Grizzly Collage

Here's Jeff looking natty in his Mad Men costume for a dinner party we had a few weeks ago.

My recent collage project from Jane Davies' book was a bust. I was making backgrounds and did a few layers of collage and then I covered it with gesso. The idea was to peel the gesso off and make interesting shapes. Instead it peeled down to the paper support.

I brought a ton of collage materials to Bodega Bay for our girls weekend, but the weather was so incredibly gorgeous and we were so relaxed that we never broke out any art projects.

My foray into collage so far has done more to inform my morning newspaper reading than cranking out the art projects. Yesterday, there was a little article in the Times about our governor reaching into his own pocket to buy a bronze grizzly bear sculpture to put outside his office. The end of the article ended this way:

>>Real grizzly bears have not been seen in California since the early 1920s. Chris Serveheen, a grizzly bear expert with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, said he liked the idea of a bronze version in the Capitol, "particularly since the state put bears on the state flag and proceeded to eliminate them all.">>

Last week there was an article about the disappearing salmon problem and there was a similar quote about how many fish have disappeared from the Pacific ocean along California's coast.

These are the kinds of statements that would normally go right over my head if I hadn't stumbled upon that fabulous 1933 Visual Geography of California book? There are dozens of maps about all kinds of stuff like this: how many mountain lions, bears, etc have been killed. Here's an excerpt:

"Suppose that we were to tell you that more than 6 thousand mountain lions (cougars) had been killed in California during the past 20 years? This statement seems hard to believe but it really is a fact. The state pays from 20 to 30 dollars for each lion caught." (I love the writing style.)

Soon I will get a flat scanner to share the pics from this book and successful and not so successful collage projects.