Cay Denise

Working in fits and starts over the last week, this zine is an assemblage of floral imagery in a combination of abstract and semi-realistic versions.   That said, I've added a few words to this zine.  'Flower Power' in unusual lettering was created on one page.  The rest of the text appears on another page.  The latter includes a phrase I just discovered today while doing a search of flowers and philosophy.  "Mono no Aware" is Japanese in origin.  From an excerpt of Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs write-up about the meaning of the phrase, this is how it is described: It boils down to this: appreciate the moment, because the beauty experienced in it will never be the same.  It will pass.  It will end.  And that is okay because as life changes, new beauty, perhaps of a different kind, will arrive.  Every season the cherry blossoms die.  But every year, they come back to, once again, coat th...

This zine is a sheet of copy paper covered with glued remnant squares of different sizes and patterns, emulating a patchwork quilt.  It wears of translucent cover of vellum with cut-out letters (outlined in gold) spelling the title.  I tried using tracing paper for the overlay, but it was too thin.  I also experimented applying matte medium and gloss medium over a test vellum sheet to see if that could add a bit of strength.  But the vellum wrinkled a bit.  For now, I'm sticking with the unaltered vellum.  I like how the translucency of it mutes the covered color.     That said, a project like this might have been better on black paper instead of white.  It would have helped the letters 'pop'.  But I'm still pleased with this piece.  I'll also keep my eye out for a stiffer translucent paper that can be cut with an X-Acto and a colored vellum. If you have any suggestion as an alternative for the vellum, please consider leaving a comm...

Do you remember book reports we did in school?  This zine is a 'riff' on a book report.  Using the zine format, it contains my most important notes from the first two seasons of 'The Diplomat', a Netflix production that I have really enjoyed watching.   The show is about a woman appointed as an Ambassador to the U.K. (rather than Ambassador to Afghanistan which is what she wanted).  Plus it is about politics and political intrigue in two governments that intersect when there is an Embassy of one in the other's country.  The show begins with the explosion on a U.K. Aircraft Carrier that results in many fatalities and the Prime Minister of the U.K. is intent on finding the responsible party, as he should be.  Of course, there are many other plot twists and turns beyond this single incident.   Because I don't want to give away the show, I'm only providing a photo of the zine's cover .  It is a quick sketch of the White House, because it is the U.S. P...

In one of my March 2nd (2025) posts, I mentioned in the next zine with a word background, I should try folding the 8.5"x11" paper horizontally and writing from the fold to the paper edge on both sides.  That is how this zine background was created.   Both the front and back covers (the two pages on the bottom left) have abstract designs.  The remaining pages have words/letters in different forms: hand-writing, cut out with black paper framing, and printed with glitter glue framing. In making this zine, I wasn't thinking or planning how I wanted it to look when finished.  In fact, I simply put watercolor remnants together that I liked.  The 'I am' came to mind because I cut out the 'I' and liked it.  Then, I cut out two squares of paper I liked and created the A+M.  Later, I printed 'enough' which seemed like the perfect pairing with I am.  It is certainly a vivid reminder of what is important to remember as an artist...and even more so, as a perso...

Naomi Vona was one of the featured artist instructors for a module in Kara Bullock's 2024 Let's Face It online course.  I wanted to try it, becuase she's done some really interesting work transforming magazine images.   This is my first effort using the basics of her technique.  The image I used is a magazine photo of Millie Bobbie Brown from the March 2025 issue of Vanity Fair.  The only things not changed are Millie's shoes, feet, arms and face.  All the rest of the photo has been painted over with paint markers, and embelished by washi tape, a gold Pen-Touch, Micron pen, and a touch of glitter glue.   I love Naomi's art-making idea, but I'm not enamored in using magazine paper for an art substrate.  (It doesn't work well for collage either.)  That's because I tried some other paint pens in my supply that didn't go on opaque and others that made the surface too wet such that the paper wrinkled.  It was fun to try, but is not my cup of tea. ...

How much art has been made to express political points of view, to  illustrate the results of political impacts of decisions, and/or to make fun of or satirize politicians, etc.? It has been 40 days since Donald J. Trump was inaugerated President of the United States and began his second term in office.  From that day through the end of February, I've made so many Facebook posts about issues including his Cabinet nominees, his selection of Elon Musk as an advisor, the (seemingly illegal) efforts of DOGE, the indiscriminate firing of federal workers without due process, and the compromise of national security through some of his decisions/directions/policies to name a few.   So today's 'art' is a Photoshop assembly of screenshots of those posts with words/phrases that capture much of what has been part of the news environment.  I'm calling it ' Poli zine #1' (Poli for political).  It's hard to believe that it only represents what has happened from 1/20 th...

There are a couple of paragraphs somewhere in the book titled 'All the Beauty in the World' that the background writing in this zine is a handwritten copy of.  You wouldn't know that to look at it, and that is intentional.  The idea was to have a fully handwritten page of text that has no spacing (other than between lines), no punctuation, and is continuous (line by line). Once done, using what I thought might be a contrasting watercolor paper pattern -- rectangles of it were added to the center of each zine page.  There wasn't enough contrast though.  So, smaller black rectangles were also added.   For what was to go in those black rectangles, I had no idea.  After thinking about it, I decided against quotes and stopped thinking further on it.  Sometime later, the word 'repeat' came to mind, and I thought that would be perfect because each page looks SO similar.  The words you see (aside from 'repeat), are synonyms except for 're-turn'.  The...