box in progress--remembering living in Hawaii

I am really very excited about this piece. In my trove of collected found objects I found: a broken child's jade bracelet, found in the gutter on the corner of Nuuanu and Beretania in Honolulu. A shell from Molokai with embedded sand, giving the appearance of bared teeth. A spiral unicorn shell from the green sand beach on the Kona side of the Big Island. Sea glass from the little hidden beach on Oahu I called, ever so cleverly, "sea glass beach", because there was SO much of it. It was tiny, and surrounded by tall rocks. Likely it was a favorite drinking spot, with the bottles being smashed and rolled to smooth, nearly opaque surfaces. One could just scoop up large hand fulls. I wonder if it is still there.

Put together with silver gilded windshield glass in blue, seed, round, oblong, rice, and baroque pearls (Mikimoto end-shanks I received in trade from a friend who did time in the Garment District in NYC),
broken mirror pieces, and a few silver gilded clear glass pieces. In a wooden cigar box, currently painted with antique gold paint.

I have the front of the box planned in my head, but am still toying with whether to use the antique patina paint on this piece or not. Leaning towards yes.

I loved living in Hawaii, but I missed my friends and family, both of origin and of choice and went back to the mainland.

Architecture, Future Past

Center is black iron fence piece.
Tracing around with pearl, freshwater and vintage
silver gilded blue windshield glass
opaque glass
gold gilded clear glass
gold pigment
silver pigment
variegated foil
antiquing paint
on found wood in building-ish shape
Exploring the materials of the past surrounded by layers of years, additions, subtractions, embellishments.
The things we throw away reclaimed and elevated, celebrating the sensuous shape of the fence with sediment of shiny things.

this is about 8 x 24"

In vinos myseria

"Candy Says"

Asymmetrical wood with cameo, broken jewelry, beads, buttons, ephemera. Glass from cocktail glasses, bus shelters, stained glass scraps, cars, windows, bottles. Bring the disparate elements of the cast offs of a city into a cohesive other. Elevating the mundane with gold and silver foil, gold, silver and copper pigment. The yellow is the wall of my studio behind. So many pieces making an intricate, mindful collage.

I really like the silver radiant lines, and the skull bead, which I found in the gutter near my workplace.

 For some damned reason,  I cannot get this image to post right side up, even if I save it upside down. ah well, dig that crazy detail!

Shining

small fetish boxes with glass items: a glass skull I dug up in SE industrial Portland, under the Hawthorne bridge, gilded in silver in a box lined in '30s silk velvet and a squirrel mandible w/gold pigment painted heart in a simple black box. I posted them a few years back, and I will dig out the ones I never photographed, because they make a great series.

For awhile, I had this set of unpainted pine dolls. They were spooky on their own, but I recalled the antiqued metal angels in cemeteries, and painted them. In a simple black box with gold hinges attached.

I am beginning to branch away from 2-d glass only art more aggressively, but my heart is, as Blondie said, of glass.

"I'm So Glad That You're Gone" (squirrel bones/glass heart in box) 

Hawthorne Skull (skull gilded with silver in velvet lined box)

The Shining: wooden dolls, treated with patina, in black box. 

Mardi Gras

New box piece. The reaction to my use of orange in an earlier piece lead me to try the same colors in a cigar box, with Mardi Gras on the mind. Lots of found jewelry/beads/buttons give it the controlled chaos I enjoy so very much.

almost (finished)

This piece was called "almost" because it was almost there, but not quite. I did not want the background to be silver or gold, pigment or foil. I've been crazy about this antiquing paint, and I think the dark, juxtaposed with the monochromatic light, is hot.

http://ceciliacannon.blogspot.com/2014/01/almost.html (original)

Boulevard of Broken Glass

There are tons of apartments cropping up like mushrooms on my street. The silver lining is the large amount of free wood, provided you don't mind odd sizes.

I was inspired to start making little buildings, and a village started to form: a house of pearls, both freshwater and vintage, experiments with patina paint, and a horseshoe I found on an afternoon with my work cohort; a silver glass house made of bus shelter glass gilded in silver, a house with bricks of copper foiled glass and a key; a landscape-on-house.

this will be a continuing series. It's the antithesis of those horrid little holiday villages people put under their Christmas trees. 3-D, but only front sides are detailed. Sides are painted or gilded. Sizes vary: 3"-5" x 6"-10"

mango pit beach

I've been producing a lot of new work lately, and have been slow to document it. 

When I lived in Hawaii, on Oahu, there was a beach south of Kailua, around a bend, surrounded with mango trees. It was an isolated, sparsely populated, if at all, local beach, and I spent some delicious afternoons under an umbrella in the sand. Here, in another imageistic piece, I attempt to capture the feeling of the beach I always thought of as "mango pit beach". I left the fruit stones out of the piece.

Green bottle glass, sea glass gilded in gold foil, blue windshield glass, pieces of Japanese fishing floats, stained glass scraps, mirror pieces, sea glass gilded in silver on found wood, painted with gold pigment. Hawaiian seashell.

35 x 35"

STAR

Variegated foil, tin, glass, gilded glass on wood.

Sea Urchin (mermaid piece)

What's with the mermaids, anyway? Besides the belief that I am one, my favorite story growing up was Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid". No, not the Disney-fied happily after after nonsense, with a wedding and singing crabs, but the dark allegory of his forbidden love for Edvard Collin.

The one where the heroine has the choice: kill her beloved's beloved, and she will be a mortal. Instead, she throws the knife into the sea, her sacrifice making her a daughter of the air. Sacrifice is true love, and my idea of romance.
Sea glass from Hawaii, antique red coral from a broken necklace,windshield glass and a perfect sea urchin.

Little Drop of Poison

Another shadow box. Collage of gilded glass in gold/silver, part of a Venetian glass vase, crystals from a chandalier, bus shelter glass, buttons, pieces of vintage jewelry. Elevation of humble cast-offs into something, new, whole and beautiful.

landlocked

mermaid/water piece

the shell was once very important to me, but the personal magic is gone. 6" x 8"
In the private collection of  Jemiah Jefferson. Author, bon vivant. My heterosexual wife.

Ma Vie En Orange (carnival)

Here, I take orange on as an issue. It is not a color I lean towards in my personal spaces/clothing and I rarely use it in my work.

Multi-media collage, as per usual. On found wood, painted with chrome paint, haloed in silver pigment. This is one of the larger newer pieces.         16 x 24 inches or so.

(red roses for a) blue lady

I like this best of recent kind. Broke my favorite perfume's bottle, quite by accident, and used its wonderful blue painted glass as a central medium for this piece. The blue is less intense in person, but still painted blue through clear glass. Opaque black glass scraps from a friend's art work, windshield glass, found glass, jewelry pieces . Silver pigment around edge.

"The house where nobody lives"

Last piece in the Josephine Apt. series, "The house where nobody lives" (leave the key in the slot). House of gilded glass, plastic, broken jewelry, wire
set on a triangle of found wood. Background is painted in gold pigment, interference violet pigment, topped with gold foil, textured with fishnet. Keys. Glass. 2nd photo is close up before layering of foil.

Lily Pad and Water

I enjoy touchstone pieces, the imagistic ones done several times throughout one's career. The lilypad and water is one of such pieces for me. Japanese simplicity from gold gilded beer bottles, silver windshield glass, Japanese glass float pieces, and other found glass. center piece is a large pearlescent jewelry piece. JAS piece.
12" x 12"

Icon//BVM

I take a lot of guff for using Catholic iconography, but, though I left that org a long time ago, I still dig the Saints. It is my take on an art history staple.
Plus, I found this plastic, and it looks like a Virgin, kind of like the Jesus on grilled cheese, except not. I used varegaited gilding foil to highlight the figure, leaving the face and hands clear.
trim is from a 1940s sweater, metal and pearls. Cross above is made of rusty nails, cloud below figure is made of vintage shell buttons, vintage velvet violets, rusted metal, and beads. The found wood is weathered with peeling paint, which gives the piece that old/new feeling I love.

pay attention to purple

More newish work. I like purple and green together.

Final piece, updated. Now with more purple!

Portland en Bleu

I haven't posted any new work lately, but this one made me really happy, so I am bothering. Glass scraps from a friend's fused glass class, windshield glass, errant jewelry, broken chandelier bits on silver pigment painted found wood. This one is on display@ my work, as someone bought it, and I wanted time with is before she comes to pick it up.

Pâte de Verre Skull

I took a class to make a glass sugar skull, using the pâte de verre technique: packing molds with frit, kiln fired. I didn't particularly enjoy the rushed class, and it was after a particularly arduous work day, but I love the final product. This is not a found art piece.

These were to be Dia de los Muertos painted sugar skulls, but they didn't give us much time, nor the greatest of tools, to do the detail work. Alas, especially in painting, I am a perfectionist, so, after washing my mold out twice, I chose to use a color instead of white. Cotton candy pink, of course. The teeth don't show in the photos, but are there. See the side view to note how thin this is, the lacy edge, the nearly transparent eye sockets.
It was fun to try something different, and I really enjoyed magpie-ing the scraps outside, which have already made an appearance in the last piece I posted. The color in the 2nd and 3rd photo are almost exact.

This will become a larger piece, in memory of my sister, who died when we were children.

"C'est seulement pour toujours, peu de temps du tout"

"It's only forever
Not long at all"-- Bowie/Labyrinth

Glass. Plastic.Gold/silver/electric blue/Black and white cocktail dish from the '50s
the close up silver field has gold backed glass and blue windshield glass breaking it up, single cube style.

24" x 24"
(originally added wrong image)

Tattooed by Life

The FuturePast style. Is it old? Is it new? Is it sacred? (yes)

Copper foil accented with gold pigment painted glass. I like the juxtaposition of the shine/matte.
Sculpy Scarab in Art-Deco style @ center with halo of vintage and fresh water pearls. On found, round wood piece.

I changed my mind (a mermaid piece)

I changed my mind. I made this for the newly married couple, and it belongs to them. I will get to spend a long weekend staring at it, and give it to them on Tuesday. (*if you are reading this for the first time, I originally called this post 'conundrum', and was being selfish and wanted to keep this for myself.)

Shells, white coral, freshwater seed/rice/round pearls, a few vintage faux pearls,  pre-ban antique red coral, windshield glass, silver foil on gold painted found wood piece. 5" x 8"

Butterfly

Just a blue sky with a butterfly.
Found wood with gouges. Blue windshield glass gilded with silver/gold foil. Monet gold tone/rhinestone butterfly brooch (broken).

Thanks to whomever thought this pretty enough to post on FB; hello strangers: look around-- there is lots of great found glass collage work here.