Mixed Media Collages
Do you know what Eco Art Is???
Ecological art is a style of art and artistic practice that seeks to preserve, remediate and/or vitalize the life forms, resources and ecology of Earth.
We are going to concentrate on the “remediate” part by using recycled materials to create a piece of art.
Have you ever thought about taking your garbage and making art with it?
That’s what Cindy does with some of her artwork....
Oil painter and mixed media artist
This is Cindy Ruskin, she is a mixed media artist and oil painter. Originally from South Africa, she has a BA in art history from Harvard and has studied painting in San Francisco and New York City. After college, Cindy moved to San Francisco where she worked as an illustrator, animator, set designer, window dresser, greeting card designer, graphic designer, storyboard instructor, reporter and writer – while making paintings and mixed media works. In 1997, Cindy moved to New York City to become a full-time artist, but found herself devoting more than two decades to creative projects with low-income children. She ran the art classes at Avenues for Justice, an alternative to prison program for juvenile offenders for twenty years. She also volunteered in public schools, teaching art history, writing curriculum, and giving museum tours. She was the art director of Lower East Side Bike Parade where her workshops helped neighborhood kids decorate their bicycles. And, aside from teaching art at the Lower Eastside Girls Club, she created a large mosaic for the organization’s new building. In early 2020, when Cindy's teaching ended with the Covid quarantine, she returned to her original goal, shifting her focus full-time to oil painting. Imagination and the joy of existence set the tone of her paintings, often coupled with awe for nature and inspiration from poetry. In the past two years Cindy's paintings have been published in Photo Trouvée, All SHE Makes magazine (In Issues#2 and #5), and The Purposeful Mayonnaise magazine (Issues #2 and #5), and GoddessArts Magazine. Interviews with Cindy are featured in the online publications Art Feeds Souls, Clover & Bee magazine, and Strictly Magazine. In recent years, she exhibited her work at the Ridgefield Guild of Artists Annual Juried Exhibition, and online at the PxP Contemporary Gallery, the TMP Gallery, the Camelback Gallery, and the Arts to Hearts Project. Previously, Cindy's exhibits included a solo show in Times Square,New York City, sponsored by ChaShaMa and a one-week-long guest show at the Matthew Marks Gallery, benefiting the Duk Lost Boys Clinic the Sudan. While living in San Francisco -- after reporting a story for PEOPLE magazine about the AIDS Quilt -- Cindy wrote the book The Quilt: Stories from the Names Project, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She also co-wrote the HBO documentary, COMMON THREADS: Stories from the Quilt. The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1990 as well as a Peabody Award. |
Cindy's mixed-media pieces are a hybrid of painting and collages. In her most recent work, she started by partially painting a recycled plastic container. Then, working backwards, she filled the container with found materials such as candy wrappers, doilies, buttons, text, wrapping paper, bits of ribbon and foil to provide sparkle, glitz and humor. She also used old prints of her own paintings and drawings as collage material.
Jeffrey is an artist that lives and works in Waverly, IA! You might know him because he works at our schools and drives buses for W-SR! He enjoys taking things that otherwise would be known as trash, cutting them up and making art out of them. He's particularly fond of adding imaginary creatures to his mixed media.
Here is your challenge:
Using a piece of cardboard as your base, create a mixed media piece that uses wrappers, glue, scissors, paint, paper and whatever else you can think of.... to create an art piece that uses creative thinking.
You are going to get the opportunity to take wrappers and create a piece of art out of them. My hope is that you can appreciate how much space each of your wrappers takes when you throw them away. How long does it take for them to disintegrate in our landfills? You could be like Cindy and take something that would otherwise be known as trash and create a beautiful piece that is then sold as a precious piece of art that can sustain your way of living!
You might be thinking... Where do I start? Here is a few things to think about:
1. "What do I want to have as the theme of my art?"
2. "Could I use this as an opportunity to create something that might make our Earth better? I can use my imagination to create a robot that cleans up garbage at a park. Or, a machine that filters all of the natural water on our Earth?" "What can I imagine?"
3. You could use this time to look at a place in your community and make it better. Use the images of that place and show us what you could do with it to improve it. Is it a park that is missing an important piece of equipment? Could you create that with your wrappers? Or, is it a place that is run down, and you can show us what you could make it look like by using what you have?
4. Look at the colors of the wrappers you chose. What do they make you think of?
If none of this is working for you.... I suggest you take a wrapper and just start cutting it up. Now, glue it onto your cardboard, randomly. Then, look at what you have. Turn it all different directions. What does it make you think of? What do you see? What is your mind thinking when you are looking at it? Now, go with it! Does it have to make “sense”? NOPE! Have fun in the process of creating your masterpiece.
2. "Could I use this as an opportunity to create something that might make our Earth better? I can use my imagination to create a robot that cleans up garbage at a park. Or, a machine that filters all of the natural water on our Earth?" "What can I imagine?"
3. You could use this time to look at a place in your community and make it better. Use the images of that place and show us what you could do with it to improve it. Is it a park that is missing an important piece of equipment? Could you create that with your wrappers? Or, is it a place that is run down, and you can show us what you could make it look like by using what you have?
4. Look at the colors of the wrappers you chose. What do they make you think of?
If none of this is working for you.... I suggest you take a wrapper and just start cutting it up. Now, glue it onto your cardboard, randomly. Then, look at what you have. Turn it all different directions. What does it make you think of? What do you see? What is your mind thinking when you are looking at it? Now, go with it! Does it have to make “sense”? NOPE! Have fun in the process of creating your masterpiece.