Detritus Project - Assemblage - CORN ROAST

Mel Kolstad, curator for the Langdon Divers Gallery in the Fond du Lac Library issued a call-to-artists to create original artwork for the "Detritus Project" to be be displayed at the library gallery February 3 to March 2, 2016. Artists were to use materials library staff found in returned books, which Mel refers to as detritus. The opening reception will be Thursday, February 11 from 6pm to 8pm.

The box of detritus was pretty picked over by the time I stopped at the library. I chose these two pieces. I was attracted to the "Corn Roast" raffle ticket as the event occurred on my birthday. The sticker on the left side remains unused.

I cut out the portions of the ticket that were of interest to me and collaged them with a "Journal Starters" image from my book. The inspiration of the corn roast date prompted me to draw my face with colored pencil.

As I am coloring in my face I am thinking of all the herbicides and GMO's that are now so infused into our countries corn production. How many acres upon acres are planted in corn...and why...

I placed the collaged image in an old wooden box and added more bits from the ticket around the sides of the box. Finally I rolled up some corn husks and glued them around the edge.

This piece is titled CORN ROAST.

For more information on the "Detritus Project" click here http://www.fdlpl.org/blog/2015/11/turn-castoffs-art-call-detritus-project

Mel Kolstad is one of the contributing artists for Journal Starters: Sampler Volume 1!

Fond du Lac Barcamp & Art Journaling

I attended my first barcamp at Sept. 20th, 2014 at Marian University's Stayer Center in Fond du Lac. I facilitated an Art Journaling session. I think next time I will name it Visual Journaling instead. As “art” seems to imply some type of “artistic” talent needed.

It is an experience hard to describe. To start, this is their facebook description “ …a participant-generated idea swap meet for the infocurious. It's an unconference, folks!”
Here is the link to their website - http://www.barcampfdl.org/

This group of people was very diverse and included computer based technology enthusiasts, educators, visual artists, and performing artists.

From Wikipedia “Although the format is loosely structured, there are rules^[19] at BarCamp. All attendees are encouraged to present or facilitate a session or otherwise contribute to the event.^[17]Everyone is also asked to share information and experiences of the event via public web channels, including blogs, photo sharing, social bookmarking, Twitter, wikis, and IRC. This encouragement to share is a deliberate change from the "off-the-record by default" and "no recordings" rules at many invite-only participant driven conferences. It also turns a physical, face-to-face event into a 'hybrid event' which enables remote online engagement with BarCamp participants”.
Thanks to Mel Kolstad for the above picture.


I jotted down some notes while attending the sessions. Unfortunately I didn’t have my current journal and had to resort to working in my “Fragmented” journal instead. It took several tries to print a quality picture on my laser printer. (see first photo). To waste less paper I printed on both sides. To further lessen waste I added bits and pieces to other journal pages.


Three salamanders crossed my path on the way to Barcamp and another one after I arrived home. They, along with a waste copy of the first photo in this post, were the inspiration for this page.


I added some different shades of gray colored pencils to give a little more depth to the salamanders.


A journal page from my Relief Printing session facilitated by my friend Mel Kolstad and Beekeeping session by http://dsbees.com/.