Fi Webster's photos

Cut-paper collage created for Kollage Kit theme: "Snakes and/or Ladders." And this definitely fits for Illustration Friday's theme of "Paper." Title from Robert Browning's "Andrea del Sarto," in which the full line is "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?" String of macaw feathers made as an offering to the gods by the Huichol Indians of northwestern Mexico. Extension ladder from Uline industrial supply catalog. Cloud from The Book of Clouds by John Day. Lithograph of hand by N. H. Jacob, from an anatomy & surgery book by the 19th century French surgeon J. B. M. Bourgery.

Cut-paper collage created for Kollage Kit theme: "Circles." The small bubbles in the central current come from The Great Women Cartoonists by Trina Robbins. They're in chronological order from 1902 in lower left to 2001 at upper right. The rest of the bubbles are just... from everywhere. For the comix geeks among you (and more power to you!), there is one item that's technically not a speech bubble, but text on a flash panel.

Cut-paper collage postccard created for swap-bot challenge "A Bit of Red." For this swap we were supposed to create a collage that is mostly "neutrals" (including brown) with just a bit of red. I decided to work only with the clippings from my collection of writing, maps, & diagrams. As I put together the neutrals, I noticed that a lot of my elements (the ones that are legible) had something to do with men: men's hats, helmets, & swords; men fighting dragons, carving tablets, designing ancient temples, building cities; men getting in fights; a man who faked his C.V. and wore blue eyeshadow; even men choosing restaurants. So, inspired in part by Hallowe'en, I decided that the "bit of red" should be a ghost of an unhappy man. As it happened, the only red I had in that box had to do with male-male competition in different species--fish, mammals, birds, etc. (!) When I cut out the little red ghost, I didn't expect words like "vigorous thrusting" & "sperm" & males dealing with rivals to show up so prominently, but it seemed fitting--and humorous to boot. The last piece I added was the big "El"—Spanish for the masculine "the."

Soundtrack for this cut-paper collage: The Beatles' "I've Just Seen a Face." Created for Kollage Kit theme: "Fall." The crossing poles are old rusty fence rails from my own back yard.

Cut-paper collage postcard created for the Swap-bot swap "Nifty Neutrals," in which we are only allowed to use black, white, grey, and brown. Background polygons from magazine & catalog clippings. Central zig-zag from real (not facsimile) mid-19th-century ledger paper. Thanks to the influence of composer John Cage, I let chance determine the locations of the black painted lines: their positions are pairs of integers in sequence from a random number generator.

Cut-paper collage for the Kollage Kit theme: "Artificial Humans." With a bit of red, and quite a lot of black, acrylic paint.

Cut-paper collage (irregular) 8" x 10" For a long time I have been infuriated by Koons's willful ugllness—not just in his art, but in his whole life, for he himself says they are one and the same. The huge show devoted to him at the Whitney, with both the laudatory and the vituperative things people are saying, has made me quite miserable. It's not my usual style to be so deeply annoyed by someone I have never met—not at all. Well...except maybe Dick Cheney. Everything in this collage is either from a photograph of Koons's art, from something said in the press about him, or from one of his many advertisements in the media for himself. (One of his ads is the source of the "Exploit the Masses" and "Banality as Saviour" phrases, written on a blackboard in front of little kids.) To be fair to Koons, as much as I can be, I included a photo of his play-doh sculpture, complete with plinth and favorable press remark, without cutting it up in any way. I'll be curious to hear whether y'all think Koons's work is ugly, or whether Koons is ugly on the inside. I already know my collage is hideous! =laugh= Say, is there any chance this can be a late entry for Illustration Friday's topic of "Money"? It definitely fits!

What it says at the top, over the stamps: "Hand-cancellation RULEZ!"

Today the oriental shorhair kittens had a big ol' tussle on my tie-dye skirt. I took a bunch of shots: this one is the funniest. That's pure joy you're lookin' at. =grin=

First off, let me say that I think this goes with the Illustration Friday theme of "Novelty." =shrug= The occasion for this collage is that a friend sent me a perfectly delightful letter journal—for writing in and mailing back and forth—but gack! it had hearts on the cover. For some reason I can't stand hearts. Anatomical hearts are great: it's just the symbolic ones that get on my nerves. So, after pondering about what to do with it for several weeks, I decided to rip the hearts off and make a collage cover for it. I sure hope she doesn't hate it. The round things in the upper left are photos of bun ingots from circa 3000-year-old metallurgy. The orange-and-blue one is (obviously) copper, and the grey one is tin. Then I decided to stick with the blue-and-orange theme and glue a photo of an azure kingfisher (native to Australia & New Guinea) across the spine of the journal. And of course, you will no doubt recognize Robert Smithson's artwork "Spiral Jetty" (photo taken in 1970), which was 15 feet wide and 1500 feet long. Something pleasing about those numbers... And the background for all this frivolity is actual (not facsimile) ledger paper from a 19th-century business: you can read the date in the upper left. Don't you love those ink splatters just below the tin ingot? =grin=

Cut-paper collage postcard created for the Kollage Kit theme: "Streets, Paths, Ways..." Beach walkway from a photo by Jessica Chilton.

This is an attempt at illustrating the opening lines of Rainer Maria Rilke's long poem, "The Eighth Elegy." After Stephen Mitchell's translation into English is the original German. With all its eyes the natural world looks out into the Open. Only our eyes are turned backward, and surround plant, animal, child like traps, as they emerge into their freedom. We know what is really out there only from the animal's gaze; for we take the very young child and force it around, so that it sees objects—not the Open, which is so deep in animals' faces. Free from death. We, only, can see death; the free animal has its decline in back of it, forever, and God in front, and when it moves, it moves already in eternity, like a fountain. Mit allen Augen sieht die Kreatur das Offene. Nur unsre Augen sind wie umgekehrt und ganz um sie gestellt als Fallen, rings um ihren freien Ausgang. Was draußen ist , wir wissens aus des Tiers Antlitz allein; denn schon das frühe Kind wenden wir um und zwingens, daß es rückwärts Gestaltung sehe, nich das Offne, das im Tiergesicht so tief ist. Frei von Tod. Ihn sehen wir allein; das freie Tier hat seinen Untergang stets hinter sich und vor sich Gott, und wenn es geht, so gehts in Ewigkeit, so wie die Brunnen gehen.

They're oriental shorthairs, four and a half months old.. The female, Nénu (short for nénuphar , the French word for water lily), is on the bottom, looking up, and her brother, Oscar (for Oscar Wilde), is on the top, with eyes closed. They're so active when they're awake that it's tough to get a non-blurry photo, so for the time being, I have to take sleepy shots.

cut-paper collage 8 1/2 x 11' I can't help it: some of my collages are very personal. This one sums up my late spring and summer of 2014. It was all worthwhile, though. It was for our new kittens , who are wonderful. =smile=

Cut-paper collage. My husband and I will soon be picking up a brother-sister pair of oriental shorthair kittens from our breeder. This collage will be a gift for the woman who breeds these lively, social, charming cats. Oriental shorthairs are close relatives of Siamese, and are sometimes described as the "greyhounds of the cat breeds": they are long and tall and skinny with long faces and big ears. As for the spiral tails, well, spirals can mean many things, but in the nature religion I practice they stand for regeneration and renewal. I decided on green and blue for the colors because one of my favorite images of summertime is green conifers over a beautiful blue lake.

Cut-paper collage (w/ acrylic paint) created for the Kollage Kit theme: "Body Image: your own, someone else's, the idea of..." This one is definitely personal. I had what one might call a difficult childhood. The first thing I thought of with regard to body image is the need for protection. Hence a frame: a hand-crafted Mexican frame in honor of my growing up in Texas. The spiky points are also fitting. Next I thought of a box, wanting a box I could crawl into and hide. I almost made a collage of just a closed metal box inside of that frame. But the problem was, I couldn't hide, no matter how hard I tried.

Cut-paper collage with acrylic paint in border. Created for the Kollage Kit theme: "Enchanted Forest."