My Solid There

I've been at my kitchen table sketching and decoupaging paper all week in between reading. Tonight I revisited a summer favorite, Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife and rediscovered something I had forgotten. She writes so beautifully of creating art:

The compelling thing about making art-or making anything, I suppose—is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances. Circe Nimbue, Artemis, Athena, all the old sorceresses: they must have known the feeling as they transformed mere men into fabulous creatures, stole the secrets of the magicians, disposed of armies: ah, look, there it is, the new thing. Call it a swine, a war, a laurel tree. Call it art. The magic I can make is small magic now, deferred magic. Everyday I work, but nothing ever materializes. I feel like Penelope, weaving and unweaving. (248)

Thought I'd share something that I had found again and also post some pictures of my latest experiments. I've been dabbling with decoupage, paper, rubbish, and little scraps of magazine print culture!

"Keyless Citizen"

"What comforted his misapprehension [Bloom's]?

That as a compentent keyless citizen he had proceeded energetically from the unknown to the known through the incertitude of the void" (U 17.697).

The most whimsical and humorous in my collection, the "keyless citizen" is made up entirely by two materials, paper and chain. To my great depair, I would not find real keyholes, it is an odd material to come by if you are not a locksmith, so I improvised and created the keyholes from paper which I treated with a deconstructing paint process to make them appear more like real keyholes. Keyholes...but alas no keys. Poor Poldy!