​The end of the calendar year approaches with celebrations and gatherings. I want to see the busyness of the season through lenses that show me peace and joy, and above all, Love.  I wish that for you and your household too.
Much of November was spent setting up to present my wares at the Recycle Santa Fe Art Festival – a celebratory gathering of artisans and their creations of recycled materials. After the success of that show, I set up sales for the start of the holiday season, and launched a new line of greeting cards, “Spiritus”.  

​In addition, I created two remixes – “Fine Ladies Dancing” the set of lively women, is joined by “Regard”, and “Rising” my collection of galaxies and planets is joined by “I See You” my collage mosaic of the Glowing Eye Nebula.

​These sets are available in my Etsy shop DECO Collage Cards.

​My cut paper collage “Bloomsday at Molly Malone’s”, my largest piece, will be travelling to its “forever home” in Colorado in the next few weeks – someone saw it at an exhibition a few years ago and knew they wanted the Original Collage when the time was ripe – and that is now.  I could not be more pleased.  The theme is taken from the closing soliloquy of James Joyce’s Ulysses, in fact, the last several words are embedded in the center of the piece.  I have a few giclée prints of "Molly"  - smaller sizes, of course!

​I am on a roll!  I have created another new collection of greeting cards, "Enchantment", a tribute to the beauty of New Mexico.  The five cards in this collection include “Arroyo”, “Hear the Echoes”, “Summer Storm”, “Tree of Life”, and “Water Is Life”.

​To honor the Lady of Guadalupe, whose Feast Day is December 12, I am offering a sale December 11 to 13, 2021, of the items I have featuring the Original Collage I created.  The four-card collection of greeting cards printed on premium paper is in my Etsy shop, DECO Collage Cards, and the giclée prints, both the 16” and the 24” sizes, are in my other Etsy shop, DECO fine art collage.  All “Lady of Peace” items will be 20% off the regular price on those days.

​Next, I will have a Solstice Sale in my Etsy shop, Star Art by Deco, and in my card shop, from December 15th to December 24th - be sure to add the code SOLSTICE21 before checking out.  I have added several small art prints to the shop – including “Van Gogh’s Irises.” More details will be posted in my newsletter, Bits and Pieces.

If you are in town, visit Pushpin Collaborative Co. for cards and gifts – some of my top-selling cards are available there.

Sending you blessings from Santa Fe – wishes for Peace. 


Love,

Deco

​The red, golds and greens are still present in my garden, fluttering against the blue sky and piling in layers under the trees.  The afternoons are still balmy and beckon me to walk and enjoy an hour of peace; I wander along the arroyos and am grateful for the respite.  Lately I have been working apace, preparing for my big show of the season, the Recycle Santa Fe Art Festival. It starts in a few days, and I am filling boxes with greeting cards, journals, and mouse pads, and  assembling and labeling  portfolios with the posters, prints and originals.

I have participated in this show for a few years, and I think it is the most fun art market in this city known for spectacular art markets.  Fun for vendors and customers who marvel at the imaginative products that artisans have created out of old materials. A great place to shop for gifts.

At the end of the month, I will have a Black Friday sale, something special for Small Business Saturday, and more deals on Cyber Monday. If you would like to get the up-to-date news on these, be sure to sign up for my email announcements. 

​I am glad that this month includes a holiday that celebrates gratitude; for me, it is a chance to pause, and to reflect on the good moments and to touch base with my family and friends.  Our Thanksgiving feast gathers makers, artists, poets, and musicians, so naturally we have a nonconventional menu – that’s the way we like it.

I am sending you wishes for good cheer and peace for you and your families.  You may have  seen my announcement... I have launched a new greeting card, “Peace and Joy” featuring my collage of sunrise on Winter Solstice, available in packs of 5 in my Etsy shop DECOcollagecards.
​
Love and Peace,
 
 Deco

​They’re here!
My new collections of greeting cards with images of my Original Collages are packaged and ready for you!  I am going to be bringing these to the Recycle show in Santa Fe in November, but you can get first pick by clicking into my Etsy shop DECOcollageCards. 

​The new collections include Trees of Hope, Trees of Strength, The Harvest and Autumn. Of course I  have the other collections as well, Perfectly Pear, Fine Ladies Dancing, and Rising; all the collections have 5 assorted images, blank inside, with appropriate envelopes. In addition to these, I have some sets that are all of a kind, like the ones featuring Our Lady of Guadalupe, four cards on premium card stock.

​And more surprises are on the way.  I have a new design for the holidays, Peace & Joy, in a gorgeous 5" x 5" format.  I will be announcing that in 2 weeks in this blog and in the Bits and Pieces Newsletter.



I am enjoying a beautiful autumn, with blue slue skies and gorgeous ambers and golds.  The Recycle show starts in a month – be sure to sign up for the newsletter by clicking on the button in the column to the right. I'll be announcing more details soon.

I wish you all a beautiful peaceful Autumn.
Love and Peace!

Deco

Although the heat of the sun feels like summer, the days are shorter and the winds are brisker; time for seasonal changes.  
I am launching a newsletter "Bits and Pieces" which will be a brief update on my coming shows and all the special sales and promotions in my Etsy shop.  It is FREE and you can sign up here, in the the sidebar of this blog post.
​The big news is the upcoming Live and in Person show, Recycle Santa Fe Art Festival. Mid-November and in downtown Santa Fe, it is the pre-holiday festival and market that everyone relishes.

Recycle Santa Fe
Art Festival
​November 12-14, 2021
Santa Fe Community Convention Center
201 W. Marcy St.
​Santa Fe, NM 87504
3 Day Art Market
Trash to Treasure:
​Originals, posters, prints, cards

I created a new collage, which I will debuting at the Recycle Santa Fe Art Festival.  Here is a slide show that reveals the progression from first day's  few scraps to completion.  This collage, like most of my work, is composed of paper cut from magazines and catalogs.  I call it "Serenity". 

  My work is in a few more shows - both in California.  One show, All About Women, is displaying my original collage "What Dreams May Come".  The other is National Juried Exhibition of Works on Paper, and they are displaying my original collage, "Hear the Echoes". You can read about them in the blog sidebar.

I am going to take a little time and sit outside and read a good book now - the weather is gorgeous and soon a full moon will be rising.

Deco

Old magazines and mail order catalogs are often tossed as soon as they are delivered to the mailbox. But for me and my art medium, cut paper collage, they supply a treasure trove of wealth.  The color, the shapes, the shadows, the hues, the text in a myriad of font and size – these provide me with an endless source of material. Using this “used and useless” paper, I can form endless space-scape, intricate still life, and meaningful portraits.  I use these scraps as my paint palette, and I let my imagination take me to the ends of the universe.  I can be realistic or abstract, and nearly every one of my collages is loaded with embedded words and phrases.

​That phrase "everything old is new again" seems like a centuries-old chestnut – but apparently it isn’t! Simple research showed that it was the title and theme of a song written by Peter Allen and Carole Bayer Sager (he usually gets full credit though) in 1974.  The phrase was also employed by Stephen King, in 2005.  I thought it would have an ancient lineage.  Nope.  Nevertheless, it is a handy adage for the Recycling show as well as my art.

​As I write this blog entry, our world plague is surging, and mask mandates are returning, and our sequestering appears to be the future for the safety of us all.  After a taste of cautious freedom – did you travel? Go to a concert? – returning to ordering in and binging Netflix seems like a dreary outcome.  I am going to comply of course (sure beats the alternative!)  I hope that all of you who read this post take the necessary precautions to stay healthy and keep your communities alive. I want to see you all.

Buy a new mask or two.
Wave at people. 
Be kind to workers. 
​Tip well.
"the smiles returning to the faces"

​Deco

​Water is on my mind this summer, the excess and the dearth, abundance and scarcity.  Here in the high plains desert of northern New Mexico, we worry about having enough water. It is monsoon season, and the summer downpours give us joy, while – at the same time - whole towns in Europe are washed by devastating floods. We, and most of the planet, are dependent on clean fresh water, and yet we pollute the oceans with chemicals and garbage.  Breaking water, mother's water breaking, water broken; ​Tó éí ííńá át'é   Water is life.

​​Water has been a theme in my art for a decade or so. As a transplant to Santa Fe, I was fascinated with the storms and flooded arroyos in the summers; my Monsoon Rush explores the powerful gush of water lit by the setting sun.

​I used Water in the first of my Elements series, Too Far Out, as I studied the dissipation of matter and the distorted perspective in and above a body of water.

​​The series I have been creating over the past several years, Coral Reef, is all about Water, and Life and Water.  It is a 12-part exploration, nearly complete.

​
​I recently was accepted into another group exhibition, Cimarron National Works on Paper, on display at Oklahoma State University.  The work that was invited is What Dreams May Come, a small but intense, densely packed cut paper collage, contemplating pathways to heaven, and conflicting impressions of magnitude.  This exhibition will be "live and in person" August 16-September 17 in the Gardiner Gallery in Stillwater, OK, and will include a virtual exhibition too.

Joyceans around the world celebrate the 16th day of June as occasion to meet, feast and read literary excerpts to each other. The day commemorates the day that Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly and his young friend Stephen Daedalus (and other assorted denizens of 1904 Dublin) lived Life, as recorded by James Joyce in his novel Ulysses. Mostly it is an excuse to descend from the ivory towers and have fun.  I have been honoring the day with my fellow readers since 2004, the 100th anniversary revelry. My Original Collage “Bloomsday at Molly Malone’s” was created to reflect upon that particular celebration.  Since moving to Santa Fe, I joined the local James Joyce group; we meet weekly for reading and discussion, and yearly for celebration.  The pandemic dampened our usual hijinks – music, recitations, art exhibitions, and feasting on the traditional foods, for which we invite the public to enjoy.  This year our fest was smaller and private, but nonetheless joyful.

​I am so pleased to announce that one of my Original Collages will be included in another national group exhibition. The selected art is my collage depiction of the great spiral galaxy M101.  The show is "Liminal" at the Verum Ultimum Art Gallery, 3014 NE Ainsworth, Portland, OR and runs the entire month of July 2021. Inclusion in this show is especially meaningful to me, as “Liminal” is the concept that I have been probing in my art for the past decade or so. Liminal is an adjective that’s used to describe things that exist at the threshold or border between one thing and another, specifically means relating to the point beyond which a sensation becomes too faint to be experienced. My work on “M101” is an exploration of that threshold. Although the original is in a private collection, the work will be viewed in an online presentation through the gallery. Giclee prints are also available.
This will be my fourth group exhibition this year. 

I am giddy with the excitement of new exhibitions and future possibilities.  So I am going to have a poster sale!  My three posters are for sale at $12 each + shipping, through July.  I am going to bypass Etsy this time, and offer them to you as a direct sale.  Send me a message, and we will arrange shipping and payment asap. 

​Here are the three posters:

​This season has been surprisingly busy.  In addition to my spring sales, I have entered  group exhibitions; in addition to the two I announced in my last blog entry, I was accepted into a lovely show titled “Blue.” The gallerists at the O’Hanlon Center for the Arts in Mill Valley, California, invited artists from around the country to participate.  The theme clearly was the color Blue and inspired creations in all media.  I submitted three likely candidates from my collection and the jurist selected my piece “Hear the Echoes", drawn by the vibrant hue of the sky and the contrast with the red cliffs.

​The artists from the exhibition were invited to participate in a Zoom call on May 18; after signing in at the wrong time (twice! dang time zone gap!), I joined about 6 dozen participants in the Zoom.  We had a chance to say a few words about our entries, as the entire show was presented to us one piece at a time.  Stirring statements and astounding creativity, from Cape Cod to Seattle…it was inspiring to see the variety.  The Zoom was recorded and is accessible for view, as is the entire show without commentary.

​I have been submitting applications for more shows; these exhibitions expand my horizons internationally.  I feel honored to be included with the other creators.  The work on my 12-piece opus “Coral Reef” continues to grow, and I hoping to complete this year.

​​Meanwhile, I am off to read in the garden – irises are in bloom!

​Spring is here and the restrictions imposed by the pandemic are easing, and my world is opening up – I am out exploring, and in… expanding my vision and my reach.

​In the middle of April, I did a short road trip to El Malpais National Monument in western New Mexico. The name means “badlands” and refers to a vast area of volcanic land created tens of thousands of years ago, considered inhospitable to many people for centuries.   Nowadays, we appreciate the geology and the flora and the fauna.  I arrived early on a frosty morning, the first to park at the trailhead.  I started my hike by following a portion of the Continental Divide Trail through the verdant lava fields.  I was fascinated by the evidence of elk; their hoof prints were huge and deep – the size of my hiking boots and making 3 times the impression in the soft mud.  The soil reminded me of the red mud of Maui. I climbed the cinder cone and explored the lava trenches; I did not encounter any people until my return to the trailhead; mostly ornithologists, it appeared.

​As Santa Fe begins to open post-pandemic, I have been expanding my activities.  I am pleased to have been accepted in two upcoming shows.  The first is in Norfolk VA, Merged II, an exhibition of collage and assemblage.  The piece they accepted was “Hear the Echoes”, the Original Collage commissioned by the State of New Mexico a few years ago to honor the poets of the state.  This exhibition will be live and in person – I shipped the framed collage this week. The Gallery is D'Art Center, 740 Boush St., Norfolk, VA 23510.  The Opening Reception is on Thursday, May 6, 5:30-7:30 pm, and it runs until May 23, 2021. I encourage my friends on the East Coast to check it out and take photos!

​The second show is based in California, but has an on-line exhibition component, so everyone will be able to view the art.  The exhibition is Purely Abstract, a Group Exhibition, and is presented by Las Laguna Art Gallery, 577 S. Coast Highway A-1, Laguna Beach, CA 92651. The exhibition includes all media; this is the first time I have had my paper mosaics accepted into an all-abstract exhibition.  They selected an Original Collage from my Coral Reef series, which I titled “All there in… (black and white)”. The show opens on May 6, and runs until May 29, 2021.

​I continue to submit my work to national and international shows, and I look forward to the possibilities locally too.  Meanwhile, the sale that I am featuring in my three Etsy shops is coming to an end soon. I offer a 20% discount on the purchase of any 2 items, and the sale ends on May 7.  You will find items to please a Mom, a grad, as well as confirmation candidates.  Take a look; enjoy!

​My mom’s birthday was a few days ago.  She’s not around anymore, but while she was living, we always added festive elements of a St. Patrick’s Day celebration – some of the traditional foods and drinks of the Irish-Americans in Chicago, where I grew up. Here is a picture of her kissing the Blarney Stone in Ireland when she was a young woman. I miss her.  She was proud of her bright intellect, her creativity, and her drive to improve her community. She was not a touch-feely person, and did not like hugging, although I have no doubt that she profoundly loved me and my five siblings. Motherhood does not always match what shows up in the selection of Hallmark cards!  As a mother myself, I learned that one of the characteristics of motherliness is Ferocity.  I do not know of any mom who lacks ferocity.  A mother is often ferocious in her love; ferocious in her support and protection.

Mother’s Day is around the corner (Sunday May 9 this year), and I wanted to do something special, so you can celebrate your mother.  In honor of my mom, I am offer two sales in all my Etsy shops.  The first sale is for the Early Bird, which offers 25% off the purchase of 3 items – anything in the shop!  Yes, even framed originals.  Of course, the shops also have smaller items, like greeting card sets and journals, which are easily giftable to your own mothers or new moms you know.  The Early Bird sale runs from March 31 to April 7, 2021.  The second sale is the traditional Mothers’ Day Sale and offers 20% off the purchase of any two items in the shop.  This sale runs from April 8 to May 8, 2021.

My three Etsy shops include:

• DECO fine art collage, featuring my collage art – New Mexican landscape, still life and portraits - in originals, prints , giclées, and posters.
• Star Art by Deco, with my collage art featuring cosmic designs like stars, planets, and nebulae, in originals and prints
• DECO Collage Cards, specializing in giftable items like greeting cards and journals, featuring my collage designs.

These three images are available as prints in various sizes, in DECO fine art collage:
​

​In other good news, New Mexico is opening up after pandemic restrictions, just in time to welcome Spring. The landscape is always beautiful, but our spring weather is capricious, and I can plant pansies and two days later, wake to winter white. I am looking forward to more colorful days ahead; soon, I will welcome family and friends to my backyard, join friends in a local wine garden and return to traveling.