Carol Wiebe

. Who stuck those rusty pieces on the ledge? he asked I did, of course. Her eyes were sparkling. You dragged them out of the garbage? He sounded horrified. They are totally rusted out. But look, she said, how the deep reddish color of the steps echoes that of the rust hook, and whatever else that other piece is. Do you think it’s a bicycle seat? They look so right there, like two ancient symbols of fall and the necessary decay it brings so that we may have renewal in the spri

Last night, I grabbed a piece of plain, computer paper along with a magazine, needle and black thread, and a black pen. I started ripping pieces out of the paper and sewing magazine scraps behind them. Other bits of pages were added on top. I let my needle be my pen, and sometimes I drew with the actual pen ~ like that face near the top right corner. Original stitched collage This morning, I scanned the collage and fixed it up a bit. Fixed up collage Some would call this an i

That sounds like a dangerous title. In reality, though, don’t we all want to be seen? And if we can catch the eye of the creator of the universe, we suppose that is a good thing, don’t we?  Or are there aspects of ourselves we have fooled ourselves into believing we can hide, that we definitely do NOT want exposed? Big questions. It’s amazing what comes up while you are just sitting and fiddling with the creative process. Playing with Ojo de Dios to create more shapes/symbols

I stood looking at my painting in progress, Ojo de Dios, and grabbed a pencil to capture a few of the shapes/symbols I saw there. They are very rough looking (bottom section), but I could use them just like they are: cut out the symbols and collage them onto a piece or two of art. I enjoy a rough, hastily scribbled look. As always, I love to keep playing, which yields ever more designs and symbols. Shapes/Symbols I’m sure you’ve noticed that I haven’t redrawn the God’s Eye ye

This design came from the painting Knock Four Times. Suspended I have done some stitching on a version of it, which I’ll scan tomorrow, and also picked out some of the symbols in it. Symbols pulled from Suspended You’ll notice that there is only a little variation between some of them, but it amazes me how even a slight variation can make the difference, sometimes, for how a shape or line fits into a certain space. #cross #knockfourtimes #suspended #symbols

A favorite activity is to grab pieces of my art and find symbols in them. If symbol seems a rather elevated term, just find marks (which are probably symbols we haven’t figured out the meaning for yet). They can be traced, flipped, enlarged, darkened, put into groups, shrunk. It doesn’t matter how simple they are ~ as you keep collecting these marks/symbols, you will start recognizing patterns and themes in your work where they emerge again and again. You can create your ow

I found Shayla Perreault Newcomb‘s name while visiting Contemplating the Moon. Cyberspace is a constantly unfolding phenomenon, and reading her beautifully crafted artist statement revealed why her name shone on my her-izon: My paintings tell the story of our journey through an internal landscape with the human as the subject and the landscape as metaphor. The square is a symbol for the physically sound. The circle represents spiritual balance. I’ve used them to show what we

One aspect of art that fascinates me is adding personal symbols to my work. I think Lascaux–except the cave paintings are my own, and they are on cloth instead of a wall of stone. Jane Dunnewold has something inspiring to say about this: Determining archetypes that have meaning for you is a springboard to a personal visual language. Creating work with your own visual language is the foundation for works roaming a very broad and artful terrain. And, of course, you can explore