Inspiration at Atlanta Vintage Books

Great vintage finds from 1959 and 1962

Having recently turned to a new, and seemingly significant age [60], I decided to take a day for inspiration, which usually means a book sale. So I went to booksalefinder.com, but of course there was nothing because, you know, Covid and all. I did a search for used book stores and came up with Atlanta Vintage Books, which was about a 45 minute drive away, so I decided to make a day of it, assuming their clientele were smart enough to wear masks, which not surprisingly, they were.

Atlanta Vintage Books is exactly what a used book store should be. There was a maze of small rooms with quirky overstuffed chairs and books organized by genre, but the best part was the basement, which held a glorious collection of old magazines, “dangerous” publications, and fabulous ephemera.

I was there for 4 hours, and could reasonably have stayed much longer if I’d had the foresight to pack a lunch. Among the treasures I bought were some old science magazines, personal correspondence, and some books.

I am particularly taken by these two magazines and their delightful depictions of what my life was supposed to be here in 2020; a far cry from the reality of Covid and almost a year of “hunkering down” which is doing terrible things to my posture. I should be tooling around the moon in that charming tractor ball or lounging in the gray and red space station where every room has a view. Alas, it is not to be.

However, a day spent recharging the creative batteries has done me good, and I’m ready to get back at it.

Time to Compose the First Part

A carousel of heads

In case you were wondering, I do break things down into steps in my planning process, which doesn’t mean anything is set in stone, but I do have a direction in mind. So today I took all those pieces and parts and put them together into some faces. I originally planned for eight faces, but I tend to gravitate to odd numbers, so I actually ended up doing seven.

I took each face and worked each part of the face a little differently, adding ink and colored pencil. It’s more interesting than just the linocut alone. I’m pleased with the way they have turned out. I feel like they have definite separate personalities despite having some of the same parts.

Cut and Paste

Are there times that I wish I could just paint something in that abstract expressionist vein and be done with three pieces by lunch? Ok, no, not really. My work takes a long time, and that’s Ok with me since I really don’t know any other way to express stuff so I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with that.

Because I want layers of separation between the elements in this piece, I took all the pieces I really wanted to work with and pasted them down on brown kraft paper and cut them out again. In case you were wondering, it takes hours to do this, but in the end I have lots of stuff to work with. Yeah, I said that before, but it’s a process. So another day of cutting and pasting and cutting brings a pile of good results.

Playing with Body Parts

Playing with body parts

I don’t know what it is like for other artists, ones who paint or compose music. For me personally, I like the flexibility of collage; moving bits around, adding and subtracting things. Now that I have all this stuff printed, that’s the thing that happens next.

I cut out a lot of stuff, and developed a head shape I liked. The heads are from these brown paper scrapbook pages I bought at Goodwill. The rest of the elements are from linocuts I’ve made over the past several months.

I like where this is going, but because of the nature of the piece as I am envisioning it, each piece will need to be cut out, mounted on kraft paper, and re-cut. The layers of separation are going to be an important part of the overall theme.

Plotting My Next Piece

I sometimes ruminate for awhile over several pieces before I get into them. Once I’ve settled on something, I will edit and revise it many times in my head before I actually get into it.

Printing elements for a piece is usually not a precision activity. It’s more like a whirlwind of paper scraps and inks mixed haphazardly, printed with wild abandon, and stacked on the rack to dry. In this case, I knew I wanted to work with shades of brown and deep red, so I pulled out some inks and plates and began printing on stuff from sheets of construction paper from Goodwill to kraft paper from Lowes Home Improvement to scraps of stuff off the floor. This will give me plenty to work with I think.

Days of Wine and Rose Colored Glasses

Love, or the Lack Thereof

© Natalie Schorr 2020

I started this piece with the woman, and unlike most collages, I wasn’t sure where it was going, so I set her aside. Maybe I just liked her vibe. I actually ruminated on this for months until I decided where I wanted to go with it. She originally had different arms / hands, that I tore off and changed.

Her leggings are part of a June Christy album, which also found its way into some of my OOTDs. Record albums, readily available at your local Goodwill, are a great source for pattern, typography, and general inspiration, not to mention the fact that they’re cheap.

I later created the man when I decided where the piece was going. I wonder what would have been the result had God created women first?

Love generally fades, and rarely at the same rate. We all kind of see what we want to see.
Read more about this piece here. It’s for sale.

The Seconds Tick the Time Out

The Passing of Time in a Pandemic

So on my “seeking sanity” road trip, I was drawn to, or should I say Spotify was drawn to playing “On the Road to Find Out,” from Cat Stevens’ album, Tea for the Tillerman. For whatever reason it came up a number of times, and I was kind of drawn to it, particularly the line: “The seconds tick the time out…” which kind of led me to do this piece.

I’m about to turn 60. While my age has never really bothered me much, the days and weeks of the pandemic and the isolation from that have taken a toll on some parts of me. Day after day, get up, teach, work in the studio, go to bed. Repeat. I feel confined as if I have taken root, and not in a good way.

There really isn’t a place I feel is home, and maybe that’s part of the problem. Of all the places I’ve been in the past , it seems as though any roots I’ve put down there have withered. Maybe I am rooted in the pandemic.

So this piece is about time, and there are a lot of ways to interpret it, as I had a lot of thoughts about the passing of time as I did it. The background is inspired by Paul Klee. The rest is just me, thinking about stuff.

Detail

You can read more about this piece. It is for sale.

Inspiration Trip: Day 8

Embracing the Industrial Landscape

Carrie Blast Furnaces National Historic Landmark

The landscape of Pittsburgh has changed dramatically since I left there in 1992, but there are still wonderful places to get the flavor of how it used to be. I was thrilled to find the Rivers of Steel: Carrie Blast Furnaces National Historic Landmark. They have tours, which meant that I didn’t have to break in and surreptitiously walk about taking pictures pretending to be ignorant that I was trespassing the way I used to do years ago. I only took a little over 700 pictures there.

Every day I am grateful for digital cameras.

Inspiration Trip: Day 7

The intersection of diverse ideas

The intersection of Doherty Hall and Wean Hall on the Carnegie Mellon campus

I received my Masters Degree from Carnegie Mellon University in 1986, so of course I wanted to revisit the campus. There were a few students out enjoying the bizarrely warm weather, but not many. That’s the sad part of the Covid crisis. Everywhere I go, it’s like a Sunday and a holiday combined. Ghostly quiet. It’s hard for all of us, but I think that for young people it must be incredibly frustrating.

Despite the crisis, there is inspiration to be had, like this wonderful moment. One of the most interesting places on the Carnegie Mellon campus, in my opinion, is the spot where Doherty Hall, a Beaux Arts masterpiece conjoins with Wean Hall, a wonderful example of Brutalism. How can you not be excited?

Inspiration Trip: Day 6

On a clear day you can see Braddock

Poles and towers at the Edgar Thompson Works, Braddock PA

It was, at last, a clear day, so I headed down to Braddock to grab some shots [ a few hundred of them ] of the Edgar Thompson Works for US Steel. The vast majority of the steel industry has closed down, but this plant still seems to be in some part operational.

The shapes that make up industrial landscapes are so inspiring. Towers, tanks, warehouses. Walls of windows, towering smokestacks, and webs of wires. There are a lot of projects to come with this.